Hello, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, dear friends, I'm delighted to be here with you today. declare open our shareholders meeting of May 7th, 2026. This year is a special year for us. It's a 190th year of Schneider Electric. Few companies can celebrate such an anniversary. It's special year for me 'cause I've been 40 years with Schneider Electric. For me, it's rather simple. My seniority, the age of the company, minus 150, and that's the number of years I've been working for the company. As you've seen, this company is one of the companies that has been able to transform itself during the different industrial cycles according to needs of the countries of France to provide the cutting-edge technologies for all countries everywhere in the world. We're in France.
We're proud to be here with you today, and we're also proud and glad to be citizens of the world. I would try to draw your attention to the fact that this meeting is a public meeting that will be broadcast live and recorded on the company's website. In accordance with provisions of Article nineteen of the Articles Association, the chairman of the shareholders meeting shall be the chairman of the board of directors. In that capacity, I chair this meeting. Next to me, Fred Kindle, whom you know well, who is Vice-Chairman & Lead Independent Director. Olivier Blum, Chief Executive Officer of Schneider Electric, 33 years with the company. Nathan Fast, Chief Financial Officer, 20 years with the company. Ségolène Simonin du Boullay, who's Secretary of the Board of Directors, and will proceed with the constitution of the shareholders meeting.
I call the duties of the scrutineer Jordi Daubigney, representing Amundi Asset Management. Caroline Cassou-Landou, representing FCPE Schneider, shareholder shareholding. Both of them shareholders presenting with the largest number of voting rights and accept the duties. I invite Ségolène to perform the duties of secretary. I note the presence of our statutory auditors, Séverine Chaime, Mr. Charles de Verneuil, and Jean-Christophe Georghiou, who is with us for the last time at the Schneider AG. I would like to thank you, Jean-Christophe, for having accompanied us for many years. You are coming to the end of your status as independent with Schneider. Thank you for all the work you've carried out and the support you provide us.
I greet the members of the Board of Directors, attending, Giulia Chierchia, Clotilde Delbos, Laura Ding, Rita Félix, Linda Knoll, Anna Ohlsson-Leijon, Philippe Knoche, Anders Runevad, and Bruno Turchet, who are sitting in the first rows here. I would like to take a break here to thank from the bottom of my heart, Nive Bhagat and Linda Knoll have decided not to ask for renewal of their mandate and will leave the board at the end of this meeting. I'd like to thank them for all they've contributed to the company. I'd like to thank Linda, particularly, who chaired our Human Capital and Remuneration Committee since 2016, and who was with us for 12 years.
I can tell you that she's seen all the transformations the group has undergone and has one of been one of the major main players during all the years we spent together. I would also like to greet Ellyn Shook, who's joining us today, and Mr. François Jackow, whose appointment, CEO of Air Liquide, as appointment as a board member, it will be submitted to vote. I look forward to working with them with the board. They have experience, they can contribute, gonna be very beneficial for the company, whether it's consulting technologies, services, and global approach to business and technology industry.
I greet the members of the Shareholder Advisory Committee, and I take this opportunity to thank all the members of the committee on your behalf for the work they are carry out and the advice they provide to enable us to improve our communication with the individual shareholders. Before opening this annual general meeting, unfortunately, I have sad news to convey, and I would like to pay tribute to the memory of Mr. Jean-Pierre Belhoste de Soulanges, who was a member of the Shareholder Advisory Committee, whose passing we learned took place on 3rd May. He was to be with us today as a member of the committee. He was in charge of the Individual Shareholders and Heritage Association. He worked tirelessly with conviction to promote individual shareholding, which is essential contribution to the common good.
His commitment. Yes, please give him a warm round of applause in his honor. Our most sincere thoughts on behalf of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee and the Advisory Committee of the Shareholders, our sincere thoughts are with his family and loved ones. Headphones have been distributed to enable you to listen to some translations of our speakers who will speak in English. This is what happens in very international companies. Channel 1 for the French version, channel 2 for the English. I'll leave you a little time for you to select your channel. I hope everyone is ready. Now I'll leave hand the floor to the Secretary of this general assembly.
Merci. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, good afternoon. I remind you that this shareholders' meeting was convened today on first convocation. A prior meeting notice serving as a notice of meeting was published in the Bulletin des annonces légales obligatoires on March 27, 2026, while the notice of the meeting in the Journal Spécial des Sociétés was published on April 17, 2026. The shareholders present and represented own 405,586,551 shares. The definitive number of shareholders present and represented will be announced before the vote of this resolution, so we can now validly deliberate on resolutions relating with both the ordinary shareholders' meeting and the extraordinary shareholder meeting. The members of the bureau will please certify the attendance sheet by signing it.
You can read here the shareholders' meeting and according to the usages, the documents relating to the convening of the shareholders' meeting are laid upon the table. The provisions of Article R2025-81 to R2025-83 and R2025-88 of the French Commercial Code relating to shareholder information were complied with, and the documents covered by Article R2025-89 and 2025-90 of the same code were made available to the shareholders on time. We ask the assembly to allow us to not read the Board of Directors report, given that the shareholders had the opportunity to review it before the meeting. The legal formalities have been completed. Jean-Pascal, over to you.
Of course. Thank you. I'm going to stand up to present a re-review of the year's activity. There'll be a presentation that would be more interesting than reading a document. We're experiencing a really special time, there's no need to explain further about the energy crisis, the crisis in the Middle East. Clearly, energy and electricity are at the heart of all transformations and transitions. Before Olivier Blum's presentation, I'd like to give you the strategic context in which Schneider is operating and e-explain the mission and purpose of Schneider and to implement a necessary transition. When I talk about transition, I should talk about, in fact, a revolution.
We are at a time where energy is experiencing the revolution of electrification and digital is experiencing the revolution of AI, and the two are combining to accelerate events. I have never experienced in the 40 years in the industry such a change or an evolution. In energy, the equation in human terms, we will have to supply reliable energy to 5 extra billion inhabitants on the planet in the 25 coming years. There are 8 billion of us. 5 billion amongst us have decent access to energy. 3 billion do not have this access. 2 extra billion inhabitants will join us. There are 5 with energy. We have to add another 5 billion who need energy over the next 25 years. This is the challenge for our generation.
Secondly, we have to reduce by half carbon emissions to be able to maintain temperatures at an acceptable level. The third aspect, every day with the price of energy, we have potential energy shortages. 80% of the world's population, Europe especially, France, are in areas where there's no fossil energies. For humanitarian reasons, environmental or economic reasons, which otherwise stifle our economies, we have to operate a transition and to ensure the world in which we lived. In the last 50 years, 20% was electric. 20% of what we do is driven, energized by electricity. In the next 25 years, we're going to shift to 50%. It's a huge leap because the electric world or electricity in the world was very stable. We talk a lot about data centers, but it's not only about data centers.
I've often said at this general assembly, energy transition isn't done through the supply of energy, nuclear, wind energy, solar energy, gas, oil. The transition of demand, which is going to implement this revolution, that's where Schneider is positioned. When you look at the data centers, it's only the third reason for electrification. The first is in buildings, because increased temperatures demands much more air conditioning, and people The countries that don't have fossil energies are shifting to heat pumps that are 3 to 4 times more efficient. The second aspect is mobility. Vehicles are going to become electric. We've seen since the beginning of the crisis, the number of new vehicles, the proportion of new electric vehicles has gone from 15%-30%. When you're in China, if you live in China, most of the new vehicles are electric.
New mobility is electric, and electric vehicles will be much cheaper than internal combustion vehicles. There's industry. We compare factories today with a country without fossil energies. You have to shift to electric energy where the prices are more predictable. All these phenomenon are leading to economic returns. To have 500 kilometers with electric between EUR 25-50 cheaper than thermal engines, heat pumps provide 50% of savings. The, for economic reasons, it's justifiable. The future is electric 'cause all the new technologies use electricity. You could use gas in a data center, but in between the time you have to transform this gas into electricity. Countries have understood this. What we're experiencing today, which wasn't sufficiently clearly stated, it's a race to access to competitively priced and available energy.
We take something as energies, logical and accessible that we'd never be lacking in, but we could be subject to shortages and prices that stifle the economy. It's not just a race for energy, it's a race for electricity. The country that's most understand this most is China. If you're back 25 years, China multiplied its generation of electricity by 10. Today, China is generating more electricity than the United States, Europe, and India combined. That means China has a huge reserve of electricity to transition its automobile industry to electric, to feed AI, and also to provide energy for all the new technologies. The United States are just now beginning to realize that this race is on, and there's a race for electric installations in the U.S.
Unfortunately, Europe is the only place in the world where electricity is not growing. It's even in recession. This is the case in France. France has a major excess generation of electricity, 50 kilowatts per hour, and we have enough electricity to provide the data centers with energy. Most of us here in this room are French. When we had in the 1980s, 1970s to 1980s, a vision of the world that was shifting away from fossil energies to go to a much more electric world, we haven't moved forward over the last 40 years. France particularly decided on an electrification plan just recently to increase consumption by 40% in the coming years. We are way behind. We've got to catch up.
Today, Europe has 20%, France has 25% of electricity, China, 35% soon, a race for global electrification that Schneider benefits from in all the countries where it is. What is Schneider's mission in such an environment? Well, Schneider's mission is to enable and to accelerate this energy transition towards a more efficient world, decarbonize, and that enables innovation. We explained over the years, there's this equation: digital solutions for more efficiency, electricity to decarbonize the economy with AI at every level for innovation, aiming to develop industry, society, and the economy that will be sustainable. The way of doing so is to make available to our customers systems that enable them to understand what's happening in their industry and in their energy needs, to give them the means of exploiting Industrial Intelligence and Energy Intelligence, smart energy.
This equation goes from energy to digital technologies and AI. All of this is extremely intertwined, and they're two sides of the same coin. AI needs energy, a lot of energy. The quantity consumed by data centers are going to double in the next five years with forms that are more and more different, 'cause we use data centers to train artificial intelligence. In the coming years, there'll be data centers, no doubt smaller, but that will deploy AI in industry, in factories, in buildings, in cities, in your lives, and will act physically through robotics and driverless cars and be at the heart of our cities. This will increase. At the same time, with this increase in energy needs, the energy system needs a lot of artificial intelligence to optimize the way it functions.
We talk about data centers and sustainable development being in contradiction, but data centers represent a very small amount of energy consumption in the world, 0.3%. Even if this doubles in 2030, it will represent 0.6%. However, if you invest artificial intelligence in a smart building, we have quite a few in France, in fact, or in a smart city, you can easily free up to 20%-50% of efficiency. When you bring all this together, for 1 watt invested in AI, you can recuperate 4-10 watts of energy coming from optimized efficiency. In such a context, we at Schneider Electric, we are pragmatists. We provide solutions that have economic returns, proven solutions. We are not talking about innovation in 10 years or solutions in 10 years.
70% of the carbon emissions can be eliminated with existing solutions. What is important to set as a priority is that our existing solutions provide a return on investment for all sort of savings that can be measured, and that pay for back investments. It's efficiency first and foremost, what we call sufficiency, energy sufficiency through electrification because the processes, electrifying process, whether it be electric vehicles, heat pumps are more efficient than their thermal equivalents. There are digital solutions, a thermostat, programming, digital programming systems providing another 20% of optimization is using more efficient devices. Electrification will make it possible to decarbonize the economy, which consists of replacing processes that were based on fossil energy, fossil fuels, and replaced by low-carbon electricity. There's the equation.
This enables us to have, as an objective, 70% of the reduction carbon footprint. This requires the whole system through digitalization, electrification for greater efficiency. Networks that are smart and decentralize generation energy, microgrids. I'm sure people have solar panels on their roofs to reduce their use of the grid. Flexibility that we need, we don't have much in France for the time being, which consists of providing better conditions if you consume less electricity at certain peak hours. For the first time, to make available to a whole energy ecosystem, a data lake, a reserve of data that make it possible to optimize from generation to consumption of energy, and will be several amongst. Olivier will talk about it later on.
The objective of Schneider over the next 25, of the last 25 years, has been to connect everything so you can understand what is happening around you in industrial world, in the world of energy, and to bring together all this, these data. The Data Cube, you have a digital twin of the architecture. You have the data, you have vertical expertise through applications, and to develop an artificial intelligence adapted to energy and industry. Three slides to, before handing the floor to Olivier, to describe Schneider and what we've become today. First of all, a company that's well-balanced when it comes to the final markets. 30% in buildings, 30% in data centers and networks, 30% in industries, and the rest in infrastructures.
Revenue that's balanced per geographical zones with North America that's continues to grow with the driven by data centers. Asia Pacific, 26, Europe, at 23%, rest of world, 12%. Employees that are close to the markets when it comes to R&D, production, supply, and access to market, make it possible to be a local, a most local global company. A very important aspect for us to be the company that seeks partnerships more than any other. We believe at Schneider that 1 plus 1 is more than 2. We like to commercialize with distributors and integrators, and in technology, we collaborate with many companies that are references in technological segments. Now we have been committed in sustainable development for a long time, and in a net zero objective defined at 2050 by SBTi.
All the objectives of Schneider are consistent with one another. Finally, since we are today, the Schneider Electric, all the strategy of Schneider and all the Schneider teams are supported by the Schneider board that represents society in its diversity. 92% are independent board members, a board with 46% women in the board, which is a level of which we've been for a long time, and different nationalities that represent the global presence of Schneider Electric. I thank you for your attention. I thank you for having listened to me during this presentation, this introduction. Before handing the floor to Olivier, I'd like to give you another example of one of Schneider's contributions that we're so proud of, over and beyond, just the famous marathon, Paris Marathon.
[Presentation]
[Non-English content] Thank you, Jean-Pascal. Greetings to all. I'm delighted to be with you here today. I'm going to cover two topics. First, our performance for 2025, Nathan will tell you more later on. As you know, 2025 was a crucial year for us because the executive committee and myself as the new CEO since November 2024 was to deliver a powerful year, but also to redefine, along with the board of directors, the next cycle for Schneider. You will have understood from Jean-Pascal's presentation that everything is speeding up around us. Schneider is a company that performed well for 90 years because it always placed innovation and impact as a priority. What is characteristic of the company is that readiness to challenge ourselves and be ready for the next cycle.
I'm going to tell you about our financial results, but also the new direction we have defined, and I'd like to thank Jean-Pascal and the board. It was hard work, more than usual, because it was important for us to define the new cycle. Briefly, our performance for 2025. It was a record year. For the first time in our history, we have reached EUR 40 billion in revenues, placing us as one of the biggest players in our sector. Almost 9% growth. For a number of years, we had delivered that type of growth already with an acceleration between H1 and H2. Notably, our Industrial Automation activity was back in the green in 2025. That was very important for us.
If we drill down a bit, beyond revenue growth, we delivered 50 basis points of EBITA margin expansion, 12.3% growth of the Adjusted EBITA, and our cash is one of the highest performers. One of the priorities we have, of course, is to redistribute dividends. We have a progressive dividend policy. This is the 16th year in a row that we're going to do that. EUR 4.2, up 8% versus 2024. Our market performance is still solid today. We reached a historical high, almost EUR 288. It was today. Thank you. Thank you all for the trust you have placed in us and the employees and the Executive Committee and so on.
I think it's a fine symbol for this to happen on this day when we're all together. We often look at our financial results. You will have understood, of course, from what Jean-Pascal said, we have products. What is different about us is that we continue to be a product company, but where product and digital work together, which is why with Jean-Pascal we created the Digital Flywheel, which is a manner in which we can measure our performance on the digital offering, connected products, digital services, software solutions that can help us to gradually measure our operational performance and how we can reach and execute the strategy. This accounts for a significant portion of our revenues, EUR 25 billion, which is 20% if you just focus on services and software.
You can see that with 15% growth, it's part of our portfolio that is growing faster than the rest. Additionally, we with AVEVA, we have a company working specifically on intelligence and in terms of recurring annualized revenues, AVEVA performed also very well with 12% growth. As you know, Schneider is very keen to innovate, to perform, and progress for all, the impact of that has always been part of the strategy. I remember working with Jean-Pascal and his predecessor on the very first program that we called Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Development, almost 20 years ago.
For the past 25 years or so, we have been launching a sustainable development program where we converge the societal targets, the corporate targets, and we define a number of criteria allowing us to have an increased impact on our ecosystem, employees, shareholders, customers, but society more broadly. The previous program has reached a conclusion. We have reached pretty much all of our targets. To give you a better idea of what that means, 2, 3 examples perhaps. Since we started in 2018 measuring with this indicator, we can be very proud because we saved 862 million tons of carbon emissions thanks to Schneider Electric solutions, and that will continue in the following program. One other historic program since 2009 is access to energy.
There are a lot of people in the world do not have access to energy, and we have managed to help 61 million people access energy and of course, clean energy. It's also a program that we will be continuing in the future. Over the past five years, we had decided to embark our suppliers with us to help them to cut their carbon emissions by 2, and we succeeded. A very important program for us. You know that we're one of the first companies in the world to take net zero commitments by 2050, which is why we decided to have a resolution about the say on climate. It's the second time that the shareholders will be voting on it.
It encapsulates all of Schneider Electric's targets in terms of carbon reduction and our 2050 targets. When we're talking about direct emissions, what is known as Scopes 1 and 2, we're at less than 1%. We have almost reduced Schneider Electric's impact to zero. We're still working on Scope 3. Obviously, the big challenge in the coming years will be the use of products used, which still accounts for a significant proportion of our carbon emissions. If you look at the previous slide where we said that we had helped save 862 million tons of CO2, which is around 80-100 a year, I know that's not how the market calculates, to us it's important.
Schneider Electric, in a sense, is a net positive company because what we generate in carbon savings through our solutions and our business is much higher than what we have as emissions. Then, of course, I'll say more about this in a moment. Then, of course, I can't finish this first part of my presentation by saying that there have been a number of accolades, Time Magazine and Global 100 as the most sustainable company. We don't work for these accolades, but it's always very nice for all of Schneider's employees who are working hard to reach these targets and to make sure that Schneider Electric has an impact. Actually these accolades count.
When you walk into a room and the customers see that Schneider Electric is the world's most sustainable company, it boosts our credibility, and it also makes us very attractive for young talent because we have a positive impact. In a nutshell, 2025, a fine year in terms of financial performance, as I said in my introduction, a crucial year because we are now going to define the next cycle. That is what I'm going to be telling you about just now. What will this next cycle be? You had a bit of an overview of that with Jean-Pascal. You remember what Jean-Pascal has been talking about over the past 10 years or so. The Paris Agreement in 2015 was a watershed moment. The world will be increasingly electrified and increasingly digital.
The 10 past years proved that the world is starting to electrify, to be more digital. What we're witnessing now is a phenomenal acceleration of both electricity and digital. This is what Jean-Pascal was talking about. We are entering an age of more electrification, more renewables, more decentralized power, more hybrid, AC/DC power architectures, more AI, more demand for power and cooling, and a world, of course, that will be increasingly fragmented. When we kicked off our strategic process last year with the management team, basically it's looking at the world around us. We were on the cutting edge for 190 years. What is going to allow us to continue to succeed in the next 5 or 20 years? It's an obsession for us. A lot of opportunities, of course, but of course a number of threats.
I'd say the starting point for us is the very first film you saw. A lot of things are important when you're at the helm of this company. The, what you need to understand is that it's a tech company. It's an innovation company. It's a company that has been standing out from the competition for 190 years with innovations at each key moment in the Industrial Revolution. We were there when electricity emerged, when digital emerged. What is happening now, which is a fundamental change, and I'm sure you're experiencing and sensing it in your everyday life. There comes a point when these trends are something you need to learn to live with.
We are convinced that over the past few years, with a major acceleration in 2025, is that we're entering a new age of intelligence. It might be called the 5th Industrial Revolution, the revolution of intelligence. If you look at the world around us, where energy and electrification is increasingly important, there will be more and more AI, a world where everything is interconnecting. We talked about data centers a lot in the past few years. Data centers need energy need data centers. What's important is that we are present on both sides of the equation. We provide the infrastructure, but we can also leverage AI to make our solutions smarter for our customers, both in the world of energy and in the industrial process.
Which is why we reviewed our mission statement by saying that we are your energy technology partner. Our obsession is to electrify, automate, and digitalize every application to drive efficiency and impact. It's not a generic thing that we're doing. We look at each of our, the segments in which we operate, and if you look at the expansion of our portfolio over the last 10 years, 20 perhaps, we bought a company called APC that allowed us to be entirely consistent between electrification, digitalization, data centers. We bought a company that does liquid cooling called Motivair to be present in that vertical. The electrification, automation, digitalization strategy reflects differently in construction, in industry, in data center, in infrastructure, and it's what makes Schneider Electric different.
2025 was key for us because we really wanted to reposition Schneider Electric to reinvent the future. We know that Schneider Electric is a very big company, and importantly, there's a question of speed at which we can transform and where we can lead all of our employees to embrace that change. We wanted to share that vision with our shareholders, with you today, when we had our investor day in December in London, in order to define a new corporate program, which we have called Next, in which we will be focusing on three pillars: technology, customers, operational excellence. Why technology? Because it's the reactor core of our company. Technology needs to be made available to customers efficiently. Otherwise, what's the point?
Of course, we grow every year, and it's very important for the scalability to be efficient. 3 priorities, technology. It's quite simple. We've created a portfolio, unique portfolio solutions, and we don't want them to be scattered around different parts of the company and not be properly coordinated. Products in controls, in software, what we're trying to do is to create a unique experience for our customers. It's a relatively simplified slide, but all of that is done for home, for buildings, office space, and so on, in order to offer our sales forces solutions that are integrated, consistent, and really stand out from the competition. That portfolio wasn't created overnight, of course. It took 15, 20 years to create. We've reached a point where we can be really different.
It's what I call step 1 of transformation. A single portfolio, products, smart products, control levels, software supported by services. Step 2 of the transformation we initiated, make sure that all of these products can talk to each other. If we want to generate value for our customers, these solutions need to be integrated and interconnected. What we've understood is that the mode, the best efficiency would come from data. We created what we call the Data Cube, allowing us to drill data from all of these solutions and structure the data to make it useful so that our customers can create value. Step 3, once we've created the Data Cube, the data needs to be able to talk to the pieces of data needs to talk together. It's what we call intelligence in energy, intelligence in energy.
To give you a simple example in the future, you are here in this room for this general assembly. You're not at home, you have, of course, a switchboard, a board, an electric cabinet that is probably not smart or connected. In the future, it will be. We can automate it. Thanks to AI, we have the capacity to make your home, your building, more efficient. You can control things yourself, or you can use agents. Ultimately, you can cut your energy consumption by 20% to 30%. The world of tomorrow will be made of products that are connected, and all of that can be amplified by intelligence. That's what Schneider Electric does. That's what we call Energy Intelligence. That will allow us to stand out in the world of tomorrow.
It's very important because we are a global company. We're a leader in all sorts of products. We have reached a high level of intelligence. That's our uniqueness. I won't tell you about our competitors, but there are very few of them who can boast such a portfolio across all segments and providing such a level of intelligence. As we always do, what we did in the past was to create EcoStruxure, which is the, forms the basis of Energy Intelligence. It's not particularly new, but we're doing the same thing with AVEVA in Industrial Intelligence. They create Energy Intelligence, Industrial Intelligence, and these two platforms need to talk together, working on the energy and the process. Again, all of this won't happen 10 years down the road. It's already happening.
If you look at a data center, we're one of the very few, if not the only company, that starts on the design level. We can go and see customers, help them simulate or design the behavior of their electrical installations in a data center, thanks to the software we've developed. Also integrating the partnership we have with NVIDIA. When building a data center, we can make it as effective, as efficient as possible, and with the data we can collect, we can monitor things and generate services. What do I mean? We can use preventive maintenance. We can try to anticipate difficulties or replacements of equipment or chain or tweak the parameters. Having a single portfolio from products to controls to software applied to each of our segments throughout the life cycle from design to build to operations to maintenance.
The Schneider that we knew with Jean-Pascal many years ago, was essentially involved in the building, phase. We have expanded Schneider throughout the life cycle, in buildings, in industry, in infrastructure, and I'm sure that's what makes Schneider Electric so very different. How is that reflected in our software offering? A few animations here. Very importantly, we will continue to be a product company, a smart product company. It's, our knowledge of the physical real world and of the real product brought together with digital brings more intelligence to our customers. We are acknowledged for all of that.
We're doing plenty of things in R&D, but we, our business analysts have already acknowledged our solutions, beyond our historical leadership in products, we are now being acknowledged as a cutting-edge company in software solutions that have an impact on energy and processes. As I said in my introduction, our obsession is innovation at the service of the customer, progress for all, and that's why we continue to be committed. We're going to go up to 7% of R&D cash spend to stay on the cutting-edge. If we're a company that is both product and digital, we need to continue to invest everywhere in the world. That's the tech pillar. They were the most important one. The second pillar is how we work with our customers. Very briefly, what we've created for our customers is a multi-hub model.
We've kept talking about that over the past few years. It's a model in our four regions. We sell, we market, we research, we develop, and we ship to our customers. We're a global company with a global strategy for a number of parameters, but we're also a company that operates in hubs to speed things up, to have greater proximity with our customers, take decisions quicker, because in an increasingly fragmented world, it's essential for us to remain agile and close to our customers. Last year, you heard that we decided to acquire up to 100% of the shares we had in our joint venture with Temasek in India. Why so?
To strengthen our fourth hub, which is the international hub, where we can now leverage all of the R&D resources, but also supply chain and software resources that we have in India with a company that we'd acquired called L&T, that migrated to the brand LK. Four hubs, Europe supported by France, North America by the U.S., Asia by China, and what we call international, supported by India, and that makes Schneider Electric truly unique. Final point of our plan, operational excellence, operational efficiency, product cost, productivity, but also a focus on how we can make Schneider Electric more scalable, to use a buzzword. If you add 7% to 10% additional revenue a year, tomorrow it could be EUR 50 billion, EUR 60 billion, EUR 70 billion, and therefore it's important to manage all of that carefully, to manage that scalability.
In this plan, where we've aligned all of the teams globally, there are two things that don't change. We still have a very strong focus on the human aspect. That is what made Schneider Electric really different, but also a company with an impact, so a lot of commitment to sustainable development. We've launched this new program. The previous program reached its conclusion at the end of 2025. I won't go into the details of this plan taking us to 2030. New commitments in terms of circularity, better product design, commitments for generations. How do we work with all of the generations within the company? Then, of course, preserving what we call the flagships of the previous program, saving on emissions, avoiding emissions, since 2018.
Access to energy everywhere in the world, a mix of new indicators and old indicators, which we measure on a quarterly basis. This is the first report published end of March 2026. Let me finish by saying that Schneider Electric employees are at the very heart of Schneider Electric's success. Some of you may know that, but I work with Jean-Pascal as I worked with him as HR manager. What makes the true difference, it's our people. We need to train our people. We need to support our people. Digital is becoming very important. All of our employees need to receive training about digital, about AI. We need to support our leadership so that they can transform in a fast-moving world. An indicator also that we're very, very proud of, our shareholding, with the top 5 employee shareholding.
1, we're one of the very few companies that has a shareholder plan for our employees. Our employees have an opportunity to invest. 63% of employees who can access the plan have invested in Schneider Electric, be it through their personal savings or their corporate savings plans. In 3 countries, it's more than 80%, India, China, and France, in our top markets, which shows you how loyal and dedicated employees are. France, of course, we've been around for a very long time, but even China and India, more than 80% of our employees have signed up to the plan. Of course, I am not alone in setting all of this up. There's, of course, a board of directors and an executive committee.
Great variety, huge experience. As Jean-Pascal has said earlier, more than 40% of the members of the board are women, which is also special. I'll stop there. 2025, a huge success. It was great, it's behind us. A new plan now going forward, let's continue to deliver and to be fast in everything that we do. I'll stop here, Nathan will tell you a bit more about the financials. Thank you.
[Non-English content] Thank you, Olivier. Dear shareholders, I'm with you today for my first General Assembly Meeting as the Financial Director of Schneider Electric.
I'm sorry for this. Today I'll review 3 things. The 2025 performance, the start of 2026 and some trends, and then also stepping back on the midterm ambitions that would be linked to what Olivier has presented and what we declared in Capital Markets Day. First, we closed 2025 with record revenues, EUR 40.2 billion, up 9% organic, surpassing for the first time the EUR 40 billion mark. While gross margins were slightly down, as we expected, we delivered a 50 basis points organic increase in Adjusted EBITA margin, supported by strong cost control and simplification actions that we launched during 2025. Free cash flow exceeded EUR 4 billion for the third consecutive year, driven by strong operating performance and working capital discipline.
Net income was down 2%, while adjusted net income increased by 4%, and ROCE rose above 15%, reflecting the strong strength of our execution. Overall, 2025 demonstrated the strength of our execution, as I said, and sets a solid foundation for our new chapter, as Olivier Blum explained, on advancing energy technology. Moving now to the performance by activity and geography. Energy Management delivered another year of strong performance with revenues of EUR 33 billion and up double digits at 10%. Growth was led by data centers with strong momentum across all the regions. You can see on the chart, North America grew 17%, Western Europe 3%, Asia Pacific 8%, and the rest of the world growing at 7% organic. This reflects the strong structural demand and our leadership in electrification solutions.
Industrial automation returned to growth in 2025, with revenues of EUR 7 billion, up 3% organic. This performance reflects a recovery in Discrete Automation, particularly in the second half of the year, which was partially offset by some softness in process and hybrid. By geography, North America was stable in 2025. Western Europe grew 2%, Asia Pacific 3%, the rest of the world growing at 8% in 2025. Moving to the performance by the business models. Products, which now represents 47% of the revenues for the group, grew at 3% organic in 2025, supported by both volumes and price, with a continued weakness in residential buildings and the recovery I mentioned in Discrete Automation in the second half as anticipated.
Growth in 2025 was led by systems which represents 34% of the revenues and was growing at 19% organic, driven primarily by Energy Management projects and notably in the data center space. Software and services, representing 19% of the revenues, grew 9% organic. Inside of that, AVEVA ARR was up 12%, where the focus remained continued on our progress toward the subscription-based model. We also saw strong growth in field services, supported by increased install base, notably in the data centers. That's for the first part. Now let me briefly turn to the start of 2026. In the first quarter, both businesses contributed to our overall growth in revenues of +11% organic, which was reaching a first quarter record of EUR 9.8 billion.
Energy Management was up strongly at close to 13%, benefiting from the strong demand across all end markets, including data centers. Industrial Automation delivered growth above 4%, reflecting the continued recovery in Discrete Automation. While process and hybrid remained impacted by weaker demand that was coming from the first half of 2025. 2026, of course, began in a pretty an environment that was increasing uncertainty. Against that backdrop, I'd like to share our key trends that we expect for the year. First, we anticipate strong market demand to continue driving growth and led by data centers and networks with systems as the main growth engine. Products is also improving with continued recovery in Discrete Automation and software and services also having strong, led by recurring growth. All regions are expected to contribute, led by the U.S. and India.
While South Asia and international, we may see some temporary disruptions in Q2 linked to the Middle East uncertainty. Above all, we also aim to be net price positive in value for the year with the margin drivers aligned to those that we outlined specifically in the Capital Markets Day in December. In that context, we have reaffirmed our target for 2026, and we shared that during our presentation of the first quarter results last week. We expect Adjusted EBITA growth of between 10% and 15% organic. Inside that, this performance is resulting from two things: organic revenue growth between 7% and 10% and an organic increase in the Adjusted EBITA margin of 50 to 80 basis points.
Looking ahead a bit and building on what Olivier shared from a strategic perspective, let me translate what advancing energy tech means in terms of financial ambitions. Okay? This is going to be consistent with what we shared in the Capital Markets Day. First, energy transition is driving structural growth opportunity across our markets, okay? Driven by new energy landscape, digitization and AI, and a multipolar world. I think Olivier outlined this and Jean-Pascal as well. As outlined at Capital Markets Day, we see that addressable market growing between 6%-7% CAGR through 2030, that would mean reaching a PAM of approximately EUR 6 billion. Okay? EUR 6 billion PAM is our playground. Against this backdrop, we have introduced strong financial ambitions through 2030. Over that period, we target organic revenue growth of 7%-10% CAGR.
Second, a cumulative 250 bips organic expansion in Adjusted EBITA margin. A free cash flow conversion rate of around 100% of net income. These all reflect the structural growth in our markets, our ability to outperform those structural markets, and our continued focus on execution and cash generation. Finally, turning to the topic of capital allocation, where our priorities remain firmly anchored on disciplined value creation. We will continue to fund organic growth and maintain strong investment grade credit ratings while delivering a progressive dividend. At the same time, we will pursue active portfolio management, selective M&A and partnerships, and execute a more systematic share buyback program. All of this to support sustainable short, medium, and long-term shareholder returns. Finally, at Schneider Electric, we remain firmly committed to open, transparent, and ongoing dialogue with our shareholders.
Our shareholder advisory committee here in the second row, I believe today, continues to play a key role in engaging with individual shareholders, and our investor relations team, of course, remains ready to engage. We are pleased to see this commitment to transparency is also recognized by external parties. [Non-English content] Thank you for your attention, for your trust, and your continued support.
[Presentation]
Merci Nathan. Thank you very much. So a nice video from our neighbors in Grenoble, with whom we work, not only in France, but around the world. They're extremely active and wonderful company. Before explaining how the board works and the different committees, before handing the floor to Fred Kindle, who will talk about his role as a board member and lead administrator, lead director, I'd like to talk about the board briefly and ask the camera if they could look at the first row where the members of the board are seated. If the camera would kindly. Yeah, we'd see them from the back. I can see them. They are there. I've already talked of them during the introduction. Each member of the board has been chosen for his/her competencies, their mindset, and their qualities.
The quality of an organization is based on the choice of the people and their collective behavior, their behavior as a team. The Schneider Electric Board, you have people who've been chosen because of the following skills: knowledge of digital, knowledge of our industry and of industry in general, and knowledge of a sustainable development and deep-seated skills in HR and finance for the audit committees, for remuneration committees. People who come from diverse countries, very different countries, and have different, very different backgrounds. I welcome Ellyn Shook and François Jackow, whose appointment will be proposed later on, in roughly an hour or half an hour, when we will proceed with the votes. Next, if I move forward. Now, during this meeting, we're going to propose a dividend of EUR 4.20.
A dividend that has been increasing for 16 years. Throughout the financial crisis, the major financial crisis, the COVID crisis, we have promised and we have delivered a progressive dividend payout. I am not talk about financial objectives that have been presented by Olivier Nathan Fast. Concerning the Board, its makeup, we have five committees. All the decisions are prepared by committees with specialists and then are presented to the Board with recommendations. All the dossiers are available to the Board members. The Audit Committee with Jill Lee, the Governance Committee I chair. Human Capital Remunerations, Linda Knoll and Ellyn Shook is going to replace Linda. The Remuneration Committee, the Investment Committee, chaired by Anders Runevad, who knows the digital segment and engineering segments, and the digital segment, chaired by Abhay Parasnis, who is currently in California.
We're going to propose a vote for Ellyn Shook and François Jackow and the renewal and membership of the Board. I'm going to hand the floor to Fred Kindle, who's going to talk to us in French.
Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately, my French is not sufficiently good to give the speech in French. I don't have the vocabulary and the grammar. I'm really sorry.
Dear shareholders, thank you very much for your tolerance of my English language. In the next few minutes, I would like to share a few thoughts regarding compensation and say on climate. Let's start with the first chart. I pressed. Yeah, here it's coming up. Okay, the first chart is about the compensation of our CEO, Olivier Blum. When you look at the chart, it has actually two parts. There's an upper part and a lower part. The upper part is looking backward into 2,025, and it shows you the total compensation delivered to our CEO. You can read the numbers yourself, but just to quickly repeat, he received a fixed salary of EUR 1.2 million. He received a bonus, a short-term, variable annual pay of roughly EUR 1.1 million.
That derives from the application of his achievement rating, which was 73%, roughly, applied to the numbers. On top of that, he received a number of performance shares. These are shares that are granted to him, but are restricted in a way that they're only delivered depending on the performance outcome of future years. These shares amounted to a total of about EUR 2.7 million. Last but not least, there was a pension benefit that is tied to the fixed income and variable income and some other benefits. I don't think there's anything special about this compensation. It's exactly according to the rules and regulations that we laid down and you said yes to in the previous AGM. The bottom part talks about exactly the same thing looking forward.
It's the policy applied to the compensation again, looking into this year. I'm not gonna read all of that, but you see the proposal is that he will receive a fixed income of EUR 1.2 million again, no change. That his annual variable pay, if he actually achieves the on-target performance, will be 130% of his annual pay. You can read the criteria right below that. There's gonna be a slight change at the very end in green, you see it. It's a minor change. It's basically updating certain criteria to the new year. In the middle, you see again, no change. He will receive the so-called performance shares, 233% of fixed compensation, again, under the restriction of delivering a certain performance. With a small change, which is more technical than anything.
A pension benefit that is in line with the previous years. Last but not least, not a monetary change or statement in any way, but this clarification of the severance indemnity that led to some questions in previous years. All in all, I think nothing dramatic, hardly any change at all, and we hope that you can approve these resolutions as you did in previous years. Let me switch to the next chart, which is about the compensation of the Chairman, Jean-Pascal Tricoire, and the board members. On the left hand, you see the compensation that was applied to the Chairman looking backward again. He received EUR 930,000 for the full year, and some ancillary benefits as well amounted to about EUR 56,000.
The resolution looking forward at the bottom of the same side, the 2026, is basically saying no change that we want to apply for you in this AGM. Same thing happen again if you say yes as in the last year. On the right-hand side, you see the actually numbers applied for the directors. You see we paid out roughly EUR 2.6 million. This is in line with the ceiling that was approved by you in the previous AGM. Here, we want to have a couple of changes. You see there's a re-resolution number 10, that we actually want to increase the ceiling from EUR 2.8 million to EUR 3.2 million. It's not a massive increase, but it is an increase.
The background of that, simply put, is that we think the directors are well-paid in a French context. They're okay paid in a European context. Actually, the monetary benefits accruing to the directors that come from abroad, from overseas, especially with U.S., are not as attractive as they could or maybe should be. That's the reason behind this small change. The application, you see the resolution number 11, where certain payouts for actually traveling and taking part in sessions, running committees are slightly enhanced. These are the resolutions applying to the directors. Again, you know, thank you for approving them, for saying yes to these resolutions. With that, I would conclude the discussion, short discussion on compensation and quickly switch to the next topic, which is say on climate. You may recall in the last AGM we talked about that.
This is basically a way, a means to allow you, dear shareholders, to approve, to say yes to our climate strategy or to disapprove if you don't like it. It's a voluntary advisory vote. We're not bound to follow it if you say no. It's very clear. If you had severe problems with our climate strategy, we would take that into account and would make necessary changes. What you see in the chart is how the climate strategy is developed. You see the different bodies that are involved in that. It starts with the board, certain committees, the executive committee, functional roles in the company and the countries. In the middle, in the scope, you see what kind of targets we have given ourselves that we want to deliver in the future years. Not going to read all of that. You see a very prominent one.
In 2050, we want to be net zero value chain and a 90% reduction of greenhouse gases, it's quite an ambitious, a good goal to go for. Further down, you see that these are not just, you know, nice goals that you write on paper. The achievement of this is actually measured, monitored, and audited. The achievement is also very transparently declared in the annual report, in the statements. We hope that this is appealing, and it's also reflecting our attitudes towards ESG and that you can say yes to that. We are quite curious what the outcome will be. Last but not least, there's a final chart that deals with the kind of the ordinary resolutions that we need to have passed at the AGM.
Basically, they all deal with the issuance of shares without the subscription rights of shareholders. Issuance of shares that we need to do in order to furnish our savings plans, to hand out special rewards, things that are very customary and we have done in the past as well. Basically, no big change to things that you have said yes to in the past. With that, I think I can conclude my short speech. Thank you in advance for your yes votes and in general for your support of the company and again for your tolerance of my English language. Thank you. I give it back to Jean-Pascal in French again.
Thank you, Fred. [Non-English content] Thank you, Fred. Let me now call up Jean-Christophe Georghiou, who's a partnership at accountancy firm PwC and who has been a partner in Schneider Electric's transformation for a very long time. I'd like to pay tribute to him because it's his last AGM with us.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, I am going to tell you on behalf of the College of Auditors, Forvis Mazars, PricewaterhouseCoopers, about our conclusions. Our missions are required by law. Their purpose is to provide you appropriate level of assurance about elements presented to you to allow you to make decisions during this General Assembly. I will be giving you a brief overview of the documents that feature in the universal document. We certify that unreservedly the annual accounts. Our report includes a technical observation about the adoption of modifications of the accounting system as of January 1, 2025. It's highly technical, and it's the case for all French companies. Our audit opinions are based on due diligence conducted by us in France and elsewhere in the world.
Our work is adapted to the organization of your group, the nature of transactions, and take into account our appreciation and our internal control. Our reports focus on points which we deem the most important as part of our audit of both the annual accounts and the consolidated accounts. For each of these points, we explain within these reports our vision of the risk and the manner in which we apprehend it. For the corporate accounts, the annual accounts, the key point is the evaluation of participation and liabilities. For the consolidated accounts, the key points we examine are the evaluation of gaps of acquisition or indefinite marks and uncertain tax positions and the recuperability of deferred tax connected to tax deficits. In our special report about regulated agreements, we were not informed of any agreements, conventions of that type.
Let us now move to the extraordinary part of this General Assembly. 4 reports about resolutions 17, 18, 19, and 20. The resolutions subjected to your vote talk about the maximum amount of issuance. We were to verify that the reports of the Board to justify are compliant with legal obligations. For the 17th and 18th resolution, it is proposed that you can delegate to the Board of Directors for a period of 18 months, the competence to decide on the issue of ordinary shares or securities giving access to the company's share capital with cancellation of preferential subscription rights in favor of a category of beneficiaries, that's the 17th resolution, or persons designated by name, that's the 18th resolution.
The final conditions in which the issues will be performed have not yet been determined. We don't have a clear opinion, and therefore, on the proposed cancellation of preferential subscription rights. We will draft a report in the event that the board uses these delegations of authority. Likewise, for the 19th and 20th resolution, it is proposed that you could delegate for a given period the competence to decide about the issuance of shares, again, with no preferential subscription right. That would be reserved to company savings plan members or certain beneficiaries described in resolution 20. The final conditions have not been set, determined. We cannot report on these conditions and again on the proposed cancellation of preferential subscription rights. We will also be preparing an additional report in the event that the board should use these delegations.
The final report which we have established is our certification of sustainability information. Your company has published for the second year in a row information, sustainability information in keeping with the so-called CSRD European directive. Our report gives limited assurance about the elements of compliance included in the report, although there is just one report. In fact, it has three parts. Compliance with ESRS principles, risks and opportunities of sustainability, and compliance with reporting requirements of CSRD and of the taxonomy. Based on our findings, we have identified no errors or omissions or inconsistencies. Let me add that your company, for a number of years, has been publishing, Mr. Blum discussed this too, performance indicators in addition to legal obligations.
SSI, SSEs, these have been specifically verified by PricewaterhouseCoopers audit, pages 336 and 339 of the universal document. In conclusion, let me remind you that the conclusions and the assurance that are reflected in all of our reports is essentially based on our independence vis-à-vis your company, which is why the management, the audit committee, and myself ensure that each of the missions that are conducted outside of that scope do not create any additional risk. That concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Thank you very much, Jean-Christophe. We're now here with Olivier Blum, Nathan Fast, and Fred Kindle, and we are prepared to answer any questions.
Before that, I would like to tell you that we have received four questions in writing from the investment committee and one from the CoOGEP. All of the answers of the board have been published on Schneider Electric's website. To keep the debate lively, please make sure that you ask your question or questions in just one go. I'm now going to look at the advisory committee, and I shall ask Agnès Berg and Michel-Louis Prost to take the floor. Row 2, please. Mr. Chairman, Mr. CEO, my first question. First, please allow me to say a few words about our colleague, Jean-Pierre Belhoste de Soulanges, who, as you said, recently passed last Sunday. He was an elegant man. He was a man of fierce competence.
He was always kept to himself, but he was always present and always attended our advisory committee meetings. His questions were also always very sharp. His sudden passing, of course, saddens us, and on behalf of the entire advisory board, I wish to pay tribute to him. This is my question. Against a background of strong growth, driven notably by investments in artificial intelligence and data centers, how can Schneider Electric ensure that the momentum is sustainable rather than just cyclical? How does the group intend, how can the group protect itself from a potential slowdown if these investments were to stabilize? Thank you. I'll let Olivier Blum answer this question.
Thank you for your question. We mentioned that we organized an investor day in December to present our plan for 2030, where we said, where we announced growth between 7% and 10%. There's strong growth of data centers in that plan, all segments are experiencing growth. Data centers for Schneider Electric remain a priority. I would say that developing our sales in industry, infrastructure, and building is also equally important. We are not only exposed to data centers. We need to work in all of the buoyant sectors that are driven by electrification. I also insisted when I talked about our portfolio of technologies and data centers, I told you about design, simulation, build, operation, and maintenance, meaning that our revenues are not just linked to a particular phase of the data center. It's all along the life cycle, which allows for much more stability.
Now, if we look more specifically at data centers, we consider that between now and 2030, more than 100 gigawatts capacity will be built in the world. The figure keeps changing, of course. If we look at our own pipeline or backlog, I think we can be confident. In short, a well-balanced exposure in the different segments, a portfolio of products that is less cyclical than just construction. Also, a variety of geographies. We're very well-balanced between what we do in North America and Asia or Europe. I think this really allows Schneider Electric to be much more resilient, and that's why we have committed to a growth rate of 7%-10%. We could have been much more conservative, but it shows that I believe that we can be resilient to all of these cycles.
Finally, we have a significant partnership with historical partners or companies such as Foxconn, meaning that we don't necessarily want to make everything ourselves, but to have partners, which will give us more flexibility, if growth slows down, we will be more resilient. I think this will probably make us more resilient than others in the following cycle. Mrs. Berg.
[Non-English content] Good afternoon. In the current context, with all the tensions around the Hormuz Strait, what are today the main challenges for Schneider Electric? Do you identify new opportunities that would be happening for the group in this context? Thank you very much for your analysis.
Olivier.
Well, it's a great question. Often we have the first part of the answer, not the second part. Since day one of the conflict, our priority was, of course, the personal safety of our employees. None of our employees were affected, were hit. Support was available 24/7. There was continuity of service for our customers. Allow our customers to continue working on their sites. We have an assembly line in the Emirates, which was only shut down for 2 days. It reopened on day 3 to support our customers. Our logistics centers worked. I would say there was no impact on service continuity. In our quarterly results, we said with Nathan that the impact on revenues, be it in terms of sales or margins, was not material, not significant. There were no changes for our ambitions for this year.
That is our experience since the very start of the conflict. Part two of your question, what opportunities are there? Jean-Pascal said so, and maybe we've said so too much, but I'd say that the main conclusion is that all governments in the four corners of the world have understood that they need to be more autonomous in terms of energy sources, and they need to transit towards electricity, towards renewables. That means that increasingly, governments, including France's government, are very strongly focusing on electrification. In terms of immediate impact on the year 2026 on revenues in the Middle East, probably, of course, there will be an impact, although very limited. In the longer term, there will be an acceleration of electrification, more digital, more electricity, more great results for Schneider.
Of course, we're opposed to this conflict and saddened by it, but there will be positive consequences. I'd say the difference compared to what we experienced a few years back, with the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and a renewed focus on electrification, well, this will probably be even more sustainable. I hope we can leverage that as best as we can by providing our customers with solutions.
Okay, let's take questions in the room now. Over there. Sir.
Claude Aroche. My question is about the 190th anniversary of Schneider Electric. It was in 1836 that the Schneider brothers founded a manufacture, which 190 years later still bears their name and has now become a multinational operating in technology, energy, with more than EUR 40 billion in revenues. After 360 years of Saint-Gobain, the 300 years of Wendel, the 200 years of the Bolloré group in 2026, we are celebrating the 190th anniversary of Schneider Electric. Why don't we organize, and that is my question, a grand celebration, a grand party bringing together individual shareholders and institutional shareholders, but also employees, customers, and suppliers, and which would conclude by a massive banquet? Of course, it's not every day that you turn 190. Thank you.
Well, I don't know. Are we ever going to overtake Saint-Gobain? Probably not. Well, I suppose it's an idea. I'll see what the management of the company thinks. I took that type of decision for 20 years. It's no longer in my remit.
We are, of course, delighted to be the heirs or the bearers of a torch that has been passed down for 190 years that experienced major crises. You know that the company, towards the end of the 70s or 80s, almost went bankrupt, it returned to the market and developed to become what it is today. Essentially, what we are is just a name because the difference of what Schneider was, things are, of course, very different. Something remains, this very strong belief that the company is based on the men and women who work for it. We select these people, it's around these people who are engaged that we can build our projects, be it in terms of the team or the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, or other stakeholders, including shareholders.
I'd say that's the first point. Our second strong belief is that innovation is the key to everything, and that the most significant progress comes from science, and that in order to develop science, we need to educate. We, as a corporation, need to participate in fashioning curricula and learnings. I'd say that another strong belief that we have is that to be competitive in one's own nation, we need to be competitive globally. Schneider is a company that is European, of French origin, and that is happy elsewhere in the world. We work very hard. There's a lot of pressure, but we are part of the world and of the world's global competition. That is a belief that persists and that remains a very strong indicator.
I have a passion for the future most, more than for the past. We will celebrate, we will celebrate humbly. That's another Schneider value. We're always there at the service of our customers. We don't really sell to consumers. We have customers who build homes, who build offices, who build data centers, who industrialists or who operate cities. We deliver, we provide technologies that are invisible, but which allow them to be more digital, more, and more energy efficient. I'd say that the humbleness means that we need to be discreet. When you reach a certain age, you stop celebrating your own birthday, do you not? Interesting question. Thank you for being so enthusiastic, because we're all very proud and enthusiastic. Question on the other side of the room.
Sir. Hello, Philippe Bousmard, individual shareholder. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. CEO, for your very clear presentation. A question for you, Mr. Chair. I don't know, perhaps you're gonna pass it to Mr. Blum. You've been saying for a number of years that the future is electric. I think everyone's convinced. The production capacity in every country is rising. Sometimes, there's an accident of electricity. Look at the negative price of kilowatt hour here in France. That's not my concern. It's more the grid, the network. Electrification is all over the world, of course. When you look at production capacity that is growing, when you look at demand that is growing, do you believe that the grids of Europe, the grids of the world, in Asia, in India, are sufficiently resilient to transport all of this new power that will be produced to address rising demand?
I'll answer this myself. It's a very good question. That is not my main concern. If I look at the French side of things, my first concern is how slow we are to transition towards electricity consumption. We have a great grid. We export electricity, we are strangled by the cost of our imports of fossil fuels. We have been unable over the past 40 years in France to organize the transition of demand towards electricity. We were the champions of electrification in 1980. In those days, China was 5% electrified. Now it's 30%, the amounts of electricity are nothing in comparison. Ours are nothing in comparison to theirs. If we wish to invest in production and in grids, we have lots of electricity in this country, but no energy.
We, as citizens, in the manner in which we consume, the manner in which we talk to our governments, because what we want is to transition from the price of gas. We can invest in a heat pump or an electric vehicle. The return on investment is very fast. More generally, I'd say that you're absolutely right about the grids, but we can already draw much more from the grid that we have by making the grid smart and by organizing flexibility. The old system for energy was, okay, there's consumption, the consumption cannot change, and we produce to the maximum of a peak, meaning that a lot of the time, the grid is used 50%, at less than 50% of capacity, more than 50% of the time.
Once you've digitalized everything, you can push consumers to consume when the electricity produced is green and cheap, low carbon or abundant. You can charge batteries, you can charge your electric vehicle, you can cool your building and so on. That is really not very much the case. In France, there's a very low proportion of buildings that are digitalized. We are wasting energy in lots of buildings, and that investment is very cheap, much cheaper than the physical investments, and the ROI is very fast. That is my concern. I'd say that you're right, but there are plenty of things that we can do before we need to reinvest in our grid in Europe. We'll need probably transmission between countries 'cause we have a lot of power. If we don't need to consume it, why don't we sell it to our European friends and partners?
You will see at Schneider we're working on that, on microgrids, micro networks. We can generate our own power with a PV panel to weather the consumption peaks. We can have more electricity without an additional contract. There are a number of clients such as data centers who are setting up micro networks or micro generators to alleviate the pressure. Increasingly, there are a lot of extreme weather events, and we need to ensure continuity of service. Every time there's a hurricane in the U.S. or a typhoon in southern China, there are power cuts that are very bad for industry, for data centers, and all of that is being set up.
Decentralization, flexibility, all of that is something that will help us to make progress. The priority is the transition of consumption, the excess, the surplus of electricity we're producing. The data giants want to invest in France. We have low carbon, cheap electricity, but to be connected to a fast node ready to plug, it takes 5 to 7 years. It's not because of EDF or the technology, because of bureaucracy. I mean, there's a lot of savings that can be generated because you have, of course, you have, the data center, then you have all of the integrators, you have the startups, and jobs for everyone. Bureaucracy is something that we pay for. We pay for it in terms of jobs and in economic sluggishness. France has a huge advantage.
We always look at the negative aspects, we have a capacity to use energy at a time where everyone wants electricity, and we have plenty. That was a very interesting question. Thank you. I had not suggested. Other side of the room, sir.
Mr. Chair, greetings. Greetings to you all. Christian Cherori, individual shareholder. I had 3 comments, 3 congratulations, and 1 question. Congratulations for recruiting Mr. François Jackow from Air Liquide. I think he's a fantastic addition to the board. Well done for your results in data centers, AI factories. Congratulations because for the partner because NVIDIA talks a lot about you, quite surprisingly. My question was about AI. You talk about AI in general, there are various types of AI. Perception AI, generative AI, agentic AI, physical AI, as NVIDIA says. My question is about agentic AI. Could you tell us if you have use cases for these various types of AI?
Olivier.
Let me pick up on your first sub-question, your comment about NVIDIA. If you looked at my slide about data centers, we are involved all along the life cycle. What was important in this partnership? NVIDIA are the people who define the GPUs. The processes will be launched in 18, 24, 36 months, and what's important for us is to optimize data centers, not in terms of GPUs available today, but of those that will be emerging down the road. What they're doing in the Omniverse with AVEVA and ETAP, we're trying to optimize the efficiency of a data center, both electrically but also in terms of cooling, and see what the next generations will be.
There's been a lot of communication about that, but each new generation, each new generation of GPUs made by NVIDIA will consume more energy. Optimization both of the power and the cooling, that's going to be fundamental. What we're doing with NVIDIA is we're simulating how these data centers could be optimized, 2 or 3 years down the road. When a customer comes along and talks to Schneider Electric, if we have an architecture that was predefined with an NVIDIA stamp on it gives us a cutting competitive edge. We're really delighted. To answer your question about AI, there's everything that we can do in-house with AI, of course. Today, we have a CRM. Salesforce is a global company. We have plenty of data.
If we use that data properly with agents, we can give our salespeople opportunities to be much more efficient in targeting opportunities. Even more importantly, there's everything that we told you about. How do we amplify all of Schneider Electric's solutions? If we can place an agent, we will allow our customers to optimize even more. We have a few solutions that we've launched in construction software with controls and automation. If we can add AI to that, and one of our software solutions is going to do that, it will help our customers to optimize their energy consumption. In everything I presented here, when I talk about Energy Intelligence, the reactor's core is finding more data, bringing the data together, and using more agents.
AI amplified, increasingly will be AI native, because these solutions will be native and therefore more effective. We have plenty of examples of new software launches to provide more added value. I would need more time, I'll stop here. We were at the Hannover Messe in Germany 2 weeks ago, we presented a number of applications where agents define the system, program the system, and commission the supervision system. It's extremely impressive. Of course, if you look at the applications that Schneider uses, there's no right to hallucination. Data protection is crucial, the security of operations too. We're not just in the digital space. We work on lifts, on lighting, on machinery, that sort of thing. There are characteristics in the AI that is, it's mission-critical AI.
That's why we call it Energy and Industrial Intelligence. Very different features than than with photography or video or text.
I'm gonna take two more questions. Sir.
Hello, Mr. Jean-Pascal Tricoire. Congratulations. I saw that you'd reached the highest ever share price today. Well done. Questions about the recurring revenues. I suppose it's more software and services. Could you tell us what the percentage is? What about patents? What is your patent? What is your IP policy? Do you have a lot of activity here or?
Very briefly, recurring revenue at Schneider Electric. It's we include in that software and services. There are two categories of services. We have all of our maintenance service contracts with visits that are planned in advance. We're also working more towards digital service contracts.
When we sell a data center contract with all of the equipment, there's a digital contract called EcoCare for recurring services based on software solutions, based on data to allow us to conduct preventive maintenance, for instance. These are the 2 main components, and the software that we sell in the form of recurring contracts. We have set targets in our 2030 plan, multiply by 2 the share of recurring revenue between 2025 and 2030. Again, first part of my answer, and again, Oh, yes, patents, IP. Patents are, of course, very much linked to our innovation. I don't know if we have an actual policy, but we do try to protect our innovation. There's incremental and disruptive innovation. That's where, of course, patents are particularly important. Or sometimes there's just incremental improvements.
We want to provide new things, and we don't necessarily need to patent everything. We do need to protect everything that's disruptive. There was a third question about continuity. Continuous direct DC and hybrid architectures. DC architectures, we're also working on coalescing companies that work in that field. Of course, AC is prevalent at the moment. We're talking a lot about data centers, but the transition to DC is due to the very high density and accelerated aspects on which we're working actively.
I think we had a question over there that's going to be the last one. Sir.
Mr. Chair, Patrick Kernen. I've been a shareholder for 1 year only, but I have a question about overproduction of power in Europe. The Turkish energy minister recently required power producers, solar, wind, and geothermal, which is working well in Turkey, has asked all of these power suppliers to equip themselves with batteries to avoid waste. A shareholder asked a question about that too, is Schneider Electric well-positioned in batteries to provide storage capacity to all those who produce energy and who produce much more energy than before?
Second question. I saw that you have a partnership with NVIDIA, Microsoft, Capgemini. Do they own shares in the group? For the past 2, 3 years, we have seen Capgemini, Alten, and Dassault Systèmes, who use AI, who started using AI a long time ago. In fact, the share price is down, while Schneider Electric's share price, that does the brick and mortar, seems to be doing better. How do you analyze this difference between in the variations of companies that all operate in AI?
Let me answer the last part of your question. I'm not going to comment the share price of other companies. Artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize everything. That's why investors are sometimes cautious or dubious. For Schneider Electric, it has two consequences, a huge demand of technology solutions. That's positive. It also pushes digitalization of everything, because if you have not digitalized, you don't have data. If you don't have data, you don't have AI. What we're witnessing is that this emergence of AI in smart buildings, smart factories, smart cities requires connections, because an AI in isolation in the cloud serves no purpose.
It starts to have an impact if it's real-time, real-world, which is what we do. Bringing products, digital twin, from the digital twin all the way to the product through the control stage. All of that is very positive, and all of that strengthens our standing. I think we really need to make a difference between IT, that is disconnected, not from the real world, from the physical world. Then, of course, data protection, no hallucinations, privacy. Levels of security that are industrial-grade. For batteries, there will be more and more batteries, and if you want smart grids, why don't you buy an electric vehicle? That can serve as a domestic battery to kind of smooth out the peaks and allow you to save money on your electricity contract.
The systems are not quite fully operational, but the FlexiGrid is emerging. On your final question, yes, we have strategic partnerships with people like Microsoft, NVIDIA or others. Your question was about cross-shareholdership. We don't own shares in each other. It's just a contract that we have together to work on developing technologies, as is the case with NVIDIA. Jean-Pascal Tricoire told you about what was presented in the Hannover Messe. In Industrial Automation, we use their AI. We use Microsoft's AI to provide the customers with solutions. Foxconn, which is more of a supply chain partner to develop solutions together. In the slide I showed you, there were other examples, companies that are much smaller. SE Ventures, where we take minority stakes in technologies that we consider will be interesting in the medium or longer term, and we can do that. It's not the case for the big companies you mentioned.
I think concludes our Q&A session. Thank you very much for your engagement. The questions are indeed strategic for the group. We need to get together very often because things are moving fast. We're now going to transition to the most important part of this general assembly. You are going to vote on the resolutions. It's a crucial moment, so please make sure that you stay until the end.
You will have a lamp, a headlamp, which can come in handy if you're camping or if you're a bit of a DIY person. It can always come in handy. You will only receive your present in exchange for your voting box to make sure that we get all those little voting boxes back. Now over to Ségolène, who will tell you how everything's going to work.
Before proceeding with the vote, we note the status of the definitive quorum. The shareholders present or represented own 405,793,258 shares, which is 72.10% of the share capital. Before voting, we would invite you to watch and listen to the very short film explaining how to use the electronic box in your hands. Please do not forget to validate your vote in 10 seconds. In so far as all shareholders have been able to read the draft resolutions and documents enabling them to cast an informed vote, and unless you request otherwise, I will not read out in full the texts. First resolution: approval of the statutory financial statements for the 2025 fiscal year. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted.
Second resolution: approval of consolidated financial statements for the 2025 fiscal year. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Third resolution is adopted. Third resolution: appropriation of profit for the fiscal year and setting the dividend. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Fourth resolution: approval of regulated agreements governed by Article L225-38 and subsequent of French Commercial Code. Vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Fifth resolution: approval of the information on the directors' and corporate officers' compensation paid or granted for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025 mentioned in Article L. 22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted.
Sixth resolution: approval of the components of the total compensation and benefits of all types paid during 2025 fiscal year or awarded in respect of the said fiscal year to Olivier Blum in his capacity as Chief Executive Officer. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Seventh resolution: approval of the components of the total compensation and benefits of all types paid during 2025 fiscal year or awarded in respect of the said fiscal year to Mr. Jean-Pascal Tricoire in his capacity as Chairman of the Board of Directors. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Eighth resolution: approval of the compensation policy for the Chief Executive Officer. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Ninth resolution: approval of the compensation policy for the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Vote is open.
The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Tenth resolution: determination of the total annual compensation of the directors. Vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Eleventh resolution: approval of the directors' compensation policy. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Twelfth resolution: renewal of the term of office of Mr. Anders Runevad. Vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Thirteenth resolution: appointment of Mrs. Ellyn Shook as director. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Fourteenth resolution: appointment of Mr. François Jackow as director. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Fifteenth resolution: opinion on the company's climate strategy. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Sixteenth resolution: authorization granted to the board of directors to buy back company shares.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. 17th resolution: delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to increase the capital by issuing ordinary shares or securities giving access to capital share of capital of the company without shareholders' preferential subscription right reserved for a category of person. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. 18th resolution. Delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to increase the capital by issuing ordinary shares or securities, giving access to share capital of the company without shareholders' preferential subscription right reserved to one or more named person. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. 19th resolution. Delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to undertake capital increases reserved for participations in a company savings plan without shareholders' preferential subscription right. The vote is open.
The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. 20th resolution. Delegation of authority to the board of directors to undertake capital increases reserved for employees of certain non-French subsidiaries of the group directly or via entities acting to offer those employees benefits comparable to those offered to participants in a company savings plans without shareholders' preferential subscription right. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. 21st resolution. Amendment to Article nineteen of the company's articles of association to comply with the regulatory provisions. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. 22nd resolution, and last. Powers for formalities. The vote is open. The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Jean-Pascal, the floor is yours.
Thank you for having participated in the vote. Thank you for attending this general assembly. I invite you to jot down the next AG, which will be on the fifth of May, 2027. We hope that you'll come many, and we'll be able to have a drink after we exit this room. Thank you very much.