Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Head of Investor Relations, Amit Bhalla.
Wow, that's a century of history, legacy, and innovation, and today we're here to talk about the future, the next five years, and beyond. It's my great pleasure to welcome all of you to our Capital Markets Day of 2025. Fantastic to see a room which is packed. I know we couldn't accommodate everybody, so I know there's many people watching online. Welcome to each one of you as well. We're here today at this fantastic venue of the McLaren Technology Centre, as you all can experience, and there's probably a couple of reasons why we chose to be here. First and foremost, this is such an intelligent site, as we will see during the course of the day, and it's fully powered by Schneider Electric.
At the same time, you know, when you think of McLaren, what do we think about?
I think about pole position and, since the weekend, world champion. We also think about speed. We think about quick decisions, data-driven decisions, and teamwork. And these are all elements which resonate with Schneider Electric as well. Let me talk about what we have in store for you today. Of course, it is my duty to put your attention towards the disclaimer because we are talking about forward-looking statements. But what we've done is we've divided the day into really two parts. So the morning sessions, we'll talk about strategy, we'll hear from our business leaders, from our operation leaders. And we're also joined by a few special guests, including customers. And then in the second half of the day, we will talk about what we've done in this very site with McLaren.
Then we'll move on to the finance section, which I know that you're all eagerly waiting for. And after that, we have the Q&A and the rest of the day, which I will explain later. In order to get things started and to say what we're going to do to advance energy tech, it's my great privilege and honor to welcome our CEO, Olivier Blum.
Thank you, Amit, and good morning to all of you. Welcome. Indeed, great to be in this beautiful technology center. For those who have been watching the Grand Prix, you've seen, maybe, sometime there was a control room. So this control room is behind us, somewhere in that building, and it's powered by Schneider Electric devices, supported by our data center. So I hope we have a little contribution, a very small contribution in the success of McLaren. We are here today for a very, very important moment, which is our Capital Markets Day. I had the privilege to be at Schneider Electric for the past 30 years, and if there was one thing that defined Schneider Electric, it's always about challenging the status quos, always being ready for the next cycle.
And we have been through different cycles of our company, a cycle where we've gone through a huge geographical expansion, a cycle where we have created One Schneider, and a cycle in the past 10 years where we created a unique technology stack, which is called EcoStruxure, with a very, very strong ambition and a very strong vision that the next century will be about electrification, digitalization to make energy more efficient and more sustainable. And I think when we launched that program more than 10 years ago, I think it shows today that it's a reality that we are in. It's not anymore a vision, it's not anymore a dream. And what we want to share with you today is basically what we are doing to get ready for the next cycle, which is basically a cycle of intelligence, of energy, of industrial intelligence.
I met with most of you for the first time as a CEO one year ago. It was in India for our Investor Day. Since that time, we've been working with my management team, the ExCom, really to work together on how this next cycle will be about, what does it mean for Schneider Electric, what are the trends that will impact us, and how we are going to differentiate Schneider Electric. That's what we want to share with you. We shared actually already with the leadership team of Schneider a month ago what is this plan, because it's super important that we align all the company everywhere in the world. Very excited to be with you to talk about the future. Before talking about the future, it's important to say that we are starting on a very strong foundation.
We've been delivering very strong and consistent results over the past cycle with a very strong acceleration of our growth. You remember the time where we were a kind of GDP plus minus company. We have entered in a new cycle where Schneider Electric has delivered consistent growth, and we have included on purpose the COVID period to show that even taking into consideration the COVID period, Schneider has delivered great growth, very good profitability, delivering strong cash return at the end of the day, and strong real total shareholder return for our investor, with something which is very strong in our DNA, very, very strong progressive dividend policy over the cycle. What is very important, what we have done in parallel of delivering strong financial results, is to transform the portfolio of Schneider.
You remember when we launched EcoStruxure, we talked about the digital flywheel, and we are ending that cycle by having 60% of our portfolio, which is already digital, and of course, we'll tell you today what we are going to go to the next level. We've done it also with the support of very selected acquisitions, as usual, a couple of acquisitions that have helped us to take software to the next level, of course, with AVEVA, with OSI, but also Planon, ETAP, and RIB. Very selected acquisitions also in technology, just to mention one, Motivair, which is helping us really to go to the next level of having a full solution in data center based in the U.S. And you will have the CEO, Motivair, with us today. We'll tell you more about what we are doing in technology.
But last but not least, a very strong acceleration of everything we do in our multi-hub strategy with the completion of the acquisition of L&T in India. So that's basically about the past cycle, very consistent execution to deliver very strong shareholder return. What I would like to do today, and we are going to talk a lot about what are the accelerations we are making at Schneider Electric, what we are doing really to go to the next level. But what I think is very, very important to start with is we start with a very strong position and a couple of things that differentiate Schneider. I'm going to be very, very, very short, but I just want to make sure we are all on the same page of what are those attributes that make Schneider Electric very, very different. So the first one is a very balanced exposure.
It has been really an obsession, I remember, from the different CEOs before me, and in particular, Jean-Pascal, to make sure that we can build a very strong balanced exposure from a geographical standpoint. That's why we put so much focus in expansion in China at one point of time, in India, in the U.S., of course. Now we are going to the next level, of course, with geography like the Middle East. Also a very strong balanced exposure from an end market standpoint to make sure that creates a much more resiliency for Schneider Electric and to be able to go through different cycles.
What we have been doing in the past 10 years is to add one more pillar in this very balanced exposure, which is more diverse from a business standpoint, business model standpoint, from pure product to more services to more digital layers, which makes Schneider Electric, again, more resilient. What has been very, very important when we have gone through all these developments is to make sure that we create a very strong, diverse, and international leadership team present in all those regions to make it really, really, really very close to each of the markets. The second thing really that makes Schneider Electric different today in the market is our portfolio. You will see a lot today through the different presentations, but also through the marketplace. A differentiated portfolio which starts, of course, from our legacy, which is a very, very strong franchise in product.
All the examples that you see on the slide are more than EUR 1 billion of turnover franchise, starting by really very strong positions that we have in low voltage, for instance, with our MasterPact and Acti9 series, leadership positions everywhere in the world, and hence in medium voltage with the launch recently of our SF6-free AirSeT series. And hence also recently by the new platform we have launched with Galaxy VX, our three-phase UPS, which put us in the leading position in the world. And going to what we do in industry with Altivar and TeSys, all those franchises that we have created give us a unique access to many customers. But as you know, we have connected all those products to make sure we can go to the next level of intelligence.
We build a very strong layer at the edge level with automation solutions from home to building automation, but also to industrial automation. And that's why really this combination of energy management and industry automation is making Schneider Electric very, very different. And on top of developing a lot of services, starting by field services, you know that we have told you a lot in the past five years on what we were doing to go to the next level of our journey with digital services, with what we call the EcoCare franchise. And you will see today how it contributes already to the acceleration of our growth. And some people know a little bit less.
But in this period of the past five, 10 years, where the focus has been on energy, on sustainability, on electrification, on digitalization, we have also built advisory services which are agnostic to help our customers at enterprise level. And all of that, of course, as I said before, amplified by a very strong layer of software that we build. So that unique position that we have in the market, that we have built around EcoStruxure, going to AVEVA and Connect, has been and is today a very strong foundation on which we can leverage for the future. So of course, it has been supported by a lot of investment, a lot of our investment. And we commented to you that we have accelerated our investment in R&D. And it's translated in a very strong return with a very strong vitality index. And it's not only what I believe.
What is also important is a testimony of the market. All business analysts are not only recognizing all those great platforms that we have in hardware that I don't even show on the slide, but recognizing today Schneider Electric having already great position, being number one in energy management software, in grid software, also same with Planon in microgrid, but also in supply chain. I don't know if you're aware, but we have been recognized for three years in a row by Gartner as the best global supply chain in actually, not in our industry, in the industry in general. The third thing that makes really, really Schneider different is a geographical coverage, and we'll have later on with one of our key partners a testimony.
But we have built really a unique ecosystem in every single geography with a very strong belief that to make Schneider Electric different, we will have to connect all this ecosystem to deliver more to the end user. So it's about leveraging panel builders, integrators, people who are assembling all our technology, people who are distributing the product of Schneider Electric, but we are also promoting our technology. And just to give you the example, one illustration of what it means in India, with the combination of Schneider and now L&T in India, it means that we have 140,000 + points of sales in the geography that give us the possibility to access almost every single corner of the country. So this strategy of being with partners or saturating the market has been in the really, really core center of the strategy of Schneider and makes us truly different today.
The fourth point, which is very, very important that I want to remind you, we've launched One Schneider more than 10 years ago, actually 14 years ago exactly, with the ambition and the vision that we will deliver more to our customers if we were one company, but we'll also deliver one more to our employees. So on the customer side, that's when we decided to have one sales force in every country to make sure we can saturate, as I said in the previous slide, by customer type. But that's also when we decided to create one digital experience. On top of the human experience we are creating with our customers, it's how you create a unique digital experience for our customers. One services organization. We've talked with you a lot about services in the past year.
We have created more than six, seven years ago one services organization to embrace all the offerings of Schneider Electric, one global supply chain. So that's what has helped us to deliver very strong real growth and market share gains in most of our markets. But there's something also that we don't speak about a lot. It helps a lot on the people side because we are one company. We don't operate Schneider Electric, you know, with multiple units which are not interconnected. We are extremely integrated for our customers, but we are integrated for our employees as well.
I don't like to speak too much about myself, but I'm a pure product of that strategy because I've grown in the past 32 years in this company doing very, very different jobs in multiple geographies, in sales, in R&D, in country management, being the head of HR for the company. But that's a unique value that we give to our employees, and that's why people join and stay at Schneider over the cycle. And of course, being One Schneider has helped us, as you know, to deliver very strong return in terms of performance, strong return for our shareholders, but has helped us to be always very efficient across the cycle. And the last point, I already touched a little bit about it.
If you have to retain what makes Schneider Electric different, it's a company which has an extreme focus on people, on the way we are developing people, on the way we are building a very, very diverse world, diverse teams everywhere in the world. We love and we believe in differences that make us stronger, that make us more innovative. But if there is one metric I would like to call out on that slide, the engagement of our people is translated on the last line, which is the confidence Schneider employees have every year in our global shareholding plan. We have last year, this year actually, 63% of our employees who are eligible, who have invested in Schneider, who have bought shares through the shareholding plan.
You could say, look, this is true only in economies where we have been there for very long, but of course, like France. You have countries like China, India, where more than 80% of our employees have invested in Schneider Electric. I could give you a lot of metrics, but I think it gives you a good illustration of the level of engagement that we have everywhere in the world. Actually, as a result of that, we are happy to report that our employees are in the top five shareholders of Schneider, which is, of course, very, very good. Sustainability to finish, and I put it together with people because for me, there is a very strong between the topic of people, engagement, and sustainability. For us, it has been always about being a responsible company.
It's for more than 20 years that we said we want as a company to deliver very strong shareholder return, but we want to impact very positively our ecosystem. We don't believe the two should be disconnected, and there will be a premium for companies who are able to integrate responsibility, sustainability into their strategy. That's why every three to five years, we launch a new program. That's how we have been able really to help to save and avoid more than 790 million tons of CO2 emissions in the past cycle. If you remember, and actually, I was the head of sustainability and strategy at that point in time, we said we would like also to engage our top supplier to help them to reduce their CO2 emissions.
We have helped through our program our top 1,000 suppliers to divide by two their CO2 emissions, plus many other initiatives where we give access to energy for every people in the world. And of course, I'm absolutely convinced it makes us different. But again, it seems I'm not the only one to be convinced because we have been rewarded in the past year two times by Corporate Knights, two times by TIME as the most sustainable company in the world. So there is probably something we are doing right at Schneider. So those five real elements make Schneider Electric very different today. And it was very important for me to start my presentation on those five key pillars, which give you a better idea of what is the starting point of the next cycle and what are the things we want to accelerate.
So that takes me to the next part of my presentation: what do we see about the market. And look, you are involved in that market. You know very well. You are making a lot of studies on how the market is evolving. But there are definitely for us three mega trends which are at the center of everything that we see. First of all, the acceleration of the new energy landscape, the acceleration of everything which is happening in digital, and something which is not new for Schneider. But we have been convinced for more than 10 years that we are going to operate more and more in a multipolar world, but that this is something that we see as a very important trend.
So if I go pretty fast on electrification, we said more than 10 years ago, the next century is going to be about electrification and digitalization. It's happening. The usage in electrification has started to move everywhere in the world. Of course, we have very important examples that we know in our own life, which are, for instance, electric vehicles. But we see it also in industry where more and more industry are going through an electrification of their process. So multiple examples which show that electrification is growing everywhere. And if you see where we were at the end of 2024 and where it's going in the next 10 years and then up to 2050, there will be a permanent acceleration of electrification everywhere in the world. And of course, this electrification makes Schneider Electric even more attractive at the end of the day.
What is very important also to keep in mind is that electricity is the most efficient source of energy. We like to remind it. This is what will help, of course, to meet the energy demand everywhere in the world. But it has also some implications. And Frederic, who leads energy management, will come back on that more in detail. It means that those new usages that we see everywhere in the world are changing completely the traditional electrical distribution that we have been all through in the past century, which was basically an AC electrical distribution architecture to something which is more AC/DC. And for Schneider Electric, as a global leader in electrification, we want to lead that transition.
We want to lead that disruption because as a market leader, we believe we are the company that should give really an indication of where the market should go and how we can influence the standard to do it. So that's also something very important that you will hear more from our teams today. What is important when we speak about energy? Energy is getting more decentralized. There is a large part of the energy that will come in the coming years that will come from decentralized energy, maybe 30%-50%. We don't know exactly of the total generation, a lot coming from microgrid. But there is also a massive opportunity to meet the energy demand, which is to bring much more flexibility.
There are multiple studies that say that maybe we could gain 10%-20% of the overall demand in the next decade by having much more flexible solutions. I will go fast on artificial intelligence. Every single day, I'm sure you are reading about artificial intelligence. I think we are all convinced at that point of time that AI is already in our life, in our personal life. I'm not going to ask you individually how many times you are using every week generative AI compared to what you used to do one year ago, but it's growing very, very fast. All companies are using more and more AI. But what is very important for me is a third metric.
We see an acceleration of AI in the industrial world where a lot of investments are happening, and this is a place where Schneider Electric can deliver a lot of value. And of course, as a result of that, there will be a need for more infrastructure. And of course, today we'll speak about data centers and the unique positioning of Schneider Electric in that market. And I talked briefly about this multipolar world. For me, it's really something we have to look at two angles. One, it's a great growth opportunity, reshoring, basically more investments, more CapEx in many parts of the world, a lot of investment also in cloud to deliver cloud sovereignty for all those governments who want to develop their own cloud. And of course, it's another angle which makes life and the world probably a little bit more complicated for global companies.
But again, thanks to our unique positioning in the past 10 years to create a multi-hub company and that I will write a little bit more later on, we believe that gives us an opportunity to be even more differentiated in the next cycle. So I see that more as an opportunity than a threat. But of course, we have to learn, all of us, how to navigate even better in this world, which is more fragmented.
So when you combine all of that, we are entering a new era, a new era where energy was already at the center of every single probably priority of government and company, but an era where AI will require more compute, more compute will require more energy, and we believe we can be the company in the world that can deliver energy and industrial intelligence to meet the demand of the market and to demand the demand of the technology in the next cycle. So that's a unique positioning for Schneider Electric. Maybe you have noticed in the past weeks that we have disclosed what we call our new statement, our new positioning, but that starts from a very, very, very strong belief that, first of all, planet, people, and business all matter. I've talked about sustainability.
It will continue to be high on our agenda to be a responsible company. So all matters. But what is even more important is that AI will rely on energy in the next cycle. Energy will power our lives. Energy will be essential to progress. And the only way to take it to the next level will be through technology. That's why we strongly believe in energy technology. And you have seen this short video today at the beginning of the meeting, which was really to show you that at every single step of the world's transformation, Schneider Electric has been a leading company from a technology standpoint, always inventing the next generation of solutions. First company in the world to invent the switchgear, the contactor, the PLC with Modicon, and so on and so forth.
So at every important time, we want to be the company which will make the difference. And that's why we want really to be your energy technology partner. We want to be the energy technology partner of our customers. We want to be the company which will electrify, automate, and digitalize every industry, business, and home to drive efficiency and sustainability for all. And of course, what I've described before, the positioning, the portfolio that we have built gives us that unique opportunity to go to the next level. So what does it mean now if I start to go a little bit more in details? Why do we believe it's important to start by electrification? Because if we want really to make the world more efficient to meet really the expectation of our customers, we strongly believe that, first of all, everything starts by electrification.
We have this unique number one position in electrification where we build solutions in building, data center, industry, and infrastructure to make sure that we bring intelligent devices for our customers ready to electrify. But as I said before, what is very important is to build a very strong layer of automation. And again, automation for home, automation for building, industry automation, all are extremely important. That's why the portfolio that we have created between energy management, industry automation, and with our software company like AVEVA gives us that opportunity not only to go from the electrification to automation, but to go to the next level of digitalization, which, of course, you understand, will be very, very important in the next cycle. So what are we going to do now in this next cycle? We need to accelerate the transformation of Schneider Electric.
Three things for me and the team which are extremely important: how we are advancing our technology leadership in the field of energy and industrial intelligence, how we go to the next level of regionalization of Schneider to create a unique proximity with our customer and more agility, and how we create a very strong focus on operational excellence to deliver cost competitiveness and scalability, so let me start by technology, and you will have many more details during the day, so I will just lay out really the foundation of what we are going to present later on, but in this world, which is changing, where energy and industrial intelligence is becoming more important, where you understand that the world of energy is changing, what is important for us is what could be the portfolio that we can create to deliver more value for our customers.
Very simply, what we want is to help our customers to really onboard by offering intelligent devices which are integrated, which sense, which think, and which act, a strong layer at the operational level to help our customers really to simulate and automate systems, and of course, a strong value proposition at the optimized level once you have installed all those assets to help our customers really to be able to have access to multiple systems, to multiple data, and to create more value at the enterprise level. What is very, very important to retain about the strategy and the portfolio of Schneider Electric is in everything we do, we want to develop dedicated solutions for building, data center, industry, and infrastructure. You will hear us talking a lot about the full lifecycle.
So we want to be present from the time of the design to the time where we build, we operate, and maintain. We are not only present at the CapEx time. We are present also before at the design stage, but also at the maintenance level where there is more OpEx. And of course, what makes us unique is the combination of unique capabilities with three strong domain expertises in building, power and IT, and I put liquid cooling together with IT and industry automation. So that's really the starting point of how we are building technology to create more value for our customers.
The second point, which is very important for us where we accelerate, how can we convince customers to buy more from Schneider Electric is by making sure that we have this very strong technology stack with those three layers, but making sure that we have a very strong services layer. Of course, we have developed in the past 10+ years a lot of field services. But as I said in my introduction, it was also about how we go to the next level by providing more digital services. And you will see today a lot of examples because now it's not anymore an R&D, it's not anymore a direction, it's a reality. We are already delivering a lot of value for our customers together with our Schneider Advisory Services. But what we want and what is very, very important, we want to create one unified customer experience.
It's not only through our sales force, it's the way we sell, the way we deliver quotation, the way we connect, the way we commission. We want to make sure that wherever you interact with Schneider Electric, you have one unified customer experience, and we believe it's a very strong differentiator in the market. For that, again, you need to be one company. You need to be extremely integrated to make sure that you have strong direction from a technology standpoint to make sure we always make the life of our customer easier. The next part, which is very, very important, and you will see a lot today in all our presentations, we have built this very, very strong foundation with intelligent devices. We want really to go to the next level, electronic at every level to protect, to convert, and to process.
But you will hear also us talking a lot about software-defined architecture. Every platform we are launching has to be software-defined by design, going to the next level of energy and industrial intelligence. So what is different in what we are going to be presenting to you today is that we have worked a lot in the past months, not to say years, to make sure we are able to capture data. And of course, it was not possible at intelligent device level when they were not intelligent before, when they were pure hardware. But the fact that all our hardware are connectable, same at the control layers, our automation layer. We can extract data. We can structure those data to make sure that they can be useful and leveraged to create more value for our customers.
So that's where we combine all the data that we have coming from Schneider Electric, but coming from our ecosystem in what we call the Data Cube, which is really a place where we federate all our data. The Data Cube is basically powered by AVEVA technology. So we are leveraging AVEVA technology, but which is now going to the next level to make sure that we can federate all the data that we have in our ecosystem, our own data, the data of our customers, the data eventually coming from other integrators, and to make sure that we can leverage the unique knowledge we have by domain, to make sure that we can contextualize those data, we can organize those data, and we can also make sure we leverage those data across the lifecycle.
So all the work that we have been doing, like building infrastructure, you understand where it's going now. It's not only about creating a larger portfolio from product to service to system to whatever. Of course, it's important and it has helped us to be very successful in the past years. But we believe that the future is about intelligence, and intelligence will be delivered by data, and the company will be able to capture those data, to structure those data, to contextualize those data, and to deliver more across the lifecycle will be the winning company. And we believe Schneider Electric is in the ideal position to be that company that can deliver more to our customers.
You will hear us talking much more about what we do with those data, how we are going to structure those data, what we do to pre-train, to enrich, to post-train, to adapt those data to create really the first energy and industrial foundation model that utilizes a data cube. Why we want to do it is really to deliver physical intelligence, combining the digital twin with asset and domain experience. Every single word is important because we believe it's not only about capturing and structuring the data, it's really to be able to contextualize, to deliver the physical intelligence, and we believe there is a very strong value for our customers. We see already the demand really growing, a lot of very, very positive feedback for our customers.
Of course, everything can be enhanced by injecting workflow on which we are working in different parts of our portfolio. On the next slide, I will not go in detail, but you have different use cases that we see already that could be very interesting for our customers. What you can do by leveraging really AI to help a customer to save energy, to replace a pipe, and to imagine what would be the impact on the production. You can imagine that the more you capture data, the more you contextualize by domain, the more you can simulate and the more you can deliver efficiency for our customers.
You will see later on during the presentation that's something we are building that we are accelerating, but we have already a lot of solutions available, and you will see both in the presentation of Caspar with AVEVA, but with Fred also in Energy Management that we have already a lot in the pipeline. But of course, what we are sharing with you today is the next level where we want to take Schneider Electric. Just to help you to understand what it means for Schneider Electric, if we informed you 10 years ago to speak, for instance, about data center, and we were telling you that we were really involved at the CapEx stage to provide infrastructure. But what it means, it means that we are building a strategy where we are present across the entire lifecycle for our customers.
Just to take the example of a data center, what we are doing differently is to simulate, to create a digital twin of a data center. Of course, that's why we've been partnering with NVIDIA in the past few years to simulate in their own universe what will be the evolution of a data center infrastructure depending on the different GPUs of NVIDIA. What we do with it up, for instance, is to simulate the electrical architectures to make sure when those GPUs go to the market, we can deliver to our customers predefined architecture, and they will know that by using Schneider Electric predefined architecture, they will be able to optimize power, but also cooling efficiency in their data center. I think there is no better person than Jensen Huang to tell you about the partnership we are building together with NVIDIA.
Thanks, Olivier.
It's great to be here with Schneider Electric on your Capital Markets Day. Schneider is one of the world's great technology companies. Nearly 200 years ago, Schneider helped launch the first industrial revolution. You forged steel, engines, and machines that shaped the modern world. Today, you build the software and systems that power our critical infrastructure: factories, cities, national grids. And now a new industrial revolution has arrived: AI. AI is the most powerful technology force of our time. It's transforming every industry and creating new ones. Like electricity or the internet, AI is also infrastructure. Every company will use it. Every nation will build it. AI demands a new kind of factory: AI factories that produce digital intelligence from data. NVIDIA invented accelerated computing, which led to the big bang of modern AI. Today, we build AI factories, reinventing the entire computing stack from chips, systems, algorithms to applications.
NVIDIA's partnership with Schneider Electric spans every layer of this transformation. We're working on so much together. Over 100 GW of AI factories will be built before the end of this decade. We co-design the complex power, cooling, and automation systems required to operate these new AI factories. Together, we're helping industry build faster, smarter, and more efficiently. Just this year, we deployed the world's first fully liquid-cooled NVIDIA Blackwell AI factory with EcoDataCenter. We co-engineered a groundbreaking 800-volt power sidecar for high-density AI factories, delivering higher power efficiency in less space. We launched NVIDIA OVX, an NVIDIA Omniverse blueprint for designing and simulating gigawatt-scale AI factories, helping our customers build digital twins with Schneider Electric's SimReady assets. And we helped your customers accelerate their engineering workflows while integrating NVIDIA CUDA- X and Omniverse libraries into critical industrial software like ETAP and AVEVA. Everyone will need energy.
Everyone will need intelligence. That's why this partnership matters. To everyone at Schneider, engineers, operators, and leaders, have a great Capital Markets Day.
That's to tell you again that what is very, very important for us in the strategy we are developing is in every segment to make sure that we can deliver solutions across the lifecycle. You've seen the example of what we are doing, for instance, with NVIDIA to create digital twin. We help our customers to build and operate and to make the data center the most optimized. Of course, we have a unique portfolio from everything that we had in the past and now amplified with what we have is Motivair. You will have a lot of examples later on today where we'll deep dive on that.
But the last point, which is very, very important on this slide, we don't stop there. We want to stay with our customer at the maintenance level. That's why we are creating those EcoCare contracts, which are co-designed with our customers to make sure that we can help them to maintain in an effective manner, to do preventive maintenance, and that creates, of course, great recurring revenues for Schneider. So we do that in data center, but of course, we do that in every segment. You will have later on great examples, for instance, on what we do in the grid, in power grid, but also in industry, because we believe that's the only way to differentiate in the future, being able to provide unique solutions across the lifecycle, capturing data, amplifying by AI, and delivering more to our industry.
So in order really to accelerate this technology transformation, we continue to invest. We want to take our R&D investment to the next level, progressively up to 7%, with more investment in automation, more investment in all digital solutions. But we want also to do it with partnership, with a lot of strong partnerships. You have the example of NVIDIA today, but a lot of other partnerships that we do with our suppliers, with, for instance, semiconductor suppliers to co-design for innovation. A lot of partnerships also in manufacturing with Foxconn, for instance, to create capacity, to create also more variability, more flexibility in our own supply chain, but also a lot of investment in Schneider Ventures' early technology that will be important for the future of Schneider. So all of that is helping us to amplify really our technology transformation, but it goes also with very strong commitment.
We'll talk about at the end of my presentation about the financial commitment, but by doing all of that, we want to take our Digital Flywheel to the next level. More than 70% of our revenue should come from the flywheel by 2030. We want to have 25% of our group revenue being made of software and services, which is a very important ambition. And within that scope, we want to make sure we multiply by two the level of recurring revenues of Schneider, both in software and digital services offer. So the next part I don't want to deep dive with you on top of the technology is what do we do to differentiate.
I've given already a lot of examples at the beginning of my presentation on how we manage each and every ecosystem in the different geographies, and you will hear more from my colleagues from the operations. But for us, we believe we have created a unique approach in every single market by working with the different players, the different partners when we can deliver more of Schneider to every single customer. So we have some direct access to very large end users, very important customers, but we leverage all our partners. They can be, for instance, electricians, points of sale for home. They can be panel builders. They can be system integrators in automation. And when we are able to articulate that ecosystem, we create a huge difference in the market.
But I tell you, if you would speak to our customers, they will tell you that we take out the complexity because the world is getting more complex. Technology is more and more complex, and that's what we do differently. So that has been the starting point of our strategy, being extremely integrated at the local level to create unique value for our customers. Of course, when we have global customers, for instance, the hyperscalers, we have dedicated organizations to make sure that we can meet their demands. We can give them the full support everywhere in the world. But that's unique differentiation by region, creating more value for our customers. But we don't stop there. We want really to go to the next level of regionalization of our supply chain. We want to make sure that in every region, 90% of what we sell is made sourced locally.
Of course, the COVID has been a great illustration on how important it is to have a very resilient supply chain. In a world which is even more fragmented with a trade war, we believe strongly that the winning combination will be a regional commercialization supported by a regional supply chain. We don't stop there because we go to the next level supported by regional R&D teams. We've talked with you a lot in the past year about the multi-hub, but we are really going again to the next level to make sure that in every part of the world, actually the four key hubs that we have, which are basically North America, Europe, Asia around China, and international around India, we are making sure that more and more we regionalize our R&D.
We create hubs where people have more autonomy to speak to the demand of this local market. But again, like we do in supply chain, we do the same in R&D with very strong global principles to make sure that we are leveraging global platforms. We have global architecture. So we are making sure that we are maintaining a certain number of global standards that make us efficient, but to move as close as possible to every single market, the innovation. And by doing all of that, we are creating a model which is much more agile, which is much faster, more reactive because we are creating four regional loops from sales to R&D to supply chain where we empower our people to make fast decisions and adapt to the local market. And I can tell you it makes a huge difference with our talents.
It makes them much more empowered rather than waiting for somebody else from a global organization to give you approval. So that's a very strong attractive and retention factor for our employees.
So we have done a lot, and we continue to do a lot to accelerate that multi-hub strategy from what we are doing in Europe, investment in SF6-free, the joint venture we have done for instance with Star Charge to deliver EV charging and storage solutions, continue to leverage China, which gives us the scale, which gives us a lot of opportunity to leverage strong R&D capability in power electronics, strong investment in North America from a supply chain standpoint, but from an R&D standpoint as well by making Motivair the global center for liquid cooling technology at Schneider, and of course, creating now the fourth leg, which is our international hub supported by India, which is now and to the next level, of course, with the acquisition of L&T and Lauritz Knudsen.
By the way, good news to share with you, if you're not already aware. We got the approval from the CCI, so we will be able to close the acquisition before the end of this year. I will finish by telling you that we put in this cycle a very strong focus on operational excellence to deliver cost competitiveness, to deliver scalability. It starts from the way we are designing our product. We have been very much inspired by our multi-hub model, by having strong R&D capabilities in China and India, which are the most competitive markets in the world, that help us to reinvent the way we design products, to compare with best in class, and to generate much more efficiency in the way we design our products.
Very strong focus also on how we work with our suppliers, and all of that helps us to deliver much stronger productivity. On all those aspects, Hilary will come at the end to tell you what are really the different metrics we are going to use to measure our progress in terms of cost efficiency and productivity. And what we have always in mind with the management team, with a company which has been growing fairly fast, and we continue really to believe we have a huge growth opportunity in front of us, in making sure that we build a model which is scalable, which is always efficient, that we take out really sometimes inefficiency that a global company can create. And that's why we put in this cycle a very strong focus on cost efficiency and scalability.
And you will have many examples of what we are doing, but also, for instance, focus on very strong pricing competencies in the company. So, of course, I will not be complete if I will not tell you that on top of technology, leadership, customer differentiation, and operational excellence, we continue to keep a very strong focus on people and sustainability, going to the next level of our people strategy, strong focus, of course, historically on career development, but making sure we equip all our employees with the skills they need to have in the technical and the digital world. And very, very important, making sure we invent a new way to manage Schneider Electric. And we are spending a lot of time with my leadership team. We cannot manage a company like we did in the past, which are all very hierarchical.
It has to be more and more mission-based. It has to be more and more performance-based. And we are really evolving the way we are managing the company to go much faster, to deliver higher performance and make it simpler for our team. We are at the end of our chapter, and of course, I will finish by saying all of that is supported by our strong leadership team, which is the best illustration of what we mean by multi-hub model, by having people coming from different regions, being in different locations that help us really to be all interconnected in a world which is moving very, very fast and which is very fragmented. So, as I was about to say, we are at the end of the previous cycle when it comes to sustainability. So we are closing our previous commitment and taking new commitments.
And I think I have a problem now with the slide. Now it's coming. And we will say more at the beginning of next year, but these are the commitments that we are taking, again, to continue to drive impact, to transform always our ecosystem. I said it before. It's very strong in the DNA of Schneider Electric. And we make sure we always connect the mission of the company. So everything we can do in electrification that can help the world to get more decarbonized, taking new commitments, for instance, to go to the next level with our suppliers, but of course, taking new commitments on the way we can really unlock human potential. So we'll share more in detail at the beginning of next year when we launch a new program, but we wanted to give you a heads-up already today on where we are going.
So all of that, of course, is supported by a very strong and ambitious plan to deliver strong shareholder value. It's very important. I've said a lot about the way we see about the market evolution. This market evolution gives us a strong confidence that we are still and we continue to be in a very strong growth cycle with a potential accessible market that will grow from 6% to 7%. That's very, very important that continually to be supported by electrification, automation, and digitalization. And we see that in all our markets. Of course, there will be always a lot of attention on data centers, which is growing fast, but we see equivalent opportunity in building, industry, and even more in infrastructure where the demand in power grid is very, very important.
So in every single market, as I said before, and we'll share more later on today, we have unique value proposition, things that make Schneider Electric very, very, very different. And this is all those elements that give us a strong confidence that we can deliver in the next cycle a sustained growth of 7%-10%, which is really, really an ambitious growth opportunity for us. But we strongly believe that with all the portfolio we have created, all the acceleration that I've explained before, we can go to that level of growth performance. And of course, it will be supported by a strong margin expansion ambition of 250 basis points in the next cycle and continue to put cash generation very, very high in our priority, close to 100%. And of course, we'll continue to have a very strong focus on capital allocation.
Hilary will go much more into the detail of all those aspects, but we want to keep a very, very strong definite trajectory. We'll continue with a very strong progressive dividend strategy like we have done already for more than 15 years, and you will see also that we'll continue in the next cycle to put a very strong focus on portfolio management, active portfolio management, so EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.5 billion of pruning. Don't expect any big things, but we want to make sure we have this agile culture at Schneider with my business and operational colleagues where every year we revisit our portfolio and we take out those stuff which are less essential to the strategy of Schneider Electric and we can reallocate more capital to the transformation of the company.
Last but not the least, we'll tell you more also later on with Hilary what we have in mind in terms of share buyback, which is very, very important in our strategy. So I will pause to tell you that I am extremely excited about this next cycle because when we look at the foundation we have created in the past, when we look at where the market is growing, when we look at those three accelerations that we have around technology, customer, and operational excellence, that gives really a huge opportunity for Schneider Electric to make the difference and to drive very strong shareholder value. So we are excited to have you today. That will be a full agenda with detailed explanation on everything that I've shared with you today. Again, I want to thank you very much for being with us.
Thank you very much for your interest in Schneider, and you can count on us to deliver very strong shareholder return in the next cycle. Thank you.
All right. Thanks very much for that, Olivier. We'll let you have a breather for just a few moments. Of course, when we talk about advancing energy tech, that is not possible without our customers and our partners. You mentioned around customer differentiation and the ability to have more time to discuss on that aspect. We're very happy and privileged to have Guillaume with us here today from Rexel, a longstanding and important partner for Schneider. So we'll just have a short video. I think we will set up the stage and then I'll invite Olivier and Guillaume to join us back.
Rexel, electrifying solutions that make a sustainable future possible.
Every day and in more than 20 countries around the world, we guide customers through the challenges of their work to improve the comfort, security, and energy performance of installations, infrastructure, and buildings. Through the products, solutions, expertise, and services we provide, we strive to make the activity of our customers easier, more efficient, and more sustainable. At Rexel, every one of us is passionate, dedicated, and highly knowledgeable. We all are instrumental in bringing innovative electrification solutions to the field and in making energy transition happen. We all believe in delivering positive energy to everything we do. That is what makes us get up every morning. Rexel, electrifying solutions that make a sustainable future possible.
So, Guillaume, thank you very much for being with us. As you probably all know, Guillaume Texier is the CEO of Rexel. We have been a very long partner of Schneider Electric.
Guillaume, there is something maybe you don't know. I joined Schneider 32 years ago, but my first job was really to support contractor, to support distributor. And I remember my boss the first day told me, "You know what? Schneider Electric is about technology and partnership." And the more you will be able to work with your partner, the more they will help you to expand the coverage in the market. So that's how I started really my career working with your point of sales, actually in the south of France. And since then, I've been always amazed about how companies like yours are helping really Schneider Electric to go to the next level. So maybe my first question to you, Guillaume, will be about the past.
How do you assess really that collaboration with Schneider Electric and how it has contributed to the growth of Rexel in the past cycle?
Hey, look, I mean, first of all, thank you for having me. It's exciting. Secondly, I mean, it's been a wonderful story over the last decades, as you mentioned, a story of partnership and a story of growth together. I mean, as you mentioned, the world has changed and our world has changed from a GDP-based market to something which is much more exciting and accelerating. And what is interesting for me when I reflect on this growth together is what are the main reasons for this growth together. And the first thing which comes to mind when I think about Schneider is the power of the brand. And when I'm saying brand, I'm not only saying marketing.
It's also about the ecosystem, the range of products, the geographical coverage. What strikes me is in our 17 countries where we operate today, in each one of those countries, Schneider is a driving force in the market because of the width of the brand, because of the technology, because of innovation. But this is extremely powerful. For a distributor like us, it's much more exciting and much easier to sell a brand which is well-known, which stands for innovation, which stands for quality of product. And the fact that you have a full ecosystem addressing each one of the segments of the market is something which is quite powerful. Even though not many of our customers are using all of the possibilities of Schneider, the fact that it exists is extremely powerful. So the brand is the first thing that I would mention.
The second thing when I reflect on the past is appetite for the future and for innovation in general. And when I'm saying that, I'm saying digital, and we're probably going to talk about that. I'm saying electrification technologies. I'm saying software. I'm saying sustainability also. On each one of those journeys, Rexel and Schneider have worked together to try to pioneer the industry in the direction of preparing for the future. That's very important for us. And the third thing I would say would be consistency and commitment to the channel. You've explained that in the slides. You've explained that when you talked about your past, what is important in the B2B world for us with our customers and also for us with our partners is long-term commitment, how you fix issues when they arise, how you address opportunities when they arise.
It's not about the short-term ups and downs. It's about how consistent you are in progressing together. And I have to say, Schneider, from this point of view, has been outstanding. So you know what? Great journey together. And when I look forward into the future, great opportunities to address together.
I think you almost answered my next question, but maybe there is one point where you believe Schneider is different because you are, of course, working with many partners, many suppliers in different categories, lighting, cable. But when you deal with Schneider Electric, what will be the one unique point you see in Schneider?
May I offer two? One I would say is understanding and commitment to the channel. I think the slide that you showed is very telling from this point of view.
You truly believe that there is more power in Schneider and in its partners in addressing the granularity of the market and the full range of the market through channels and through distributions. And for me, it makes a big difference. For less advanced partners, the kind of relationship that we have is very commercial, very transactional, win-lose type of relationship or lose-win. With Schneider, it's most of the time a win-win relationship. And one good example, I mean, one simple example of what we do together is trying to co-optimize logistics. You have logistics systems. We have logistics systems. If you're transactional, you don't really optimize the two systems together. But you have your IT, AI-powered tools. We have our AI-powered tools.
Putting them together, sharing more data, trying to optimize the way we do transportation, supply chain, reducing the common inventory that we have together is something that is an example of a win-win situation. And the second topic, which is super important for me, is helping us address the new opportunities. We are in a transforming world. The world of energy is changing every day. It's changing for us. It's changing for our customers. And for us to accompany this move, we require good partners who are able to help us address those new opportunities with technologies, with also services. And that is something where Schneider, for each one of those new opportunities over the years, has risen to the opportunity to help us do that. So two things very important: commitment to the channel and help us address new opportunities.
Very clear. Thank you.
Talking about commitment, that's a good transition. I remember 10+ years or something like that when e-commerce entered in our industry. There was a lot of big theory that maybe distribution will disappear, that supplier will go direct. And we, Schneider Electric, have taken a very strong stand that our job is to deliver innovation, to create demand, and to make sure we can leverage our partner like you to do the last mile of this new e-commerce, this new digital way of dealing with customers. So how did it transform your own company? How have you embraced e-commerce overall at Rexel?
I mean, look, I mean, you know that Rexel has been very, very instrumental in trying to push e-commerce. We've gone in one decade from probably 10% of e-commerce to today 32% or 33% of e-commerce. So that's been a very powerful transformation.
We think it's the future. You know that among our countries, some of them are at 80% today of e-commerce. So it's going to go this direction. The important thing, and you mentioned that, is that e-commerce is never going to be pure e-commerce. We are, at the end of the day, in a physical world where contact with customers, where expertise sharing with customers, where delivery of products is still going to be there, which means that we have to go to a model which is going to be a mix of physical and e-commerce. In this journey, we have had a very good partnership with Schneider, especially on the data side. To get into e-commerce, this effort, it's about tools, and we have the tools. It's about people able to push e-commerce opportunities to our own customers. And it's about data.
Data is particularly critical in the quality of our e-commerce. And I have to say Schneider has been among the best partners in terms of sharing data in a very complete way: data about the products, data about the sustainability features of the products. And this will become even more important in the future as we tackle the next level, which is AI opportunities. I mean, AI for us, it's transformational both in our internal efficiency, but also in the way we interact with our own customers. And to be able to do that, more and more data is going to be necessary. And I have to say Schneider, because of its commitment to this transformation, is one of our best partners in terms of providing this level of data.
And I would add that I've been very impressed in the past 12 months.
We've done multiple launching together, including, I remember, Odace in France, our new wiring devices range in France. And the type of digital marketing that we've been able to do together is really a good example on how we can enhance and create more demand in the mark et.
No, exactly. I mean, the power of data is incredible. We are advanced on this journey, but there is still so much to do. I mean, both in terms of percentage of transactions which go through the digital channels, but also about the retail media and marketing, you're right. I mean, we can do much better, and we will do much better in terms of addressing the opportunities to unlock the value of this data.
So today, I've presented really where Schneider is going and what we are doing to the next level of technology.
Of course, there is a lot about connected product, about digital services. How those new business models are impacting your company, which was really more a kind of company focused on transactional product like we were Schneider a long time ago? So how do you see that opportunity going to the next level of digital offering, more services, more software for a distributor like Rexel?
You know, that's very exciting. That's very exciting for me. We had our own Capital Markets Day two years ago, and we also had ambitious growth goals. But one thing which is very important is we put a lot of emphasis on advanced services. We believe that for a distributor to be successful in tomorrow's world, it cannot just be a box mover. We need to provide additional value to our customers, additional value through expertise, through additional services.
And those services can be advanced logistics services, but they can be also expert services, diagnosis, software. It can be all of those kinds of things. So we will do that. We are already doing a lot of that, but we will do more and more of that because our customers are requiring it in the new world and because also it's important for us to continue to add value and to progress our value added in the supply chain. So we are very decided to do that, and we will do that with partners. It's not our ambition to produce those services. We want to be able, just like we sell products, to sell additional services. We think it's going to be a big thing, and we are extremely excited to partner with companies like Schneider to go in this direction.
For us, it's a big transformation because selling products is one thing, but transforming your sales force, your 25,000 people into people who are able to sell services, which is totally different in terms of the kind of pitch that you use, in terms of the kind of transactions, in terms of recurring revenue, is a big transformation for us. But we are extremely decided and motivated to go in this direction. We think the world is going in this direction. We totally agree with what you are saying on that. It's a complex world where the electrification opportunities are going to come with a layer of additional services and software that we will be committed to selling with a partnership with Schneider, for sure.
And that's very true here.
Again, Guillaume, as I was saying before, you are really helping us to extend our market coverage and to go to every single corner of every country where we operate together.
That's absolutely right.
I could not, of course, resist to ask you my last question about the market. You've heard what I've said about the way we see the market growing in the next cycle. You've heard me saying that we will need to accelerate the growth of Schneider 7-10 in the next cycle, which is compounded, of course, through all the business model of Schneider. You don't have exactly the same exposure than us, but in your own market, what do you see in terms of growth opportunity? How do you see the market moving in the next cycle?
Look, I mean, in terms of figures, we have figures of 5%-8% growth, but you're right. We are not exactly exposed to the same markets. We are less exposed to emerging countries. We are less exposed to data centers. I didn't use a map precisely while you were doing the presentation, but it seems to me that we have a consistent vision of where the market is going, which is exciting in each one of the segments that we are serving. There are data centers, for sure, but there are buildings also, a very important one, in which we think that there are opportunities which are going to steadily progress as electrification progresses. So overall, we are with the same vision of an accelerated world, which, by the way, is going to come also with challenges. There are going to be supply chain challenges.
There are going to be inflation challenges, and all of that is going to be challenges that we're going to address together, I think.
I know we are at the end of our slot, but you talked about your growth, which is a combination of volume and pricing, and I've seen your regular communication to the market. You've been talking about pricing also in your organization, so what is your pricing excellence strategy, I would say, at Rexel to deliver such great results?
I mean, first of all, our pricing depends very much on your pricing, but we think overall that in this world, this world is going to be a world of acceleration, which is going to create bottlenecks, which is going to create probably a more inflationary environment than the opposite, so that's one thing.
The second thing is we are in a world where value added is creating pricing power. So I truly believe that you are going to see price appreciation over the next few years, and now the last piece for us is our own pricing, on which, thanks to AI, we are able year after year to progress the way we price to the market. So overall, it's a supportive pricing environment, but what is also exciting is the volume opportunities that we descri bed very well.
Guillaume, thank you very much for coming.
Thank you very much for having me here.
I know it has been super helpful for our investor here to understand how we partner together and the value we jointly create to our customers. Thank you again for being here, and thank you for the partnership, and let's really keep growing the business together. Thank you, Guillaume.
Thank you.
Sometime one and a half years ago, looking at the numbers at the IEA, we look at the numbers on a daily basis. I tell my colleagues, data always wins. Sometimes it takes some time, but at the end of the day, data always wins. So look at the numbers. I said the world may be entering the age of electricity. So what do I mean with that? Our economies, our societies have been fueled by always a dominant energy source. 200 years ago, when there was the Industrial Revolution, it was the age of coal. Remember the novels of Émile Zola, for example, coal miners bringing coal to the industries, to the factories. Coal was still there, but the age of coal has been replaced by the age of oil and gas, what we have today. We will use oil and gas for years to come.
But when I look at the numbers, I see the age of electricity is coming. Just numbers. In the last 10 years, global energy demand increased, and global electricity demand increased two times higher than the global energy demand. And in the next 10 years, we are seeing it. Global electricity demand will increase six times higher than the global energy demand. We are seeing a major surge of electricity demand everywhere, but everywhere. For example, in Europe or the United States, almost 10 years, electricity demand was more or less stable. And now it is going up for the first time since maybe 15 years.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Executive Vice President, Energy Management, Frederic Godemel.
The energy landscape is evolving, and it's evolving extremely fast. It's evolving because energy starts to be decentralized.
It's evolving because the demand is increasing, and we saw it in the recent interview, and it's evolving at a speed that in the last 30 years, where I spent time with customers, is something I've not witnessed, so the pace is accelerating. We understand that what people will need to keep operating in the world of tomorrow is certainly energy resilience, security, absolutely, efficiency on the energy they purchase, and of course, sustainability, because it will not be possible to continue doing like we were doing before. To achieve this, they will ask products, of course, but solutions and outcomes. At Schneider Electric, we've assembled a portfolio around products, around services, around solutions, and we augment this portfolio with software, and Olivier said it, with energy intelligence, which is where I'm going to bring you through in the coming part of my presentation.
I want to share today the conviction that we are extremely well positioned to be answering the next cycle of energy. Indeed, the world will need more energy, and we are at Schneider Electric, the masters of the world of energy of tomorrow. I want to start by reminding a few of our positions in the market. First, in some very important segments, data center, utilities, home. We do that through a network of partners at large, and it was, I believe, well illustrated before by Guillaume and Olivier. Sometimes when we work directly, especially on services and advisory on customers, we recognize for what we do.
I want as well to move to our products in energy management, extremely strong product lines, where we occupy in most of the domain the number one position in low voltage, medium voltage, UPS, and you can see on this slide the details. We as well have augmented this portfolio with digital capabilities and capability to monitor the energy. Today, I'm going to go, like Olivier did, on three parts. I'll spend most of my presentation on technology today. I want to give a bit of context to start with, and then to go to the evolution of technology for the next cycle. We will look then on how we integrate those technologies by applications, by segments, going to buildings, data centers, and grid, and then my colleague, Gwenaelle, will go into the industry segments that we support as well, of course.
We will go to the energy intelligence layer, illustrating what we can do. I will conclude on what we do in terms of operational excellence to manage our R&D with a sense of discipline, and of course, to look at productivity. Let me start quickly by reminding the context and rewind not as long as the movies that you saw at the beginning, but a few 10 years ago, where energy, electricity was largely linear and growing steadily, mostly based on fossil fuel. Now, let's move fast forward to the world in which we are today. I will not comment on the figures, but what we see is two phenomena: more renewable energy production, so in a way, more instability, and the demand that is increasing.
This is the world of today, the world in which today we operate, and we are just at the beginning of this world because AI factories are not deployed at scale, because e-mobility is not deployed at scale. In order to keep operating in this world, I believe, we believe at Schneider Electric that innovation is essential, and it's essential to balance demand and supply in a grid that is what it is. The grid needs some time to keep evolving, and some businesses need to keep operating in the conditions of today. I want to show here an example of an energy curve, of an electricity demand curve during the day. What you see at the middle is that with production of renewable, in certain days, there is abundant energy supply for a few hours.
If you want to keep operating your business in the best conditions, you need to be able to benefit from those blue periods where energy is abundant, electricity is abundant, and you need to be able as well eventually to shave the peak to be able to be supplied by some grid operators that will tell you that during some period, eventually one hour per day, you need to shed your capacity. To do that, technology is absolutely fundamental, and that's why we work at Schneider Electric on electrifying, automating, and digitalizing. This is extremely important to have those capabilities to be able to answer what electrical installation will need for tomorrow. Let me now go into EcoStruxure. We built EcoStruxure over a period of years, and we are augmenting now this by energy intelligence at all layers.
And that's where I'm going to bring you into so that you understand layer by layer, so that we illustrate layer by layer how we develop technologies that go together. We did here one illustration, and it's an analogy, of course, with what you can have with nerve termination, nerve system, and the brain, and we're going to climb the ladder together. I want to start by the intelligent product layer, the layer we call onboard, in which you will see that we are preparing evolution for the future. Before doing that, I want to remind the success that we had with a few of our very important products that have been launched over the past period. We revolutionized medium voltage. We have been the company announcing that we will remove SF6 from our medium voltage offering.
The ban in Europe is arriving as we speak, and we are ready, and we have already taken leading position in this new domain with our AirSeT franchise. We digitalize low voltage breakers, and we have an incredible number of units digital that are already around the world and in our customer installation, and last but not least, we launched recently a product augmented by AI, which is a touchscreen, a room controller that you can see in some hotel rooms, that is hitting the market with a very strong success at its first months, and there will be more things that will come, and I will detail some of those new launches in the coming part of my presentation. Let's keep looking at the way the world of tomorrow is evolving.
Olivier said it. There is more need for direct current application at all levels, in homes, in buildings, and in industry. In order to answer to this need, to this new architecture, you will see us developing technologies that are able to combine alternating current and direct current. We will use power electronics because power electronics have evolved, and they are now able to do some functions of protection and control. What you see illustrated at the bottom of the slide is those architectures that we call hybrid that you will have in building, in which we will optimize points of conversion, because today you have a lot of points of conversion in building. Tomorrow, we will work on architecture that optimizes points of conversion. You will have later in the marketplace examples and illustrations on the way we do that at Schneider Electric.
I want to take another application, which is in industry, and that's something we have co-developed with the team of industrial automation, one application in industry distributing power to motors. And here as well, thanks to a combination of architecture and power electronics technologies, we will launch next year a new offer that optimizes the motor control center offer, and that is able to deliver up to 80% of space saving. And you know that sometimes for industry, saving space is important. We will be able to come with this offer integrated into an electrical distribution architecture, which is our know-how. Let's keep climbing the ladder. Olivier spoke about software defined. Our products tomorrow will come with software defined. I want to illustrate here what it means with medium voltage. Today, medium voltage offers are largely ordered in what we call engineer-to-order.
It means you design, you order critical components, and you receive a panel that you commission on site. It's long because you have to design in advance and choose in advance some of the components. If you move to software-defined architecture, you have here an example. We will be able to accelerate three times the time to order and design. We will manufacture standard components, and those components will be programmed by software. It means the capability of the panel will be programmed when you are on site. The advantage of that, you remove many steps into the fabrication process, and you go much faster to commission on site. Take the example of data center, where today there is tension on the number of people to commission products and install them. This is the solution for the future, and this is why we move to software-defined power architecture.
Let's keep climbing the ladder, and let's go now to applications, to illustration of what we do when we combine various parts of our technologies in a given application. I want to insist on three areas, and Gwenaelle will later insist on one area, which is industry that we support, of course, with our technology. I want to insist on three segments, areas, applications that are today extremely important for us because we see those applications as developing in the next cycle. The first one is building. The second one is data center, and the third one is power and grid. In those three applications, and in building it is mostly due to the need for more cooling, we see those applications developing strongly in the next cycle.
So let's go into building, a space where Schneider historically has built strong position in many sub-segments like hotels, hospitals, real estate, and so on. We already have a very strong installed base. You know that we have added to our portfolio software companies, Planon and RIB, to design and to manage the office space. Now, I would like that we look at the operations layer, and I guess we all understand the building and the way it's managed. You manage fundamentally three things: the power distribution, the HVAC, and the building management system, eventually with security and fire, and of course, the energy management that becomes more and more important because the energy bill in a building matters. Those systems that we had at Schneider Electric are pretty fragmented.
What we do and what we have announced in our Innovation Summit, which was a few weeks ago in Las Vegas, is that we will launch one new platform where we have all our operations data into a single platform. The advantage of doing so is, of course, you facilitate the commissioning time, you facilitate the life of the operators, and more important, you can augment them, and you can do AI on top of what the operators are doing. We call this platform EcoStruxure for site operation. It will be deployed in the next cycle, and it's a platform that allows you to have one integrated solution at site level. I want now to go to data center, and Olivier said it. We know that in the next cycle, there will be strong investment in new compute capability that we will have to support at all levels.
In data center, Schneider Electric has an extremely strong position. We are the leader in supplying architecture of electrical distribution, and we develop, and we will come back on that, additional capability around simulation and, of course, around cooling to prepare the future. Before that, I want to remind our position in traditional data center and the level of offerings that we have that allow us to cover 90% of the scope of power, cooling, software, and services, and services, I will conclude on that, are extremely important to keep those operations safe for the way they operate in the future, but we know that data centers are evolving. Traditional data centers will keep growing. Additionally to that, we will have the creation of AI factories, which are different architectures to compute at more data, and that will use more power, and that will need, of course, more cooling.
So let's dive into the way we operate. And here, I want to illustrate a few things that Olivier and Jensen said before, and the way we work in partnership to be able to prepare this next evolution of AI data center. We partnered with NVIDIA, and we have worked with them to be able to design the architecture, the electrical distribution architecture of the future. I want to illustrate here the way we do it. You all know that we have ETAP systems that is a software that simulates the way we do electrical installation. We have built that on the Omniverse platform, and we are able to start to investigate architecture, simulate architecture, run various simulations so that you understand what is the best model to distribute the power at each point of time.
And we work now to put on that the acquisition we have made on liquid cooling around Motivair, and we are able to simulate progressively the flow of cooling associated. So power plus cooling, that's what we do at the simulation level. It's extremely important to start by that because we can simulate and optimize the architecture. There is another point that is important: it's to deliver faster and together in an integrated manner those architectures. At Schneider Electric, we have these capabilities since some time. It means we have already the experience of integrating multiple technologies since some time. And we do that to deliver on site faster, what we call prefabricated solutions, solutions that are allowing to accelerate the installation, the commissioning on site, and that come pre-tested so that the work on site is much more easy.
Of course, I want to speak about the architecture of the next three years with more power, 800 volts direct current. Here as well, Schneider Electric works to optimize token per watt. So because we have the capability to look at that end to end, we work from medium voltage down to the rack level. And that's extremely important to optimize that. We are able to integrate solutions. We have capabilities in direct current protection and arc flash safety, which is another important point when you design those new architectures. And we have an expertise around direct currents that we have developed over the years to support data center customers. So we work on those architectures. You will see as well in the afternoon on the marketplace with our experts the way we deliver those solutions. Of course, there's not power distributed to GPUs without cooling.
I thought it was better than me speaking about it to invite on stage Rich Whitmore, who is the CEO of the new joint company, Motivair, into Schneider Electric. Rich, welcome on stage.
Thank you, Fred. Motivair, oh, loud mic. Motivair was founded by my father back in 1988 and has always been focused on mission-critical process cooling. Ironically, he's from Birmingham, England, just up the road from here. The beginning of his career was in the pioneering of computer air conditioning. So when I say I've been around this for a while, it's really since I was born. So all of this critical cooling that we've been working on, cooling nuclear power plants, surgery suites, data centers, of course, high-performance computing and supercomputing. Fred touched on it a few minutes ago. All the power that goes into these systems converts heat.
What's sometimes overlooked in these advanced compute systems is that all of that power, once it goes into the servers, comes out as heat. What we've been doing over the last decade is a laser focus on developing liquid-cooled hardware, liquid cooling technology for use in advanced computing. That's what you're seeing today: AI factories, AI data centers. When we look at that, this product portfolio that we've developed has been in conjunction and in partnership with the leading chip manufacturers, server manufacturers, and to some degree, data centers. That portfolio has been thought through from the chip, from the silicon out. That's unique to Motivair. When we look at our integration with Schneider Electric, we were acquired in March this year, and we've been very busy.
We're well on our way with our integration plans, and we've been working very hard to industrialize Motivair technology so we can produce it around the world. And that was part of our strategy when we combined with Schneider Electric. We needed to be and wanted to be a global company, but we wanted to be able to support our customers region by region. And I'm proud to say we're now able to start producing liquid cooling hardware in multiple factories around the world. Our team is enthusiastic, and we're very excited about the way everything is going. So we saw Jensen talk earlier. Olivier and Fred have also talked about where heat loads are going, where power is going, but specifically in this area of supercomputing, high-performance computing, AI factories. The rack densities are growing at an exponential rate.
These are public roadmaps, so these are things that you've probably seen in different industry highlights. Today, we're north of 130 kW a rack, and we're moving to a gigawatt, I'm sorry, a megawatt per server rack in the not-too-distant future. The interesting thing is that Motivair has been cooling racks of this density for years: 400 kW liquid-cooled racks deployed at scale all over the world. This is nothing new for us. I think many of you are still learning about liquid cooling, but for us, we've been an innovator and a pioneer in this space for years. It makes us very comfortable to say that we feel we're the leader in that space, and we're cooling the world's fastest computers: ranked number one, number two, and number three in the world. Again, this is an area that we're very excited to be in.
Lastly, when we talk about being able to support our customers globally, I think in the AI era and where we're going, experience matters. Having done this before matters. Having a product portfolio that's battle-hardened, tested, and deployed globally matters. But you can't just have the best products. You have to be able to service them. And that's another added value that we have now that we're part of Schneider Electric. We can deploy product globally for customers, but we can service and support them as well. And that's important to us so we get consistency for our customers globally through the life expectancy of their data centers and their AI assets. Thank you for having me here today, and I'll turn it back over to Fred.
Thank you very much, Rich, for the testimony.
Of course, I could not close this session of data center without re-insisting again on services, and I will illustrate later what we can do through technologies to better serve our install base. But those data centers and those AI factories are extremely critical, extremely sensitive, and they need to be kept in the best possible condition with the least possible manual intervention on site so that they keep operating on the best matter. I will come back on that later on. I told you I wanted to speak about grid, and by the way, without grid, there is no data center and no AI factory. So grid is absolutely a place that will support the transformation of the economy in the next cycle. And that's a place where as well Schneider Electric is extremely well positioned with our offer, strong presence in the top utilities.
Many offers around software in GIS, in advanced distribution management system, offers on which we have been recognized externally to be leading the technology in terms of the way we address those technologies, so I will here as well illustrate what are those offers doing, from grid planning to asset management, then moving to grid operation, and this is where you find the advanced distribution management system on top of SCADA and new applications that are coming, and I illustrated that at the beginning of my presentation with flexibility, which is an important part to keep managing grids in the future. Like we have done for building with a very different application, we come here as well with one integrated platform that goes from planning to operation to flexibility management. Why does it matter? Because when grid becomes constrained, you need to simulate before operating.
Having everything on one platform, what we have launched and announced, which is what we call one digital grid platform, is a strong evolution demanded by our customer to be able to accelerate and do that with more efficiency. I illustrate that here with three use cases. We can support grid operators, advising them with agents now on one data platform, and when there is events, with most of the time a storm or risk of fires or things like that, when there is events, we use technology to accelerate the response time to events. Last but not least, when the grid becomes unstable and needs flexibility, we are able to simulate with one platform the consequence of a scenario of flexibility.
I was last week in India, and here as well. I think it's better to have one customer, and I was with the CEO of Tata Power, which is a very large integrated utility in India. Let's listen to Dr. Sinha.
"Tata Power is one of the oldest power companies in India. It started in 1915 when it set up the first hydro power plant and also brought that power to the city of Mumbai, and for 110 years, it has been supplying power to the city of Mumbai, as also to many other parts in the country, as the largest integrated power company in generation, in transmission, and distribution. How do you see the partnership with Schneider Electric? Any highlights, anything you would like to mention?" Well, we have a very old partnership with Schneider where we have tried many of the new technologies in India together.
This SCADA system, when it came, it not only brought the technology of how the electrons flow, but how the data also flows and how do you manage on real-time basis. The advanced distribution management system supported us in optimizing the supply of energy based on the load requirement. Similarly, some of the newer technologies, especially the SF6-free circuit breakers that came, and especially in the ring main units that we have set up in the city of Delhi and Mumbai, have supported us not only in reducing our carbon footprint by 75%, but on the overall basis, the cost benefit is nearly 50%. So I think many of the technologies that we have worked with Schneider have helped us to provide affordable power, but also reliable power to our consumers.
I thank a lot for the feedback. Just looking forward, how do you see the evolution of technologies?
What will be the most important points in Bihar?
I think the integration of the smart technology, especially the smart grid, and how do we work together, whether it is this SCADA system, the smart metering solution, and also some of the technologies on the grid side, especially using the RMUs and some of the IoTs which are there in these technologies. I think those are the things that will support us in providing efficient supply of power.
Thanks very much. Thanks for the partnership, and thanks for receiving me. Thank you very much, Dr. Sinha.
Absolutely a pleasure.
And of course, you understand that India, as many other countries, I could mention the U.S., will be absolutely at the forefront of those grid transformations and need solutions that will help them to manage better the grid in the future.
Let's keep climbing the ladder, and we are at the probably enterprise level where we come on top of data as on top of installed base, and I want to illustrate here a few things we are doing that are extremely important for the next cycle. Let me start by services. Olivier said it. It has been one of our focus points in the past cycle, and we have built extremely strong forces to support our customers with their installed base. We have the number one installed base today in electrical assets. We have very strong in all countries forces to support our customers with experts that are able to intervene on site, and we today estimate that we serve around 16% of our assets, the reason being that we create at high pace installed base.
So we think there is still a very strong opportunity in the next cycle to keep growing double-digit this business. Additionally, we have augmented these foundations by strong forces in digital and AI with in-house AI engineers that are able to work at system level and get data from the asset to make not any more planned maintenance, but preventive maintenance. I want to give two examples. One which I think is illustrating that very well in the data center space, something we do with Compass Datacenters, which is a large colocation company mostly based in the U.S., where we have instrumented their installed base and are able to support them with a set of analytics. It allows them to operate better with less maintenance and more Predictive Analytics that allows them to intervene only when necessary. It has allowed them to reduce their OpEx over the cycle.
You look at another company in the scope of industry, BASF, where here as well, we have helped them to reduce the downtime and especially the unplanned downtime, and we are improving the efficiency of the process by our analytics and advising them on the way they operate their installations. Now I want to keep climbing and illustrate what we can do with energy intelligence. Olivier said it. We have developed over the time practices that support our customer around domains, energy and sustainability, electrification, process optimizations that will be spoken later on by Gwenaelle, and asset management, so we've developed those capabilities of advising our customer. Thanks to those capabilities, I want to illustrate what we do in the world of energy and sustainability.
We are able to support our customer in their business transformation to manage risk, to manage performance, and on top of that, because we have accumulated data, we are able with our software now to replace many manual operations by our software. That's what we call energy intelligence. We build that on top of data that we have accumulated, data for sustainability, for example, with many customers around the world. We collect data points from our operations. We have a lot of energy invoices that are processed to see that the numbers are extremely significant.
Now, thanks to new technology, thanks to data and architecture on data, thanks to AI, we are able, and here you have a quick illustration, and you will have a real demonstration later into the marketplace about the way we are using agentic AI at scale to be able to find anomalies on this example on invoices and make recommendations as well on the way to drive your efficiency on the next steps. You will see that illustrated and demonstrated, but I want to focus here in what it brings typically into our own operation or to our customers. Something that was extremely complex, and believe it or not, when you have a lot of invoices, you end up having anomalies, 5% of anomalies. The manual effort to deal with those anomalies was typically 12-15 days.
Now it's done in seconds by agents, and it's an accuracy that is absolutely fantastic. You will have a demonstration on that, so I pass fast so that you will be able to go deeper when you are in the marketplace this afternoon. Now imagine that we are building the capability to do that in four domains, which are the domains that are mentioned here, and try to correlate some of these domains between energy, sustainability, process, electrification, or asset management depending on the use case you want to have for your specific operation. This is what Olivier was explaining. This is what we call energy intelligence at scale. I want to close my presentation by the third chapter, which is around operational excellence and around the way we manage our R&D and our competitiveness on product. Let me first look at the R&D. Olivier said it.
We are investing in R&D and keep investing to prepare our technology for the future. I show you in the past example why it's important to keep investing in digital products and on top of that, to solutions that integrate and to value that you get with the data. So we invest on intelligent products, the onboard layer, and we invest even more when we are at operate layer or at optimize layer because what you need to support those layers is more digital and more software-based. Of course, we invest a lot to support the growth in data center. I show example, but you will have more on the marketplace. We invest a lot to support the grid development, which we see as something extremely important in the next cycle, and you've seen as well the way we invest to support buildings.
We do all those investments with a sense of return on investment. Each hour of our investment is dissected and analyzed in the sense of return on investment. The second thing is our R&D capability, the Multi-Hub. Olivier presented it, and I will illustrate to you that you have here a set of figures that shows that today our R&D is distributed around geographies, around North America, around Europe, and around Asia. And we benefit a lot from being strong in Asia to be able to look at technologies and optimize the cost of technology. I want to give here one example, which is around medium voltage, and I could have taken many of those examples. I took this one just to illustrate. Medium voltage breaker, today the larger part of the market is in China. So the development initially has been made in China. Now there is market everywhere.
There is market in Europe, in Africa, in the U.S. for those types of breakers. The way we operate at Multi-Hub is that the development starts in China, and then the development, the main bricks of the development are transferred to our two other hubs, for example, here in Europe and in the U.S., where they localize the product, they make the adaptation for the local standard, and of course, they benefit from the platforming that has been done by the biggest markets. So the advantage of doing so is that it drives you the right cost efficiency, and we benefit when it makes sense to our maximum volume. Additionally to that, we drive a strong program of cost productivity, what we have called inside the company cost leadership. We three pillars.
The first pillar is, of course, using our R&D to redesign some of our products, and each time we launch a new generation of products, we have an occasion to optimize the cost and the design. We collaborate with suppliers. Olivier showed what we do, for example, with Foxconn, and we work a lot as well to benefit from the investment we did in the past cycle to support the growth, now to generate productivity and maximize the productivity we get out of those investments. It's time for me to conclude on a few key messages. Message number one, the change is indeed extremely fast in our energy management domain. I have an absolutely strong conviction that energy management at Schneider will remain the driver of the new cycle with a combination of technology and a combination of architecture and solution and data on top of it.
We have this capacity to combine our architecture into segments that we have chosen carefully because they are providers of growth in the future. And last but not least, we will manage R&D and cost with discipline. The goal, of course, is to bring growth, superior growth, and shareholder return. Thank you very much, and I look forward to seeing you in the marketplace this afternoon.
All right, thank you, Fred. Thanks for keeping us on time as well. I think it's been a lot of content this morning, and probably we need a well-deserved break or just a coffee. So we're going to keep it short for 20 minutes. So probably back just after around 10:55 A.M. We need to keep it not more than 20 minutes because we've got the web live going on as well.
There's some content that's flowing, but we come back at 10:55 A.M., and we start with industrial automation. Thank you.
Some people are surprised how easy things can be if done correctly. We are a global polymer company producing high-performance materials. We stand out in the chemicals industry for our vision to become Net Zero with our emissions by 2035. We need to optimize our existing plants, and we need to build new plants.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Executive Vice President, Industrial Automation, Gwenaelle Avice-Huet.
Hello. I'm Gwenaelle.
I've been leading European operations for the past years, which is basically the whole business of Schneider, and since October, I'm in charge of Industrial Automation. So I will walk you through our positioning, Industrial Automation, starting with our market positioning, and then going into who we are and how we want to protect ourselves, what's the strategy behind, right? And also what it means in terms of operational excellence for R&D, and finally to walk you through the financial path to make it happen. So first, market positioning from Industrial Automation. So industries that are living a reality of many challenges, right? So all of you know about a number of megatrends, but how do they translate for industrial customers? So basically, they have to face volatility of the energy pricing. They have to face shortages, like for the supply chain.
They have to face difficulties to find the right workforce. So, numbers of, I would say, challenges. In all the meetings I've got with customers across the world, they're asking for modernization of the assets. Why? Because they invest for the long term. They have volatility in the short term, but they have to invest over the long term. So we need to provide solutions for modernization that help increase resiliency, making sure they deliver on time, at cost, right, and with quality. So basically, they ask for energy intelligent operations. And this is not, you know, just PowerPoint. It translates into a concrete investment pool. And that's how we position, how to capture this additional investment pool. So that's what we are seeing, and it translates also in concrete outcome. They are not just asking for system standalone. They're asking for concrete outcome: resiliency, productivity, energy efficiency, concrete outcomes.
So what's our position at Schneider to capture these outcomes, these megatrends, and increase growth and profitability at the same time? So first, I would like to be very clear on who we are and who we are not in Industrial Automation. We are not developing the broadest portfolio in the world. We are not going everywhere for every segment. We used to say we are specialists. We think about differentiation, and we want to have meaningful impact for our customers. So it starts with our segments. Where do we focus in terms of segments? We want to anchor with what the company is about. We've heard Olivier, we've heard Fred, energy leadership. We want to anchor the segment that we approach in terms of industry with this energy leadership. So that's why you're seeing Infrastructure is important for us. And within Infrastructure, you have power and grid.
In addition to that, we have a good balance between Discrete and Process and all the applications that are matching power and process together, all the applications matching both of them. So this is a segment approach. Now, in terms of geographies, I will just mention the few of them. First, India and China, for obvious reasons. Innovation cycle is very short, very rapid. Here, we're not talking. We are talking about local for local. But China, when you look at our footprint, manufacturing and R&D footprint, the reality is that we learn lessons for the rest of the world, especially in hardware. So it's not only local for local. It should be local for global. And this is super important. Olivier was talking about scale and volume that we're having thanks to China. It's also lessons in terms of innovation, hardware innovation, to scale across the world.
Another point on geographies: Europe and the United States, major economies, major opportunities. Here we're talking about deep retrofit, deep modernization, but also process electrification. This is who we are. This is what we offer to customers. So this is our key priorities, geographies. And then in terms of business, what are we looking for? Who we are. Basically, we have already established leadership position: process safety, control and signaling, industrial software conductors. And there are areas where we're not the leaders: PLC. But it's conscious because the market is moving towards virtual PLC, software automation, SDA, software-defined automation. And we want to lead these ways, the evolution of the market, to take a stake, you know, a position ahead of this curve. So not only on PLC, but virtual PLC and software-defined automation.
I will get back to that because this is an important point, because we are seeing this trend only accelerating. This is the third pillar in terms of businesses. This is how we contribute to the global energy tech partnership. What we have to retain in all that is that the strategy is about selectivity. I said specialist. It's about selectivity. Why is that? Because we want to have good return on investment from the R&D. We want to gain efficiency. We want to maximize our impact. Guess what? We have learning experience because we have facilities ourselves. We have deployed, and we are continuously deploying very innovative technologies in our own manufacturing plants. Today, we have nine lighthouse facilities in the world, best in class in terms of digital development deployment, but at the same time, circular economy.
At the same time, Scope 1, 2, 3 reduction of emissions. So you see, we want to be the lighthouse for our own facilities so that we can share those examples to the rest of the world. Just to give you one example, Shanghai, our own Shanghai facility. We have been developing software-defined automation, as I was mentioning earlier, but also digital twin with one objective: to increase the performance of the facility. The return on investment is 115%. And at the same time, the industrialization time reduction is time three. So you see, it's concrete outcome that we should share. We continue to share to our customers. So one important message: selectivity, specialist. How does that translate in terms of strategy? What are the pillars for a renewed strategy for industrial automation? First, to be anchored with our leadership position on energy.
I think we were very clear earlier with Fred. We have this energy-centric DNA, and this is an opportunity for industry. You know, look, I will give you a few examples. You are a manufacturing plant. You need to optimize your consumption of energy. Or you are a grid operator, and you want to manage distributed assets. Or you are a utility, and you want to modernize. In all cases, you have at the same time power and process combined. Why it matters? Because if this is disconnected, then it's an additional complexity for customers. So more and more, they're asking for that to be combined together as one value proposition, one team, one system. So the first pillar is to concentrate on our energy-centric DNA, right, to leverage it to accelerate our own growth. The second pillar is about open software-defined automation.
So I talked a little bit earlier, but I want to be extremely pedagogical about what we are talking about. It's not necessarily only virtual PLC. It's really a step further. So I will try to make it simple. Let's say that you are a plant manager, okay? You have to recalibrate your production line. Historically, how we do it? We send engineers. They go control panel after control panel, and they do manual adjustment. It takes days. It takes weeks. It's very long, right? With software-defined automation, it's made from their desk. It takes minutes. You see, it's very powerful. It's bringing a lot of efficiency for our customers, very flexible. That's what they're requesting today. Believe it, it's not that easy. It's a big shift from physical assets towards a decoupling between hardware and software. And this is where the market is heading.
This is the second pillar of our strategy, open software-defined automation. The third pillar, and we'll talk, Caspar will talk more about it, is the AVEVA portfolio, the AVEVA integration, what it brings to our story. And especially Olivier mentioned the lifecycle that we have to look at, right? And this is empowered through AVEVA. I will let Caspar tell more, but this integration is extremely fulfilling for our customers' benefit. The fourth pillar is about selectivity I was mentioning earlier. Again, we don't want to spread in many different directions. We want to have impact against selectivity in terms of segments, in terms of geographies, and in terms of offering will make us stronger, more efficient. And lastly, it's end-user centricity. Look, we are not there to sell a platform. We are there to respond to customers' expectations and to anticipate them.
It's a lot about specialization, investment into specialization, investment into our network of partners. We have 4,500 partners that we rely on. This is a huge asset, so we have to invest into our partners' network. End-user centricity. These are the different pillars of our strategy to strengthen our positioning for industrial automation. To do that, we need EcoStruxure. You have seen earlier with Olivier, we have evolved the EcoStruxure platform. This is very much based on how to bring together all data from field, operational, enterprise, bringing together through this data cube. This is where autonomous intelligence will come, right? We're investing into agentic AI and all that. It will come. You see how EcoStruxure is helping us to scale the strategy on the five pillars that I've just presented. Now, when I ask a customer, what do they expect?
They expect open and more reliable operations. Open, I said it earlier, disconnection between hardware and software, but also more reliable operations. Hence, my commitment today is to work on their R&D to deliver a number of elements. The first element is to reduce, to accelerate our time to market up to 15%. Platforming, for example. The second element is to reduce our complexity towards our customers. Standardization of the platforms, reduction of SKUs, things like that, reduction of complexity, the second pillar. And the last one is to become cost-competitive, R&D capital efficiency. And again, there are plenty of room to work on. I will talk to you about operational excellence at the end of this presentation, but this matters. So that's why revisiting R&D and putting even more discipline into the R&D system. Let's deep dive into power and process. I said it rapidly. What does it mean?
Again, let's take an example. Many of our customers are asking the two to combine. And what we are offering to those customers is to have one team, one solution, and think outcome-based. CapEx reduction, increased profitability, road slowing down, or reduction of downtime. It's a number of very concrete and tangible outcomes that we are putting on the table. One example, you are a chemical plant, very complex installation, yes? Very complex installation, continuous, high-energy intensive. This is where we see the best return on investment of power and process combined together. It's really something that is already requested by many of our customers. So that's why, you know, in these cases, you don't see only industrial automation. It's a combination of everything that we bring at Schneider, the whole value proposition. And this is simplifying quite a bit the situation or the difficulties of our customers. Payback.
One of these solutions like that, what is the payback? Only six months. So you see the value for this type of segment is extremely high, bringing together power and process. We should listen to our customers, right?
Meet Evonik, a leader in specialty chemicals revolutionizing plastic recycling, and Lwart, a leader in lubricant re-refining, aiming to double capacity, and see how they are fulfilling their ambitions by partnering with Schneider Electric. At our pilot plant in Essen, we are digitalizing thermoplastic processing jointly with Schneider Electric. This helps us unlock the full potential of recycling additives. It's not just about efficiency. It's about smarter, more sustainable solutions. Solutions that help our customers cut costs and achieve higher quality residues. That is how we create new value, accelerate circularity, and drive growth.
[Foreign language] . This collaboration is a milestone. It shows how chemistry and digitalization can transform industrial processes.
It highlights the power of openness in technology and in mindset. We are proud to be on this journey with Schneider Electric. Together, we are proving that open automation is not just changing plastic recycling. It's shaping the future of sustainable manufacturing.
I think it's making a good connection with open software-defined automation. So I gave you a few examples earlier. I explained a little bit how it's shaped. What does it mean for Schneider? We have developed an offer which is called EcoStruxure Automation Expert, right? We have been launching it in 2020. It was a very bold move at the beginning. I can tell you it was a very bold move. Today, we have 550 sites deployed with EAE, 550 sites. The adoption rate is very, very fast. Today, we have 1,500 customers actively engaged in that direction.
So big evolution: hardware, virtual PLC, up to software-defined automation and open software-defined automation, whereby our customers are not locked in vendors anymore, not locked in vendors anymore, which is a big transformation. Let's go now into how we do that. We are not doing that in isolation. We need to do that with partners. So we have built ecosystems of partners. I will not go through all of them. I will give you just three examples. The first one is about China. China, we are very anchored in the country, manufacturing R&D, big scale, right? But still, we need to have these ecosystems of partners to also detect the weak signals in the market in terms of technology, in terms of business model. So that's why we have built a very strong ecosystem in China beyond what we have to detect all that. Another example, completely different technology.
So here I'm talking about Microsoft. We have developed a partnership with Microsoft in order to develop industrial AI copilots. I was mentioning Agentic AI and all that. There is a path, but we need to work on that direction, and we need to build this kind of partnership. Another example, unified operations. I think this is interesting because at some point, we cannot transform the market only ourselves. We need two partners, even beyond competition, even with competition, to impose standards. Universal operations, Universal Automation is an association that we have been working with, including with some competitors, in order to impose these kinds of standards in the market for open software-defined automation. Again, just an example, but working with others is absolutely critical in order to move the market.
So all that is to share that not only we're talking about connected devices or intelligence devices, we're talking about energy intelligence automation, energy intelligent operations too, software-defined automation. This is who we are. But to make it happen and to translate that into value creation, we need to think, and that's also my commitment to transform these strategic pillars into high level of attention and execution. You talked about operational excellence. This is exactly what we need to do for industrial automation too. High level of operational excellence. Because I'm sure that you're all asking, what's the targets? What's the evolution? What's the vision for margin extension? This is my first topic in my agenda. The first topic I had in my agenda since I've been appointed in October, margin extension.
How to recover, how to reposition, and at the same time, continue the growth that we can capture now in the market and accelerate growth together with Caspar and together with Fred. So that's why the margin ambition is to get back to 18% by 2028, and we have different room of maneuver for that. I will give you three examples. The first one is the mix. Working on the mix, the more digital, more AI, more services. The second pillar is around simplification, portfolio simplification. I shared it earlier. We need to be more efficient in terms of R&D, SKU, simplification of SKU. It will help customers. It will help our R&D efficiency. And the last pillar is about cost, design to cost, production cost across the board, including in functions. So cost focus.
So just to name three of them, but to tell you that in reality, this is top priority. And to do that, again, it's a partnership. It's across the company working in the same direction with energy management, but with Caspar too, because this connection with AVEVA is creating differentiation for our customers. Please, Caspar.
Thank you, Gwenaelle, and it is great to be here in this cool and well-cooled room here at McLaren. My name is Caspar. I lead AVEVA, as you heard, and it is my pleasure to brief you in some detail on the transformation that we have done since I last presented to you, I think it was about two years ago. So before I go into the detail of the transformation, you all have seen this slide, the slide that shows the energy stack value proposition of the overall group.
If I want to tell you what AVEVA does, you've heard it. AVEVA provides what we call industrial intelligence that goes into the optimized layer of the stack and powers the advisors, right? The advisors that then support Schneider's customers. The way we do that is by bringing asset information, so the information that comes from design and operational information, the data that comes from the assets and from the machines that are run by our software, and all that together with analytics, sometimes as raw data, feeds the advisors that serve Schneider's customers. This, in summary, is how we fit into the overall tech stack of the energy tech value proposition of Schneider, okay? What I will show you more is that for our customers, the impact of this is very clear. It is greater efficiency, first and foremost.
They can design faster, they can operate smarter, they can optimize continuously, reducing both cost and complexity. And we also, of course, help them advance sustainability, lowering their energy use, cutting emissions, accelerating their transition to more efficient electrified and digital operations. And of course, in our world today, also in line with Fred, what Olivier, what Gwen have talked about, we deliver resilience because in this very volatile world with cyber risk, with supply chain disruptions, with an increasing scarcity, a scarcity of affordable energy, our integrated approach gives customers the insight, the automation, and the control that they need to stay ahead. So our technology enables customers to design, build, operate, and optimize industrial assets with higher efficiency, lower energy use, like I just said, driving measurable improvements to their bottom line.
What that also means is that our software is at the heart, at the heart of mission-critical operations of our customers, so that means that customers stay and expand with us and entrust us with more and more of their data, and this is why AVEVA has built a resilient, high-margin, low-churn, and recurring business with durable long-term growth. This is what we have done, and as part of Schneider, we have created a combined proposition that no other player in the market, we believe, can match. Our strength is that all of our softwares, many, many softwares are today fully interconnected across the asset lifecycle.
In design and build, our applications, such as Unified Engineering, this is our design software used for complex assets, such as a power station, a refinery, an FPSO ship, up to three million data points or more, one of the most powerful design software out there. Asset Information Management, simulation and learning, ETAP for electrical engineering and RIB for construction, all of this creates a unified data-centric foundation that flows seamlessly throughout operations. Under operate, the next one, we support our customers with AVEVA's PI System and with the Unified Operation s Center. This gives customers a complete view of their asset performance and leads to more reliable operations.
Remember that we have, that we are actually one of the world's leading sources of industrial data from the PI System, the time series data, how machines perform, vibration, temperature, this type of information stored over decades is in the PI System, and this is used together with the data that comes from monitoring and control to analyze. It feeds the analytics. It feeds also, frankly, the AI of the future because AI will not be able to perform without this information, and the vast majority in large assets of this information resides in the PI System today. Under Optimize, the third part, yeah, you see AVEVA's Asset Performance Management with one of the critical applications being Predictive Analytics. One of the things to say here is that we have worked with AI, with Predictive Analytics for a decade plus.
It's powered by the time series data that comes from the PI System. It comes from other applications and gives you predictions on when your assets will break down, what you need to do to keep your asset going, when to schedule maintenance, etc. These are some of the biggest savings that you can get and one of the biggest business cases of putting AI in action in the industrial space. Now, at the center of all these software, you see Connect. At the center of the software architecture, Connect is our open data and industrial AI platform, and it basically allows everyone, everyone in an operation, everyone in a company, everyone in a supply chain to work from the same trusted data, and we believe this is the one place where the industrial ecosystem comes together.
More to say to that is that the integration that we have done in the last couple of years of all these different capabilities is what differentiates AVEVA and drives long-term stickiness and scalable recurring value. This is an example here, AVEVA Connect in action. You're looking here at the energy transition campus in Amsterdam, and I think this is a powerful example of how Connect helps to build the future of that industry. It's a training site. Teams from all over the world come together, work with each other, and it is a combination of different capabilities. It's a microgrid that brings together solar, hydrogen production, storage, batteries, EV charging, heating and cooling systems, grid systems, all that into one network, which is orchestrated through Connect.
Every energy flow, every asset information, every operational signal can be monitored, analyzed, and optimized in real time, in real time, and the information can then be shared across the people working in it. This shows how AVEVA can accelerate the energy transition itself, enabling operators to integrate very diverse energy sources into one place, and it also powers a community of innovators, right? Now, what is the scale of AVEVA today? We are investing into the future of industry. We have made a sustained investment into Connect, the platform that I have described just now. 50 years of innovation, we have basically accumulated and infused this platform, our technologies, our softwares with this deep knowledge that the software, our customers, and our people in AVEVA carry, building net new use cases and building the digital backbone of the future.
You can see here the scale of our operation. We're also investing heavily into our R&D roadmap. As part of this, we have recently completed the acquisition of Crosser. It's a leader in real-time analytics, integration, and edge AI. Crosser's hybrid-first platform is already integrated into Connect, and it expands our ability to process streaming and event-driven data in real time, unify this information across silos, very important, breaking through silos, and delivering industrial AI at the edge. These investments are important because industry is becoming more digital, more electrified, and more interlocked or interconnected, you've heard it. One of the key ways in which we ourselves have used AI is in our own development of software with a 14% efficiency gain to date.
We've been at this for about two and a half years of using it, and that created entirely new ways for our customers to design, operate, and optimize their assets based on the software that we have created. And you can see an optimized, fairly even global picture here of how across the world, following the blueprint of Schneider Electric, we deliver value to our customers pretty much anywhere where there are complex industrial assets in the world. Now, what you see here, based on that, based on what we support, is the scale and the importance of the industries that we support. You see here some of the biggest names in energy, in power, in data centers, in chemicals, in food, in life sciences, in infrastructure, mining, marine, and EPC.
From Exxon to BP to Enel, Pfizer, BASF, Starbucks, Kellogg, Wood, Technip, the companies that keep the world running use AVEVA software, and it sits at the heart of how they operate, and I want to tell you something, and I say this very, very humbly, that the reality is simple. If you switched off AVEVA tomorrow, many of these industries would not be able to function because our technology is mission-critical. It keeps energy flowing, plants running, supply chains moving, and so on. This is what we do for our customers, and you can also see some of the new wins that we've had, new logo wins through the go-to-market organization of Schneider, and I will show you the scale of that in a second, but you can see some of the logos here. Now, allow me to quickly talk you through three examples of our software in action.
The first one is Bruce Power, one of the world's largest nuclear plants in Canada. I went there myself. You have to drive a very long time to get there, but once you get there, you are blown away by the scale of this plant. We boosted their project efficiency as they expanded this facility with the nuclear renaissance. Using AVEVA Asset Information Management on Connect, they have digitized 1.7 million documents, bringing together live data feeds, live data feeds that come from over 40,000 PI data tags. So the PI System, the data tags feed in here. And together, this enabled 1,800 users to collaborate in real time on our platform, no small feat, right? And Bruce has saved over 1,000 hours of engineering in a single year and cut operating costs by 50% up to the EPC handover throughout the entire project phase. That's not bad.
Moving on to Covestro. Covestro, you all know them, I think, a leading German chemicals manufacturer, is experimenting with creating a new biological plastic-like material, and to do this, the engineering team drew on their AVEVA digital twin, so it comes from our design site, from their existing petro-plastic manufacturing process, and they used Process Simulation, another one of our applications, to model this new bioengineering process, and this simulation eliminated significant waste early on from the design stage and is enabling Covestro's team to explore how they can speed up delivery of these new circular products. This is fairly impressive, bleeding-edge, sustainable science in action, and it is enabled by AVEVA's industrial AI. The last example and video, one of my favorites, Marine Leader Yinson, you may know them, they create floating production, storage, and offtake facilities.
These are among the most complex marine vessels in operation anywhere in the world. You can see it here, super large. I was at a different customer last week in China. These are massive, massive vessels, so they operate in some of the world's deepest waters off the coast of Brazil, off the coast of Africa, and Yinson streamlined their digital design process using AVEVA's Engineering in the Cloud, enabling the global team of engineers, so in different places, hundreds of engineers working on the same design at the same time, right, in real time to share their designs on Connect. Usually, you take the design, you send it to the engineer, they review it, they send it back. It takes a very long time, but by sharing analytics and tracking emissions, they have cut costs, they have cut waste, and sped up significantly the project delivery.
And that meant that the vessels, of which the world doesn't have enough of, can sail away from the shipyard up to six weeks earlier than planned. And Yinson, as a result, also is on track for their 2050 Net Zero target. Now, every customer we work with faces the same issue. Their most valuable knowledge is trapped within disconnected data. Think like a silo somewhere. The data is there. Three people know that it's there. No one else. You know, not good. The result is that industrial data has been one of the most underused assets in companies. And the real breakthrough comes when we aggregate, when we enrich, and when we analyze this data across silos, across the silo within the enterprise and across the silos within the supply chain, of course. And this is what we do for our customers.
We allow them to ask the questions that get the clear answers that they need to make the right decisions. So we have, as a result of having these capabilities, a powerful ecosystem around us, from the hyperscalers to the data platforms to our system integrators. And this brings me to our partnership with Databricks that I think you've probably followed. Together with Databricks, we are giving industrial companies something they have not had before: a seamless, no-code, zero-copy way to bring IT data and OT data together at scale, in real time. And powered by Connect, customers can combine operational data, enterprise data, IT data, all sorts of data, unlocking value, powering AI, and creating business intelligence or industrial intelligence without fragmented point solutions.
And what we consistently hear from Databricks and other partners is how impressed they are by the quality and specifically by the structure, the context of the industrial data that they receive through Connect. And the impact of that is real. They use this integration to boost efficiency, to get costs down, and to accelerate sustainability programs today. We have great success so far in mining, in manufacturing, in power, and in oil and gas. I'm also very pleased to share with you that we've been recognized as the winner of the 2025 Microsoft Manufacturing Partner of the Year Award, AVEVA. Yeah? And all of that together means 50% faster data curation, 75% lower compute costs, and near real-time decision-making with 48 times data refresh rates. And this is what Connect gives: secure, scalable access to trusted intelligence, to trusted industrial data that enables this new level of industrial intelligence.
Through partnerships like Databricks, like Microsoft, this is amplified for our customers and also for AVEVA. You will see many more such partnerships coming in the next six, nine months, as many other players in the analytics industries choose to partner with us because of the data and the quality of this data that we provide, this industrial data. Now, I want to come and just give you a couple of points on Connect itself, on the platform itself. What you see here is the scale of Connect today. You remember two years ago I presented it to you, at least some of you, I believe, were there. It was new then. Connect is what we call the digital thread that links engineering, operations, and optimization from the edge to the cloud. It's powering Schneider Electric's optimized layer, like I have laid out earlier.
We now manage more than eight petabytes of trusted industrial data, reality capture, engineering data, production data especially. This data flows through our installed base into Connect, where more than 23,000 active monthly industrial users have access today to over 50 software-as-a-service applications. This is where synergy comes to life. Schneider brings the world's largest footprint of energy management and automation systems, and Connect transforms this footprint into intelligence that then again feeds the optimized layer of Energy's tech stack. That is Connect. What sets AVEVA apart also is our overall global Connect partner community. We have more than 25,000 strategic partners, + 5,500 specific partners for Connect. We have distributors and system integrators, and all of these, as you've heard before in the true Schneider mantra, expand our reach and allow us to go deep into local markets and bring our technology to life there.
It also brings a sense of community, the AVEVA community. It's a trusted ecosystem of where partners collaborate, where they build together, build new applications that sit on top of the platform and deliver consistent value, right? And I want to highlight again the, in this case, very specific partnership we have with Schneider Electric's go-to-market organization. So the way that we are able to sell and access new customers through Schneider's countries, right? What Schneider calls the countries. And this is not just great because it gives us more scale. It also gives us new logos. The new logos, you saw them on the earlier slide. I showed many of them. But the sheer scale of new opportunities that this brings us is unparalleled and is a key differentiator for us. We operate in a low churn environment. Industrial software is a low churn environment. Yeah?
Low churn also means it's hard to displace others, logically. Winning new customers, which is the hardest thing to do, is super important for long-term growth. And this is what the Schneider countries, the Schneider go-to-market organization is augmenting and accelerating for us. Now, as I am about to close, I want to tell you that since 2021, we have fundamentally re-accelerated this business. AVEVA is now firmly positioned as a faster growth, higher quality recurring revenue company operating at good margins and with a clear trajectory of continuous improvement. The subscription transition that we have done to get here meant that we had to take a deliberate dip. We invested in cloud, we invested in AI, and in the transformation of our commercial model and the full transformation of our commercial model. And that transition and investment has now translated into a stronger and into a more resilient business.
Over the course of the last few years, we have delivered mid-teens ARR growth, annualized recurring revenue growth in the mid-teens with consistent low churn of less than 2% and a 110% retention rate supported by more than 1,000 new logos this year alone, so this year alone, 1,000 new logos, many of them in Asia. Recurring revenue, and this is a key point, has reached 85% of this business, enabling an approximately 80% gross margin, even with the higher hosting costs of the software-as-a-service transition and the growth that we've had in SaaS. We have controlled operating costs effectively while increasing strategic investment in AI, in R&D, and in cybersecurity, and as the subscription transition revenue recognition drag fades and our recurring revenue backlog converts, revenue and ARR growth will start to converge.
This will help margins to step up further, moving towards 30% EBITDA over the coming years. The message that I want to leave you with is very clear. We have rebuilt the growth engine. We have protected margin quality, and AVEVA is now in a much stronger structural position, strategically sharper, and financially accelerating. Thank you very much.
Greetings to all of you in London and those joining virtually. I'm Noelle Walsh, President of Cloud Operations and Innovation at Microsoft. I lead a team of over 13,000 people who are responsible for building and operating our global fleet of data centers. Microsoft runs over 400 data centers across 39 countries, and I'm delighted to share my perspective on AI growth. We are already seeing that AI is a once-in-a-generation technology. AI is accelerating productivity and unlocking new economic value.
We are seeing this take place across domains and industries. At Microsoft, we are committed to leading this shift responsibly and at scale. We are democratizing access to AI so that breakthroughs can address society's most pressing challenges, from education to healthcare to energy and material science and beyond, and we are ensuring sustainability, including carbon, water, waste, and biodiversity, while partnering closely with local communities. This long-term commitment to AI and cloud infrastructure is backed by significant capital investment. In our most recent fiscal year, Microsoft invested over $80 billion in capital expenditures, primarily to support our data centers. The pace continues to accelerate. In just the last quarter, we spent nearly $35 billion. As our CEO, Satya Nadella, recently shared, we will increase total AI capacity by over 80% this year, and we will roughly double our total data center footprint over the next two years.
This reflects the customer demand signals we see. As our data center network rapidly grows, so do our energy needs. We have strong utility relationships, and we are investing in energy efficiency and in renewables. End-to-end energy systems from grid to edge are essential to meeting our goals around performance, reliability, and sustainability. Our global partnership with Schneider Electric is built on shared values of innovation and operational excellence. We view Schneider as a critical and strategic supplier. We turn to you for electrical equipment and for systems to monitor energy performance. We also look to you as we explore new ways to deliver capacity at a faster speed to market, such as through innovations like skidding and modularization. Together, we can accelerate deployment of infrastructure that is sustainable and resilient as we drive unprecedented growth in AI and cloud services.
I want to thank you for your partnership and for joining us in shaping a future that is more sustainable, intelligent, and abundant. Congratulations and best wishes on a successful capital markets day.
All right, so we have one more session before we break for lunch, and we wanted to just sort of turn it around. You know, we've heard from some customers, Microsoft right now, Tata Power earlier in the day on grids. But for this session, what we wanted to do was actually have a few interactions covering three angles. So the first angle, you know, we've heard from our businesses on technology, et cetera. Now we want to talk to our operations leaders who are actually bringing it on the ground with customers. So that's the first angle. The second angle is to try to deep dive a little bit into specific segments and have more details.
The third angle, as I said, is to actually hear from physical customers, not just virtually on the thing. So to get this started, I'd first like to invite Aamir Paul, who is the President of our North America Operations. Good to see you again.
Good to be here.
Markets day setting. So Aamir, of course, you know, you're leading North America, largest zone region for us, fastest growing as well in the last cycle. Today we talk about the next cycle. We're going to keep it going like that for us?
We're going to try. Look, you heard from the IEA director about this is the age of electrification. In the U.S., research we've done with NREL and others says the electricity mix of final energy is going to go from 23% to 57%.
That trend of electricity becoming the predominant energy source is true very much in the U.S. Now, in the near term, because of the infrastructure being old, and look, the grid was having problems even before this AI boom was upon us. We were seeing that even in the last administration's investment cycles. But in the near term, we're looking at about 1,000 terawatt hours of shortage, which is, to put it in perspective, 100,000 homes without power. So what you're seeing is electricity demand is going up, electricity costs are going up. And that context bodes well for the solutions and capabilities we bring to bear. We see investments happening in infrastructure, in water, in transport, especially in Canada. We see a lot of investment happening in healthcare and semicon.
Then, of course, with the policy conditions, MMM, especially rare earths and life sciences and pharma production, we see really positive signals coming back. You know, through the cycle, we've seen things shift. We had a cycle after COVID and residential that was super strong. That is more challenged right now, but secular trends that are positive, and we expect that to recover at some stage. Then Mexico is softer a little bit for us right now, especially because of the USMCA negotiation. But if you put it all together, the context is super supportive. Of course, I haven't even talked about what you want to talk about, which is data centers.
Before we get there, so I think if the secular trends are all there, even though there might be some specific issues in Mexico, et cetera, at the moment, those are for everyone, right? So what differentiates, in your mind, Schneider in the eyes of the customers that you're seeing all the time, every day?
Well, look, our colleagues have covered this in some detail. It's the breadth of our portfolio, but it's also our commitment to not just bring those assets, but to integrate them throughout each phase from design, build, operate, and optimize, and that is especially important when the complexity and speed is changing at the rate it is.
One of the things that's super interesting is as the cost of energy goes up, not only is it more important to build assets that are more efficient today, but actually going back to the existing stock and investing in software that's agnostic and open that allows you to solve those problems becomes critical. Because the payback period is entirely different when electricity costs were here versus when they're here. And I'll give you a few examples. JPMorgan Chase new headquarters. A lot of people have talked about what they've done there, but the core building management system of that facility, which is one of the most advanced Class A office buildings in the United States, is Schneider Electric.
The reason they picked us is because of the open API nature of that platform, the fact that we can take HVAC systems, electrical systems, occupancy data, and bring it all together. Another example is in Tennessee, where we have a big footprint. The Nissan Stadium, which is the home of the Tennessee Titans, is a 2 million sq ft facility. They wanted the facility to flex literally from a sports event to a concert to other sorts of things that we're going to be hosting, and they wanted to create an incredible experience. They needed not just these point solutions to work, but then to work in an integrated fashion and service of what that facility is for. We were the partner they selected.
Then last one, University of California Health Systems is building in UC Irvine, UC San Francisco, UC Davis, some of the most electrified outpatient facilities and hospitals in the country because that system has a goal to have zero carbon electricity in all their setups by 2045. Again, when they hit that complexity curve, the partner of choice was Schneider. It's the ability to take the portfolio that's been described, but take it from start to finish and to make sure that we're focused on the integra ted outcome. The mission of the customer is what we're trying to deliver, and that's a big differentiation.
You know that we're always in searching for good venues for future capital markets days. Tennessee is probably now added to the list as well. Anyway, let's put. We can arrange for some incredible entertainment in Tennessee.
Let's move across to data center, and it's obviously the topic on the top of mind of several of the folks over here as well. You know, the last time we were together in the capital markets day setting, you know, we announced the Compass deal at that point of time. I know that more recently, in the last few weeks, we've announced a couple of large deals. I think the question that everybody has is that, you know, there's a level of visibility and pipeline that we have. How do we feel about that, you know, as an organization? And secondly, what's the general feeling with regards to, you know, how this continues in the coming times?
Look, you heard from Noelle. We do a lot of work with Microsoft and we feel the acceleration she was describing.
The deal you were talking about a few weeks ago was with Switch, headquartered in Las Vegas. And we do this interesting thing with them where they have a patented design for an integrated modular solution. It has our UPSs, our power distribution, it has our chiller solution. And then working with them, we've optimized that design, particularly for speed of deployment. And that particular deal was $1.9 billion. And the scale at which they're expanding, we expect the opportunity to do even more with them because it's co-developed to optimize time to power. So we have visibility for 12-18 months, but what's more exciting is the work we're doing at the design level, architecturally, in terms of what comes next, gives us a sense of what people are planning on.
Now, of course, you have to get land, you have to get power, and there are other constraints. So the firm visibility on deployment is 12 - 18, but we, of course, have design visibility that goes beyond that.
And I think, you know, it's being applied also in different, you know, in different settings and different sizes. In fact, later this afternoon, there's a containerized data center in this very facility, which we'll have the chance to visit. Maybe one other question on data centers, because there's a lot of focus, of course, on the new build and the huge amounts of capital expenditure, et cetera. One of the questions that we get often is with regards to at what stage does this turn into a retrofit opportunity or at some point of time, you know, as the scale-up happens, you know, how is Schneider think ing around that?
On a relative basis, do you think we have, you know, an edge or a superior positioning given all of the planning we've been doing on that?
You know, Fred talked about the Compass example, where in that set of facilities, we have about 3,000 assets that we're monitoring in real time. Last year alone, they created 10,000 unique events, triggers and alerts, of which we offered 2,000 remediations in real time. And that meant that there was a 40% reduction in onsite events, and it also meant a 20% reduction in CapEx. Now, that example of how do you take the software layer and connectivity and make sure an asset can have lifecycle value that's more predictable and more stable is absolutely critical, and it applies especially in the retrofit environment.
Because if you step back from the bright lights of AI, there's still a lot of enterprise IT that is moving to the cloud. That migration hasn't stopped. That's still happening. And as that happens, and people want to be able to, between inference and getting their data right, capture all of that the right way, we know that the existing data centers are going to get some level of density for inference. So that next phase is still to come, and the service capability is going to be a big part of that. The other thing I'll say is specifically in the U.S. market is we have a labor shortage. There are roughly about 600,000 electricians in the U.S. We need about 900,000. Every year, about 10,000 retire, 7,000 join, so there's a 3,000 deficit.
Now, even with all the training and support, you're going to have to build both deployment infrastructures, which are modular, but also service solutions that are software-driven because you just don't have enough people to get this part right. So lots of conversations about land and power as being barriers in terms of scale-up, but actually labor is one, and that's where services, both in the new construction but also in the optimization phase, become so important.
Very clear. So I think we've spoken about the large customers. We've spoken about Switch and Compass Datacenters, who are very large as well. But also, we are lucky today that we're joined by another important customer of ours, a large customer, which is Vantage Data Centers. So I'd like to call upon stage David Howson, who's leading Europe, and I'm going to step away and let you guys have a conversation. Thank you.
Well, David, thank you for being here. Thank you. You're fulfilling our promise of a real-life customer, so thank you very much.
Physical customer. There we are.
Look, first things first, our relationship has been growing rapidly, but Vantage has become a global player. We were talking, your last fundraise was spectacular, and you're just investing a ton of capital. Tell us a little bit about Vantage's journey and how you're differentiating in the market right now.
Yeah, sure. So we are, in terms of the scale, we're now across five continents. We've got 53 active data centers. We're building probably two of the three largest AI factories at this point in time. And our differentiation really starts with that focus. You know, if I think about the number of customers, you know, we only serve really the world's largest technology businesses. We're not trying to be and serve everyone.
We have a very narrow focus from a product perspective. Obviously, in the cloud era, that has been hyperscale, you know, cloud and go forward, that's additive AI factories. And then geographies, all of the geographies we picked are really the largest data center markets. So we're lining ourselves up through that focus. Access to capital has been a differentiator. You know, the scale and the speed right now and being ahead of that. And obviously, you do that really built off, really, I think the third differentiator, which is operational excellence, right? You got to have that operational excellence for all your stakeholders, your customers, your investors, and to be able to feed the lifecycle of the capital as well as for our employees as well. So those three really are our key building blocks.
Yeah, that track record of execution matters.
I think you're almost at 9 GW of managed capacity and growing, which is incredible. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about how challenging that is, right? Every market has its own issues. You and I are talking about differences between the U.S. and European markets. What is getting in the way as these hyperscalers come to you and say, "More now"? Yeah. What is the real challenge that you're facing in the market to get time to power right?
Yeah, I think there's two trends here, right? Which is, you know, the time period to develop new power and grid capacity is way longer than our time frame to develop data center capacity. And then the secondary trend, which is driving speed to market even more, is, you know, the chip technology is developing. There was a chart earlier about, you know, how NVIDIA is ramping through.
So all of those are putting more focus on speed to market and really deploying capital with the right product at the right time. And so what we're trying to be, there's two elements to this really. One is the land and the grid capacity and being far more proactive. You know, we used to bring power to the data center. We now take the data center to the power, right? We got to find where there is excess power, and that's driving that geographic piece. So that's where we put a lot of our capital out, getting powered land and developing that so we can, you know, get the product to market. The other lever is around standardization. And, you know, this is one area where we work with you guys a lot.
You can't be designing these things on the fly, you know, when you get a demand signal or a leasing signal. You got to have your supply chain all pre-plumbed, pre-engineered. And whether that capacity lands in, you know, in Berlin, in my region, or in, you know, or in Milan, we need to have the same components and the same product set, pre-engineered, pre-ordered, and work with our supply chain for that such that the actual time for us from lease to in-service is as short as possible because that's the drivers that our common customers are looking for.
Right. So that brings us to our relationship. And, you know, we're privileged. I think in the last few years, it's almost 10x larger than it used to be and accelerating, which is just phenomenal. But give us your perspective on Schneider.
As you think about partners you want to work with, what are you looking for?
Well, one, we've actually got a really long relationship here in Europe, going back 15 years from a business that we acquired. What we're looking for, and maybe some examples here, you know, we leverage and partner with you guys across all three parts of our lifecycle. So, you know, we are partnering with your design teams, our design teams. We had teams together in Grenoble a couple of weeks ago, leveraging that same sort of templated design that you folks have been working with NVIDIA on. We have too. And, you know, all of that was around 800V DC technology. That's probably not technology that we're going to be deploying until 2028, 2029, 2030, right? But being able to think about the R&D channel.
And what we have to understand with that and rely on your expertise is what does that mean for our economics? What does that mean for our development cycles? And so it's not just about sort of the productization of it. It's about how does it impact our business? So really sort of helping understand and help solve business problems. So that's in that far looking out sort of first part of the lifecycle. The middle lifecycle is all about we've got that product. We know what we're going to go take to market jointly. And how do we make that as efficient as possible? You know, we've entered into recently long-term supply capacity agreements with Schneider. And they give us certainty, and they give you guys certainty as well in terms of how we can go make the commitments to our clients.
Because when our clients are saying, "We want you to deliver this in 18 months or 24 months," we need to be able to back that off and have all of that pre-arranged. So that's a great example in that middle piece. Second example in that middle piece is, you know, just thinking about it, we heard it earlier. We buy a lot of that capacity directly from Schneider, but we don't buy everything ourselves directly. Actually, our contractors and our supply chain that are building these data centers buy a whole suite of Schneider products as well.
Fundamentally, when we get to that deployment and delivery phase, Schneider is fantastic at looking at this and saying, "This is a Vantage data center." It doesn't matter whether Vantage has, you know, cut the check to buy that or whether one of our GC contracts has, et cetera. And so sort of that support model, you know, through the deployment side and understanding the drivers for us, you guys have an organization that's sort of able to cut through that, which is super powerful for us.
Well, yeah, thank you for that. We're committed to making your mission our mission and making sure that, you know, whichever mechanism gets into it is one that we support you with. Just, you know, Amit asked me the question. Let me ask you the same question. What are you seeing right now, right?
As you think about the order book, the backlog, the timeline, what does the sentiment look like and how does the marketplace look like from a demand standpoint as you see it?
Yeah. I mean, what a difference a year makes, right? I mean, you know, I think it's the AI infrastructure has just become a reality this year, you know, 100%. Led by North America first, the large training sites, gigawatt sites. We're fortunate enough to have won a number of those. And so that's just suddenly become a reality. That is, I describe it as sort of lapping on the shores of Europe right now and also in our other regions in APAC as well. And starting to see the first inference workloads at scale, at a bigger scale actually than I think we were expecting, starting to play through into those regions.
And so from our collective perspective, it's accelerating the developability of the land. It's been hard to predict the volumes in terms of what's been needed and the timing of when they're going to land. Because obviously, it's such a sort of native technology right now, and it's still evolving, trying to pick the geographies, trying to pick the technologies. And therefore, that standardization and that fungibility of our designs has really paid off in terms of the work that we've done beforehand.
I think you said something there that really struck a chord, which is the fact that we have these strategic supply agreements takes one variable out of the equation. Because when those other complicated variables you just described get locked, collectively, we can move at an incredible speed.
I think one of the things in our model we've been trying to talk about is the core technology bricks that Fred and team are working on globally, right? Like 800 volts, like the GPU architecture, but the most regional company means that we understand what it is to deploy that in Germany and Italy and France. Every country, every zone has different regulations, different labor laws. We can partner with you at both levels, horizontal technology globally, but construction and deployment very, very locally. Geographically, absolutely.
I think the next, you know, we're seeing it now. You heard it referred to as skids and modularization. The scale and speed is driving the innovation that's needed.
If I think about the amount of contractors and supply chain that are involved building a traditional data center in a downtown sort of area compared to leveraging a much more integrated technology solution, actually, really is where we're heading in a actually designed to be manufactured that way and designed to be deployed in a pre-configured, pre-commissioned to avoid the labor challenges that we've got, et cetera. It ends up solving a lot of the business problems together. Speed to market, it actually drives down cost, it actually improves reliability. And it's an easier product to operate and maintain going forward. And that's where, you know, I think Schneider has probably an advantage just given the breadth of your portfolio and experience to bring those integrated solutions together. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of shrinkage in the supply chain coming.
Yeah. We have to get faster and better across every step. Look, last question. And you know, we are always inspired by our customers and the challenges they give us. So you've heard a lot about what we're building together. What advice do you have for us? How can we be more helpful and a better partner even than we've been as we go on this exciting journey?
I think we're going to have much more step function shifts in the technology that we've got going into data centers driven by the higher densities. And partnering around the impacts of those technologies in a more integrated way, actually, with the chip manufacturers, with the systems integrators, with the end clients, et cetera, to really solve some of those challenges going forward. Because they've got sustainability, community challenges and opportunities that go with them.
We can't just sort of evolve this. We have to, you know, collectively think forward about that level of innovation, you know, really designing the data center of the future together in a more integrated way. I think that's the big ask.
It's no longer about supplying components or even having a portfolio. It's actually thinking of it at every stage as an integrated system and thinking ahead. So that's what we're trying to do. David, thank you very much.
Thank you. Appreciate it. Cheers.
Well, thank you again. Thanks, David, for being here. Thanks, Aamir. And I'll call upon Manish. So Manish, as some of you or most of you know, is leading a very large zone for Schneider, which is, and I'll explain in a moment. Why don't you explain the zone that you lead, Manish?
Well, thank you. Thank you very much. It's great to be here.
You know, I was privileged to be watching the race over the weekend, which was in the international operations zone, and you know, it's double whammy for me, so good to be here. I think, you know, international operations is, I would say, is the most exciting place. Of course, we are also growing, and it's a place where 50% of the world is. It has a dynamism of a very youth, of a very young population, which is hungry for growth. There's a lot of wealth creation, and the governments are working extremely hard on infrastructure build, and that's what, you know, and therefore electrification and automation is at the center of everything that is happening there, so very exciting, and therefore, the economies are growing at 1.5 times higher than the global average.
You know, very lucky to be in this part of the world and contributing with the purpose of building here. While there is growth in every country in the region and the growth vectors are a bit different, I would call out, you know, India and Middle East are the two focus areas for us at Schneider Electric. India, you know, is the third largest country for us. It's going to be the third largest economy in the world. Olivier just mentioned about, you know, the Multi-Hub and the hub that we have created there around India to serve the international markets. I would say here that first in India, we are just going to close very soon our joint venture acquisition of the remaining shares. We had some great partnership with our partners there over the last five years. I want to thank them.
But again, this gives us a great opportunity to see how we can, you know, simplify our Indian operations as well as be even more agile to capture the growth. And this is what we look forward to. I will think about India. I think some of us were there last year as well. We talked about the brand transition with Lauritz Knudsen. That's been working quite well according to plan. And, you know, with the two brands that we have there between Schneider and L`&T in the electrical and automation space, it is giving us an unprecedented breadth. I mean, Olivier talked about, you know, the kind of presence that we get with that. So we are able to penetrate deep into the country as well as we are able to serve all the customer segments that are present. So that's the story that we are extremely excited about.
It's the Middle East, which is also a growth area, a place where we have been present for over 40 years with very strong local teams, strong partner ecosystems that we are extremely proud of, and what we are doing here is we are investing more, so today we have about 10 industrial sites in the Middle East. It's very well linked to the hub so that we are able to serve, we are able to bring in the local content, and we are able to adapt the offers for the local markets, so extremely pleased with that, and while we work on the partnership approach, there are a lot of big investments coming in, you know, data centers as well as some of the other mega projects, so we are building a very strong project and execution teams so that we are able to capture that opportunity.
So, a lot going on. And, you know, at Schneider, we are really here to take the technologies and deploy there.
No, that's very exciting. I think the one question that comes to my mind is that, you know, your zone is sort of, it's very broad, right? So you spoke about India and Middle East, both sort of, you know, emerging in their own way. But then you also have, you know, you have Australia and you have, you know, parts of, you know, the African continent and other areas. So in terms of the go-to-market or when you're speaking to customers, it's obviously not one size fits all. You just spoke a lot about, you know, doing some stuff which is very differentiated for that particular market. You want to speak a little bit about that because they all have very differentiated characteristics as markets, right?
Sure.
I think what we, I would say at Schneider, we are very proud that we are the most local of the global companies. And that's what we have been building on. For us, I would say the center is this Multi-Hub and the hub that we have created in India. What it helps us do is, I mean, it is the proximity that we have with our R&D teams, the industrial teams, and the marketing teams being close to the customer. We are able to be very agile. We are able to understand more the customer knowledge. I mean, you lay on top of that the frugal mindset of India, which is also helping us there to compete in the local markets. With this, we are able to cater to every market segment, and I talked about the brand.
So on one side, we have the global investment that is happening in India and Middle East where we are able to bring the technologies that are developed. Fred talked about it. Aamir talked about it. Co-prescription that is done with NVIDIA and then brought into our markets. We are able to serve them locally. At the same time, we are able to develop offers that are able to cater to the mid-size segments. You know, talk about the rice mills, talk about the ethanol plants, you know, small chemical plants that are coming in. So we are able to tailor offers to all of them. So we are covering the full spectrum. And I think that's very unique about us at Schneider. Helping us do all of that is our strong partner network. You know, we have a relationship with our partners that is built over generations.
So very deep-rooted. And this ecosystem is helping carry our technologies forward. Now, this relationship that we have with partners in our part of the world is not just limited to the product side, not just on the transactional side. But we are also executing projects. So the data center projects that are coming up are also being executed through partners. And I think this is where we are very unique, that we are able to bring those relationships, do the technology exchange, and the partners are able to deliver those solutions. Then on top of that, I would say that we also have a very well-established service network. So, you know, we want to be with the customers throughout the lifecycle.
So, you know, once the systems are deployed, we are working actively to see how we are able to bring our digital services and take them on the recurring service throughout the lifecycle. So I would say it is the same DNA that we have, tailoring it to the local environments, whether it's a developed market like Australia or it is, you know, the emerging economies of India and the Middle East.
Right. And Manish, if I could just pivot now to have sort of an end market focus. And that goes even beyond your zone, right? So I would like to talk about the industrial end market. You already alluded to several of them in your zone. But of course, you know, when we talk about the industrial end market, you know, even China is a significant country for us, et cetera.
I think this is obviously one end market where we truly bring together, you know, the full portfolio of Schneider for the customers. In your specific zone as well, a lot of what Gwen presented on the software, you know, software-defined automation, a large part of that growth is coming through from your region as well. So maybe just a few minutes around, you know, that from the eyes of a customer.
Sure. So, you know, we said that there's a lot of new build which is happening in our part of the world, you know, with all this, the growth of population. And therefore, what companies, especially industrial companies, are looking for is how they are able to have a future-proof investment that is scalable, that is modular as well on top of being future-proof.
This is where there has been a lot of interest shown in software-defined automation, which is our EcoStruxure Automation Expert. What the customers clearly see is that it is able to help them decouple the hardware and the software. They are able to get out of the, I would say, the lock of the legacy systems because the hardware and software is decoupled. It gives them the flexibility here in this technology that we have been talking to them. Intelligence resides on the edge. Therefore, you know, when you're building an application layer, when you're expecting your factories, I think things are able to go much more faster. It's very flexible. It's very scalable. This is what is greatly being appreciated. Gwen talked about the 550, you know, installations which are there, a lot of them in our part of the world as well.
What we are seeing is that especially in CPG, in water, also energy and chemicals, there has been a lot of interest in deploying it. We see the scaling, you know, at great scale going forward. So very excited to take this, build the libraries, you know, bring training to our teams so that we are able to deploy this very fast.
All right. Very interesting, Manish. I think, as we've said earlier as well, nothing like a real-life customer to talk to. We're delighted to have with us Senior Executive Vice President from Nexans, Vincent Dessale. And I'd like to invite you up, but I think we have a short video while you come up.
The age of electrification is accelerating at an unprecedented pace. We, Nexans, are the artisans of this new electric revolution.
Yet, few people know this because what's essential is often invisible, just like our work. Today, we're speaking out to show that along with essential professions, we share a vital purpose. We're not artists, but we're shaping the contours of sustainable electrification. We're not firefighters, but we keep flames from spreading during a blaze. We're not farmers, but we transport the fruit of solar energy. We're not astronauts, but we're helping the digital economy blast off. We're not architects, but we're building a bold model. This is a different kind of message, more of a manifesto to make us proud to be Nexans because our activity is essential by nature, essential to people, essential to the planet, essential to the future. Nexans electrify the future.
Thank you, Nexans. Welcome to our Capital Markets Day. I think it's great to hear about electrify the future.
I think that's been the consistent theme of the day. Maybe we can kick it off. We heard the video, but if you can tell us a little bit more about, you know, how you are as Nexans, you know, playing a role in enabling industrial operations, especially in this space.
First of all, thank you for your invitation to this Capital Markets Day. In Nexans, you know, we are designing, engineering, manufacturing, and installing cable solutions, cable systems. Basically, we are doing this from any point of generation of energy to any point of consumption of energy, which means that we are delivering the transmission infrastructure.
So we have high-voltage components, the grid infrastructure with, again, medium-voltage components up to the, I would say, the usage of energy in the different types of construction buildings from your individual house up to gigafactories, data centers, hospitals, schools, and that's basically what we are doing. So basically, we transport the energy from the generation to the usage. That's our job.
Okay. No, and I think we are so well interconnected because I think that our products together touch each other in that part.
Hopefully, when we do that, we should be connected to some Schneider product for sure.
I think we have said here, and, you know, he would love to work on some co-innovation as well as Gwen on this. So maybe I'd like to get your perspective.
You know, we talked about electrification, but, you know, data, AI, and I know that Nexans is also at the center of it. If you could share a little bit about that.
Yeah, well, I think it has been said this morning, we have an increase of demand of energy. We have an increase of electricity. But on the other end, the infrastructure is a little bit obsolete in some areas in Europe, in North America. It's on the opposite underdevelopment in the rest of the world, and somehow, we have to manage this energy in a proper way.
So in order to manage it, it means that we have to monitor, we have to analyze the consumption, we have to save some energy also, which means that we need to collect all the data from these different infrastructures, different networks in order to do this efficiency, to have this productivity in the usage of energy. So by consequence, data, the way we structure the data, the way we analyze the data, the way we can optimize, simulate, do digital twins on all types of architecture will bring, of course, an added value to the ecosystem of electrification.
So it's great to hear about, you know, the transformation that you're making towards being more data-driven. I know that at Schneider, with Schneider Electric, we are also partnering with you on the Smart Factory program.
So if you can tell us about, you know, how you're working on this transformation and Schneider's role in it.
Yeah, indeed. Like many companies, we have tried to take advantage of the data that we have. I mean, usually any manager, we say, is able to use 5% of the data available. With artificial intelligence, we can probably go up to 80%-90%, which means that you will be able to take decisions faster and more accurate. So that's basically the starting point. So we have our digital factory internally, and we are working on our operating model. So here, it's more business-oriented. But we have also to work on our assets.
For this, we have signed together, I think it was in 2021, a partnership agreement in order to make it simple, digitalize all our manufacturing assets all over the world, working on some use cases that I've heard this morning: energy monitoring, efficiency overall, predictive maintenance, predictive quality, and also to create a kind of collaborative platform at the level of the factory, at the level of the region, and also at the level of the group in order, again, to increase our performance all over our activities and to share within the group the result of our different units, which, of course, allow us to be always in a continuous improvement, but in a much faster way than what we had before. So this is what we have built.
Just to say, to show how it's efficient and how the return, because at the end, it's an investment, the return is nice. At the beginning, in 2021, we planned to have this overall deployment on all our units up to 2027. And in fact, at the end of this year, all our units over the world will be fully digitalized with the different systems that Schneider brought to us.
Thank you for that. And I think it's great to see that, I mean, to hear from you that you see the advantage coming out of it, that you've accelerated your program to actually bring it two years ahead. So congratulations on that. You know, we, of course, want to do more with you. You've heard us, you know, today in terms of some of the technologies we are developing. How do you see the future?
If, again, you know, if I had to say, if I had to ask you about what you think Schneider could be doing more for you, what would that be?
I think we, even if we did it faster, the deployment of this program, I think we did it faster also because we are thinking about the next step. We see that the next step will be even more important for Nexans. The first step was, as I said, to implement the digitalization of our factories. It was, of course, to build the data structure, to build the data lake, to use this data lake in order to take decisions faster, to support our operators on the line by some tools, helping them to take decisions faster.
But I think what is interesting is that now we have almost four years of data, which means that thanks to this data, when an operator in our line is facing an issue, we have four years of problem-solving registered in this data lake. So we can, thanks to AI, when there is a problem, look back to all the histories in all our factories all over the world and propose already some solution when an operator on the line is facing a solution. So that's basically the type of support that we can do thanks to artificial intelligence. We think also about agents in order to be more efficient in the management of the line, anticipate the activity, anticipate the usage of raw material, the usage of overconsumption.
I think there is also another area. It is clearly everything which is anticipation, how we can use this data in order to be more predictive, more reliable in terms of product quality, in terms of maintenance also. So that's the area where we are going to work. And I'm sure that we are going to work with you, thanks to your experience with other players, in order to go to this second step, which will be the usage of the data and the acceleration of the usage of the data by the artificial intelligence.
No, so thank you very much. I think that this is, we hear you very well. And I think that with what both Gwen and Caspar have been saying, this will be, we'd like to come back and see how we'll be able to take it forward and go deeper on it.
Maybe a last question in terms of, you know, looking at power and process in your factories and with what we talked about, the energy DNA. If you can tell us a bit about that, how do you see the value of it?
No, I think, as I said in the first question, we are really looking everywhere to optimize the usage of energy. So we have developed with you in all our plans of energy monitoring. But this energy monitoring, this energy management, to come back to the presentation of this morning, is a key topic.
So everything we can do to monitor the infrastructure inside a building, a factory, at the grid infrastructure up to the transmission infrastructure will help the overall efficiency of the supply chain of the energy, where we know by definition that it will be more and more volatile because you bring inside this overall network renewable energy, so ups and downs somehow, but the consumption is not always aligned with the production, so all what you can do all over the network to monitor the energy, make this energy more flexible, and also we think in the future to store it in order to have some buffers. That's really for me the next step in order to be ready and to continue this road on the energy, on the electrification.
Okay. Thank you very much, Vincent, for your time, and thanks for the partnership.
I think we are very excited about it. It's great that we are part of your little journey, and we want to continue and come back with all the points that you've just mentioned to us.
My pleasure.
Thank you, Vincent. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Vincent. Thank you, Manish. I'd like to now call upon Laurent Bataille, who is leading Europe. All right, Laurent. So just a couple of quick questions from my side. Firstly, and I'm just passing the question I get all the time from several members of this audience. You know, Europe's had a consistent level of growth, but when you compare it to some of the other zones, it's more muted. What does it take to unlock the growth in Europe?
No, it's a great question. And actually, what I would start by saying is Europe is not homogeneous.
I mean, we see lots of local specificities in the market. Some parts of Europe are growing faster than others. Currently, for instance, the southern part of Europe certainly has better traction. As you know, Europe also has a specific, relatively complex governance, which means that a number of new regulations or new investment plans take some time to actually happen in the market. You know, from a directive to translation into local laws, it can take two years or sometimes more. What I would say, however, in very concrete terms, where Europe has probably missed in terms of growth potential over the past two years is somewhat linked to AI and data centers.
You know, just to put things into perspective, while Europe hosts today more or less 18% of the cloud capacity in the world, when it comes to the compute capacity of the world, we are talking about close to 4%. So it was great to hear David talk about how this AI wave is actually reaching the shores of Europe, and we are very positive on that. I think it will actually be one of the growth hurdles, especially because now we see data centers moving to power, and there are places in Europe that actually have excess electricity or green electricity or fast grid connection. So I would say data centers certainly will be one of these opportunities. I think a second important realization in Europe is the importance of infrastructure.
So we see more and more thinking about how, for instance, simplification of permitting can actually accelerate the deployment of projects, which I think will have a big impact in our business because infrastructure upgrades in ports or in power and grid will be important. It was interesting yesterday to actually see the EU grid package is really focused on investing more in the grid. And then we've heard Guillaume this morning talk about buildings. The building environment has not been easy over the past few years, but it's actually picking up. And I think it also has a lot of potential for an acceleration in Europe.
Yeah. In fact, that's a good segue. If we talk about buildings and, you know, buildings of the future, incorporating energy intelligence in them, what does a building of the future, I don't know, five years from now, 2030, even beyond, look like?
So I don't think it's going to be a huge step change. It's actually a progressive transformation. What we see are two underlying, very powerful themes in buildings. One is the energy landscape of building is profoundly changing. It's electrifying, but it's also becoming more complex. And second, there's more and more penetration of digitalization in buildings. So when it comes to the energy side, what's happening in buildings? You know, in the past, buildings were primarily using energy, a lot of it for heating, for instance, which is primarily fossil-based. You know, still a lot of gas boilers in buildings. Two-thirds in Europe of tertiary buildings are using gas, for instance. There's a big underlying transformation here because you see an increase of loads in buildings. So the transportation market is entering into buildings through the EV Infrastructure and charging infrastructure.
In a typical office building, the EV Infrastructure might represent between a third and half of the electrical load of the building. So you see that's pretty significant. On top of that, you see new technology, typically storage, that helps by entering buildings to create more resilience, but even opportunities for arbitration or more flexibility. You certainly also have a big push for energy efficiency. All that actually makes buildings energy assets that interact with the grid. They're more complex. They need to have smart capabilities, you know, whether it's better metering, better controls capabilities to be managed much more closely and optimized. In that regard, I would mention JFK Terminal 1. It's a very interesting large building, a piece of infrastructure that has the largest microgrid in New York State, and actually, interestingly enough, it's powering its own infrastructure.
Thanks to the microgrid, you can actually operate when you lose the grid, 50% of the loads, meaning you create resilience in case anything happens to the grid. And then by 2033, it will be able to actually power up the full fleet of ground vehicles supporting the airport. So you really see this change of the energy landscape in buildings, and it's happening everywhere. Second, very big change is the digitalization. And it serves. We talked about making buildings smarter, but it serves another purpose. You know, especially post-COVID, lots of building owners had to think about how they kind of reinvent buildings. Let's be clear, we spend 90% of our time in buildings. And so making sure there are great places to live in, to work in, to interact with is very important.
And to get there, it's essential to actually weave together, interconnect together some of the IT workflows and the IT layer of buildings with the operational management layer of buildings so that it's a much more seamless experience we have in buildings. Let me try to illustrate that with a very simple application. Room booking. It's an IT workflow in the sense that you book a room, you have a screen at the entrance of a room, and all of that is not necessarily linked to the physical reality of the building. But as you weave that into the operational system, when you now show up in the room, you can actually have ventilation adapting to the number of people in the room to make sure it's comfortable, you don't have too much CO2, et cetera.
Something else is if you leave the room early, actually it can free up for booking in the IT system. So interconnecting OT and IT in buildings is extraordinarily important. That's what we do with both EcoStruxure and Planon, for instance. It helps us deliver fantastic buildings in terms of experience for the occupant. One of them I would underline is the Salesforce Tower by Lendlease in Sydney. Not only is it extraordinarily energy efficient, it's LEED Platinum, but it's actually also WELL Platinum, meaning on health and wellness, it's a great building to work in. You have sensors everywhere, you know, measuring air quality, temperature, humidity, noise level, lighting. And so these are really places where people want to go, to work in and collaborate in. So again, energy transformation and electrification particularly, but also digitalization.
Right. No, wonderful.
I think I'm going to use this opportunity to also introduce our guest who's, you know, who's all of the attributes that you just spoke about. Exactly. It's exactly in the buildings that, in the specific building we'll be talking about that we're in London, and that's Mohammed Rashid who joins us from Sidara, which is the Dar Group. I think we have a video as well, and then you can join us.
Thank you, Amit.
Sidara is one of the largest privately owned consultancies in the world, which consists of a house of brands delivering a variety of architecture, cost consultancy, MEP consultancy, city master planning, energy transitioning. The building is set up to achieve collaboration. We're allowing the technology to also collaborate to match the ethos. We have our BMS, our access control, CCTV, our lighting systems.
Everything here has been put in place to speak with one another. Software tools are supported by all of our on-premise connected solutions, such as our switchgear, our energy metering, and so on, which Schneider Electric implemented. The technology in this building enhances the user experience. We have our mobile applications so people can book rooms on the move. They can get information from the facility. They can understand how busy the restaurant is on level seven just from their hand. If you booked a room, the HVAC will start preconditioning the room for your well-being, and we can monitor that using the meter room IoT sensors, which measure temperature, humidity, VOC, and CO2. The Planon IWMS is the point of contact for the facilities management team. All of the tickets get raised up into Planon, and the FM team on site can take action.
For our data layer, which is built on the Building Data Platform, it enables us to basically use any kind of operational digital twins, start really embracing AI, and to help us in our future decision-making. Some of the achievements we've had in the first year of occupation are really around our certification. So we've achieved WiredScore and SmartScore Platinum. It's really showcasing how technology really helps the user well-being, as well as it helps our sustainability benchmarking. So we can actually understand where we sit from a sustainability point of view and where the gaps are to start improving over time. Three words to describe the relationship between Sidara and Schneider are evolving, exciting, and innovative.
So very happy to have the opportunity to dig into the history and achievements of this very iconic building in London. I'm here on stage with Mohammed.
So Mohammed, you're head of technology for Sidara. Sidara is a very large design firm. Why don't we start by that, by you telling us a little bit about Sidara, but also about what you're trying to achieve with 150 Holborn? Of course.
Thank you. Thank you, Laurent. Hello, everyone. So Sidara is one of the largest multidisciplinary design and engineering consultancies worldwide. It is privately owned. We are currently more than 22,000 employees. We are a house of brands model. We currently have more than 20 practices worldwide, working independently, but we also recognize and we know the importance of our collaboration together and our practice. For 150 Holborn, 150 Holborn is super important for Sidara. 150 Holborn is our global headquarters in Europe, and 150 Holborn was the first office to have all the brands under one roof for the first time.
Actually, it was a bold ambition, and the fact and what we wanted to deliver clearly was to create an innovative environment, which is or acts as the incubator of talents, ideas, and innovation while having a modern and vibrant work environment for our staff.
So a pretty strategic project. What were concretely the objectives you were trying to achieve here?
The building was envisioned back in 2016 and four years pre-COVID. Back then in 2016, we knew that data would be the golden thread. You need data to measure, to benchmark, to evolve. And we had big plans to have a building with data collection and a lot of technologies in this building. That's why we called it a living lab for us. The uniqueness of this building or opportunity was we are designing this building.
We are bringing a lot of practices under one roof for the first time, watching the construction, and then occupying the building and validating your very own design in this building. So it was a big commitment back then, especially that smart in 2016 wasn't well defined. So it was like sometimes a hype, sometimes you call any automation smart. So it wasn't clear what smart yet. So it was a big investment, if you want to call it, from ourselves to have such a thing in our building. So we worked and focused on three main personas for our day one operations. The first and most important persona was our very own users and visitors, then the facility manager and the owner. Speaking about staff and visitors, this was the most important part for this building. Why? This building was about collaboration.
We're bringing companies under one roof for the first time. So we wanted to enable, create an exceptional experience for everyone to show for ourselves before showing anyone else that we should be together so we can make better decisions, we can open opportunities for ourselves. But the challenge was when we designed the building, we didn't design it for a COVID hit. So COVID hit mid-construction for us. And this is one of the outcomes of having such a big investment back then about data that it helped us create a journey or a better experience for everyone to come back to the office. So we wanted to start with collaboration with everyone. Then COVID came and we started with an empty office. What can I do? We had a different plan in here. So it helped us to, and we will come and speak about the experience.
Next, the facility managers. So facility managers, we wanted to equip a building with a lot of technologies. So we keep energy and assets as the culture of this building. It's not something that, okay, we will watch, and we don't want to have like 200 or 100 or 50 people managing this building. We want to have a normal amount of facility managers, but equip them with technology so we keep it as the culture of this building. And the owner, the owner himself, we are the owner of this building. We want to showcase this building. This building is under the spotlight for Sidara because we are calling this building our home, our main headquarters. So we had a lot of things to show where you have energy commitments, you have ESG commitments, you have social commitments, you have a lot to showcase.
So it comes with a lot of sustainable commitments back then in 2016.
So you had these three personas to cater to. In terms of
your technology decision, how have you chosen the path? This was a bit hard back then. So the very first important thing was to define the personas. When we defined the personas, you needed to move to a journey or a day in a life or what these personas will do. We need to create something for these personas out of the smart technology. So we created, we thought about a lot of things. We are the consultant. We will be the resident of this building. And then we looked for who can deliver this with us. So it's not easy.
You have a lot of technologies in the building from the mechanical, electrical, everything in the building, in addition to sensors and IT, OT systems. I'll just mention it in a bit. The very first thing was we were looking for a real partner. We didn't want someone just to come deliver something and then disappear midway. We believe that this is a journey, especially with smart back then, data, COVID hit, work from home, new challenges. We started hearing about AI and what's coming next, but it was also a hype back then. We needed to do something. That's one. We wanted someone to continue this journey with us. Number two, one of the examples you just mentioned, and this is implemented in our building, the meeting rooms.
We created. We wanted a meeting room that will react to people attending in this meeting room, especially that we have a lot of meeting rooms in our building. We have one floor dedicated for meeting rooms in addition to a lot of meeting rooms on other floors, and we have multiple brands. So any brand can use any meeting room. So we asked for an experience where we needed to connect HVAC, lighting, sensors, audiovisual systems, the TVs, even the scheduling system in one place so we can take immediate action. So when you book a room, the room will recognize that you will be coming, how many people, which company you are will change the logo. It will warm up when you arrive. Even if you leave ahead of time, it will turn off. So this required a decent platform.
We found back then that EcoStruxure IoT platform was one of the best in the market to do everything we needed, especially for the meeting rooms. This takes me to the open architecture. We wanted something that is future-proofed. We understood in 2016 that we are on an exponential rise, let's say, in everything related to technology. The most important part, we didn't know what's coming. We knew, we understood that we need to put the data somewhere. We will benefit from it one day. We wanted to make sure everything is with open architecture. Because if you want to use the data, do the integrations, you need open architecture. We currently have more than 60,000 data points getting every five minutes in our building. All of these data points are being on the Building Data Platform, BDP.
On top of BDP, we use this one because BDP normalized the data. It made it available for us. We connected to our very own cognitive digital twin, which is Para. We are using the data from this building to feed our digital platform that we created for asset intelligence and energy intelligence to continue that journey. This is something else. In addition to that, back then in 2018, we checked a few independent research companies like Bernstein. Schneider Electric was a leader in facility optimization software, I think, back then. Also you were seven years in a row the most sustainable company in the world, not to mention all the big names you have as Schneider Electric. It was a tough exercise, but I think we had the best selection in the market.
Thank you.
And so your teams moved in the building in 2023. It's been two years of experience. What can you tell us about the outcomes, actually?
Great outcomes we had. So after the COVID hit and we were supposed to start with a number of attendees, now we have work from home. So compared to 2023, we have 35% more people attending the office. We are getting this data also from Planon, another system that we have in this building. Also, if you want to think about it, we have the Schneider sensors in the building that is contributing to the occupant well-being and showing how the comfort level is in the building. So also we are getting this from the IWMS on Planon. Moving to facility management, we are using Building Advisor from Schneider Electric. Building Advisor is helping a lot in FDD or fault diagnostics and condition-based maintenance.
One of the main important things back then when we designed the building was to keep energy and asset life as its core in the culture. A platform like Building Advisor is helping a lot our facility management to augment and elevate how one human being can work in this building and act as, let's say, 10 people. Also, it helped reduce the energy out of the meeting rooms by 22%. I think you have the slides in front of you. I can see it here, and for the owner, and it was super important why we were counting the visitors, so thanks to Planon, 18,000 visitors came to the building. We are doing live tours. We are bringing people from all over the planet to London to see this exceptional building.
People are super happy when they see how we thought about this building, how we did the investment, how we partnered with Schneider Electric to deliver this. It was a real big thing back then. It's a no-brainer today to do such a building, but in 2016, 2018, it was some kind of big investment to do. We are realizing new brands and new revenues and new work opportunities out of these tours and visitors. It's a pretty important tool for you on the business side also. I understand you've had a number of very good certificates thanks to the data you have in the building. Data was super important for a lot of certifications. I will start quickly into the certifications. The evidence is coming through the certification.
150 Holborn has currently the second highest BREEAM outstanding in operations in London, 97.2%, I think, last year. And as you saw in the video, we got the WIREDScore and SmartScore Platinum. And in additional information of the video, 58% of the criteria of reaching these certifications came from Schneider Technology. Not to mention additional things like EPC and a lot of additional certifications we are looking to achieve well very soon. So the evidencing the smart building through third-party certifications is super important to tell our tenants, our clients, and everyone that this is something real happening here. So this is it, I think. But we are looking for additional certifications for the building, but we are getting a lot of attention.
And by the way, also we won recently an additional certification for Para, which is built on top of BDP and The Big 5 as the Digital Innovation of the Year. So it was a great one also.
Congrats for that. Maybe a last point. Is it one of a kind or first of a kind? What's next for you? What's next?
Actually, we started with data. We're hearing now about AI. We are looking for a lot of things. But from our side, we believe that dashboards, as we see it, will be a bit legacy in the upcoming future, and I saw a lot of your colleagues mention it, agentic AI, the AI, the adaptive dashboards, the copilots, and everything. Even in buildings, you will not look to the same dashboard every day as a facility manager.
You will have a copilot sitting within the system, serving you, elevating you as a facility manager. Whenever you come and open your screen, even on your phone, you will see a different dashboard representing what's happening today, where you should look in this building. And I saw something recently presented also by Manish about the foresight, which is something similar to what we are looking for. We are looking to a different era right now. So we will have agents living within buildings and everything else. Now we're speaking about buildings, but agents, AI agents will live everywhere. So even buildings are going to a new era where buildings will be able to think, learn, and even protect themselves. And actually, we are just beginning.
Thank you. Thank you, Mohammad.
Thank you.
Thank you for showing the way for your purpose.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. All right.
We are running just about five minutes behind schedule. Hopefully, you'll forgive us for that. But we are going to break for lunch now and be back at 2:00 P.M. U.K. time. The same goes for the live webcast. Thanks very much for the morning session. Let's be back at 2 o'clock. The first session is with McLaren, so you don't want to miss that.
T hank you. Some people are surprised how easy things can be if done correctly. We are a global polymer company producing high-performance materials. We stand out in the chemicals industry for our vision to become Net Zero with our emissions by 2035. We need to optimize our existing plants, and we need to build new plants that rely on bio-based materials rather than on fossil sources as today.
To optimize and transform in this way, we need to understand how our processes are working. AVEVA is one of the key players in the industry, and when AVEVA decided to set up a new process simulator from scratch, we decided to become one of the key development partners. AVEVA helped us to digitally transform our production facilities. This is the AVEVA PI System. There we have deployed over one million data streams. We have contextualized thousands of critical assets, and this data fuels AVEVA Predictive Analytics to detect unusual process conditions early. We use AVEVA Process Simulation to build digital twins of our production plants. This allows us to test engineering ideas for our bio-based and circular materials. We generate multiple options to then later apply at our world-scale plant. Our people really love the state-of-the-art numerics engine, so young engineers can develop faster and contribute sooner.
With these solutions, we were able to improve reliability, make the plants safer, and also more efficient. That significantly contributes also to reaching our Net Zero goals. We're using AI models to detect anomalies in our plants in a way that humans cannot. But with all the technology developments and the enthusiasm about AI that is out there, we should not forget about the human element. It's our people who turn the data insights to decisions that drive innovation. Smart Modular Technologies has been operating in the Brazilian market for 20 years. We produce memory-integrated circuits using semiconductors with flash technology for smartphones and RAM for direct application in smart cities. Additionally, we manufacture memory models for computers and servers, as well as IoT connectivity models for the Internet of Things, enabling the interconnection of digital devices and distributed systems.
Thanks to the EcoCare Next Generation Service Plan, we get faster response times for both remote and on-site support. We benefit from condition-based maintenance with 24/7 remote monitoring of our electrical equipment by Schneider Electric, which helps predict potential problems. If necessary, specialists can be dispatched to our site. Schneider Electric experts perform thermal monitoring of our connected SM6 units, enhancing the efficiency and uptime of our daily operations. We can also access and verify our installed base from anywhere, at any time, from my Schneider portal. Furthermore, we benefit from augmented reality-based safety training with EcoStruxure XR Operator Advisor. For Smart Modular Technologies, being an EcoCare member means partnership, predictability, and trust. I started in the ditches, literally digging ditches. I've been with the City of Conroe for a little over 20 years now. Back then, when I started, there were only eight water plants. The city's growing rapidly.
That type of growth presents challenges trying to provide adequate water supply. The biggest struggle is keeping enough to the existing customers while adding new customers. When the legacy systems were out of commission, we were just relying on our manual control systems. We were relying on the customer to be our warning system. The amount of time we were spending gathering data from all the water plants daily was four to five hours for one or two operators a day. Now that information is sitting there waiting for us in the morning. The City of Conroe and Schneider have had a long relationship. When Hurricane Harvey came through, Schneider was here to help us. We were one of the first wastewater systems back up and running. We were first introduced to EcoStruxure Automation Expert about two years ago. The reasons we pursued this equipment are its flexibility and scalability.
Our operators can go in and troubleshoot it themselves. EcoStruxure Automation Expert has helped with deployment speed and operational efficiency. When new customers are added, we can fine-tune the settings at the plants to get water to all of the citizens. It will call us, alarm us, giving us time to remote in and address any issues before the customer is impacted. We now have it at all 19 of our City of Conroe water plant sites. We have seen EcoStruxure Automation Expert reduce recovery time up to 80%. It should improve our engineering efficiency up to 70%. I think the biggest win is having the capability to correct issues before the customer is impacted. Our largest goal is to make sure when a customer turns on their faucet, water comes out of it. Sobha Limited, one of the leading real estate companies in India.
Quality is not just delivered, it's engineered for over 30 years. Our backward integrated construction model and real estate development has ensured precision in every detail. More than 25 years, Schneider Electric has been part of our journey. One SE solution offers us everything: MV, RMU, LV, BlokS eT panels, and smart home automation in one integrated package. In one of our most prestigious projects, we have deployed Schneider Electric's Wiser Smart Home Automation. We are using Zencelo flat switch and also Sleek Opale switches in our projects. In Sobha, good use of space and safety has always been most important. We requested Schneider Electric to come out with a customized solution for distribution board and ONT boxes. Schneider understood the brief, customized the product, and delivered swiftly. Their LV panels with a double roto- active MCCBs have extended the lifespan by 20 to.
He has always been most important. We requested Schneider Electric to come out with a customized solution for the distribution board and ONT boxes. Schneider understood the brief, customized the product, and delivered swiftly. Their LV panels with the double roto, active CCBs have extended the lifespan by 20%-30%. After-sales service from the Schneider team is extremely good. As we look ahead, digitalization is our next big leap. With Schneider Electric, we aim to empower homeowners with a real energy insight, with a smart home to reduce the electricity bill and increase the green energy. We have to think about not only what we do day to day to decarbonize, but where we want to be in the future. Vancouver International Airport is the largest building in the entire province of British Columbia.
There's no shortage of challenges, but also tons of opportunity, which is why we're super excited to be pursuing Net Zero. The biggest contributor to the decarbonization of YVR and the aviation industry is the widespread adoption and use of renewable electricity. We have a number of initiatives that we've implemented, including the installation of 20,000 LED lights across our campus. Also, the transition to EV and electric vehicles for our internal fleet, and in collaboration with Schneider, we are implementing an energy management information system that allows us to make real-time data-driven decisions that optimize our energy use while also improving passenger and guest experience, reducing climate impact, and saving money. We're really committed to taking a lead position to do this for our airport and our work, but we're also committed to sharing our learnings with others.
We've been the recipient and beneficiary of so many great ideas in our region. We want to make sure that those are shared beyond. Today, in our world, smart manufacturing is redefining industry, transforming the rules and reshaping the future. Compact design, enhanced safety, and seamless connectivity are the driving pillars of industrial success and transformation. Schneider Electric's Altivar Machine series brings intelligence to your machines, supporting industrial excellence across every sector, every scale, and every step of the journey. For simple machines, ATV12 provides compact, efficient, and reliable solutions. It's ideal for food processing, material handling, conveyor, and consumer machines. Need more flexibility? The ATV320 offers a versatile and robust design. It's the go-to choice for packaging, material working, textiles, hoisting, and general machine control. For closed-loop high-performance needs, ATV340 empowers your machine with advanced control capabilities.
From packaging and material handling to hoisting and pumping, it delivers where performance matters most. When compact design needs enhanced safety and seamless connectivity, it answers all your needs. Turn potential into performance with Altivar Machine. It's very exciting and fulfilling to be part of the change driving sustainability and making a real impact every day. Our major emission reductions stem from several innovative projects that align with Schneider Electric's supplier decarbonization initiative, the Zero Carbon Project. Let's walk you through our journey. Our first major initiative focuses on renewable energy. We secured renewable energy through a power purchase agreement, investing in a hybrid plant that includes both wind and solar energy. As a result, we are proud to say that by the end of 2024, we are sourcing 91% of our electricity from renewable sources.
Next, we implemented a waste heat recovery system that captures heat from our heat treatment operations and compressor operations. This initiative has led to an energy saving of 1,233 MWh . We redesigned the sealed quench furnaces to reduce its thermal mass. This resulted in 50% energy improvement. We also adopted an automated power changeover system to minimize fossil fuel consumption, yielding an annual emission reduction of 123 tons. Through these transformative projects, we have achieved Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission intensity reduction of 49.5% between 2021 and 2023. This journey has been enhanced by invaluable support from Schneider Electric. They have provided us with technical training on calculating our carbon footprint, access to digital emission calculators, various workshops, and on-site support by their sustainable procurement teams.
Together, we are committed to making a lasting impact on our environment, paving the way for a sustainable future, and we are just getting started. Some
People are surprised how easy things can be if done correctly.
We are a global polymer company producing high-performance materials. We stand out in the chemicals industry for our vision to become Net Zero with our emissions by 2035. We need to optimize our existing plants, and we need to build new plants that rely on bio-based materials rather than on fossil sources as today. To optimize and transform in this way, we need to understand how our processes are working. AVEVA is one of the key players in the industry, and when AVEVA decided to set up a new process simulator from scratch, we decided to become one of the key development partners.
AVEVA helped us to digitally transform our production facilities. This is the AVEVA PI System. There we have deployed over 1 million data streams. We have contextualized thousands of critical assets, and this data fuels AVEVA Predictive Analytics to detect unusual process conditions early. We use AVEVA Process Simulation to build digital twins of our production plants. This allows us to test engineering ideas for our bio-based and circular materials. We generate multiple options to then later apply at our world-scale plant. Our people really love the state-of-the-art numerics engine, so young engineers can develop faster and contribute sooner.
With these solutions, we were able to improve reliability, make the plants safer, and also more efficient. That significantly contributes also to reaching our Net Zero goals. We're using AI models to detect anomalies in our plants in a way that humans cannot. But with all the technology developments and the enthusiasm about AI that is out there, we should not forget about the human element. It's our people who turn the data insights to decisions that drive innovation.
I can confirm it's been great working with your organization and with your tech team because they're always pushing us to the next level from a technology standpoint to bring energy and AI together to the next level, and we love that.
And that's something that I think Formula 1, the type of people in Formula 1, sometimes you have something on the shelf that we can use, but where it gets really exciting is when we can work with technology partners and go, "We're trying to solve for this problem. Can we do it together?" Because then all the engineers feel like we're racing together, and that becomes culturally very powerful when people can see us win a Grand Prix and that our partners and suppliers feel like they contribute to it. So sometimes we're fortunate we can take something off the shelf. Other times we need to problem-solve and engineer together.
So this conference, as you know, is about energy technology. We are talking a lot about electrification, digitalization, and of course how data and AI is changing everything. When I was in your tech center, I was really amazed on how that data penetrated every single part of your company. I mean, can you tell us how you manage, how it has changed the world of Formula 1 and McLaren in particular?
Yeah, it's, you know, we're a performance-led organization, so everything we do is focused on, will this make us better, faster, more efficient, whatever the goal is on a particular project, and data informs our decision-making. We still, you know, need that business instinct or what we call racer instinct because we have so much data coming in. We pull down one and a half terabytes of data a race weekend. We have 300 sensors on the race car, but that also can be data overload. We also have times where we need to literally make split-second decisions, so we're constantly having data fed to us. We run about 50 million simulations over the race weekend.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Zone President, U.K. and Ireland and Benelux, Kelly Becker.
Hi everybody. Hi Dan. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Welcome to Schneider's capital markets today, and thanks for hosting us in your amazing facilities.
Thanks all for being here. I think Zak stole a little bit of my thunder as well before. So let's hope we don't cover the same thing.
Zach, what can you do, right?
Yeah.
So Dan, I hear it's been sort of quiet and subdued this week.
Super subdued, yeah. No champagne, no nothing. We've just been, you know, had our feet up, not thinking about next year either. But no, massive, massive weekend for us in Abu Dhabi. Obviously, we got the job done there last year. It was tight, came down to the wire, two points. Zak will always say, you know, he loves seeing the last throw of the game and it coming down to that. That's what the fans wanted. We made it difficult for ourselves at times, but ultimately we came out as double world champions, as in back-to-back world constructor champions, but also doing the double this year with none other than Lando Norris.
Pretty amazing. I bet Lando would have been happy to wrap it up a few weeks earlier.
Oh, 100%. Yeah. I think he was, yeah, he was very focused going into Abu Dhabi. But of course, you know, it's a boyhood dream. He's been with us seven years. You know, he's a very well-established driver here. He always wanted to win in Papaya. Didn't want to jump ship, go elsewhere and sort of chase it that way. So yeah, we're super proud of him. He deserves it. He just got us all a bit guessing and nervous at the end.
Yeah, no, amazing. So fun. So tell us a little bit about McLaren's winning formula, because obviously the driver gets a lot of glory, but it's a huge team effort. What does that actually look like?
Yeah, you know, there's 150 people that go to the racetrack. Only 60 of those can touch the car. But you look at us as an entire organization, there's 1,400 people in this building delivering two cars to the racetrack. You know, we design a car, we build it, we then go racing. And depending on where you are in that kind of lifecycle, you're either going, "I've been given a car and I need to extract the most amount of performance out of it and deliver today on track." That's what you guys will see on TV. Then you might have an aerodynamicist that's focused on what's happening in the next six months, what's happening in the next years to come as well from a concept perspective, so we have a real kind of range and dynamic of roles and people and what they're doing.
But we deliver an engineering change to the car every 15 minutes. We are constantly evolving. You can imagine that an F1 car is a product, right? Yeah. So we are a rapid, yes for a sports team, but we are a rapid prototype organization. We are constantly going, "What's going to add downforce? What's going to add performance and lap time to the car? And how do we react quickly?" And of course, we rely a huge amount on data, which I think Zak puts that quite well in his video over Olivier of, you know, we don't want people drowning in it. We want people sort of like gracefully swimming in the data to really understand how the car's behaving and then what decisions that ultimately.
So, for those of us who only get to experience this by watching Netflix, what does a race weekend actually really feel like, both for the teams that are here, of which we'll show our guests later today sort of the brains of the operation for those who are here, but what happens trackside? What does that actually look like?
Netflix is definitely a snippet. You get all the good bits. There's a lot that goes into a race weekend. We call it a traveling circus of what goes to the track. We go to 24 locations a year. Next year is actually the first time we will do the European stint in one stint. What normally happens is you have Canada in between. Everyone sort of has to come back and then fly away. So, you know, we have to prepare ourselves to go into two types of environments. One is on the road into Europe and the other is flying to, you know, multiple locations around the world. But if I look at it from a technology perspective, we actually turn up a week before, a week before the race.
We get given an empty shell by Formula 1 and the event provider and they go, "There you go. You guys get on with it," and we have six sets of our garages that are floating around the world in sea containers. So they turn up. We have a crew that goes and builds the garages. We run about three and a half kilometers of cabling. We do everything to build this kind of small office. If we're in Europe, we have trucks, which kind of are big transformers. They turn into engineering trucks, or we're given an office space and again, we convert that into our engineering hub for the weekend, and then the other bits that come into the thing are all flown. So you have your trackside infrastructure, which is our baby, which is the IT rig.
And then we have the two cars and of course then the team follow. What's great about it is it's kind of it feels like the living room of the mechanics. No matter where they are in the world, they've got to feel like, "This is the place I work. That's where I know the wrench is. That's where I know where that is all standardized." It's all standardized. And we take all of that stress out of the people's lives. So if you go from Austin to Mexico, which is quite a short flight, but it's back-to-back races, you can fly, you leave your desk, you can fly to Mexico and you can be at your desk again in exactly the same day.
So it feels quite surreal actually if you go from one location to the other and you're like, "Oh, it's all here again." So that's the kind of logistical part of it and there's a huge amount of it that goes into that. And then we get into the race weekend. So we have free practice. We get three sessions unless it's a sprint weekend. People know that format. But you get an hour of testing and you'll be doing lots of different combinations, different tires, different fuel loads, different, are you doing qualifying laps, are you doing race pace? And that gives us all the indication of how do you set your car up best for the weekend. And we get such a limited amount of time to do that now. It used to have an hour and a half.
It was all very relaxed, you know, time after time to look at the data. Now it's come out of session one, get straight into the data. Session two, are we ready to go? Are we in an optimized state to go into qualifying in the race, and we lock the car in just before qualifying? It's called parc fermé. So you can't touch the car. So the aim of the game is to make sure that you have a car that can do a very quick one lap on low fuel, but then a car that can go fast as well on high fuel across, let's say, 52 laps in Abu Dhabi.
And so when you guys, so the race weekend is one thing, and then as I've gotten to spend a lot of time with your teams in the last couple of years, this idea of performing while transforming really feeds a lot into what I think we're doing at Schneider as well. So the part I've struggled to wrap my head around with McLaren is we are talking long R&D cycles while we're performing. You guys are changing 15 minutes every week. You're looking at the car, thinking about how do you use that data? How do you drive effectiveness? How do you stay at the top level week after week while trying to transform and change things every week as well?
Yeah, well, it's competition. You kind of fight in a survival mode, which is like, you know, if I don't evolve and I don't change, ultimately you get eaten in this sport. You know, if you win the first race in Bahrain and you do nothing to your car, you come last by four seconds at the end of the year.
Wow.
Like that's how relentless the sport is. And if you look over, you know, a five kilometer track and you look at a visual of how close the top 10 cars are, like on an A4 piece of paper, it's like that. It's everyone is so close. It's milliseconds. So we know that, you know, we've got to react and we've got to behave to the competition. And that will be, you know, if you're looking at industry, everyone's got their competitors. How do we compete with them? How do we make sure we give the tools and the best offering to the person driving? And that might be a customer. In our case, it's a Formula 1 driver.
Right.
So that's the thing that drives us. And then also we just simplify our objective. We want to go and win. What are the things we need to do that ladder up to winning? And then what are the things we need to have in place in order to go and execute? And that's something, you know, Zak has really, you know, he said the sport is complex, but the way we approach the sport is simple.
And so when you walk around this building, it's hard not to get distracted by the cars.
For sure.
Right? But we like to think there's a lot of other things happening sort of behind the walls, behind the scenes alongside you guys. Schneider and McLaren have worked together for a really long time, both direct as well as, quite frankly, through partners. And Olivier earlier today was talking about how important our partner network is as well. So when we think about what's actually in this facility that our guests are going to get to see some of later, can you give people a little bit of a view of what's the importance of the wind tunnel? You know, what's the importance of the containerized data center, the Mission Control? Why do these things matter to helping you guys be successful?
Yeah, so these things all contribute to the process of how you develop a Formula 1 car. You'll all get to go and see our data center, which is out in the yard, which is a phenomenal facility, something that we deployed in COVID. We tried to get really creative about how do we, you know, give the right environment to our high performance computing data center. Now we're in an era of AI that's actually been really useful for us because we've got the capability and the capacity to do more. We've had to grow into it because it was actually quite a, you know, it had a huge amount of capacity. But we do something in there called CFD, Computational Fluid Dynamics. It's a bit of a mouthful. But that is a complete digital twin of the Formula 1 car.
We're regulated by how much of this we can do by the sport because it's aerodynamic development. But you can imagine that if you work in aerospace, you want to get lift on a plane and that makes it go up. We're doing the opposite. It's an upside down plane. We're trying to make it go down. And that's the currency we trade in. It's called downforce. So every time we do an iteration in CFD, we go, "How much downforce is that potentially added to the car?" Because this is all digital. This is all concept. It's conceptual. Once we seem happy with a particular concept, that could be bodywork, floor, brake ducts, rear wing, front wing, whatever it might be, we then rapid prototype a 60% version of the car. This is the coolest toy car you've ever seen. Like big, you know, big.
We call it the model.
Sort of like the Lego car out there.
A bit like the Lego car. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely more sophisticated. It's got, you know, real electronics, mechanical engineering built into it. It behaves like a Formula 1 car, and we put that in a physical wind tunnel, so we run that in its first physical condition, so we, you know, we have a big fan and Woking Borough Council don't particularly like us when we turn it on because it causes a spike, but we run a, yeah, a very significant operation around blowing wind at the model and then doing lots of experimentation around the angle it might be entering into a corner through to all the different conditions like wind and rain and everything else that you approach on a weekend, and then of course we're going to go and build the Formula 1 car, so we're in, we're a manufacturing organization.
We've got a state-of-the-art facility down the road, which is our composites facility. We build a lot of the car in-house, and then we deploy it to the track. In those practice sessions, we're actually testing parts that aren't relevant to that race, so we'll put parts on in practice one that might be a front wing for the next event, so we're always collecting data about what's going on in the digital and the physical world, and the aim of the game and the real work that happens back here is correlating those reference points. If you saw something really awesome in CFD and then you went, "And it's actually good in the wind tunnel," and then it's terrible at the track, then that's a head scratcher, and you're really trying to take those three lines and get them as close to each other.
That's what engineers are trained to do. They're like, "We know it's capable. We can get it. We can get the juice out of this car." That's the work that we get to across. When you look at those practice sessions and they're doing all this work and you're like, "What are they even up to?" That's the problem that they're trying to solve. Now you've got those guys at the track, but actually they've got 30 people in Mission Control looking in real time. It looks like NASA. I always joke when I sit in here because actually this sort of section here looks like Mission Control. It's like looking up to the bank of seats. You feel like you have more visibility, more control about what's going on in the field at the race. Because it's actually quite lonely in the garage.
When the cars go out.
You can see the guys just watching the race sort of.
They're just watching the race, and the cars are around the other side of the track, so it's actually quite quiet and quite lonely. Whereas if you're in Mission Control, you can see everything that's going on, every single corner, all the onboards of your competitors. You've got your GPS. You've got your competitor's GPS. You can hear our radios. You can hear our competitors' radios, so this is the highest point of knowledge. This is where the real work happens, and then we help inform good decisions at the track, whether that's strategy or whether that's coaching Will and Tom, who are Lando and Oscar's engineers, to get their drivers to get the most out of the car. There's really funny scenarios like we might see a vibration in the data in the car and we'll go, "It's really obvious on corner four.
That's what's causing it," and if we continue to do that, we're going to create a reliability issue and the car might stop. Yeah? So, you know, the philosophy here is the car never stops on track. We then feed that back to Will. Will will just say to Lando, "Stay off four, dude." And that's it.
Yeah.
We don't tell Lando why we've made that decision. And it may have been a very scientific view upstream, but ultimately it goes to his engineer and he's like, "Stay off the curb." If he then doesn't stay off the curb, we go, "You're here on the radio." You're going, "I've told you once. Stay off the curb." So he ends up talking to him like a four-year-old. And that's the relationship you have with the drivers to really be that calm voice, but he just gives them super clear instructions, but not out of intuition, very well informed by data.
And I think we've been talking in the last many months with the teams around data, right? Especially around this entire facility. And I think for those who don't know, there's also a commercial production facility that occurs that you guys share the space with in addition to the F1 team. And as we've been having some of these conversations, you guys have said, "Look, we've got loads of data about our facilities and we want the experience for our people in the facility to be just as good as the experience track side," right? It's an end-to-end plan for the team. How are you thinking about a lot of that data? I mean, we've talked about things like Planon because you're sharing the space, you're sharing the financials, the energy as one option.
We're talking about the use of AVEVA for the sort of Mission Control side moving forward. So what do you think the future looks like from a facility standpoint and evolving how you make this the best space for all your employees as well?
Yeah, well, look, this building is actually 23 years old, would you believe it? It looks like a spaceship still. So, you know, over time we have kind of underinvested in the technology. I think we sort of took it for granted. It's like, you know, this building will always stand up here in 100 years. That's not the case. So we've continued to invest. You know, the wind tunnel was only three years. We updated our old wind tunnel. It was only three years old. Mission Control has had a huge amount of investment.
So if you look around the building, you sort of peel back the walls. We're using some of the latest of Schneider's technology because we've invested in those tools, because we know that's what we need and we need the best in order to be super reliable, really understand how we're using our power, make sure we're using our power in the right way. But actually now we've got all these assets. We have this great opportunity to start making them all talk to each other and run a much more intelligent campus compared to just having isolated pockets of, "Here's a capability. Here's how you power it. Here's the UPS that's under the ground just in case we lose power and we've got redundancy." All of that is intelligent information. And you're right.
We've started to look at, you know, how do we hone that data in a way that allows us to make better business decisions? How do we control cost? We're in a cost cap. So before, very luxurious. You could kind of spend on anything and just be like, "It'll look after itself." Now we have to look after the pennies. We actually have to behave. Formula 1 never really behaved like a business. It definitely does now. I don't think anyone knew the concept of a P&L back then. It was just like, "Got a problem? Throw some money at it." But now we've got to be super conscious, and also sustainability is in our purview as well. You know, how do we get the most out of alternate technologies in order to power this organization? And a lot of that's excluded from the cap.
So the more you're in, you're more incentivized to look at things like renewables, looking at PV on the roof potentially, all these things that are going to ladder up to greater energy management, but not just out of pure gut feel. Again, back to racing. We don't use stuff on gut. We use data. And I think, yeah, you know, we'll definitely look at how do we use those platforms, particularly AVEVA, and how that works in our manufacturing facility, Mission Control. Because actually, in principle, they work very similarly.
If we can surface that information, we're just going to run this campus in a way that is not only going to be the home of a future world championship team, hopefully, but also a great place to work for our people and making sure we can put the tools in their hands to build a really awesome race car.
So as we mentioned, people are going to get to see some of these items in the facility tour this afternoon. So that will be very fun. You'll have to use your imagination a little bit with the containerized data center because for health and safety reasons, we cannot let you inside the active room, but we've done some cool stuff to try and give you a real vision of what we're doing there. So Dan, last words about what you expect from great partners, what you expect from Schneider, and what can we expect from McLaren moving forward?
On the first one, you know, I think we've summarized this with the intro video. Like we don't just want to consume. We really want to sort of challenge not only ourselves, but how we use technology, but work very closely to each other. How do we stretch your technology to make your products better as well? And that's what we do with not only our partners, but our suppliers as well. They love working with Formula 1 teams because it's like you're using it in the most extreme scenario, which is even great for our product development. You know, we're wheeling our trackside rig around the world, 24 locations, and we're moving certain products in a way that it might not traditionally be used like that.
Using our data center trackside every week.
This is all great information, and of course that, you know, that helps with not only us to be performant, but also respective organizations. In terms of McLaren, like I feel like we won the championship, both championships this year. Got to get used to that. Both championships this year, the McLaren way. We took the fight with two drivers. It's not been seen in history. Normally they give up on one and they help the other.
Yeah.
We did it with both. We went to the last race with two drivers that could have won the championship. One more in a more mathematical, stronger situation. And I don't think we'll change, but we'll certainly look to evolve. And we'll definitely come back stronger next year and hopefully put the fight to the now 10 other teams with Cadillac joining and see if we can get the business done. But no, it's a great place to work. Great team. Super proud of what everyone's achieved here. And yeah, let's see what the results tell us on track, but watch this space.
We're thrilled to work alongside you guys because you push us every day to think and to move at pace and speed. We wish you the best. Thanks for the partnership.
Thanks so much. Cheers.
Thanks a lot. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Chief Financial Officer Hilary Maxson.
All right. A bit of a tough act to follow McLaren here right at the center of McLaren and the McLaren Technology Centre. So I'm the final presentation of the day, the last thing standing between you and seeing probably a few more McLaren cars, but also more importantly, Schneider Electric in action helping McLaren to, I guess he said, win something over this past weekend. I don't know much about F1, but something happened this past weekend. And in this presentation, I'm going to just review for you the ambitions, the targets that we have over this next five years and some of the key drivers we plan in order to get there. And for me, this next five years is all about advancing performance through energy tech for shareholder value.
I'll start just by actually thinking back to just about two years ago in London, almost to the day, I think. We introduced our Next Frontier Capital Markets Day commitments. If you remember, we actually upticked our organic growth target quite a bit at that time to what we would consider to be a differentiated growth target of 7%-10% CAGR. That was between 2024 and 2027. We also outlined further progression in our Adjusted EBITDA margin and we upgraded our ROCE ambition. I'm happy to say that we're largely on track with all of those ambitions today, with some opportunity to refocus on operational excellence as Olivier and the rest of my colleagues outlined. We start our next five-year journey, of course, with a continuation in differentiated growth.
We've talked about the mega trends all day today that we're uniquely positioned to capture: the new energy landscape, digitalization and AI, the multipolar world. We've also talked a lot about our strategy to outperform the market through technology leadership, customer differentiation, and operational excellence. All of that gives us the confidence to extend that differentiated growth target of 7%-10% CAGR all the way through now to 2030. To get into a bit more detail, based on economic data, but also discussions with some of our large customers that have a longer line of sight than some of our other customers, we feel confident that our addressable market, and Olivier mentioned it, will grow between 6% and 7% between now and 2030. That's growth that will give us an addressable market of EUR 600+ billion in 2030.
We've updated our end market exposures for you. You can see that we're decently balanced across end markets now, and that's using a forecast of our order book at the end of 2025. Data Center & Networks, clearly a great growth opportunity for us, still greater than 10% growth expected there, but we also expect good growth across the rest of our end markets, Buildings & Industry at 4%-5% and Infrastructure at 5%-7%. The only other mention I'll make on this slide is in the footnote, we did also update the breakdown between data centers and networks. So at the end of this year, we expect to have exposure to pure data center of 25% with networks at 4%. And that's a percentage of our overall group revenues.
Now, Data Center and Fetworks, clearly an important end market for us, an end market where, as Frederic shared with us, we are clearly the market leader and we intend to remain so. So we thought it would make sense this time to give you a bit more detail into this end market. In particular, we expect the pure data center piece of this end market to grow 12%-14% CAGR between 2025 and 2030. That's driven by acceleration in AI data centers, of course, alongside traditional cloud data centers. More muted growth in distributed IT. There we show 3%-4% CAGR, although eventually that end market should also pick up tied to the growth in edge data centers.
You can see based on our updated geographic coverage here, North America remains an extremely important piece of the puzzle for us in terms of Data Center & Networks, but lots of opportunity across the rest of the regions, and we talked about that today. I think for the first time we give you a breakdown of our portfolio. You can see Secure Power Systems at 32%, and the key offers there will be three-phase UPS as well as prefab data center, electrical distribution, LV/MV, and I'll mention that software and services. We talked a lot about the lifecycle journey for our customers today at 16%, but we'd expect that to grow over time. Olivier and Frederic both mentioned that we are one of the key players in offering a full lifecycle journey for our data center customers today.
The last point I'll make here is that we talked a lot about technology leadership, about architectural design. We've given you a breakdown in terms of dollars per megawatt in terms of opportunity for Schneider Electric going forward, something that quite a few of you have asked me about for some time. So we've given you $1.2 million-$3.3 million per megawatt in this growth of data centers that we expect in front of us. However, through that expertise in architectural design in particular, we're focused on optimizing the cost of token per watt for our AI data center customers. So particularly for the most complicated of the AI data centers, we wouldn't expect to trend to the top of that range over the course of this five years. And that's something really important for the industry, I think.
Now, everything we've talked about today, and Olivier mentioned it this morning, technology leadership, that next level of energy and industrial intelligence, the lifecycle journey for our customers, all of that is going to continue to accelerate our revenues toward more digital and more resilient over this cycle. The digital flywheel we expect to be greater than 70% of our revenues by 2030. And in particular, within that, we expect software and services to increase to around 25% of our overall revenues. And as you know, that's a piece of our portfolio, those two business models that tend to have a lot of customer stickiness as well as resilient revenues across any sort of market cycle. And as part of that, we expect to double the weight as a percentage of our group revenues of contractual recurring revenues by 2030.
Caspar already outlined the incredible journey we've had at AVEVA. We've already driven recurring revenues there to around 85%. We have a lot of opportunity across the rest of our software and services portfolio, particularly digital services, to continue that journey of driving more and more contractual recurring revenue. In this slide, we've given you a sense of where we expect the growth to come from across our regions, our top countries, and our clusters. You'll notice that we've actually put the forecast here, the numbers based on our new regions that we intend to start reporting on in Q1 of 2026. That's based on our multi-hub strategy as well as the organizational update that Olivier showed earlier.
But we have also put into this very long footnote exactly what this would have looked like based on the old regions so that you'll have both sets of information. I think more importantly, because you'll see these regions going forward from a forecasting standpoint, we expect the U.S. part of North America, East Asia part of China and East Asia, and then India and Middle East and Africa part of South Asia and international. Manish talked about both of those earlier as the key drivers for our growth, all driving high single to double-digit growth over this cycle. Now, we don't have a perfect crystal ball, but we've put the rest of our top countries in here as well, the best that we would estimate over these next five years. And China remains a very important country for us.
We talked about it a number of times, particularly associated with our Multi-Hub and R&D strategy. And we'd expect China to be trending towards mid-single-digit growth over this cycle. The last point I'll make in terms of differentiated growth is about our business models. And Olivier mentioned that more and more we pay attention to our business models, and we expect to have a bit better balanced growth in our business models over this next five years than we've seen over the past couple of years. In particular, we expect products to grow mid-single-digit to high single-digit, systems high single-digit to double-digit, with software and services both growing double-digit, again to get to that 25% as a percentage of our portfolio. I'll turn now to our profitability, and we're driving profitability particularly through operational excellence over this cycle.
Now, you can see in this slide that we have driven a consistent improvement in Adjusted EBITDA over the past years, and we don't expect that that journey is finished. Over the next five years, we have a commitment to drive another + 250 basis points organic expansion in our Adjusted EBITDA margin. And we feel confident making that commitment across all of the growth scenarios that we show here because of the focus we have in cost consciousness in our gross margin, in our OpEx, as well as Caspar and Gwenaelle both mentioned we have a particular focus on regaining momentum in margin in our industrial automation business. And we expect to emerge from the transition to subscription at AVEVA with strong Adjusted EBITDA margins of around 30% by 2028.
To get into some detail of the group journey for driving our Adjusted EBITDA margin, it starts with gross margin. And you can see here on this slide that our path in terms of gross margin has not been as smooth as our path in Adjusted EBITDA margin. So over this next five years, internally, we're already driving an obsession with gross margin, and we're looking at drivers like industrial productivity, pricing excellence, and mixed management as the levers that we'll all think about each and every day. And I think you heard from my colleagues quite a bit about what we're thinking about here. In terms of industrial productivity, we've really prided ourselves in being a company that drives strong industrial productivity. But post-COVID, and this isn't new news, post-COVID we lost a bit of momentum, both tied to the supply chain crisis as well as inflation.
But we've already regained a good deal of momentum there, and we intend to drive strong industrial productivity of EUR 2 billion-EUR 2.5 billion over this next cycle starting in 2026. Now, part of that will be driven by volumes as well as we'll leverage our new capacity investments. But more importantly, we have programs internally, and Frederic and Gwen talked about them around design to cost, around driving technical productivity, and we have a new strategy in our procurement organization to drive supplier negotiations. Turning to price, we've been a bit slow this year in terms of pricing to offset inflation, and of course we've had tariffs as well. So we're reinforcing a mindset of pricing excellence across the organization, focused on agility, quick reactivity, as well as consistency in pricing. And part of that, of course, is more digital tools.
We're also refocusing on value capture tied to innovation. We do anticipate that over the next five years, very likely we will be exposed to inflation as well as probably some more unpredictability in terms of tariffs. So we do have an ambition of flat to positive net pricing over this timeframe to fully offset any impacts that we do have from either tariffs or inflation. The last impact on our gross margin is mix management, and mix management really remains key over this cycle. You can see actually we expect to continue to have negative gross margin impacts, but to primarily offset those at the Adjusted EBITDA level. So I've given you a little bit more information here about Adjusted EBITDA by business model. I'll start on the left-hand side.
The drivers of our gross margin over this cycle, two of them here listed aren't much of a driver. We expect normalized pricing in systems, and I've also noted that we don't really have much impact from geographic mix in our mix management because in general our regions don't have a material difference between them. Software, we of course expect to contribute positively over this cycle. Software is highly accretive to the group gross margin. Caspar gave us an example with AVEVA where we're 80% + in terms of gross margin, but we still expect to have a headwind from systems over this timeframe. Systems are fairly dilutive to our gross margin, so we'd expect in the gross margin bridge that you see that we'll still expect some headwinds from mix over the five years.
I'm happy to say though that while systems, we do anticipate that systems will remain dilutive to the group gross margin over this cycle. Systems are already around neutral to our Adjusted EBITDA margin, and we would expect that to remain over the course of this cycle. What's more dilutive today? Software, as you know, we have the transition to subscription there, and we expect software to become accretive at the Adjusted EBITDA level over this cycle. Products will remain accretive, and services today are around neutral to the group gross margin, and we expect to drive those close to neutral at the Adjusted EBITDA level over this cycle as well. I'll turn now to cost consciousness in our operating costs. We do intend to continue investing with intent across both CapEx and OpEx over this cycle, of course keeping in mind all the time ROI on our investments.
In particular, and we've mentioned it a few times today, we do still intend to move our R&D as a percentage of sales to around 7% to drive that technology leadership, that next level in energy and industrial intelligence that we spoke about today. We also have an internal program on digitalizing further, the One Schneider Electric that Olivier spoke about quite a bit. And in terms of CapEx, we continue to be an asset-light company. We expect to invest around 2.5% of our group revenues in CapEx over this cycle, peaking in the next couple of years due to the timing of deployment. And we tend to invest, and we're investing now 18-24 months in advance of the demand cycle. So we have a lot of agility actually in all of this spending.
Now, while we do expect to continue investing over this cycle, we also have a particular focus on efficiency, on simplification and scalability across our operating model. And that's partly supported by the digitalization and AI investments that I mentioned on the prior slide. So we talked a lot about doing it on behalf of our customers ourselves. We're standardizing processes, making sure we understand our own data and standardizing our digital architecture, for example, implementing cloud ERPs in our hubs over this timeframe. We also talked about AI at every level of EcoStruxure and every level for our customers. We're also deploying AI internally. Caspar gave an example of that in R&D. I've given a few more examples here where we're already at scale in using AI to drive productivity.
So in our customer care centers, in services with our field services reps, in work order planning, in quotation and tendering, and there's plenty of more opportunities there as well. So with this digitalization and AI, along with other efforts in simplification, we expect to drive our SFC to sales ratio down by 1.5-2 points over this cycle, and that excludes R&D. We're also adopting this metric, this focus internally as a metric in the organization to ensure that we really are consistently focused on efficiency and effectiveness in our organization. As part of this, we do expect incremental restructuring charges of around EUR 500 million between now and 2027, starting with a restructuring of around EUR 300 million in 2025. Now, that 500 million is on top of the around EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million normalized level that we'd expect to then get back to from 2028 onwards.
All of this strong progression in our P&L we do anticipate should translate into our free cash flows and our return on capital employed. Starting with free cash flow, we do anticipate that we should continue driving a cash conversion ratio, so that's as a percentage of our net income of around 100% over this cycle. Now, this is a growth cycle, so this does include targeted working capital reduction programs across the company. I'm happy to say, again, it does translate into our ROCE, so we've upgraded our ambition for ROCE growth to between 15%-20% over this next five years. I'll turn now to capital allocation, and we don't have a lot of changes in our capital allocation priorities.
Of course, we will continue to fund all of the exciting organic growth that we heard about today, and then we continue with a plan of disciplined capital allocation to drive short, medium, and long-term shareholder returns. And I'll talk through each of these boxes in the next slides. So first, we remain committed top priority to retain a strong investment-grade credit rating. This is important for us for flexibility to drive our strategy in all sorts of market environments, but also it supports our low cost of debt. And we've had a couple of credit ratings upgrades over the last few years, so we're further clarifying this commitment as one to retain category A credit ratings over this next five years. Olivier mentioned we have paid a progressive dividend now for 15 years in a row, and we remain committed to a progressive dividend policy.
With the board, we do plan to undertake a share buyback program over this next five years, EUR 2.5 billion -EUR 3.5 billion in share buyback, and that should be a bit more systematic and consistent in nature than what we've done over the last couple of years. Lastly, active portfolio management remains important for us. Olivier mentioned as well, we are introducing a target for disposals, EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.5 billion revenue disposal between now and 2030, and we'll intend to complete that by our biannual portfolio reviews, really looking at the health of our portfolio biannually and challenging ourselves to consistently shed assets that are effectively distracted to us from a portfolio standpoint. We have a great portfolio. We don't want to get distracted with anything that doesn't make sense.
Nothing here to mention in terms of particular margin impacts that we would expect not to be really more neutral from a margin perspective over this cycle. In acquisitions, we remain agile in acquisitions that accelerate our strategy, and we've added a particular focus on partnerships. We'll look to leverage partnerships and alliances to drive value creation over the next five years, and you heard from a number of my colleagues some of the partnerships that we have going today. Now, we get a lot of questions about M&A, so I won't read through the details of this slide, but we thought it would make sense to give you a better understanding on the framework under which we operate, something we call our end-to-end inorganic process. Most importantly, what we expect from any potential M&A target, first and foremost, strategic fit.
There's a few examples in the past we've given you around what strategic fit looks like for us. We talked, for example, with Rich in Motivair today. Financial fit just as important, and we look for targets with strong growth and gross margin profile. Lastly, feasibility in terms of integration. Now, all of the targets that we've shared with you today are organic, so they haven't included any particular M&A within them. However, we do think inorganic growth is a good complement to our group's organic growth strategy, whether that's through acquisitions, whether that's through partnerships, whether that's through our venture portfolio. We do consider it as an important part of driving long-term value creation. I'll finish with a reminder of the medium-term financial targets that we put out today.
First, a continuation of differentiated growth of 7%-10% CAGR between now and 2030. Second, a continued consistent evolution in our Adjusted EBITDA with a target of + 250 basis points organic expansion between 2026 and 2030. And third, a continued strong conversion into cash with around 100% free cash conversion ratio as a percentage of our net income. And that's all tied to the strategy that we talked about today of technology leadership, customer differentiation, and operational excellence. With that, I will invite Amit and Olivier on stage with me to do the Q&A.
All right. Well, we are bang on time. We have 29 minutes and 31 seconds for Q&A. I know we've all been waiting for that. I see some hands, lots of hands going up. So we try to get everyone's question. So one question per person. There are a couple of microphones.
Okay, we just why don't we start there with André.
Thank you very much. It's André from UBS. I'll stick to one question and maybe start with the growth target. Clearly interesting to see the extension of the timeline that you're now targeting 5% for five years. And within that, I think the industry target was actually lowered while the broader market growth target is maintained. So could you just talk about what gives you confidence in that kind of longer visibility and in that market growth to be out there in the outer years in particular while you're taking a more conservative view on industry?
No, sure. I can start and feel free Hilary. So I don't want to repeat everything we've said since this morning, but there is a combination first on the end market.
You've seen that basically the combination or the convergence of electrification, automation, and digitalization gives us a level of comfort that the market will continue to be very, very dynamic. And as you know, we started our transformation already a couple of years ago when we launched EcoStruxure. And in everything we presented to you this morning on how we are taking our technology stack to the next level, combined with the work that we are doing on our commercial setup and go-to-market, it gives us the confidence that on one side we can make the most of the market growth. And of course, data center, power grid will be segment, for instance, which will be very attractive.
But at the same time, as you understand, by going through the full lifecycle of our customer, which helps us to go from the design of the asset to the CapEx investment to the OpEx with services, that gives us also a lot of runway for growth. So it's not only about the market, it's about the work we have been doing ourselves to position ourselves in new parts of the market, full lifecycle, new offer. Last point, we did not describe too much in detail today. It's also the geographical expansion. As you know, we are present in different parts of the world with a very balanced exposure, but we are building also a strong runway for growth. Manish talked, for instance, this morning about what we are doing in the Middle East. That's a part of our portfolio, which is fairly small today.
It's still actually Middle East and Africa is the fourth largest region of Schneider. It's not one country, but that's another example of growth. So it's not only about the market, it's about all the work we are doing by ourselves in the way we position Schneider through the full lifecycle, different business model, and geography. And of course, in that cycle, we expect to extract a lot from digital and AI, which will come progressively, which will be another part of our growth profile. Anything yo u want to add, Hilary, feel free.
Yeah, just to the industry in particular, like most companies nowadays, we have quite a sophisticated model taking many, many, many economic data points and AI enabled, giving us an understanding specific to Schneider, actually, of our addressable market based on what we have.
Industry, and that's the model that would lead us to look at those numbers. Data center is the one area where we talk to our customers more about the longer-term cycle as well. So I'm sure nothing will be perfect, and there's some opportunities in industry that may happen in this cycle or a bit beyond this cycle that are hard to predict. But I think we feel pretty good about the mid-single digit to high single digit to double digit growth rates really across the end markets is a great cycle for us this ne xt five years.
All right. Maybe Jon.
Thank you. It's Jonathan Mounsey from BNP Paribas. Just wanted to really delve into some of those slides that Hilary presented, particularly around the margin. So 250 basis points cumulatively, that's obviously one of the main targets for the margin expansion. Used to be 50 basis points a year.
Is there anything in that? I know you're spending quite a bit on digitalizing Schneider. Are we talking 250 because maybe the margin, the leverage is a bit more back-end loaded with that investment going in upfront? Are we likely to see lower margin expansion 2026, 2027? What's really meant by that slight changing of the way we communicate the margin?
So nothing to be read into it. I personally like the + 250 a bit little better than the 50 CAGR, which is very difficult to understand because basis points CAGR is very difficult to understand. But I'd mentioned that we expect that consistency, that growth in our Adjusted EBITDA over time. Nothing back-end loaded. I think at best you could assume somewhat linear over that timeframe.
All right. All right. Daniela.
Thank you.
Actually, a follow-up on the margin, but Hilary, you mentioned several times you're refocusing the organization on margin and pricing. So a little bit more on the part that we don't see in terms of how did you change compensations, KPIs, what changes in practice on the day-to-day have you done to achieve this?
Well, look, I can start. Nothing that we are changing on compensation. What is very important for you to know, I mentioned that we created One Schneider already more than 10 years ago. Actually, you might not know, but if you look at the incentive system at Schneider Electric, it's one incentive system. We are one company. We have one P&L, one share price.
So, except our salespeople everywhere in the world, which are paid based on quota because we have different business models, specialized business models, for the rest of the organization, we are already on One Schneider compensation, which is very, very important for me because from what we do for our shareholder, from the share price to the short-term incentive, everyone is aligned on one goal. And that's super important. And I was mentioning this morning very briefly that we are evolving the leadership of Schneider because when you look at the portfolio we are embracing and the speed at which we are moving, that's very important that we don't work in silo. You have understood that we are more integrated for our customer, more integrated for our employees than any other competitors in the market.
There is a reason because we believe we can extract more, we can deliver more to our customer, more to our employee, and therefore that's why we need to have one incentive system. What we could do better, like any very large multinational in the world of today, which is more fragmented, is how we accelerate the speed to execute, and that's why we are breaking the silo. We are working with management team in an evolved type of leadership where we are more mission-based oriented than a traditional hierarchical company to make sure we deliver the mission, but there is one mission in the company because there is one share price PI, so don't expect any change in compensation or whatever. It's more an evolution to accelerate the speed at which we are executing our strategy.
I think Olivier, your new company program, we have a number of the colleagues mentioned it. We have a key pillar in that. That's what we call it internally. And that's one of the big things Olivier has driven. We have a key pillar in that on cost competitiveness. And that's around the points that I made on gross margin and on our OpEx. So both of those are key pillars of what Olivier is driving internally.
Right. James.
Thanks very much. Another follow-on on profitability and how we get to 21% margins by the end of the decade. I mean, your headcount hiring has been much more than other people in the electrification space in recent years. It looks like you're now moving into a bit more of a phase where we've done some of the investment, we're getting some of the harvest.
How does that really manifest internally? Is that right? Is that how you see it? That you've done an investment level that is a bit above others? You can now collect on that. And how does that tie to the restructuring going up, which would imply you need to get rid of headcount? Did you hire too many people or is it a function of mix? I'm just trying to understand how those three things sit together.
Yeah, sure, sure. Look, that's a big question and I can start here again. I think we are all exiting, first of all, as a very large company kind of cycle, which has started with the COVID. We all manage in a very operational manner our company. We had this COVID period and you go back, you go after the COVID, you have a rebound and so on and so forth.
I think it's super healthy for any kind of multinational that has been through this COVID, reborn of COVID, interesting growth cycle, fast growth cycle, that we take stock of where is the company and we generate more efficiency. I've been in this company for long enough to understand that in every cycle you have a risk that we create collectively inefficiency, and especially when you are in a very favorable growth cycle. What we wanted to do with the management team in this cycle is to make sure that we keep investing in the future, but we stay very stringent on the efficiency side, on the way we manage the company to make sure that one part can go, of course, through the margin expansion, but one part can help us to be reinvested.
To be specific to your question, yes, it means, and we're not going through massive restructuring, but we are much more disciplined in the way we hire people, in the way we grow the company, and trying just to be more efficient in the way we are managing the company. I've told you this morning a lot about the regionalization. I don't know if it means a lot to you, but every company in the past 20 years has been pushed to globalization. And then you reach a point where you have local team, you have regional team, you have global team.
What we have done in the past 12 months with the management team is to take stock on where we are and how can we generate efficiency, how we can avoid overlap between people who are doing jobs at the local level, at the regional level, and the global level. So even at the leadership level, we are going to reduce step by step the number of leaders that we have because we believe that's the right time to do it and to be more efficient. So to your point, yes, it's going to be translated by efficiency plan, but don't expect anything massive that will be in the news or whatever. It's more really for me a healthy practice that in every growth cycle you need to stay very efficient in everything you do.
All right. Ben? Back over there.
Thank you.
I thought, Hilary, you were very open in the presentation about the pricing sort of gap for however you want to call it this year. But my question really is for Olivier. I mean, it's very, very rare to see Schneider sort of not price ahead of the competition and to be a price leader. If we had to pick one thing, is it one region? Is it one division? Is there something systemic? But as CEO, how do you look at this year in terms of this pricing problem? And are we confident that Schneider is going to be back to business as usual?
Yeah. That's a very good question. And indeed, this morning we have been very vocal on that point, and it's very high in our priority. First of all, when you look at the world, the world is not one today.
So we are working on some areas like China, which are still very deflationary at that point of time. So even if we are a leader in the Chinese market, the capacity to deliver positive pricing is very limited because all the market is deflationary. And you have also part of the market where we have been able to deliver positive price, probably not fast enough to your point. And we have always to keep in mind that there is a pricing we can do on the product business, on the transactional part of the business. On services, up to now, our priority number one was growth. So we're putting a lot of strong practice also to increase our pricing, really excellence in services. And as you know, 2025 has been a complicated year. We have been in this middle, in the middle of the tariff, going left, going right.
With the team, it probably took us a couple of weeks, months to really take stock of the situation and to decide where we would like to price. What I can tell you with a lot of comfort today, I think this year has been a bit of a year of transition. In this new plan that we have presented to you today, there is a very strong focus on price excellence, which starts from the businesses, what are the strategic pricing that we can deliver up to the operation who are in charge of the last mile of the pricing, which is operational in every region. You can count on us to be back to very strong practice, which are part of the DNA of Schneider on the pricing side.
All right. Gaël, maybe.
Thank you.
I was wondering if the 18% margin ambition for Industrial Automation is ambitious enough because if we take the AVEVA's target for granted, if they get back to their former strengths with a margin of 30%, then we can infer that the rest of the portfolio will probably deliver a margin of not even 15% by that time, which looks a bit below what we used to have in the past and certainly below what some of your peers currently achieve. So yeah. So look, we said 18% by 2028. Let us get started. That won't be the end of the journey for Industrial Automation. Concern. I think from at least my understanding, everyone is trying to position themselves in solid-state transformers. It's not an area that you're in. So do you assume that you'll partner? Do you assume you'll use other people's?
Do you think you'll have to buy something? How do you plan to address that technology change?
You know what? That's a good time for me to take a break and to pass the question to our technology officer in Data Center, Fred. Of course, we are working on all those things.
That's a great question. Well, that's a good question, and you will go in detail on the marketplace on that. So you can even go further with our technologies. But in a nutshell, when you look at the entire chain of power from medium to low voltage, it shows that when you go to 800 volt DC, you are changing part of the components. Now, the way you do it, you still have power conversion, you still have battery, and you still have a demand supply at low voltage.
So all this will be distributed in a different manner. This will be explained to you on stage. But consider still that the functions, the building blocks will be there. Up to 2027, we don't see at large new technology like SST and so on, but we are looking at the way we will manage our architecture after 2027.
And you will have a lot of examples of what we are doing in the marketplace later. I'm sure that will address a lot of your questions.
Martin.
Yeah, thank you. This is Martin from Citi. Just a question on acquisitions. Even with the buyback you've announced, you will still build cash, and so the balance sheet will have further deployment potential later in the five-year plan. You've obviously given new return on capital targets today.
Would that target still stand even if you were to do a large deal, or is that just based on the existing business? So how should we think about it in terms of future M&A? Thank you.
Well, look, I can start, and of course, Hilary, we'll complete. On M&A, you know we have been very consistent, and since I've taken over, I've been in touch with all of you on that topic, and my answer has been always the same. First of all, all the ambition that we are giving to you today are organic, point number one. Okay? So these 7%-10%, we believe we can do it organically. If you look at the first slide that I've presented this morning, it's a good illustration of our M&A strategy. We want to be extremely selective.
M&A will be done every time it helps us to accelerate the strategy we described this morning. That's why if you look at the past years, very selective acquisition in the software domain to create the next level of energy and industrial intelligence, very selective M&A in technology like Motivair, and you understand how it contributes to our portfolio, and an acquisition, of course, completion of an acquisition in India to continue to build our multi-hub model. That would be exactly the same in the next cycle. We will be extremely selective. We don't plan any major acquisition at that point of time. Now, you never know what will be the market in one year, two years, three years from now. If there are opportunities, we'll look at it. But first and foremost, organic plan, very selective M&A, and of course, M&A that fits strategically.
And that's why we wanted to present the slide that Hilary has presented at the end that gives you really the very detailed criteria we are using internally to describe if there is a good strategic fit, if there is a good return on investment. But at this point of time, organic first and very selective on M&A.
Yeah, in terms of ROCE, like you know, pretty much all acquisitions cause a negative impact on ROCE, but that 15%-20%, we feel comfortable with over the five-year timeframe.
All right. George.
Thank you. It's George from Barclays. Just wanted another one on data centers, if possible. Projects that are clearly scaling. It seems like only yesterday we were talking about 10 MW data centers, and now we're talking about 1 GW data centers.
I just wonder if you could give some color on how that's changing your business and perhaps how it's impacting the timelines for you in terms of conversion of orders into sales. Want to start? Want me to start, and then we pass behind?
Well, look, first of all, on Data Center, what is very, very important, there are a couple of points we mentioned this morning. There is all the presentation that Fred has made on the evolution of the technology, but I think what is super important for us is we want to be present across the full lifecycle of Data Center.
What is very, very different, and I want to say it's different tomorrow than it was in the past because it did not happen overnight, but what we have done very differently in the past 12 - 18 months is making sure that we have a full set of solutions that go through the entire lifecycle. That's why we have done a lot of work at the design stage. What we do with Caspar, with AVEVA, with ETAP, the partnership we are doing with NVIDIA helps us really to start from the design. We can deliver and maximize our position during the build phase, and we create a lot of opportunity in digital services. So that changed really a lot the way we are partnering. Maybe I'll turn to Aamir in a minute, but when we are working with those large customers, they are looking for technology partners.
It's not a one-shot relationship, a transactional relationship. So what we have changed probably in the way we operate is commercially, we have a very strong engagement at the global level with those very large customers, a very strong technology relationship with them. At one point of time, they will commit on a certain level of business they will give to us, and we'll commit on a certain number of capacity we'll give to them. So that has changed in that sense, and I don't know if it was Ben your question. It has changed a lot the way we work compared to our historical business model, which we are much more local, regional. So that's a very different model of engagement. And I don't know if it was really your detailed question.
And Aamir, I don't know, Ben, if you want to add anything because North America is, of course, the biggest illustration.
No, I think you covered it, and you heard it from the Vantage team, right? When we're engaging with the hyperscalers, we tend to focus on supply capacity agreements because a gigawatt data center is actually still built out in phases. But what they want is consistency, and they want to be able to flex how they're going to do that. And so that order comes in as a combined order, and then we execute that throughout whatever timeline. And sometimes, as you saw with Microsoft last year, they'll slow things down. Other times, they want to accelerate, but it's a single structure with standard designs. What's different from smaller data centers is the consistency from data center to data center isn't there.
So those supply agreements are harder to structure. The bigger it gets, the more they tend to be in that structured supply agreement, and then the flow is really how fast they can get the other variables like power, labor, etc., solved.
And when Fred and Aamir are working, for instance, and you've heard Noelle from Microsoft this morning, they are working on an agreement on a new design. The day after, Aamir and Fred will have to make sure that Manish and Laurent in international Europe can deliver exactly the same value proposition to those customers everywhere in the world. That's super important. So in that sense, it has changed quite a lot the way we interact with those customers in this differentiated type of business model.
Eric.
Yes, thank you, Eric from CIC. You discussed the breakdown of orders by end markets.
Should we consider that the breakdown of revenue is similar to this breakdown of orders? And if not, what are the main differences? And just if I may, a follow-up point on this one, the 14% orders in infrastructure, what's the figures for electrical grid? Just maybe to have an idea of your exposure to the grid upgrade thematics. Than k you.
So we do give you orders actually on purpose because we think it's the best indicator of what the upcoming sales are looking like. So in general, our sales and orders won't be dramatically different, but in particular, that would give you a better view on what we expect sales to look like, let's say in 2026, 2027, in the next couple of years. In terms of the infrastructure end market for us, grid is actually a big portion of that.
So in there, we have grid, we have wastewater, we have transportation are the big segments, but a big majority of that is going to be grid, probably high single digit in terms of exposure with the group.
Gaël.
Thank you. Yeah, just as a bit of a follow-up, I guess, to Gaël's question on the IA margin topic, the way that it was communicated, it sounds like there's upside risk to the IA ex- software margin, but I just want to explore from an end market standpoint. Is there anything that we should be aware of in terms of your current view on the China market, let's say the process industry outlook in the coming years? Is there any reason from a vertical or end market standpoint we should be thinking of when it comes to IA in the coming few years? Thanks.
Look, I can start on China and I'll let you pursue on margin again. But look, as we said, and if you remember what we said one year ago, 2025 was a year of step-by-step recovery in the IA market. We were not ecstatic. We knew it would get better, and actually, we said we have turned positive really in the second part of the year. And as far as China is concerned, it's exactly in line. It has been a step-by-step recovery, and we are confident that it will stay like that this year. But back, I think your question is a lot about margin. There is nothing which is related to China in particular. China, we are happy with the speed, I would say, of the recovery.
Of course, we would like to have a little bit more of pricing and to be a bit less in the deflationary market, but China is recovering step by step. What Gwen has explained also this morning, which was very, very important, we are doubling down in China in R&D because we do believe a lot of the future of industrial automation could be built in China for us in the future, and that will make us extremely competitive really to go in those markets. But I need to go back maybe on the margin question, but I guess you have another question.
Yeah, no, nothing to point to. I don't think that we're particularly concerned about Olivier's talking about that recovery in Discrete. I think Process in China had been a bit slow, but nothing we're particularly concerned about there.
The government is very much focused on subsidization efforts and efforts. And I'd mentioned we expect China overall for the group to be towards mid-single digit. Nothing particularly different in industrial automation. So we expect China to be a great contributor, both in terms of R&D, like Gwenaelle spoke about, as well as to the growth of the group, including in China. And we'll let poor Gwen get started. You know, she said she's been in the role for three months, so we'll let her get started on driving the margin ambition.
All right. I think I'm just mindful of time. So maybe just a couple of other points before we wrap up. The first one, you know, we mentioned in the press release. This one more. Oh, we have one over there. Yeah. All right.
The last one, I guess. Okay, we keep that one.
It's actually difficult to see everyone at the same time, so.
Thank you for taking that. This is Lourdes Dominguez from Banco Santander. I wanted to ask you about the building segment specifically. How are you seeing progress versus what you were envisioning back in 2023, and what levels do you expect to pull into 2026 to support growth in there? Thank you.
You want to start with the market view maybe?
Sure, so you'll see that, in fact, from an end market standpoint, we have the same expectation in terms of growth over this cycle. That was obviously delayed a little bit, actually, over the past couple of years with issues in residential in particular, first in Europe and rest of the world, and now more recently in North America. We do see that stabilizing, potentially back to a touch of growth outside North America.
I think Aamir had mentioned a little bit the slowness there. Who knows? Maybe with the Fed changing interest rates, there can be some upside on residential in North America, but not for us to take a bet on quite yet today. Overall, buildings with a bit of a delay, we now expect that 4%-5% end market growth. I think we walked through quite a bit of the reasons that we think that building is quite exciting over this next cycle.
As Laurent has explained this morning, we have a full portfolio to create more efficiency in the building market. While the growth of the market will be, I would say, average, you know, we said around 5% in the next cycle, there is a lot we can do with the portfolio that we have between the historical portfolio of Schneider and Planon.
Laurent has given a couple of examples later on how we can generate more efficiency, and you've heard from our customer that there are plenty of o pportunities still to generate growth, so that's the plan in building.
All right. No, I was just making the point earlier that, you know, we announced earlier today in the press release as well that we will transition the head of investor relations role as well, so I just want to take this moment to firstly thank all of you for the last nine years. Thanks for the challenge, for the support, and the sort of joint conquest on value creation, so really appreciate it. I'm still in Schneider in a different role, so still available, and I do want to officially introduce Nathan. You want to stand up? It's hard to miss.
Nathan is there, and we leave you in very, very capable and dependable hands of Nathan, who all of you will meet soon. Maybe just one other point is, you know, it's more logistical, but like normally in the capital markets days, you know, we have little mementos for you, which you sometimes like or you don't. But this time, what each of you can feel good that, you know, we made a token contribution on each of your behalf, in fact, on the behalf of the people on the web as well, to a specific charity linked to the SE Foundation. So please, when you have a moment, go to the website of the SE Foundation and see all of the good work that is being done.
Just to set the expectation, in a few minutes, we will be closing the webcast, and then we'll have more instruction from folks at McLaren. But before we close the webcast, maybe Olivier, the final word for you.
Well, look, in one minute, first of all, I want to thank you all who are physically present here in the Technology Center, but all the people who are on the webcast, thanks a lot, first of all, to spend time with us. Thank you for your interest in Schneider. I hope you've been convinced during that day that we are really going to take Schneider Electric to the next level. We are starting this new cycle on a very strong foundation where we have delivered already a very strong return to our investor, where we have created a unique position in the market.
And with this evolution of the market and the additional focus we are putting on technology to create the next level of intelligence in energy and industry, supported by a very strong regional market where we bring all those solutions to our customer with an enhanced focus really on cost competitiveness and operational excellence. I hope you've been convinced that we are really going to take really Schneider Electric to the next level. And of course, all of that is translated by the strong ambition that Hilary and I have described, both financial and non-financial, through our digital metrics. Those digital metrics are extremely important to me and the team because that gives us an indication on how fast we are transforming our portfolio.
I'm really convinced with the strong leadership team of Schneider that you have seen during the day. We have everything in our hands really to deliver and execute this plan very, very fast. So again, on behalf of the management team, big thanks for you for spending time with us. Big thanks for your interest in Schneider. And of course, I take the opportunity before we close to thank all our comm team, the technology team of McLaren for hosting us today. And for you, Amit, my last word, big thanks for the great work you have done in IR. I'm sure many of you have enjoyed working with Amit, but of course, we can't wait for Nathan to take that relationship to the next level. But thank you very much to all of you.
Thank you.