Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Pauline Bireaud, Head of Investor Relations for Pluxee, and I'm very happy to be with you today at the very start of our journey as a listed company. I look forward to finding further opportunity for you to hear from and learn more about our business. Before we get started, please just read quickly at the disclaimer. Our goal today is to let you hear directly from the team that leads Pluxee, so meaning the executive management team, our country CIOs, and our key specialists. Here is our agenda for the day with some key timings. We will start with some remarks from our Executive Chair, Didier Michaud-Daniel. Our CEO, Aurélien Sonet, will introduce our business, our strategic plan, and our core financial objectives.
Then Viktoria Otero Del Val, Chief Strategy, Product, and Customer Experience Officer, will look at the key growth market dynamics that underpin our opportunity and will take you through our product sales and marketing. We are supported by the Brazil CEO Thierry Guihard and India CEO Anish Sarkar. After that, we will have a short Q&A focused on the market and offering, and a short break. We will then have a deep dive on Pluxee's strong digital and tech capabilities from our Chief Information Officer, Gabriel Rotella, and Digital Factory Director, Said Layadi. It will be followed by a presentation on people and sustainability from our Chief HR Officer, Laure Pourageaud, our General Counsel, Béatrice Bihr, and our UK CEO, Burçin Reşsamoğlu.
After another break, Aurélien will take you through our strategic roadmap in more detail before our CFO, Stéphane Lhopiteau, covers our core financials and our financial objectives. We will then have our second Q&A, which is the opportunity for you to ask your question on the strategy and the finance section. We have a packed agenda for the day, so let's get started. Please welcome Didier Michaud-Daniel for some opening remarks.
Ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to Pluxee's first Capital Markets Day. Thanks to all of you for joining us today, whether here in Paris or on the phone line. My name is Didier Michaud-Daniel, and I'm set to become Executive Chair of Pluxee. Having known the Sodexo group for many years, I have followed the progress of Pluxee with great interest. This business draws on the proud traditions of the Bellon family and embodies the outstanding Sodexo values of service spirit, team spirit, and spirit of progress. These values have inspired Sodexo since it was founded 60 years ago and are carried forward into Pluxee. Pluxee has a clear opportunity to build on its significant scale and profitability as a global player in the large and growing employee benefit and engagement market.
The remarkable evolution of the relationship between employees and their work enhances this potential, and we are delighted to share how we will capitalize on this opportunity. Since I was appointed in June, I have had the great pleasure of working with CEO Aurélien Sonet, CFO Stéphane Lhopiteau, and the wider team as they prepare to accelerate Pluxee's profitable growth as an independent business. Aurélien has played an integral part in Pluxee's development over the six years. We are now a major global player in the employee benefit and engagement market, and he will lead us forward to create shareholder value as a standalone company. We have a clear strategic vision to reinforce our leadership in meal and food benefits and augment further our employee benefit and engagement offer.
We will combine this with a disciplined financial policy of maintaining a strong investment grade rating, execute a targeted approach to M&A, and delivering attractive shareholders returns. At today's event, you will hear from Aurélien, Stéphane, and the rest of Pluxee's talented and experienced executive management team, and have the opportunity to ask questions about the business and our plans for the future.... We have also assembled a board of talented directors with significant leadership experience ranging from technology startups to major listed companies. These directors bring diverse and relevant expertise that will benefit Pluxee's strategic journey, such as payments, digital currencies, human resources, media, and mobile digital communications. They also embody the personality of Pluxee in its optimism, professionalism, and relentlessness. I am confident that this board will support the execution of Pluxee's strategic roadmap and accelerate shareholder value creation.
I look forward to meeting many of you as Pluxee embarks on a journey as an independent listed company. Pluxee has largely operated as an independent business unit within the wider Sodexo for several years, and we have already made significant progress on the spin-off. I will now leave the floor for Aurélien Sonet, Pluxee's Chief Executive Officer. But first, let's have a look at a short video about Pluxee. Thank you very much for your attention.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm very happy to be with you to introduce Pluxee and share our vision, our strategy, and our growth ambition. The Pluxee story is a profitable growth story. Today, we are a leading global player in the employee benefits and engagement market. We operate a highly cash-generative and scalable ecosystem that serves more than 36 million consumers, and the market we operate in is massive and still growing. Pluxee has a significant opportunity to capture a higher share of this market. To do this, we have a clear strategy powered by three key enablers: talent, tech, and M&A. And last but not least, the Pluxee leadership team is highly experienced and motivated to deliver the next phase of our growth story. This is what we'll be sharing with you today. Let's get started.
Our business started in the 1970s as Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services. Over the last 45 years, we have progressively grown our business through our core meal and food offer. This has taken us to 31 countries, and we are number one in 17 of them. We have also expanded to other employee benefits, such as gift and mobility, and entered the wider employee engagement, reward, and recognition universe to capture growth beyond meal and food benefits. In the past five years, we have undergone a significant digital transformation, and I'm proud to say that today, Pluxee is a truly digital company with over 90% of our business and our business volume being digital. We are a team of over 5,000 people, united under a distinctive, modern, consumer-facing brand, which we launched last June and have deployed around the world over the past four months.
Pluxee embodies our positioning as a trusted HR partner, and it helps us create greater value for all our stakeholders, including, of course, our shareholders. Along this journey, we have also successfully integrated acquisition that allowed us to strengthen our position, including Tir Groupé in France in 2007, VR in Brazil in 2008, and more recently, in 2021, Wedoogift, the leading digital player in gift in France, now called Glady. We have also set up highly effective strategic partnerships, as demonstrated recently in Brazil with Santander.... The spin-off from Sodexo and the listing of Pluxee is the next phase of our journey and the beginning of a new chapter as a pure player. All along our journey, we've been following our mission: to bring to life a personalized and sustainable employee experience at work and beyond.
Personalized, because at Pluxee, each consumer is unique, and their employee experience should reflect this. Sustainable, because we design a roadmap to deliver positive impact, while allowing our clients, our merchants, and consumers to amplify their own contribution to a more sustainable future. And at work and beyond, because this is about offering solution that positively benefit people lives beyond the workplace. To fulfill our mission, we are constantly evolving our range of solutions to meet the changing needs of clients and consumers. At the core of our offer is meal and food. This is an area with well-established regulatory frameworks, that provide clear advantages for both employers and employees. We also offer a wide range of lifestyle benefits, namely gift, health and well-being, holiday and culture, and mobility. These employee benefits activities represent most of our business today, 83% of fiscal year 2023 revenues.
We have taken our offering even further with our activities in reward and recognition and employee engagement, which are currently focused on the U.S. and the U.K. We are also a global leader in public benefits, where we leverage our broad product expertise and our digital and payment platform on behalf of public authorities. We support over 12 million citizens through this activity, mostly in European countries. As an example, last year, Pluxee was selected to support the Federal Ministry for Climate Action in Austria, with the distribution of a climate bonus to cover rising energy costs. Fulfilling our mission has also led us to expand globally. Pluxee is a truly global player. As I mentioned earlier, we are present in 31 countries and are number one in 17 of them.
We have strong foundations in continental Europe, which accounted for 44% of our revenues in fiscal year 2023. We've been active in Latin America since the 1990s, and revenues in this region accounted for 38% last year. The rest of the world, which includes, among other countries, India, the U.K., and the U.S., contributed 18% of our fiscal year 2023 revenue. Our combination of our global scale and local footprint represents a clear competitive advantage for Pluxee, especially when it comes to acting as a multi-country partner to our clients and taking advantage of some global macro trends. Over the past five years, we've moved from a decentralized organization to a truly global one. This allows us to drive our strategy while consistently deploying our product roadmap, as well as our digital and data capabilities worldwide. Let's now look at the business ecosystems that we established.
We operate a highly interconnected and tech-enabled ecosystem of client, consumer, and merchants that handles 4.8 million transactions per day. Our relentless focus on delivering value to each of these stakeholders has allowed, has allowed us to sustain growth, profitable growth over time. Our 500,000 clients are made up of businesses and organizations of all sizes, from very small to the largest corporations. As an example, one of our long-standing clients in India is Life Insurance Corporation, that has more than 100,000 employees. Our best-in-class in offering supports our clients in attracting and retaining talent while lowering their costs. For 36 million consumers, greater value means enhanced employee experience and flexibility of choice. This is delivered through our high-performing consumer apps.
For the 1.7 million merchants, we create value by driving more traffic to their stores, online or physical, by increasing engagement with a massive consumer base, and by providing them value-added services. This B2B2C ecosystem is the foundation of our cash-generative and highly scalable business model. Let's take a closer look. Pluxee is a prepaid business. We first collect cash from our clients when they book their order. We then preload cards and digital wallets of our clients' employees, our consumers. This loaded amount corresponds to what we call our business volume issue. These consumers then spend their benefit within our merchant network. Finally, Pluxee reimburses the merchants. This model generates three main sources of revenue: the commission paid by the client, commissions paid by the merchants, and the interest generated on the float.
To give you a broad idea of the scale, our float stood at EUR 2.5 billion as of end August 2023. This is a highly scalable model. More business volume generates increasing revenue while positively impacting our margins. This business model has enabled us to deliver strong financial results. In fiscal year 2023, we issued EUR 22.8 billion in business volume and generated over EUR 1 billion in total revenues. We delivered strong profitability with more than EUR 360 million in recurring EBITDA, implying a 34.5% EBITDA margin. We have delivered double-digit growth in business volume, in organic revenue, and in recurring EBITDA, above the guidance given at the 2022 Sodexo Capital Markets Day.
Our prepaid business model, fueled by increasing volumes, has allowed us to deliver strong recurring cash conversion and to benefit from a robust balance sheet. In the first quarter of 2024, we have sustained our strong growth, with revenues at 20% on an organic basis. Our CFO, Stéphane Lhopiteau, will go into more detail about our business model and our financials later. Let's now look at the market where we operate. We see a clear opportunity to maintain our profitable growth, given the massive potential of our market. The addressable meal and food benefit markets remain under-penetrated at about 25%, with the direct market growing at a healthy 7%-9% in the coming years. Looking at the wider employee benefits and engagement market, there is a tremendous opportunity that we are just beginning to capture by expanding our offering and reinforcing our capabilities.
This huge benefit and engagement market is driven by the need of employers to evolve in line with the shift in employees' expectation to a new model of work. Here, we have highlighted some of the fundamental trends that are transforming the world of work. In a high inflation environment, employees are expecting their employers to protect them against cost-of-living pressures and to preserve their purchasing power, while employers need to optimize their costs. Beyond this economic imperative, individuals are looking for a sense of purpose in their work and caring for their own well-being. In parallel, and with the battle for talent still going on, companies are seeking to attract, retain, and engage talent.
Pluxee addresses companies' needs and consumers' expectation by providing employee benefits and engagement solution that deliver what matter most to consumers today: more purchasing power, more personalized offering, and the ability to make more responsible choices. These trends underpin the strategies that I'm going to present now. As a pure player, our strategy is twofold. One, to reinforce our leadership in meal and food, and two, to augment our wider employee benefits and engagement offer. These ambitions are interlinked, as success in one fuels success in the other, serving the same ecosystem of client, consumers, and merchants. This strategy will be enabled by our digitally skilled and diverse and highly engaged talent, our best-in-class, scalable tech and data platform, and a targeted and disciplined approach to M&A. This ambition is also fully integrated into our strong, overarching sustainability commitment. You will hear more about each of these elements today.
We will drive the execution of this strategy through six strategic initiatives, which will allow us to, first, improve our value proposition for clients, consumers, and merchants. Second, drive our top-line growth. And last but not least, lead to further margin improvement.... I will go into more detail on each of these initiatives later today. As I said at the beginning, Pluxee is a profitable growth story. By executing this strategy, we will continue to deliver a robust financial performance. Over the next three years, we expect to deliver a low double-digit revenue growth every year, and thanks to our operating leverage, we will continue to improve our margin and maintain high cash conversion levels. We are confident that we will successfully execute our strategic roadmap and hence, deliver on our targets.
The highly seasoned Pluxee executive team will lead the strategy execution with the support of our diverse, talented, and engaged teams. I'm delighted that you will have the opportunity to hear from so many of this great team and to meet others during the day. With that, it's my pleasure to hand over to Viktoria Otero Del Val, our Chief Strategy, Product, and Customer Experience Officer.
Thank you, Aurélien. My name is Viktoria Otero Del Val, and I am in charge of strategy, product, and customer experience at Pluxee. I am very happy to share with you today, first, the great market dynamics on which we build our strategy, that, as Aurélien explained, will allow profitable growth. Then, I will outline how we deliver a compelling and differentiated value proposition to all our key stakeholders. The growth market for Pluxee brings together three attributes. First, a sizable addressable market with significant potential for increased market penetration. Second, robust, sustained market growth underpinned by macro tailwinds. Finally, the combination of supportive regulation and compelling mega trends. Now, let's look at each of these more closely. I would like to start with the overall market today.
The overall employee benefit and engagement market represents a EUR 1 trillion business opportunity in business volume, a massive opportunity, as Aurélien said. The direct meal and food benefit market that Pluxee and its competitors address is worth EUR 53 billion. The addressable meal and food market that includes the full potential business volume from companies that are eligible to provide these benefits is worth EUR 219 billion. So the direct market, as a share of the total addressable meal and food market, shows a penetration rate of 25%. It remains highly underpenetrated. This, of course, represents a clear growth opportunity for Pluxee to leverage its market leadership in countries such as Belgium, India, Romania, to mention only a few, its strong number two position in Brazil, and go even further in France, where we are currently in a tight race for the number two position.
But let's look at penetration rate more closely. Most of Pluxee's key markets are still highly underpenetrated, creating further growth potential even in our large and established markets. This chart here shows the meal and food penetration rate for selected countries. This rate is highest in Brazil, at about 40%, but there is still plenty of room to grow. Markets such as Spain, Austria, or India are below 20%, whereas our average penetration rate is 25%. In a number of markets, increasing penetration rate remains an important driver. If you look at this penetration rate for small and medium enterprises, there's a significant untapped growth opportunity for Pluxee. There is plenty of scope for growth in markets like France, Belgium, Brazil, to highlight only a few ones. Historically, employee benefits were mostly offered by large companies.
Digitalization has progressively made benefits easily accessible and essential for SMEs responding to the evolving needs that were described. Thanks to digital journeys and products, technology is making it easier for SMEs to adopt employee benefits by offering meal benefits, which are particularly relevant for hybrid work, or lifestyle benefits such as mobility and employee recognition, to help them better attract and retain talent in a very tight labor market.... In addition to efficient digital buyer journeys, digital marketing is making a huge difference for providers like us and for the SMEs. So far, I have demonstrated that the addressable market size is big and remains under-penetrated.
Here we see that the direct meal and food benefit market, that is the market addressed by Pluxee and its peers, has grown at 7.5% since 2019, from EUR 40 billion to EUR 53 billion in 2023, showing great resilience through the economic cycle and through COVID. So let's come back to the robust growth in meal and food benefit markets. So as I have just said, the market has grown at 7.5% since 2019, from EUR 40 billion to EUR 53 billion in 2023. So you remember, this shows great resilience through the economic cycle and through COVID. The growth is expected to continue between 7%-9% in the coming three years.
The growth opportunity for Pluxee comes both from acquiring clients already participating in the direct market, that is, buying benefits from employee providers like us, as well as converting clients not yet offering these benefits. Of course, we will continue to grow our business with our existing clients. This growing benefit market is supported by wider demographic and macroeconomic trends. The first is the global employee population, which is growing, and an additional 70 million employees are expected to enter the labor force over the coming years. The working population today is getting bigger and is continuously evolving. It's significantly more diverse and flexible, with more generations working together than ever before. This is increasing the demand for a wide range of employee benefits. I would also like to mention two macroeconomic drivers. First, inflation.
Inflation directly impacts meal and food face value and the legal gap in many of our countries. Inflation is expected to grow between 3% and 3.5% in the coming years. The second is interest rates, which have been a tailwind in 2023, delivering a direct increase in financial and fluid revenues generated. While a progressive stabilization is expected in the coming years, we will continue to see the knock-on benefit for at least the first half of 2024. Finally, the employee benefit market has historically tended to outpace GDP growth. Now, let me come to focus on the third attribute of our market, which is the supportive regulatory environment. Most countries that Pluxee operates have well-established regulatory frameworks that have been in place for years and that make employee benefits attractive for both employers and employees.
Starting on the left, the example here shows how in an employer-financed scheme, employers optimize their costs when they offer benefits, while employees increase their purchasing power. On average, if an employer gives EUR 100 in salary, then the fully loaded cost is much higher because of the social charges. He or she would end up paying about EUR 135 . When giving the same amount in employee benefits, the cost is only EUR 100 . This results in 25% lower costs for employers. Seen from the employee, receiving EUR 100 in salary means paying social charges and income tax. If the same EUR 100 is received in meal benefits, then the employee sees a 30% boost in purchasing power. The regulatory frameworks differ across countries, and individual employees have their specific fiscal situation, but the logic applies.
To give you a few examples, in Brazil, the scheme is employer-financed and has proven to be a long-standing legal framework that has been able to evolve to adapt to new needs. In India, the benefit is employee-financed. Employees opt in, and Pluxee is able to enhance their purchasing power by up to 50%. In France, it's both. It is co-financed by the employer and the employee. The point I'm trying to make here is that irrespective of specific local regulatory frameworks, Pluxee has demonstrated its ability to adapt its approach and seize growth opportunities in relevant markets. The regulatory frameworks in our key markets have been in place for decades and have evolved continuously to reflect relevant trends. Their sustainability comes from four social and economic advantages that are fully recognized by public authorities. These frameworks, first, preserve citizens' purchasing power.
Second, they help businesses attract and retain talent. Third, they stimulate the local economy and create job opportunities. Finally, they formalize, in some markets, still an informal economy, thereby increasing tax collection. Public authorities can continue to activate a range of levers to further boost. So, I was on the four key social and economic advantages that the benefit frameworks ensure. Now, public authorities can go even further by introducing additional tax and social incentives. They can also support annual indexation or cap increase in response to inflation. Since January 2023, 10 countries have increased caps. In 2022, 13 countries had done so. Another lever is to expand regulatory frameworks beyond meal and food benefits. We've seen this in France to cover work from home and mobility, for learning and development benefits in Romania, or in the form of new gift regulation in Mexico.
Taking a broader perspective, I would like to come back to the key mega trends driving the growth of the employee benefit and engagement market. As Aurélien mentioned, we identified five trends that HR leaders are progressively including in their people strategy. Aurélien underlined a couple of them earlier, including the importance of purchasing power. I would like to share with you some additional key figures to demonstrate the impact of these trends. In the context of highly diverse intergenerational workforce, 85% of HR leaders recognize the need for personalization to ensure benefits attract and retain talent. 600 million people worldwide will be working remotely in 2024, so benefits need to be accessible from anywhere. More than 70% of individuals are becoming increasingly attentive to their well-being.
Acknowledging the importance of committing to overall employee well-being, physical, mental, financial, had been building up over the years and was greatly accelerated post-COVID. The shift to a new model for work that I have just explained is intertwined with Pluxee's business model and fuels our strategy and product development roadmap. We have access to a wealth of data, so we are very well positioned to understand the impact of these trends on our clients. Another fundamental evolution that I would like to highlight is the digitalization of Pluxee's wider ecosystem. All businesses are on their digitalization journey. HR clients are embracing digital solutions, both in terms of systems and analytics. Consumers have totally embraced digital payments, digital benefit account management, digital interactions. The merchant landscape has been transformed, particularly when it comes to online purchasing, delivery, digital payment options, and reimbursement management.
Digitalization has positively impacted our business at all levels, from improving the client and consumer experience to increasing operational efficiency, enabling digital sales and marketing efforts, particularly towards SMEs. We are also bringing more value to our merchants. I hope I have given you a good idea of how we see the opportunities in the employee benefit and engagement market. To remind you, three key messages: First, we operate in sizable markets with dynamic growth, with supportive regulatory frameworks that go hand in hand with favorable macro and mega trends. Second, these factors are creating a new model for work. Third, we can capitalize on this through the digitalization of our ecosystem. So now that we have spent some time looking at the Pluxee market growth opportunity, let's focus on the Pluxee offer. I would like to start this with a very short film. Please stay tuned.
Do not go away. It's brief, and we will move right on.
How can HRs attract, retain, and motivate employees in a world of talent shortages? Giving employees more freedom of choice and the ultimate benefits package with Pluxee. With our meal benefits, consumers can enjoy healthy meals with their colleagues at lunchtime. Our gift benefits make consumers feel special, not just during holidays, but in moments throughout their lives. Our green mobility benefits help consumers commute easily to work while also caring for the environment. With learning and development benefits, they can continuously grow personally and professionally, and our health and wellness benefits take care of their physical and mental well-being. Thanks to 1.7 million merchants, we also offer many other benefits for a multi-generational workforce, from hybrid work to childcare. All these provide fiscal advantages for our clients, consumers, or both, boosting purchasing power and positively impacting the business of local merchants.
Our specialized rewards and recognition solutions enable clients to reward behavior aligned with their values and company goals using our data-driven, sophisticated programs. We help our clients measure employee engagement and happiness with our partner-driven solutions. We also help governments and public authorities deliver programs to improve the welfare of people and communities via public benefit programs, all delivered through easy-to-use digital interfaces that keep things simple while providing freedom of choice for HR clients, consumers, and merchants. Pluxee, opening up a world of opportunities to make life more joyful.
So in this section, I will outline how we are boosting the value proposition that we deliver to our key stakeholders within our ecosystem. You have already gotten a bit of a flavor from the film on this. I will also touch on how Pluxee's powerful commercial engine guides our prospects and clients along their decision-making journey. All of this is made possible thanks to our digital and data capabilities that Gabriel will describe later. During this presentation, I am very happy to be joined by Thierry Guihard, CEO of Brazil, and Anish Sarkar, CEO of India, as in this sequence, we really want to make sure that you understand how the global assets, initiatives, and methods are implemented in our local markets. We really wish to provide you with tangible examples of how our global approach comes alive in two of our most exciting growth markets.
Let me start with our offer to each of our key stakeholders. Pluxee has more than 500,000 clients of different sizes and different industries. This number has been increasing year after year. Our diversified client portfolio shows our capacity to meet the needs of clients of all types. Small and medium clients represent around 85% of our clients by number. As I have already highlighted, there remains significant untapped potential for growth, from both acquiring new clients of all sizes based on low penetration rates and from fully unlocking the potential of our existing clients. We have a very strong platform to build on. We also have a differentiating ability to answer global client imperatives, thanks to Pluxee's global offering, adapted to local needs, as mentioned earlier by Aurélien. This is an important strength in a high-growth market.
We have a diverse portfolio of multi-country clients, and we are consistently demonstrating that we can address their needs all over the globe as a trusted partner. One relationship I would like to describe in more detail is Capgemini. It spans nine countries with a global agreement, including meal, mobility, and work-from-home benefits, among others. Capgemini appreciated Pluxee's international presence, our global offering and product roadmap, as well as our focus on global account management and coordination. We have plenty of other examples where we are working with major companies like Ericsson, Criteo, Telefonica, to mention a few examples. They have all chosen Pluxee because of our ability to offer a consistent experience on a global scale and across a wide range of benefits. The experience we deliver to our clients drives widespread satisfaction.
As you see here, our NPS, Net Promoter Score, increased from 32 to 40 in just two years. NPS is a core metric for us as it measures client loyalty through their intention to recommend Pluxee. We use this survey to measure customer satisfaction at every point of interaction with us. Account management is one of our main strengths appreciated by our clients. This is great news because we know statistically this has a high impact on NPS and on loyalty. Our 2023 NPS score is seven points higher than the B2B average for businesses with a comparable geographic scope. Within the NPS, 82% of our clients were satisfied or very satisfied with our customer care. Consistent with the feedback we get from the NPS, we are also regularly recognized for customer service excellence. Spain, Turkey, Tunisia are a few examples that we included here.
But let me now bring in Thierry. Let's see how he can take us from the global to the country view, and share with us our demonstrated client focus in our key market in Brazil.
Thank you, Viktoria. Good afternoon. Brazil is a great example of a market where we have been a proven track record as a trusted partner to our clients. We have built our business in Brazil over the past 40 years, and today have more than 140,000 private and public sector clients. In the private sector, which represent 80% of our business volume, we have a balanced portfolio of large, medium, and small clients. We are also the market leader in the public sector, with more than 40% market share. We are recognized by our clients year after year, reaching a Net Promoter Score of 66 in 2023, up eight points versus 2022, and with 96% account management satisfaction.
Concretely, these scores have been achieved by redesigning and improving our client journey, with a focus on systematic account management by segment, enhancing our service level agreement for car deliveries, and offering a personalized onboarding experience for new clients. I will come back to these points a bit later. We are also consistently recognized for our customer experience and care. This include the Brazil Smart Customer Award we received in 2023 for best practices in customer experience, with a focus on our improved client journey. On the Cliente SA Award for increasing customer satisfaction on service levels, as well as the implementation of transverse teams, which I will also come back to later. So as a trusted partner to a loyal client base, we can maximize the opportunity to unlock the full potential of these relationships and go beyond benefit provision. Viktoria?
Thanks a lot, Thierry, for this great illustration. I would now like to present how we take a programmatic approach to deploying our full range of benefits. This is our fill in the matrix playbook that we are displaying, that's about programmatically bringing a large and expanding set of benefits to an increasing number of clients in an increasing number of countries to correctly respond to evolving needs. It's true, every market has its own flavor, but the benefits we provide respond to fundamental and universal needs. We deploy our playbook in an efficient way, with some local configuration made possible, thanks to our tech capabilities. We are programmatic and pragmatic, and we can adjust our offer parameters to fit local realities.
In broad terms, what we are describing here is that meal and food are core benefits, and we have increasingly expanded into lifestyle benefits as well as employee engagement over the past five years. You see the examples listed here: Belgium, Brazil, Mexico. But let me spend a bit more time on France. In France, we strengthened our in-house benefit range, while also adding a number of partnerships. In terms of in-house capabilities, the Glady acquisition contributes to reinforcing our leadership position in gift, alongside our strong meal offer. The Glady platform also brings engagement, recognition, purchasing power through discounts, and a great integrated user experience to our HR and worker council clients. Thanks to partnerships, we have introduced green mobility via solutions with Skipr, as well as health and wellbeing with Gymlib.
We believe that partnerships are a great way of bringing a broader solution to our clients in rapid time to market and in a test-and-learn logic. There is one market I have not mentioned yet, India, where we went from a single benefit in 2016 to more than 10 today. Let me now hand over to our India CEO, Anish Sarkar, so that he can bring in the local country perspective, how our global programmatic offer was deployed in India. He will share with us some key insights about our leading multi-benefit offer. Here we go.
Thanks, Viktoria. We are in our 27th year operating in India. Today, we are the number one player when it comes to an employee multi-benefit offer, serving more than 11,000 clients and more than 3.5 million consumers. The foundation is our core meal and food benefit offer, where we are by far the market leader, and we have been able to capitalize on that to drive strong multi-benefit adoption via a fully digital offer. This also reflects the Indian consumer landscape, with high mobile device penetration and widespread digital payments usage.... We offer more than 10 benefits, including food, mobility, well-being, learning, and development, all integrated into one HR platform and one consumer app. We offer to our HR clients a flexible administration platform backed up by robust compliance.
Today, 30% of our multi-benefit clients are accessing four or more benefits, thanks to our flexible wallet offer. India is a market driven by consumer choice, and our ability to offer multiple payment options is a key driver. Around 10% of consumers pay using a QR code, and just under half of all consumers using other online payment systems. We are fully focused on engaging with our consumers through offers and targeted campaigns, and have also successfully rolled out value-added services that are driving consumer engagement. These include Pluxee Delights Premier, an exclusive discount marketplace for Pluxee consumers, offering deals from over 15 categories that are promoted via our app. Pluxee Select, our engagement forum, where we are bringing regular consumer webinars on topics like wellness and sustainability with high-profile speakers. We are seeing strong engagement with more than 1 million impressions per webinar.
As well as creating stronger connections and cross-selling opportunities, this is also driving a high level of consumer satisfaction with a consumer NPS score of 60 in 2023. This score has increased by 10 points over the past year. I will now let Viktoria build on the consumer theme and showcase our great consumer app. Thank you.
Thanks, Anish. As you said, let us now look at the consumers, starting with a super quick video that we'll comment right after. As this film illustrates, we have built powerful consumer applications that provide personalized features, enhancing consumer experience and engagement. Our focus, three words: freedom of choice, purchasing power, and personalization. Our consumer app features include mobile payment options, features that ensure seamless processing, such as digital onboarding and card management, as well as value-added services. We are constantly adding and testing features to increase our consumers' engagement to fully capitalize on the very frequent usage of meal and food benefits. We are seeking to convert regular visits into meaningful activations. This requires relevance and personalization that has to come from inner features as well as from relevant digital marketing actions towards our consumers.
Let me share with you the Romania example, which illustrates in a really impressive way what can be achieved by using a global solution to deliver relevant responses to meet local client and consumer needs. Romania has an active population of 5.7 million. One million consumers are regularly using the Pluxee app on average, up to eight times a month. Freedom of choice comes in the form of a full range of benefits and payment means, with increasing mobile transactions and increasing adoption of fully virtual card. Leveraging this great consumer app, Romania is also using advanced digital marketing techniques to orchestrate messaging to consumers. This allows personalization, enhanced consumer engagement, and activation. Now, the big increase in our consumer Net Promoter Score shows how positively our consumers perceive this interaction and experience with us. So the clients and the consumers, let us now look at our merchandise.
Our merchant network is a key driver of how clients select their benefit provider and ensuring consumers can access the offer they want wherever they might be. We have an extensive and expanding merchant network, which has grown significantly in recent years to more than 1.7 million, including a growing number of online partners and platforms. We are an active partner to over 740,000 small and medium merchants, who make up almost 45% of our network today. They represent a key priority, given both their growth potential and the knock-on benefit their success provides in local communities. All this is possible, thanks to our strong merchant value proposition, of course, providing access to a large consumer base. Thanks to digital and expanded data capabilities, Pluxee also offers a range of value-added services. Now, let me just give you a few examples of these.
Omnichannel and flexible payment means, loyalty programs, increased visibility in the consumer apps, and dynamic matching with consumers to attract and retain them and stimulate their demand. Pluxee also shares actionable insights with merchants to help them drive their business. Overall, the 34% increase in business volumes reimbursed to merchants since FY 2021 reflects the growth of our merchant network, as well as the impact of our boosted value proposition, and it illustrates the win-win relationship that we have developed. Thierry, Anish, please come back and join me to illustrate how the global merchant assets and initiatives come alive in Brazil and India.
Thank you, Viktoria. So in Brazil, our merchant base has grown by more than 80% since fiscal year 2021 to reach over 690,000 merchants today. A key driver has been our ability to offer a wide range of value-added services to meet their expectation and strengthen our long relationship. Today, more than 60% of our merchants use one or more of our additional services. Express reimbursement is the number one service our merchants call on, used by over half of our Brazilian merchants today. We have also established a 200-person merchant team, which operates under a segmented sales and marketing approach, split between key accounts, meaning major retailers, franchises, and small and medium merchants. This approach allows Pluxee Brazil to directly address the specific needs of each segment.
In India, we are focused on empowering small and medium merchants, including the ubiquitous Kirana local grocery stores, that are an essential part of local communities and economies. About one-third of total business volume reimbursed in India goes to small and medium merchants. In addition to supporting these merchants in going online, with 6x increase in our affiliated meal merchants with an online presence over the past three years, we're also offering a range of value-added services. These include a unified payment solution, an effective single point acceptance solution covering all payment modes. This has already been rolled out to 50% of our merchant network. We are also supporting small and medium merchants in accessing corporate cafeterias managed by our clients for their employees. We help our clients onboard merchants for these cafeterias from our affiliate network, which represents an important new business opportunity for these merchants. Viktoria?
Thanks a lot, Anish. After this look at our enhanced value proposition, I would like to describe our commercial engine. At Pluxee, we have implemented a powerful commercial engine to drive our growth in a proactive and very systemic manner, through new client acquisition and through increasing business with existing clients. Our commercial engine supports the client at every step of their decision journey, with full alignment across sales, marketing, and customer care teams. It has three key attributes. First, we use advanced digital marketing techniques, leveraging automated data flows to get the right message out to our prospects and clients at the right moment, through the right channel. Thanks to our upgraded capabilities, we generated 30% more new business leads in FY 2023 versus the previous year... Second, we operate a segmented sales approach to guide the client from consideration to purchase.
From field sales for large clients, to inside sales for mid-sized businesses, all the way to fully self-service buyer journeys for small companies, we mobilize the right internal and external resources, sales techniques, and technology to ensure our commercial engine runs efficiently. Our sales and marketing teams make up over 40% of our total headcount. They are effectively organized based on the lifetime value of our clients. We also draw on effective distribution partnerships, including one in Brazil that Thierry will present in a few minutes. We also have distribution partnerships in Belgium, France, Mexico, to mention a few examples. This segmented approach is enabled by the rigorous use of global CRM tools and analytics to benchmark and track performance, as well as adjust actions, campaigns to deliver planned results.
Finally, our omni-channel customer care and segmented account management approach is key to our high levels of customer satisfaction. We have developed systems and processes that provide a 360-degree view of the client's relationship. This is key so that we are able to cross-sell and upsell at the right time with the right conversations. The post-interaction satisfaction score of 4.6 out of five proves that we are there for our clients to make onboarding and recurring interaction perfectly smooth. We don't just sign contracts, we accompany and advise our clients all the way. But let's take another look at Brazil, see how we are deploying our commercial engine locally to boost acquisition and improve client service. Thierry?
Thanks, Viktoria. Of course, we are seeing strong results for the implementation of Pluxee's commercial engine into our market. So I will start with advanced digital marketing. We have optimized our digital marketing efforts, thanks to our data capabilities, based on an effective combination of B2B funnel analytics and close collaboration with commercial teams. We are continuously engaging with our target audience, adopting an end-to-end journey approach with focus on personalization. This starts with our organic search engine optimization strategy and includes inbound content marketing, performance media, all the way along the journey to onboarding, cross-sell, and retention. Influencer marketing is another key area of focus, and we have just launched a new influencer acquisition channel as part of our Christmas campaign. Segmentation has proved to be very effective here, driving acquisition via segmented content, landing pages, nurturing, and lead scoring.
These efforts have a direct positive impact on our main sales KPIs, such as number of leads generated, cost per lead, and cost per closed won contracts. Now, moving on to our sales and account management teams. We have over 200 FTEs in sales, covering small, medium, large clients, as well as dedicated team to public sector. For each segment, we have specific method. For example, for mid-market on large corporates, we have thorough sales activity planning for our field sales team. In practice, this means defining the number of face-to-face meetings, prepared in advance with a specific purpose, such as identifying cross-selling opportunities, assessing the face value of each client, supported by strong data analytics, and a service level agreement review. And in terms of customer care and account management, we deploy the transverse cross-functional approach.
These transverse teams allow us to optimize the right mix of competencies across field sales, operational, and onboarding experts. It also provides the client with a smooth transition from contracting to onboarding on regular repeat interactions. This means a great experience for the client and internally, a cohesive unit and a collaborative and client-oriented environment. The targeting objectives are easier to define and follow, and also allows for some internal simulation across the different transverse teams. I also want to talk about our game-changing partnership with Santander, the number two bank in Brazil that was already mentioned by Aurélien. In July last year, we signed a 25-year exclusive distribution agreement with Santander, which brings together Pluxee Brazil and Santander's employee benefits activity.
In terms of assets, this partnership allows us to leverage the 4,000 Santander sales managers, of which 2,500 are dedicated to SMEs, and provides access to more than 1.4 million Santander clients. Again, with a high percentage of SMEs. This partnership will drive Pluxee market share growth in Brazil.
So in Brazil, the opportunity is to bring together the combination of a large and loyal client base, a targeted digital-focused sales and marketing approach, and our new, exciting, game-changing distribution partnership with Santander, create a strong platform for growth in Brazil. Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Thierry, and thank you, Anish. In conclusion, we are enhancing the value proposition we deliver to our key stakeholders within our ecosystem. We are using Pluxee's powerful commercial engine, guiding our clients along the entire decision-making journey. I hope we have demonstrated with this trio that we have a programmatic global approach, leveraging our know-how and global scale, that's pragmatically implemented locally to unleash the full potential of our existing assets and create new growth opportunities. All of this is enabled by our digital and data capabilities. Our Global CIO, Gabriel Rotella, together with Said Layadi, Global Digital Factory Director, will go into more detail on the strong technology and IT backbone underneath the surface. Let me now hand over to Aurélien and Pauline to start the Q&A session.
So now we are going to have a Q&A session, and this first Q&A session will be focused on the presentation you have just seen, so on our market, regulatory dynamics, and our product sales and marketing strategy. We kindly ask you to save your question on tech, financials, and strategy for the second Q&A session. We will be taking questions from the room and from the webcast through the question box. Please, can I ask you to state your name and company, and limit your question to two parts only? So we'll now take your question, starting with the room.
Thanks a lot, and I really appreciate the detail you've given thus far. A really interesting slide presentation. My name is Justin Forsythe from UBS. Couple questions from me. So I guess the first one, you spent a lot of time detailing the benefits on both sides of this equation, both to employers but also to consumers in that slide around tax benefits. I guess maybe you could help us understand why penetration is still only 25%, and really only going to 26%, I think was the implicit calculation there. The second question is around the SME opportunity. So kind of along those same lines, it seems like SME is probably the biggest opportunity that you have in front of you and pretty much entirely untapped. So, one, can you give us a little bit more on what you're doing to bring more SMEs on board?
Do you have any details you can give around the penetration from a TAM perspective of SMEs within that food and meal TAM?
Viktoria, do you want to start and then?
Yeah. Let me... Does it work this time?
Yeah.
Great. So let me start with the first question on why penetration is low, and I think indeed, it's very much linked to the SMEs. And as I have tried to explain, the SME market is very much helped by digitalization. From the SME's perspective, because it's much easier to access these benefits, we put also a lot of tools. We are making them available for SMEs to understand, with the simplified pricing, the benefits for them to offer this, these advantages. And from our side, the cost of acquisition has been greatly facilitated by the digitalization. So we really believe that the penetration will evolve as SMEs adapt these benefits, and that we also are fully convinced that digitalization will be a very important lever to this.
Yeah, and just to add, we should not underestimate that the level of awareness, I mean, still remains low. And so we need to promote the system. And indeed, I mean, digital marketing is helping us very much on this. And the second thing is the cost to serve as well. Through digitalization, it has become profitable to serve SME, which was not the case, you know, when we were still on a paper system. Okay.
I will now take a question from the webcast. So for the people on the webcast, please do not hesitate to ask your question directly online. So maybe could you share with the audience on any updates on the regulation talks in France?
Okay, this one is for me. So, the most recent update till last Tuesday with the prior government. So the plan has been to pass a law on 2024 to modernize the meal benefit system. And at the heart of this law, the idea is really to put an end to the paper in France, so to force the digitization for the meal benefit. And it's, you know, it's a measure that we are of course in favor of, because it does allow to reduce the burden for the merchant.
And it's also good for Pluxee, both paper and digital.
Maybe an additional question, on the French market. So could you comment on the competitive environment in France in the meal and food segment?
Viktoria?
So the competitive environment in France, in meal and food, is very dynamic. There's a lot of players, 12 players, who are today with the, with the Central of Scientia Registered. A very dynamic market with a lot of product innovation. We are also very strong with our entity in France, in meal and benefits, but also in gift, also in CESU, which is the home services. So it's a very, I would say, multi-benefit market. The integration of these benefits with 2 client personas, HR clients and worker councils, creates for a lot of opportunities.
So we will continue with question from the room.
Hello. Yeah, Florian Gueritte from Varenne Capital Partners. My first question is on the commissions overall, like, UPI in India is free, Pix in Brazil is free, Visa, Mastercard, globally, might take rate kind of 1%-2%. In Europe, the debit commissions, credit card also, capped. So just going forward, how do you think about the regulation and the overall take rate for meal and food? Especially since you already benefit from so much tax benefits. So, I mean, the taxpayer is already paying for your business. The other one is, can you just give us a bit more detail on the indirect distribution partnerships, the kind of economics you do for with Santander, for example, for 25 years, I'm assuming it's much less profitable for you.
Do you focus on recruiting merchants to accept food and meal benefits, or recruiting SMEs and employers to roll out your benefit? Or is it a kind of two-way partnership?
I'm not sure that I you know understood your last point, but maybe to answer to your question regarding the distribution partnership and taking the example of Santander. So I will not give any you know any information, the commercial, you know, any precise figures. But be sure that it's at least as profitable as when we directly sell because we are using their distribution channel, so we do save costs, internal costs.
Usually when it is put in place, we pay, I mean, a setup fee, you know, a startup fee, and it can happen that we pay a fee all along the life of the contract, according to the volume brought by the partnership. The first question, maybe you want to take that one, Viktoria?
Yeah, I will take the question on take rates, because we are quite convinced that our take rates represent the value that we bring to the merchants. We bring traffic to the merchants, we bring recurring traffic, we bring consumers who have funds available, who often complete their meal benefit budgets with their own budgets. So we create a lot of value, and this is what's reflected in our commissions. And as I said, and we will come back to this later in the afternoon, we will create even more as we elevate our offers, as we give them more visibility on our consumer apps, and as we also help them with data to analyze their business.
Hi, I'm Estelle Weingrod from JP Morgan. Just a couple from me. On the 90% digitalized, could you just give us a number for France and remind us where else it's not yet fully digitalized? Any chance you could quantify roughly the size of meal and food only versus lifestyle benefits in terms of revenue? And just the last one, if there is any update in terms of timing, in terms of the regulation for the... We're waiting to hear back from the government. If you have any, what's your best guess there?
Okay.
Thank you.
So, regarding the 90%, I mean, in France, we are slightly above 70%, knowing that the market is at 60%. So we are ahead of the overall market, because we, we've not been waiting for a specific measure to accelerate on the digitization, because we truly believe in it. This is a way for us to bring more values to all our stakeholders. Regarding the, I missed, I mean, the second one, sorry, your point,
Ah, yes. No, this is, I mean, I mean, it's, it's, I mean, we don't communicate, we don't disclose, you know, the breakdown. And, and regarding the, the deadline, you know, for the digitization in France, it's 2026.
. There will be no more paper in 2026 in France. This is the plan.
Maybe a follow-up question on the full digitalization in France or similar shift from Stéphane. Do you assume in your FY 2026 margin target, the full digitalization of the French market?
So the answer is what we consider is that we're gonna be close to the full digitization in France by 2026.
So maybe another question from the webcast from Manu Mohan. So what gives you confidence to accelerate growth to 7%-9% CAGR for the market, compared to the 7.5% CAGR achieved historically? Has the market changed structurally to enable such a growth?
So 7%-9%, right, it's a range, and there's a number of scenarios behind each hypothesis that underlies this range. So there's the scenario is basically supported by assumptions on active employers, and there's a lot of nuance to that, and there are different scenarios. There's, of course, assumptions around inflation rates, and there's assumptions around penetration rate. And we do believe that on many of these, there is scenarios, like we say, we were growing at 7.5% over the past three years, seven to nine. So when we are at the higher scenarios, these three factors tend to be on the higher end of the cursor. And again, on the penetration rate, digitalization for us is going to move the cursor.
Hello. Two questions for me, Julien Richer from Kepler Cheuvreux. The first one, back on the take rate, can we have more granularity on how your take rate evolved over the last few years, including the new verticals you launched or the new features you launched, plus the penetration of the SME, the SME market? And second question, could you please give us the share of your revenue that is linked to government regulation, please? Thank you.
So regarding the take rate evolution, so we'll come back to this, you know, during the financial presentation. What I would say is that we don't communicate, you know, we don't disclose any specific detail product by product. And by the way, it's very specific, you know, market by market. And regarding the share of revenue, which is linked to the, I mean, favorable regulation, what I shared with you in my introduction is that 83% of our business is employee benefits related. So this is what we could consider as being as relying on specific regulation.
So from the webcast from several analysts, maybe to come back on the evolution of the regulatory environment outside of France. So could you also please update us on the meal voucher regulation development in Brazil? And as a follow-up question, in which extent the take-up rate has benefited over the last quarter from the ban of negative client commission in Brazil, do you see a risk from the implementation of qualified open loop?
Okay. So, regarding, I mean, the second question, I think that we'll come back to this during the financial presentation again. You know, the impact of this new regulation on our performance in Brazil and the overall performance of Pluxee. And regarding the meal voucher regulation in Brazil, I mean, the most recent development, Viktoria, maybe you want to say a few words.
So, end of August, the decision has been made to ban discounts, the negative client commissions, and also cashback. So this has been actually quite positive for us, and, and we will come back to this in the later section. And second, question that have come up in this context is portability and interoperability, and these two points are now off the table. So that's where we are in Brazil.
Yes, good afternoon. Mourad Lahmidi, BNP Paribas Exane. At some point during the presentation, you mentioned that you were in a tight race to become number two in France. So I'm just wondering, what's your market share in France today, and what was it, let's say, three to five years ago?
You know, when we said so, I mean, we are talking about the overall employee benefits market in France. Viktoria said it very clearly in her presentation. You know, in France, not only we have the meal benefit, but the gift benefit is very important. There is a mobility, there is the holiday voucher, there are, you know, many other benefits, in which or for which, Pluxee is strongly operating in. And this is when we consider the whole employee benefits market, that we can claim to be in the tight race to be number two on this market.
... Maybe to conclude, a last question from the webcast from Ed Young. You have given your SME split by number for both clients and merchants, so could you give it by revenue? Second question, on regulatory dynamics, can you give your view on the potential outcomes of French regulation?
I think that the second question, we answered it. I mean, again, I mean, we are quite positive regarding what is being discussed, you know, with the French government. So because it will modernize the system, hopefully, I mean, it will help us continue to reduce the under-penetration rate, you know, to target more and more SMEs. And regarding the first question, Viktoria?
Yes, so 23% of our revenues are with the SMEs, and this is what I've included in the prospectus.
Thank you very much, Viktoria, Aurélien. We will now have a short break, and I ask you to come back around 3:55 P.M. Thank you very much.
Welcome back, everyone. You have just heard from Viktoria about what's driving the market and how we are delivering for all our stakeholders, thanks to our powerful commercial engine. Thierry and Anish have provided some great example on the local implementation of our global strategy. Now we are going to take you to take a closer look at the key enablers to our strategy. In a moment, you will hear from Gabriel Rotella, our Chief Information Officer, and Said Layadi, our Digital Factory Director, on our best-in-class scalable technology capabilities. Technology is enabling us to drive growth, efficiency, and innovation, and using AI and machine learning, among others, help us to develop new products and better serve our clients, our merchants, and our consumers.
Then you will hear from Laure Pourageaud, our Chief Human Resources Officer, on how we are attracting, developing, and retaining talent for our own growth strategy. After that, Béatrice Bihr, our General Counsel, will take you through our sustainability commitments. Our strategy is CSR by design, and we have also a clear net zero action plan. As part of this, Burçin Reşsamoğlu, our U.K. CEO, will provide some color on our best-in-class diversity, equity, and inclusion approach in the U.K., which is directly feeding our product innovation. Then I will be back later to take you through our strategy in more detail, as well as our approach to M&A. With that, let me hand over to Gabriel and Said.
Thank you, Aurélien. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Gabriel Rotella, Chief Information Officer. I am going to present you our digital and tech capabilities. Our goal has and always will be to leverage technology and innovation to create value, and this value is generated in three different ways. First, generating business growth and top-line impacts. We do this by ensuring best-in-class digital products and personalized programs delivered in the fastest time possible, sometimes in a matter of days or weeks. Second, boosting operational efficiency and cost reductions. This is achieved through standardization, automation, and industrialized ways of working. And third, being a trusted partner, particularly when it comes to cybersecurity and sustainability. To reach these goals, we have made significant investments over the last five years to build strong capabilities. Today, we have one platform architecture that is cloud and API-based.
It also includes data, payment capabilities, and innovative technologies like AI to deliver best-in-class digital products. We have our own digital factories operating under lean, Agile methodology. My colleague, Said Layadi, will cover this. We have strong, standardized cybersecurity tools and processes across the world. We have great digital talent, which is our most important asset, and finally, a strong governance and a global operating model. Let me focus on a few of these topics, starting with our One Platform architecture. Our One Platform architecture is about a converging roadmap of solutions to serve our clients, consumers, and merchants across their journey with us.... This journey goes from acquisition and onboarding to payment processes and customer care. We do this by leveraging modular architecture, combining our own digital assets with best-in-class third-party solutions like SAP, Salesforce, Workday, or Microsoft.
We define target solutions across the different architectural layers, from iteration services or front-end solutions at the top, to infrastructure and security at the bottom. For us, sharing and industrialization are the keys to reducing time to market for product delivery, optimizing costs, and increasing security levels. This architecture is built under cloud and API-based principles. All new assets are cloud-native solutions, and we have already migrated 50% of our legacy solutions to the cloud. Today, every country has implemented the same cybersecurity tools to protect, detect, and respond. We have delivered 28 multi-country solutions and have a very clear implementation roadmap. This architecture also allow us to integrate acquisitions and very rapidly and effectively into our digital ecosystem. Let's look closer at the second layer, our digital payment systems. Our digital payment platform is built exactly under the same architectural principles.
It combines the best partner solutions and our assets to deliver the latest and high-performing payment features. Its modularity allow us to implement the right features according to country needs and deliver new product programs in record time. We have already integrated our digital payment platforms across our key markets, and we will continue to roll out as a key aspect of the client, consumer, and merchant offer. Let me share with you a very concrete example. Austria did not have a mobile payment solution in place to meet the requirements of an upcoming Austrian Post tender offer. We were able to rapidly integrate and plug in our pay, payment platform to our Austrian ecosystem, adding our existing digital mobile payment capabilities, including Android Pay and Apple Pay, in just four months. And then we also roll it out to a larger consumer base.
Now, let's look at our global data platform, in which the very best data analytics are integrated to support our wider commercial offer. The platform is built on the latest generation of Azure data services, including generative AI and machine learning. With a distributed model based on country clusters, this platform allow us to fully respect GDPR regulation and ensure proximity with our markets to deliver the best value data analytics use cases. This platform has been rolled out in most of our countries, integrating more than 180 different data sources, and 65 data analytics use cases have been programmatically delivered in fiscal year 2023. Let me highlight one great example. Our data team worked hand in hand with merchant experts in Belgium to collect merchant and consumer transactions data from our systems.
Thanks to this, we deliver a solution that enhances consumer and merchant experience by better driving consumer traffic and reinforcing our merchant network. In this case, the algorithm identifies a lack of online offer. Our teams were then able to respond by adding 5,000 new online merchants, and it also identifies a need to improve the merchant journey, especially among small and medium merchants. Thanks to the improvements made, which reduced the time taken to onboard the merchants, the Belgian team was able to meaningfully increase the share of small and medium merchants. We are now replicating this solution in other markets, with local data resulting in various business-enhancing outcomes. We are also able to continuously integrate new and innovative technologies, such as OpenAPI, robotic process automation, generative AI, into our digital ecosystem to deliver value and create further efficiencies.
12 countries have already implemented OpenAPI services, like client ordering, meal delivery, platform connection, merchant reimbursement, and consumer onboarding. We are implementing robotic process automation to manage purchase-to-pay processes, while 10 countries have also using bots to enrich customer care experience. We are also increasing our investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning, given the strong potential for our business. We have already developed data analytics use cases. We also estimate that generative AI will reduce development costs by around 15%, and we will use AI to reinforce cybersecurity by increasing the level of prevention and detection. Finally, we were the first in our industry to implement employee benefits programs under blockchain technology. I am now going to hand over to my colleague, Said, to talk about the development component of our tech, with a focus on our digital factories.
Thanks, Gabriel, and hello, everyone. Have you heard from Viktoria and Gabriel? We are enriching our multi-benefit platform to meet the needs of clients, consumers, and merchants. Digital software is a key component of this, and we operate a digital factory model under lean and agile principles. This allows us to meet our production goals in a distributed way across our countries. It also improves our time to market and our competitive position using incremental, interactive work sequences and continuous release to innovate in an industrialized way. We have built a global way of working to continuously enhance our processes. The focus was on pushing the culture of automation, measurement, and sharing to remove constraints based on facts and metrics. Thanks to our data capability, we have a standardized approach to drive better decision-making, to identify opportunities to improve it.
Thanks to predictable, auditable, and measurable metrics, we have reached a high level of stability and capacity to deliver quality of service. And thanks to the sustainable efficiency embedded at every stage of the software lifecycle, we are ready to accelerate and scale. The main objective of our digital factory is to establish global governance, increase productivity, optimize, optimize costs, scale across several units, automate our processes, and decrease our software carbon footprint by adopting green software engineering. Green or sustainable software limits energy consumption and has a minimal environmental impact. We have implemented concrete example. Our Keep the Light Off program for non-production environment have resulted in a 30% decrease of energy consumption. While the process for exchanging messages in binary code rather than text for a range of systems, including payments and with third parties, has decreased related energy consumption by 60%.
We are building a trusted ecosystem of people, standard tools, and best practices. We are proud of the huge transformation we are managing, and the fundamentals are there. We are decreasing time, effort, and underlying costs to be more efficient to deliver value. We have lowered our global cost by 12% for the same scope, while increasing the performance of our deliveries by 2x and have a fully automated non-regression test for all global components. We are also able to ensure a higher level of standardization in multi-country context, with a seamless experience and personalization using composable architecture. In simple terms, this is a design pattern that allows developers to create reusable components to build application quickly and more easily. This pattern has been gaining popularity in recent years as businesses strive to reduce the time needed to develop and deploy new application.
By using a common design system, common components, and a common data dictionary, we are able to deliver a high quality product that still offers a high level of flexibility and scalability. The rollout of the new Pluxee brand across 31 countries was a great opportunity to demonstrate our capabilities. Our entry door to the digital ecosystem, or ED, is our constellation of more than 30 websites, including our corporate one. Each one is configured for each country, but with a consistent look and feel, designed and built using our lean agile framework. We are able to industrialize our Pluxee website in six months, providing the team with more than 40 building blocks to create their website in a drag-and-drop manner, and to deploy the result in few minutes. In less than three months, 31 countries were able to completely rebrand their front end.
Let me hand back to Gabriel to talk about what we are doing in cybersecurity.
Thanks, Said. Being a trusted partner is another key pillar of our strategy, and cybersecurity is central to this. Several actions have been carried forward in this area. We have defined and implemented the same roadmap, guidelines, and processes across all countries. We have implemented the same state-of-the-art cybersecurity tools everywhere, coordinated at global level. And last but not least, we defined the principle of cybersecurity by design in order to tackle security matters from day one of every project. It is important to note that cybersecurity is not just there to prevent attacks and defend our assets and company. It also create clear competitive advantages versus our competitors. Tender offers have been won thanks to our cybersecurity standards. From the very beginning of our transformation journey, we decided to build a strong global tech team, underpinned by a network of experts.
That's why we have recruited and promoted experienced tech leaders, including senior software engineer experts, PhDs, and certified leaders with strong industrial experience like Said, as well as specialists in data, cybersecurity, and architecture. In our regions and major countries like Brazil, France, and Belgium, we have recruited new talents or promoted internal ones. We have also reinforced and internalized key tech competencies. Internalization for us is key to keeping our core business knowledge, and we have increased our internal staff by 50% in the last three years. Through this internalization process, we also enlarge the competencies that our teams have in areas like DevOps, quality assurance, Agile, architecture, data, cyber, and cloud. Regarding our global operating model, we have defined a strong governance that works hand in hand with countries, regions, and other corporate functions to drive and execute Pluxee's strategy.
A key step was verticalizing the IT function to ensure consistency in our decision-making process. At the same time, we globalized our teams with a distributed model, meaning that we are not centralizing all in a single place, but distributing in country clusters to ensure proximity with our markets while sharing assets and increasing efficiency. We have set a target that at least 70% of our technology assets must have a multi-country usage in fiscal year 2026. To finish, our clear vision and strong governance are key success factors to ensure we have a focused tech investment strategy with disciplined management of our tech budgets. We have invested EUR 550 million in OpEx and CapEx in technology over the last three years, with a focus on driving growth, boosting efficiency, being a trusted partner, and executing an ROI-oriented IT roadmap.
In addition to this, given the progress in transforming our IT backbone, we have and will continue to increase our investment in innovative and easy-to-use, integrated, multi-benefit solutions to our consumers, clients, and merchants. In fiscal year 2021, these solutions represented only 30% of our spends. This figure reached 60% in fiscal year 2023, and we expect this to increase in the coming years. So our further investments will be deployed under the following guidelines: 70% of tech CapEx will be spent on customer-facing solutions, including multi-benefits, payment, data, CRM, and marketing automation. 70% of tech CapEx will be allocated to multi-country capabilities. And we will limit our total annual investments to the equivalent of 10% of our revenues, in which tech investments represent 90%. So value generation, growth, and efficiency, these are and will continue to be our obsession.
Thank you for your attention, and I will now hand over to my colleagues, Laure Pourageaud, Béatrice Bihr, and Burçin Resşamoğlu, to deep dive on people and sustainability. Thank you very much.
Hello. Thank you, Gabriel. My name is Laure Pourageaud, and I am Pluxee's Chief Human Resources Officer. My job, and the job of the human resources team, is to ensure we have everything in place to support Pluxee's profitable growth by attracting, developing, retaining the right talent in Pluxee. As a global leader in employee benefits and engagement, it's also crucial that we practice what we preach. We innovated more than one year ago, launching a clear new employee value proposition at Pluxee to attract the right talent. We have embedded Pluxee's response to the HR megatrends that Aurélien and Viktoria presented earlier in our employee value proposition. This means that we are demonstrating and experiencing our Pluxee offering every day.
Our employee value proposition is about positively impacting the employee experience of tomorrow, matching personal growth with Pluxee's, and inspiring others by taking inspiration from new perspectives. I'm going now to focus on how we are attracting, developing, and retaining talent at Pluxee.... Thanks to our clear value proposition and our Pluxee employer brand, we are successfully attracting the right talent. More than 1,000 new team members embraced this opportunity in fiscal year 2023, reinforcing mainly our IT, product, digital marketing, and sales team. To be attractive as an employer, you need to be visible, and we are extremely proactive. We use multiple channels to engage about talent marketing, talent acquisition, and the candidate journey at Pluxee.
As part of this outreach, we hosted a Pluxee Social Media Day to reinforce our positioning and awareness, bringing together more than 1,500 attendees to an innovative global live webinar. Thanks, in part, to this event, we have increased our LinkedIn followers by 40% this year. Our in-house global talent acquisition team also ensures we are aligned with global best practice and standardized recruitment methodology across Pluxee. We offer a fully digital onboarding journey to our new joiners, allowing rapid immersion even before employment formally begins. Once recruited and onboarded, the next stage is to empower and support our employees, providing them with regular opportunity to learn and to grow. 100% of our teams are eligible for annual people review and personal development plans. We also clearly define succession planning to ensure business continuity and career development visibility.
Last year, our Pluxee team members had, on average, the opportunity to access more than 76,000 hours of training. This includes personalized training, as well as access to a multidisciplinary and language learning innovative platform. We are also focused on supporting wider strategic goals. You heard from Gabriel on how data is transforming our business to better understand the needs of clients, consumers, and merchants. More than 80% of all employees have completed core modules from our Pluxee Data Academy so far, helping everyone to understand and contribute to our best-in-class data approach. At Pluxee, we are convinced that we must create opportunities to learn by doing, encouraging our teams to dive in while providing the right guidance on their paths.
As an example, our Talent Booster Program gives emerging leaders the chance to develop and then pitch a strategy addressing real-world business challenges to an internal jury with the opportunity to roll out the plan. Developing our people is a key driver of maintaining high employee engagement at Pluxee and, consequently, retention levels. In 2023, the employee retention rate stood at 89%, while our employee Net Promoter Score of 35.9 puts us significantly above the industry benchmark. In addition to our employee value proposition, our developing culture, these satisfaction levels are supported by two other key factors: the quality of our management, thanks to a yearly customized, innovative digital program for our leaders, and a fully digital employee experience, thanks to the implementation of a comprehensive global HR system. This makes processes more accessible, user-friendly, standardized, and therefore, much more meaningful and impactful.
We have also established our common foundation for employee benefits. Introduced in 2023, this provides all Pluxee employees across the globe with a minimum benefits package of parental and care leave, life insurance benefits, and access to support via an assistance hotline. And naturally, we roll out and continue to enrich employee benefits and engagement solutions from the Pluxee product range to our own employees. In conclusion, we are attracting, recruiting, developing, and retaining the right talent to support and deliver profitable growth at Pluxee. Our high levels of engagement results from rich legacy as part of the Sodexo family, a company with a culture focused on people. This is part of our identity and our DNA today, and we will continue building on these values as we start our new chapter as a pure player.
I am now going to hand over to Béatrice to talk through our commitment to deliver a positive CSR impact. This is another key part of our appeal to current and potential employees. This includes our work to build and promote equal opportunities, creating an inclusive working environment for our future and existing employees, who today are made up of 50 different nationalities in 31 countries, speaking 29 languages. It includes our work to ensure the highest standards of ethics and integrity in everything we do. We are proud to have been awarded Best Place to Work in Romania, in Turkey, and India, a Gold Investor in People Award in the U.K., as you will hear from Burçin, and a Super Company for Women in Mexico, among others. Béatrice, the floor is you.
Thank you, Laure, and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Béatrice Bihr. I'm Pluxee's Group General Counsel. As part of my responsibilities, I oversee ESG action and performance. As an introduction, it is important to recall that Pluxee has strong sustainability foundations since it has contributed to Sodexo roadmap over the last 14 years. On its own, Pluxee defined its material ESG target back in 2020. This target is focused on four areas aligned with its specific business activities. In 2022, Pluxee then defined its NetZ ero trajectory for 2035, and recently, in 2023, Pluxee independently joined the UN Global Compact to support the Sustainable Development Goals. So not only do we have a strong legacy, but we have also started to define our own path since 2020.
Both elements provide a great platform to deliver on our future commitments. As mentioned, Pluxee has defined ESG targets focused on four areas, all with specific KPIs. First, being a trusted partner. As Gabriel explained, we engage our team to develop technology and manage our data in a responsible and secure way. This is key to ensure business integrity and transparency. Among other initiatives, we have deployed a responsible business code of conduct training program. This program addressed topics such as sexual harassment, anti-corruption, anti-bribery, data privacy, and conflict of interest. In 2023, 94% of our qualified employees worldwide have already completed this annual training. Our goal is now to reach and maintain 100% participation in 2026. To achieve this goal, we have directly linked this KPI to our managers' compensation scheme. Second, our responsibility toward individuals.
We focus on improving the well-being of our employees and on promoting inclusion, equity, and diversity. This contributes to our employees' engagement. In terms of diversity, our historical target was to have between 40% and 60% women in management positions. At the end of 2023, this figure stood at 44% on average. This is a great result, and we continue to monitor this level closely. So now, today, in addition, we have set up a new target for leadership positions. In 2023, 39% of leadership positions were held by women. We plan to reach at least 42% by 2026. Next, our impact on local communities. We are committed to support and empower vulnerable populations. We have developed initiatives together with the Stop Hunger Foundation.
For example, we provided direct financial support in emergency in Turkey and Morocco. We are also working with the Stop Hunger Foundation to support fair access to job market for vulnerable women or young people through education, small business development, and mentoring. I'm proud to say that over 60% of our countries are participating to these initiatives. As Viktoria has explained, we are also strongly supporting local, small, and medium merchants. We drive consumer traffic, helping small and medium merchants to increase their visibility and revenue, which is, of course, also a win for our consumers, as they get a more diversified offer in their local area. In fiscal year 2023, Pluxee generated EUR 5.7 billion of business volume to its small and medium merchants. Our target is now to increase this figure up to EUR 8 billion in 2026.
Finally, in terms of environmental impact, our first priority to reduce carbon emissions generated by our operation and supply chain. We want to reach NetZ ero no later than 2035. We also want to influence our consumers and merchants with initiatives that value and reward those with the most sustainable practices. For example, in Brazil, Chile, Peru, France, and Bulgaria, our mobile applications are helping merchants to reduce their food waste. Now, let me provide you with a little more details on our 2035 NetZ ero trajectory. We have a clear action plan to reach NetZ ero across the value chain. This is an ambitious target that will be made possible with the full commitment of our employees, key stakeholders, and suppliers. Awareness is the first step.
As part of the awareness plan, in March 2023, a specific training module called Race to Net Zero has been rolled out. In fiscal year 2023, more than 2/3 of our employees have already been trained on our NetZ ero trajectory. We have also onboarded 90 suppliers, requiring them to measure, report, and reduce their own carbon emissions. As part of this effort, we addressed 100% of our transport suppliers in all countries. Next come governance and monitoring. All of our 31 Pluxee countries have validated their NetZ ero action plans. In each of our top 15 countries, a NetZ ero steering committee has been set up to ensure progress and success at local level. At group level, we have also recently recruited a dedicated global climate impact manager.
His mission is to focus on measuring and monitoring emissions to reach our NetZ ero target. Now, I am proud to mention that our NetZ ero trajectory just received SBTi validation in December 2023. Let's enter now into more details with respect to our operation and our corporate value chain, which in NetZ ero will be achieved by addressing carbon emission from our direct operation, Scope 1 and 2, as well as those from our corporate value chain, known as Scope 3. Our Scope 1 and 2 emissions are mostly made up of emission from our vehicle fleet and energy from our building. Among other action, we are progressively increasing the use of renewable electricity for our building. Our goal is to reach 100% of clean electricity by 2025.
In terms of Scope 3, we have developed a methodology aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. With regards to products and payment, you have already heard from Aurélien and from Gabriel that digitalization of our paper-based product is in progress. In terms of mobility, our primary focus is on commuting and business travel. We are revising our travel policy and working closely with our HR team to find ways to incentivize our employees to use increased mobility alternative, which are also part of our offering to our clients. Next is digital asset and IT. As mentioned by Gabriel, we are working on eco-design. We continue to migrate to the cloud, and we are extending the lifetime of our IT equipment. Finally, our efforts are also shared with our suppliers. We are requesting them to commit to measure and reduce their carbon emissions.
Now to my last slide, governance and processes. They are key when it comes to ESG. We are already working on a double materiality assessment to anticipate CSRD obligations from fiscal year 2025 onwards. We are currently selecting the European Sustainability Reporting Standards that are relevant to Pluxee's business. Next, we will use this assessment to onboard the relevant internal and external stakeholders to help us define more ambitious targets for fiscal year 2030. We are also putting in place ESG governance, supported by our future audit committee of the board of directors, who will be reviewing our ESG strategy. At group level, an ESG steering committee will be put in place shortly. Of course, our sustainability ambition will not be possible without the commitment of our country leadership.
To illustrate this commitment, I am pleased to welcome our U.K, CEO, Burçin Resşamoğlu, who has been driving sustainable business within our industry. But before that, I want to share with you that Burçin has recently been recognized in the top ten of the Yahoo Finance Hero Award. So congratulations, Burçin, and the floor is yours.
Thanks, Béatrice, for your kind words as well. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Burçin Resşamoğlu. I have been leading Pluxee UK for the last five years. Today, I am proud to share an overview of our responsible business practice in the U.K. Our activity is predominantly in the benefits, recognition, and rewards market, which is our employee experience proposition, helping employers to attract, engage, and retain talents.... Providing the best employee experience starts from within, and our strategy is focused on growing diverse and highly engaged teams to design and deploy the most innovative and sustainable products. As employee engagement experts, we embed diversity, equity, and inclusion, not only in our people strategy and culture, also in our business and product innovation. As part of our people programs, some of the key initiatives, like job shadowing, mentoring of women, has contributed to genuine gender equality at all levels.
In 2023, women's representation in the U.K. leadership team reached 50%. We also strongly encourage our employees to participate in volunteering programs focused on local issues, delivering a positive impact on the community. Our best-in-class diversity, equity, and inclusion, integrated into our employee proposition, has been one of the major contributors to our high engagement levels and other strong people KPIs. It also underpins our recognized product innovation and client offer, playing a crucial role on our ESG journey. Our Pluxee offerings include products for employee well-being and sustainability, which are key to helping our clients contribute to their own commitments. One of the example is Cycle to Work offer, which supports employees in purchasing a bike to commute to the office and provide pre-tax salary deduction at a discounted price.
This also contributes to Net Zero commitment of our company and of our clients by addressing carbon emissions reductions from direct operations. Another example from well-being programs, Smart Pay, a financial well-being tool that makes unexpected home and essential purchases more affordable through salary deductions. The Employee Assistance Programme, the most favorite in Pluxee UK, which proactively supports employees managing their mental well-being. All these elements have been contributing to our overall responsible business practices. Today, we are really happy to share that our efforts have been recognized with a gold award by Investors in People, which puts Pluxee UK in the top 17% of all companies in the market. This recognition emphasizes not just our commitment to excellence, but also our ongoing efforts to make a positive impact on our employees and the overall business community.
In conclusion, our strategic focus on people with diversity, equity, and inclusion has cultivated high employee engagement of 88%, empowering our workforce and fueling innovative solutions for our clients. All these commitments, in return, significantly enhance our client experience, solidifying our position as the number one provider of B2B rewards in the U.K. market. Thank you for your attention. Now, we will have 15 minutes break. Thank you.
Welcome back, everyone. As you have seen, through our presentations today, we have the right platform to drive our future growth with a combination of global scale and deep local roots, and this is a major competitive advantage. At global level, we have the scale to serve global clients. We are well-diversified across geographies. We leverage shared investment, shared resources, and we have access to the right M&A opportunities and partnership to support our growth. While at local level, we offer on-the-ground expertise with strong positions in the market, we have access to a dense affiliate merchant network, and we can deploy large in-field client and merchant sales team. As a leader in employee benefits and engagement, our strategy is to further boost the performance of our platform to support our continued profitable growth. So now let's return to the strategy I introduced at the beginning.
As a reminder, we will reinforce our leadership in meal and food, and we will augment our wider employee, employee benefit offer. This is about shifting from a catalog of products to providing a truly holistic and personalized employee experience.... In order to do so, we must maintain the focus on our talent and reinforce our best-in-class tech capabilities. We will also deploy our capital for M&A in a targeted and disciplined manner, and I will come back to this shortly. All this is underpinned by our strong CSR commitment and our overall goal to have a positive impact on our ecosystem. Now, let me share with you the six strategic initiatives. Capturing an outsized share of our large and growing market in a profitable manner requires us to continue to develop and improve our offer.
Our first three initiatives are about continuously improving our offering to clients and consumers through innovation, further engaging with merchants, and scaling up our employee reward and recognition, and engagement platform. This fuels the next two initiatives that will boost our business volume and revenue growth by both acquiring new client and unlocking the full potential of our existing ones. Our final initiative focuses on how we will drive further margin improvement through efficiency gains and operating leverage. Each initiative has a clear action plan and targets for fiscal year 2026. So let's look at this one by one. First, we will elevate our offer to clients and consumers by both addressing their needs through a wide range of benefits and by improving the perceived value of our offers.
Thanks to our proven Pluxee playbook, we can programmatically roll out new employee benefits in our existing countries, wherever it makes sense to do so. On a case-by-case basis, we will also leverage partnership to strengthen our product portfolio, rapidly integrating new offers into our open digital ecosystem. We will also leverage our data more and more to help our clients make informed decisions and better manage their employee benefits program and deploy more personalized campaigns to consumers. To ease the experience of our HR clients and our consumers, we will deliver a fully integrated offer via one administrative platform, one consumer app, and one payment card. All the benefits under one Pluxee brand. Our 2026 target is to maintain our business volume net retention rate above 100%. This reflects our confidence in our ability to retain and grow our existing clients through upsell and cross-sell.
We will also deliver our integrated multi-benefit offer in at least 20 countries, up from seven today. Our next initiative is about reinforcing our win-win partnership with merchants. We have a strong merchant value proposition, which is based on a seamless affiliation and merchant management process, payment option to fit merchant preferences, and access to large volumes of consumers with available spend. Being part of such a network is seen as a valuable asset, and this is true for large retail chains, but even more important for the small merchants that are key actors in the local economy. And for us, our merchant network is a key driver of our clients select a benefit provider, as well as their satisfaction, and it is also key driver of our revenues.
That's why we are constantly expanding it, and we will reinforce our merchants' sales and marketing teams as part of this initiative. We are also boosting merchant revenues by enhancing the merchant experience, adding more services such as express reimbursement, insurance, and access to marketplaces. We work with merchants in digitizing their business, leveraging on our merchant app, which improves efficiency and reduces transaction costs. In addition, we provide merchant with data and analytics to connect with the right consumer and help them drive the business. Elevating our merchant value proposition is the best way to reinforce our partnership and create more value for all. So for this initiative, we have two targets for 2026. First, reaching more than EUR 8 billion in small and medium merchant business volume in 2026 from EUR 5.7 billion today.
And second, having 65% of merchants taking at least one additional value-added service. The next initiative is scaling up in employee engagement and reward and recognition to access the wider addressable market. Again, this is a large and growing market because all over the world, companies need to attract and retain talent by offering an enhanced employee experience beyond collective benefits. We will continue to invest in our state-of-the-art platform to serve our clients, leveraging our strong existing foundation in the U.K. and U.S.... To give you an example, our U.S. business recently won a major contract with a well-known convenience store chain to deliver a recognition program for 70,000 of their frontline staff.
Beyond investing in our digital products, we are enriching our offers through partnerships, as we did with the Happiness Index, a neuroscience-powered platform which provides real-time, data-driven insight to promote health, well-being, and sustainability at work. It started as a successful deployment in Romania and in the U.S., and this year we will extend this partnership worldwide, heading to Brazil next. In addition to investment and partnerships, we will continue to establish Pluxee as a thought leader on employee engagement and experience. Finally, M&A is a lever we can activate here, and I will come back to our approach later. By 2026, we will deploy around 10%-15% of our annual CapEx spend in this area. Let's move to our next initiative, directly related to the acquisition of new clients, thanks to our powerful commercial engine.
Our focus is on applying a segmented and personalized approach at all stages of the client decision journey. Combined with clear targets and incentives and a proven performance management system, our objective is to improve our conversion rate, particularly with larger account prospects. We have set the target to generate at least EUR 1.3 billion of business volume every year from new clients. Our Pluxee brand is a tremendous asset, encouraging clients to take a fresh look at us while reinforcing perception as an innovative, a digital, and a trusted HR partner. Finally, small and medium businesses represent significant untapped potential, given the low penetration rate. This segment also represents a significant number of new clients to acquire and to manage. Therefore, we are streamlining our commercial engine for maximum efficiency. We are optimizing the cost of acquisition through a self-service client journey and a simplified offering.
We will continue to actively target opportunities for new distribution partnerships, because this is another great driver for signing small and medium businesses, as you've seen in our partnership with Santander. By 2026, small and medium enterprises should represent at least 30% of our business volume coming from new clients. In addition to acquiring new clients, we will also maintain our efforts to unlock the full potential of our existing ones. The first pillar is the face value increase, advising our clients on how they can optimize their cost while maximizing purchasing power for their employees. This means leveraging benchmark data and consumer analytics to actively advise our clients through specialized sales strategies and proactive digital campaigns. Our target is to generate more than EUR 3 billion of cumulative additional business volume coming from face value growth over the next three years.
The second element is cross-selling, leveraging our broad benefits portfolio to increase the business we do with our clients. Between fiscal year 2021 and 2023, we generated an additional EUR 528 million of business volume. Our elevated value proposition to our clients will help us optimize our pricing in the coming years. Finally, at consumer level, we will increase activation through features such as top-up loyalty program and discount offers, hence driving additional consumer revenue. India is a great example of both cross-selling and opt-in. 30% of our multi-benefit clients give access to four or more benefits to their employees, who are actively using a range of other services like the Pluxee Delights Premier Discount platform, as mentioned by Anish. By 2026, we will generate 40% of our operating revenue growth from non-meal and food benefits. Driving profitability is our sixth strategic initiative.
Our target is to deliver 250 basis points of EBITDA margin improvement by the end of fiscal year 2026. We will activate a range of levers. First, operating leverage. Our business model is highly scalable, and more business volume equals further margin improvement. We have outlined how we will continue to grow business volumes, and this will directly contribute. Second, our one platform architecture. Standardization, automation, and industrialized ways of working will continue to boost operational efficiency and further reduce costs. Third, we will pursue our efforts to digitize our business volume to reach 100%. Fourth, our operating model. We will fully capture the optimization potential of global technology infrastructure, of our global competence center, and our global shared resources. Finally, rationalizing our activities. We've talked about how we are expanding our range of employee benefits programmatically.
We are also constantly assessing our product and country performance to identify and act when returns are not in line with expectations. Our strategic agenda will be laser-focused on delivering on this efficiency gain. So we've just reviewed together the six strategic initiatives that will support the execution of our overall strategy. As mentioned, we will also leverage on three key enablers while driving our strategy: talent, tech capabilities, and M&A strategy. You have already heard from my colleagues about the first two, so I will now focus on M&A. We have identified and integrated the right acquisition and partnerships in recent years. We expanded our global employee engagement and recognition offer in the U.K. with Motive.com and in the U.S. with Inspirus. We created global agreements with online marketplaces like Uber Eats and Just Eat to expand our merchant network.
We acquired a majority stake in Wedoogift, which is now Glady, the leading gift benefit provider in France. We established a game-changing strategic partnership with Santander in Brazil. We have a clear M&A track record, and we are ready to capitalize on this experience and go even further in the coming year. We have defined a targeted and disciplined M&A approach that ensures that acquisitions support our strategic intent. We are therefore assessing targets that will add business volumes to increase Pluxee's market share, broaden our offering and product portfolio, and/or enrich our tech capabilities by partnering with innovative companies. In terms of investment criteria, we are working on opportunities providing Pluxee with a compelling strategic and financial rationale, scalable asset with potential for synergies, additional client and merchant base, and a strong people and culture fit with Pluxee.
We have a dedicated and highly experienced M&A team in place that blends experts operating at global and local level. We have a robust pipeline of relevant targets, with the plan to deliver a mix of bolt-on and build-up acquisition in the next three years. This is our strategic roadmap. We have well-defined ambition and 6 strategic initiatives, all with specific KPI to help us track our progress. I am now going to hand over to Stéphane, who will comment on our recent performance and our 2024 and midterm financial targets.
Hello, everyone. I am Stéphane Lhopiteau, CFO of Pluxee, and I am very pleased to be taking over finance activities as Pluxee becomes a standalone listed company. We are now going to see how the Pluxee business combines what we have seen this afternoon: a highly attractive business model, robust market positions, and a clear and executable growth strategy. Meaning, we are going to see how all this translates into compelling financial performance. Before diving into my presentation, let me give you a quick overview of its content. First, we will focus mainly on Pluxee's performance over the last three years, with our fiscal year closing at the end of August as a reminder. Our figures were extracted from the Sodexo's account, with some evolutions related to Pluxee new reporting framework, as introduced in the Sodexo press release and presentation on December nineteenth.
In addition, please note that our figures would have been slightly different had we operated on a standalone basis. Second, we will then turn to Pluxee's future, looking at guidance, and I will also share with you, throughout the presentation, some information to guide you about the impact going forward of our new standalone situation. That being said, let's start right now with an overview of Pluxee's attractive financial profile. Firstly, Pluxee benefits from a strong prepaid model, as explained earlier in the presentation. We also have a solid growth track record, further improved by successfully leveraging macro tailwinds on inflation and rising interest rates, while benefiting from some natural foreign exchange hedging mechanism. Next, we have diversified our revenues across geographies and products and services. This diversification spread our risk and enable us to capture growth across a broader field of opportunities.
Our track record demonstrates our ability to adapt and thrive in different and changing environments. Furthermore, our high and improving margin, as well as our outstanding cash generation, are key strengths of our financial profile. We are continuously investing in growth, but also improving and optimizing our operation to achieve efficiency and maximize profitability. Lastly, our low-risk balance sheet is a result of both our prepaid business model as well as our healthy post-spin-off capital structure. This provide us with a solid foundation to start our journey as a standalone company. With this in mind, where do we stand in terms of concrete numbers? As, Aurélien mentioned, we have been through a transformation journey, cementing our position as a leader. We have continuously improved our business model, generated strong business momentum, and we are confident in our ability to deliver on our strategic roadmap.
Our financial figures for fiscal year 2023 showcase our strong performance and growth trajectory. Our total revenues for 2023 amounted to close to EUR 1.1 billion. It represents a remarkable +25% organic growth on the previous year. This growth reflects our strong market position and our ability to capture new opportunities, supported by favorable inflation and interest rate trends. Moving on to our recurring EBITDA, we have achieved a significant milestone in 2023, with an absolute value of EUR 363 million and a strong 35% recurring EBITDA margin. This substantial margin improvement is the result of our strategic initiatives, especially through digitalization, our operational efficiency, the scalability of our business model, but also the accretive contribution from our float revenue.
Finally, our recurring free cash flow for 2023 stands at EUR 289 million, excluding a EUR 190 million one-off positive impact in Brazil from the change in regulation, with an underlying cash conversion as high as 80%. Going forward, our substantial cash generation will drive shareholder value creation, either through investment in growth opportunities or by strengthening our financial position and returning capital to shareholders. Such strong cash generation is intrinsic to our business model, supported by negative working capital. Let me take you through its mechanics. You can see on this page our three stakeholders, and at its center, our EUR 2.5 billion float as of end of 2023. It reflects the timing difference between the cash we receive from our HR clients and the repayment to merchants when employees spend their rights.
The float is core to our business, and it will naturally grow as business volumes develop, given our prepared model. Starting from the top, our business begins with a transaction with one of our HR clients. Pluxee receives balance sheet cash flows, in blue on the chart, from our HR clients when granting the right to spend to its employees, in yellow on the chart. Pluxee receives a client commission when such rights are issued, in green on the chart. Then, looking at the left-hand part of the slide, when the employee consumers shop at a merchant, they spend a benefit right, which Pluxee covers, reimbursing cash to the merchant. This will be net of the merchant commission Pluxee receives. Pluxee ultimately benefits from three core revenue streams, in green on the chart.
I have mentioned the client commission we earn when we issue rights, the merchant commission we earn when we pay back a merchant. The third revenue stream, in the middle of the page, stems from the interest income generated by our float reservoir, which is essentially cash kept at hand that we can invest while also strengthening our financial position. Our business model is a generator of cash. The cash flows going through our balance sheet, coupled with robust revenue streams, contribute to our solid financial standing. I will now take you through our revenue build-up in more details, introducing our key underlying drivers and how we generate business volume and revenue. Our business volume, and ultimately our total revenue, depend on a set of key operational drivers, which are listed on the left-hand side.
The impact of a new client win will therefore depend on its number of employees, on whether they will opt in to additional benefits, and on the face value of the benefit, et cetera. There are, therefore, number of factors we can work out when setting the business volume as a baseline for our revenue... Then from this business volume baseline, and while applying a commission rate reflecting the value we bring to clients and to merchants, we can book operating revenues. These are made of both client revenue, when the business volume is issued, and merchant revenues, when the business volume is reimbursed. As mentioned previously, there is a difference between the time of business volume issuance funded by our clients and the time when it is reimbursed to our merchants. In the meantime, the cash at hand is invested and produces interest-linked float revenue.
Last, this is further complemented in the other operating revenue section at the bottom by either adjacent revenue, not directly linked to business volume issued but sold in the same process, or by other revenue, mainly relating to other employee engagement solution, like reward and recognition or B2C complementary offers. With these basic principles of how our business operates in mind, let's move on to our recent performance, which has seen strong growth. Capitalizing on our position as a leader in the employee benefit and engagement market, Pluxee has seen over the last three years both business volumes and total revenues growing sharply. Our business volume issued, we call it BVI, has shown a consistent upward trend, and we strongly expect this growth to continue in the coming years.
Our BVI has increased from circa EUR 17 billion in 2021 to circa EUR 23 billion in 2023, mostly driven by higher benefit face value, but also by increasing client penetration, resulting in market share gains. Organically, it represents a growth of +10% in 2022 and +17% in 2023, with total BVI CAGR over 2021-2023, reaching +16%. Directly tied to this strong BVI evolution, our total revenues have delivered +20% annual growth over the last three years, ahead of our BVI growth, mainly thanks to the accretive impact of growth in float revenues. Total revenue hit a record in 2023, when organic growth reached +25%, taking it up to almost EUR 1.1 billion.
Overall, we have benefited from growing underlying demand, amplified by strong face value increase and by supportive macroeconomic conditions, thanks to higher inflation and rising interest rates, with float revenue benefiting from both factors and growing at an even faster pace. Let's now spend some time on these two indicators, BVI and revenues, starting with our key BVI growth drivers. In line with the past few years, we expect business volume growth to continue. It is key to understand that our growth does not depend on one single driver, but reflect the combination of several synergistic factors. Over the last three years, employee benefits BVI grew thanks to the following set of drivers.
Pluxee has successfully managed to grow the average face value to get it closer to the face value legal cap in each country, a legal cap which has been regularly increased by public authorities, given increasing inflation. We have delivered robust growth through the expansion of our portfolio and through cross-selling. We have also driven further growth through new client gains in line with our strategic initiatives. Considering the exchange rate dynamics, the foreign exchange impact and other reflects the appreciation of the Brazilian real and some change in scope related to the Wedoogift acquisition, now Glady. That's it for the business volume key drivers for growth. Let's look at the revenue growth momentum with first, a quick snapshot on 2023 total revenue. Our 2023 revenue growth illustrates the strong momentum Pluxee has enjoyed across all types of solution and geographies.
Our revenue growth was mostly driven by employee benefits, which accounts for 83% of total revenue, with +27% organic growth. Other products and revenue and services grew by +15%. This reflects the strength of our offering, as well as the expertise and focus of our teams. This growth has been supported by strong portfolio development and by our ability to attract and retain clients. The strong performance of other products and services was mostly driven by public benefits and notably two major contract wins in Austria and Romania. Looking at our geographical footprint, the ongoing positive momentum is not limited to a specific region, but such momentum is spread across all geographies with high double-digit organic growth. Continental Europe has been a steady contributor with buoyant growth in all major countries.
Our presence and expertise in this region have allowed us to capitalize on growth opportunities fueled by the strong economic environment. We have also seen solid portfolio growth and increase in average face value. We have been expanding our positions in Latin America with a particular focus on Brazil and Mexico, which are key markets in our industry. These markets continue to show strong growth potential, and we have successfully leveraged our global and local capabilities to capture opportunities in these regions. We are committed to sustain this momentum and to continue to drive growth in all geographies and across services. As already explained, total revenue includes both operating and float revenue, starting first with the momentum on operating revenue.
Our operating revenue has shown robust and continued growth over the last three years, reaching EUR 953 million in 2023, mostly driven by higher business volume issued and by the slight improvement in our take-up rate. Our strong operating revenue growth demonstrates the positive outcome resulting from the strategy implemented over the past years, notably around digitalization and increased commercial sales efficiency. Supported by our long experience in the employee benefits market, we are now delivering a take-up rate of circa 4.7% on operating revenue stream. On top of business volume development, such take-up rate is an important driver to manage our revenue while we provide more value to client and merchant networks. Beyond operating revenue, the dynamic has been even stronger on float revenue, a core part of our prepaid business model, which grew significantly last year.
The strong development of our business volume in the last three years, coupled with our prepaid business model, has translated into significant increase of our year-end float position. This float position is a net liability in the balance sheet. It is a resource providing cash at hand on the other side of the balance sheet. It has constantly increased over the last three years from EUR 2.1 billion in 2021 to EUR 2.5 billion in 2023, representing a CAGR of +9% between 2021 and 2023. As the associated cash is invested and forms a core part of our total revenue, this increasing amount of float has directly fueled our top-line growth, with float revenue showing an exponential growth of +85% CAGR over 2021 to 2023.
The strong upside in float revenue growth versus float growth comes from our key focus on carefully investing our float-related cash in compliance with a low-risk investment policy, while benefiting from a favorable economic environment with rising interest rates. As a point of reference, in 2023, our float revenue has more than doubled versus 2022, reaching nearly EUR 100 million. So yes, we are benefiting from economic tailwinds versus recent years, and that should be there for a certain period of time. Last, these float revenue streams provide with a natural hedge against foreign exchange fluctuation, as devaluation risk should be offset, in most cases, by high interest rates. After looking at revenue growth over the last three years, let's turn to where we stand as of Q1 in the current fiscal year 2024.
Our Q1 2024 metrics indicate a robust organic growth of +20% versus Q1 2023, testament to the strength of our cooperation and to the effectiveness of our strategy. Such strong organic growth was slightly reduced by a currency translation effect coming from Turkey, but the Turkish lira depreciation went hand in hand with higher interest rates, which almost offset the currency translation impact on revenue. All in all, we delivered +18% growth in Q1 2024. Our quarterly revenue reached EUR 266 million on the back of both continued solid growth in operating revenue and BVI and float increases regarding our float revenue component, which was also enhanced by higher interest rates in most countries versus Q1 2023. Each business segment has demonstrated resilience and contributed to the positive outcome for the quarter.
Employee benefits grew sharply, thanks to both face value increases and portfolio expansion. The other products and services segment delivered a steady performance despite a high comparison basis in Q1 2023, which benefited from major public benefits contracts in Austria and Romania. All geographic regions delivered strong growth, even continental Europe, despite the positive impact of such public benefit contracts the year before. Now, it's important to say that this quarter may not be fully representative of the full year.... Growth is expected to slow down in the coming quarters, notably the portion of growth related to float revenue, given the higher comparison basis with interest rates peaking in the last months. That being said, the dynamic observed in Q1 are the outcome of our overall strategy, and we are confident in our ability to meet our fiscal year 2024 targets.
Now that we have reviewed all details of business volume and revenue growth, let's move to our ever-improving recurring EBITDA margin. Over the past years, we have delivered significant margin improvement from an EBITDA perspective, increasing from circa 29% in 2021 to circa 35% in 2023. Pluxee has now reached a recurring EBITDA of EUR 363 million in 2023, versus EUR 209 million two years ago, thus representing an annual growth rate of +32%. We are confident in our capacity to continue to improve business profitability going forward, as we have done in recent years, thanks to, first, our dynamic and continuous investment in technology and digital capabilities, having significantly improved our operational efficiency. Second, our integrated platform, connecting various aspects of our operation and providing technological modules to secure the rollout of local digital solution.
Third, our operation in multiple countries, which allow us to leverage scale effect and product innovation, capturing new revenue opportunities while achieving cost efficiencies. Although we are a fast-growing company, the tight monitoring of our cost base across all geographies will remain at the heart of our operating model. Profitability improvement remains a key area of focus for us, and we aim at monitoring it carefully post-separation. Currently, based on fiscal year 2023 achievement, about 45% of our operating costs are related to our workforce, followed by external processing costs, which represents 30% of the OpEx, external SG&A, and Sodexo management fees and other reinvoicing, representing respectively 20% and 5% of the OpEx base in 2023.
The significant portion of external cost is directly linked to our fast-growing revenues, and internalization will be one area of improvement going forward to ensure cost efficiency and to develop even more in-house expertise. Post-spin-off, the Sodexo EUR 25 million management fees of 2023 will be replaced by a Pluxee headquarter cost standalone envelope of circa EUR 45 million in order to, first, support development and growth ambitions. Second, further develop Pluxee global function to drive and monitor operation in a synergistic way across regions and countries. And third, comply with all new standalone and listing requirements. Overall, our EUR 45 million Pluxee headquarter cost should represent 4% of our total revenue, and such ratio should be slightly optimized going forward as we deliver growth, since such costs are mainly fixed. Another key consideration in terms of cost-based analysis is that we operate in 31 countries.
Although there are synergies and scale effects to derive from our platform strategy, our business remains local in terms of both benefits usage as well as sales and marketing and support function. This requires a well-established local presence, hence the significant portion of SG&A in our cost base. From total revenues through EBITDA and cost overview, let's look at the rest of the Pluxee income statement down to net income. In a nutshell, we are performing well, and we enjoy a strong upward trajectory. We reached EUR 210 million in net profit in 2023, excluding the impact from the EUR 127 million provision for the French antitrust litigation that was booked further to the appeal court decision. We firmly contest the grounds of this decision and are going to the higher court of appeal, Court of Cassation.
EUR 210 million in 2023 is 19% above 2022, when we delivered a net profit of EUR 177 million. Except for this antitrust decision, OIE, meaning other operating income and expenses, were quite limited over time, reflecting mainly some COVID-related restructuring costs in 2021, some capital gains on disposal in both 2021 and 2022, and indemnity from the Hungarian state in 2022, and some preliminary one-off spin-off and rebranding costs in 2023 for circa EUR 20 million. Excluding the antitrust provision, our effective tax rates were temporarily reduced in the last three years, thanks to specific events. Conversely, going forward, our effective tax rate is likely to stabilize around 30%, with 2024 being quite specific as well, as such ETR should be slightly above because of corporate spin-off cost being unmatchable to taxable incomes from countries.
We are confident in our capacity to continue to grow our level of net income going forward, keeping in mind there will be a transition period, with 2024 being affected by specific items. First, in 2024, we will bear both Sodexo management fees and other reinvoicing for almost half of the year, and the ramp-up of our standalone cost. Second, our financial expenses should be slightly adjusted based on the new capital structure implemented. Third, we will support specific one-off transition costs fully related to the implementation of the spin-off project and Pluxee rebranding for an amount of circa EUR 60 million in 2024, while circa EUR 20 million were already incurred in 2023, each time recorded in OIE. After the income statement, the next section is going to be about our free cash flow analysis. We already have the EBITDA on this page.
The next key component to build our free cash flow being CapEx. We recognize the importance of investing strongly in tech to maintain and enhance our competitive position. This is emphasized by the steady growth of our CapEx, both in value and in percentage of revenue, with EUR 265 million cumulative CapEx between 2021-2023. We took benefit of the great momentum in our business to increase our CapEx, notably in 2023, by almost 50% versus 2022, reaching a peak of EUR 116 million. The major part of our CapEx is dedicated to products, IT, and data investment, and the move toward digitalization, with accumulated CapEx and tech OpEx commitment between 2021 and 2023, reaching circa EUR 550 million.
As indicated previously, we also intend to expand the size of our workforce and invest in future talents, with tech and data competencies ranking as first priorities to support our growth strategy. With a targeted yearly investment of approximately 10% of revenues for the next three years, of which 90% will be again dedicated to product, technology, and data, we intend to consolidate our market position and accelerate our development and growth as an independent entity. Combining CapEx with EBITDA, the next big piece needed to build the free cash flow is our working capital variances.
Overall, we have been able to deliver high performance in terms of recurring free cash flow over the last three years, reaching EUR 480 million of reported recurring free cash flow in 2023, including a EUR +190 million favorable one-off from change in the regulation in Brazil. In 2021, mainly, and 2022, for a residual part, working capital variances were, on the contrary, negatively hit by COVID consequences, which involved the gradual catch-up use of prepaid funds accumulated since fiscal year 2020, at a time when the expenses by the employee consumers, and therefore the repayment to merchants, were significantly postponed in many countries because of pandemic lockdowns. Even though our working cap variances can be hit by unpredictable events, one key strength of our business model is its strong negative working capital requirements, fully related to the float I explained previously.
As we deliver growth in business volume, we increase our negative working capital balance, adding more cash flow generation to our strong EBITDA. Last on this page, liquidity generated from operations, LGO, is an alternative performance measure we use to assess cash generation from countries, whatever the legal framework in such countries. Conversely, recurring free cash flow excludes restricted cash when local regulation requires such restrictions. To make it even more straightforward and to illustrate all the value behind our prepaid business model, let's see how such free cash flow can be assessed in terms of conversion from EBITDA. While restating on this page only the big one-off in Brazil for 2023, we have delivered a consistent upward trajectory in cash conversion over the years 2021 to 2023, recovering from the COVID impacts, which weighed significantly on 2021 cash conversion and partially in 2022.
Overall, our average cash conversion stands at 70% over the period, culminating at 80% in 2023, excluding the favorable one-off from Brazil. This positive trend reflects our scale, as well as our commitment to optimizing our level of working capital while ensuring a stable and well-targeted CapEx policy. After the income statement and the recurring free cash flow, I would like to walk you through our balance sheet, having you fully touch how our prepaid business model strengthens our financial profile. In this simplified balance sheet format, and my challenge is actually to make it simple. Yes, in this balance sheet format, totaling EUR 5.7 billion as of the end of 2023, the main component, which immediately strikes a reader, is what you have at the top.
As already explained, the float amounts come from the business volume issued, which corresponds under GAAP to a liability to clients or merchants, here named value in circulation and related payables. This is basically the cash in we get from our clients, net, of course, of what they still owe to us when collection is not immediate. At some point, such float, amounting to around EUR 2.5 billion as of August 2023, will also be used to reimburse merchants, but at the same time, it is constantly renewed by new business volume issuances. The balance of this float amount fully consists of cash in hand. The client and merchant liabilities, net of the related trade receivable at the top, are actually resources and represent a significant portion of our cash at hand, including the restricted cash that we need to keep aside, depending on some countries' regulations.
As shown in the cash breakdown at the bottom left, out of the Pluxee cash total, a portion is funded by the float position, i.e., the EUR 2.5 billion as of August 2023. This portion gives rise to interest income eligible for being booked with our revenue top line, as this is fully part of our business and global compensation from clients and merchant. On the other hand, the remaining portion of cash that is not related to float correspond to Pluxee's own cash or corporate cash, mainly arising from profits accumulated and kept within the group. As of August 2023, the amount of such own cash is up to EUR 588 million, calculated as the difference between total cash, i.e., circa EUR 3.1 billion, and the float-related portion of cash, i.e., circa EUR 2.5 billion.
Such corporate cash in hand is also invested, but the financial interest income derived from it is recorded bottom right as financial income within the financial result. To some extent, this view is important in terms of valuation for both the portion of cash that is already considered within our top line and EBITDA, and the portion of cash that can be considered as excess cash, fully available outside of our business cycle and independently valuable on the Pluxee balance sheet. Now, in terms of credit analysis and going through the rest of the balance sheet, the view should be slightly different. Thanks to its prepared business model, Pluxee's liquidity and credit positions are very strong.
In fiscal year 2023, Pluxee gross debt increased by EUR 610 million due to the debt pushdown, which was recorded against equity, leading to a reduction in net equity as of August 2023. This is an accounting point and has no bearing on our profit or our cash position. In terms of credit analysis, Pluxee gross debt as of August 2023 amounted to EUR 1.3 billion when cumulating all the borrowings lines. Our net debt position as of August 2023, deducting our cash balance, except restricted cash, which is not fully free for use because of some regulatory constraints related to float in some countries. So this net debt position is actually a net cash position of EUR 859 million.
This illustrates our financial strength and liquidity depth, and this provides us with a solid foundation to navigate any unforeseen challenges and to seize growth opportunities. It is a key indicator of our ability to meet our financial obligations and invest in future initiatives. Our positive net cash position demonstrates our prudent financial policy over the past years and our ability to generate sufficient cash flow to cover our financial obligations. We remain committed to maintaining a robust balance sheet, which enables us to pursue our strategic objectives, to invest in future, and to create long-term value for our shareholders. Such net cash position as of August 2023 actually reflects our new capital structures at spin-off date, although it will be slightly improved by additional profits generated since then.
As of August 23, our net cash position of EUR 859 million is made of significant cash in hand, basically EUR 2.2 billion when excluding restricted cash, less EUR 1.3 billion of gross debt as of August last year. This gross debt, including the debt pushdown, is owed to Sodexo. To make Pluxee fully independent from Sodexo as from the spin- off debt, we have secured a robust financing package, including a bridge loan of EUR 1.5 billion and a revolving credit facility of EUR 650 million. EUR 1.1 billion partial drawdown on the bridge loan is scheduled shortly, actually tomorrow, a few days before the spin-off, in order to anticipate for such separation, enabling us to repay Sodexo while keeping the capital structure globally as it is on the slide.
As the bridge loan matures in October 2024, with two possible extension of six months each, it serves, of course, as a short-term financing solution, and it will be refinanced in the public market to extend maturity. In this respect, and in terms of rating, we aim to maintain a strong investment-grade profile post-spin-off. In addition, the revolving credit facility, maturing in October 2028, extendable twice for a period of one year each, will offer us a flexible and revolving line of credit that can be drawn upon as needed. Overall, our capital structure has been designed and will be optimized over time in accordance with our capital allocation and financial policy. Our capital allocation fully reflects our growth ambitions. Pluxee's free cash flow will be allocated among capital expenditure, M&A, and shareholder return.
Our first pillar, organic growth through accretive CapEx, will be primarily focused on further enhancing our tech platform. Second, as already indicated, targeted and well-executed M&A can be a powerful growth and profitability accelerator. Our disciplined approach to M&A will rely on the following principles: As presented earlier in the strategic section, our targets will be mostly bolt-on operation to grow our business volume, to broaden our offering, and to enrich our tech capabilities. While M&A should enable us to attract highly skilled people fitting our culture, developing solid and swift integration plans will be at the heart of everything we do in this field. Given that successful M&A primarily depends on seamless integration, we will ensure, right from the due diligence phase, that we can execute flawlessly.
Finally, the resilience of our cash flow generation underpins the third pillar of our capital allocation policy, which relates to dividend payment, providing a reliable return on investment to shareholders. We are committed to maintaining a minimum payout ratio policy of at least 25% of net profit. Keeping in mind our objective to preserve our strong investment-grade rating, and with the objective to offer an attractive total return to our shareholders, we will regularly revisit our distribution level. In so doing, we will also take into account the unfolding of our M&A pipeline and of our organic investment plan. In plain English, in the absence of attractive acquisition in a given period, we will consider additional shareholder distributions. Thanks to our well-defined strategy, which is based on proven initiatives, we are committed to maximizing our potential by delivering outstanding growth in the future.
As a reminder, although M&A will be an acceleration lever, our key focus will be on organic growth, margin improvement, and cash generation. It is based on these key levers that we have built our guidance for our current fiscal year 2024 and for the midterm. At constant foreign exchange rates, our objective is to grow our revenue at a low double-digit pace in the current fiscal year 2024, and to keep the pace for the midterm, provided inflation and interest rates land softly. In terms of EBITDA margin, we are targeting to keep it at least stable in 2024, while absorbing the standalone incremental cost, which corresponds to a significant basis point upside in our margin versus 2023. For the midterm, our objective is to continue our journey, delivering margin step up so as to boost the EBITDA margin to around 37% in 2026.
Regarding cash conversion, the objective is to keep it above 70% on average over the medium term. We are confident in our capacity to deliver on those targets. With the spin-off, we will have the flexibility and the agility required to execute our strategic plan and deliver on the full potential of Pluxee, supported by a seasoned management team and by a well-experienced board. Thank you for your attention, and I will now give the floor back to Aurélien.
Thank you, Stéphane. And, before we open the Q&A session, a quick update on the spin-off, which has been fully on track since the first communication in April. The board composition was announced in mid-December with Didier Michaud-Daniel, our Executive Chairman, four representatives of the Bellon family, and five independent members. This board will bring significant leadership experience, ranging from technology startups to major listed companies. Our listing prospectus has been published today, following approval from the regulators. And on January the 30th, Sodexo General Shareholder Meeting will be held to get final validation of the spin-off. We expect the listing on Euronext Paris to be completed on the 1st of February, subject, of course, to market conditions. With that, let's start our second Q&A session, focused on strategy and financials.
So thank you very much. Before the closing remarks, so we will have a second Q&A session. So as for the previous Q&A session, please, I will take some questions from both the room and the webcast. And thank you very much, because we have already received a lot of questions on financials from the webcast. So maybe let's start with the room.
Thanks a lot. Justin Forsythe from UBS. Thanks again for the presentation. A couple from me. So just wanted to understand what the assumptions were for interest income over your forecast period out to FY 2026, particularly on the EBITDA margin guidance, because my understanding, again, you walk through the recurring EBITDA versus the operating EBITDA, the guidance is on the recurring EBITDA. So maybe you can talk about the basis points margin expansion on an ex-interest basis. And then I wanted to ask a more strategic question around closed-loop versus open-loop. So my understanding is that the argument around closed-loop is correlated a lot with the desire for super granular data on the merchant basis, and a requirement that is somewhat enforced by a lot of the regulators. So can you just reiterate for us, and, and that's given the tax benefit that exists for employee benefits.
Can you just reiterate for us why a full-fledged open-loop platform with merchant category codes from Visa and Mastercard don't provide a sufficient quality of service, and what the closed loop actually provides, beneficially? Thank you.
To start with the first question, Stéphane.
Does it work? Okay, yeah. So regarding our interest rate assumption, so we don't guide on float and operating revenue separately, so we only guide on total revenue. As I said, we expect a low double-digit growth, provided that inflation and interest rates land softly, meaning that we have. Because we have our calendar year starting at the beginning of September, in the first quarter of this year, and in Q2, it's going to be the same, we are still benefiting from higher interest rates.
However, going forward, regarding our float revenue, we know very well that now interest rates are going slightly down, and that we will, on one hand, face a higher comparison basis, because in Q3 and Q4 of 2023, interest rates were already high, and at the same time, we will face some decreasing interest rates. So we are managing our investment carefully, and we are right now extending as much as we can, but still remaining very carefully the maturity of our investment. But yes, we expect the interest rates to land softly. And we have one country where this decrease has already started, which is Brazil, as you may know, with a strong decrease, the first step of quite significant decrease in the Selic rate.
And regarding your question, you know, closed-loop versus open-loop, our conviction that it's the debate should not be a technological, you know, issue. Again, we are back to the value proposition we deliver to our three main stakeholders. And the most important is to make sure that we provide the right acceptance network to our consumers. And this, and you said it, this has to be done in accordance with the regulation as well. So what we need to ensure is that the benefit is rightly used within the right acceptance network.
So for, I mean, from a Pluxee system point, you know, we have shown our ability to adapt our technological platform to any kind of payment, and we've been able as well to evolve our solution so that we could offer the best solution to the market. I mean, Brazil being an example, we offer a product, we offer what we call a three-corner product, as much as we offer also four-corner or Four C products. And it really depends on what our clients are expecting from it.
Thank you. It's Leo Carrington from Citi. If I might ask first on the M&A strategy, you outlined the criteria, but in terms of geographic focus versus services, do you have one target in mind, or how do you expect the M&A to pan out in terms of that split? And then secondly, on going back to some of the slides earlier in terms of market share and geography on the organic side, do you see significant opportunities organically to grow in certain countries where you have lower market shares? Or is it you're in the countries with your existing strong market shares, and it's more uniform?
Through M&A, you mean?
On the last point, organically.
Organically. So yes, of course. I mean, organically, we see and, you know, over the past five years, we have reinforced our market share, our market position on all our key markets. And there is still, you know, some room for improvement there. I mean, so the answer is yes. And in terms of geographic target, if I may say, for the M&A, we—I mean, I mentioned to you that we are actively working on our pipeline as we speak, and we do have targets in all our geographies. So there is not a specific geography that we are targeting as such.
So maybe to follow up on M&A, I will take some question from Ed Young. So you spoke about targeted and disciplined strategy, and at the previous same day, you spoke about near core M&A. Does this change in language signal a shift in your strategy or in the potential target? And all else equal, would you like to reduce the revenue concentration in employee benefit?
I mean, I mean, yes, there might be a change of vocabulary because the, the near core is what we call the, augmenting, you know, towards, additional, employee, benefit solution, benefits and engagement solution. So, so, so that's. I mean, there is no change of strategy, on this regard.
Maybe I will try to merge so the question received on the float. So first one, where is float invested to generate income, and what is the currency exposure like? What is the average level of float over the year, and how does it vary over the course of the year? And the last one, does the Pluxee geographic revenue split broadly reflect how cash is also split within the float?
Stéphane, it's more for you.
So in... Yes, yes. So in terms of investment, the investment of float and of the excess cash as well is made mainly, fully of term deposits with standard counterparties, I mean, with the bank. So we are invested just checking the creditworthiness of each of the banks in which we are investing, and we invest locally our float. So meaning that, this is a way for us to not to increase exposure to foreign exchange, but to reduce it as in case a currency is to face a depreciation. In most cases, this should go with higher interest rates, so that's going to be a way for us to hedge.
I might have said before that we don't have overall any significant foreign exchange exposure. I mean, operational foreign exchange exposure, because we insure both our revenue and our cost in each country in the same currency. Then we, as any company, we have the foreign exchange exposure to currency translation when consolidating the books of our affiliated company, but this is the same for all companies in the world. The average level of our float remains overall the same, so it goes step by step through the year. So we generally have a peak in December with the gift campaign, but and we have, depending on countries and depending on some specific events and on the benefits in the country.
So we have some small variances, but they are not significant. You know, they could be something no more than 10% of the float revenue. And then regarding the last question, which was?
The geographic split.
Geographic split of the float.
So the geographic split of the float is very much connected to the size of our business, because as you understood very well, the float is fully related to the size of the employee benefit that we sell to our clients. So it's fully connected to the volume. The amount of float is fully connected to the business volume.
I will follow up with some question about tech. With tech investment, roughly two times lower than your main listed competitors, how can you compete with them, derive better productivity, and provide a best-in-class digital experience? And an additional question on AI: How do you see AI shaping the future of your business?
So I will start with AI, maybe because as Gabriel mentioned, you know, AI is still a reality for Pluxee. We are already using artificial intelligence, you know, to not only improve our processes, but to optimize, to develop new features for our consumers. So this is a reality, and now in every new products we develop, you know, I mean, our teams are thinking, I mean, how much they can leverage on AI to boost the quality of the feature or to go faster. And regarding the, I mean, the size of the investment, maybe?
Regarding investment, we have taken benefit from the recent favorable momentum in the market to accelerate, as we demonstrated, our CapEx quite significantly, by 50% in 2023 versus 2022. We have the ability to focus our CapEx on just one business, as unlike other competitors, we are a pure player focusing just on one business. We consider that this significant acceleration of our CapEx is fully consistent with our strategy to deliver strong growth and improvement in profitability going forward.
Let's go back to?
And we see it in our performance and in our recent performance.
Yeah.
Past two years' performance.
We can come back to the room.
Yes. Good evening, Johanna Jourdain from Oddo BHF. Could you give us some color maybe on the gift sale, gift season vouchers that just happened and the recent trends you observed in this business? Thank you.
You take it, Stéphane? You start?
Uh, I, I?
No.
I think it's Viktoria.
I take it.
Viktoria, on my side, it's Viktoria.
In recent years, you know, there were some extraordinary measures in a couple of European countries regarding, you know, the level of tax exemption. So we had some very, very strong campaigns. This year, I mean, those measures were not in place anymore. Having said this, our campaign, I mean, we foresee a good gift campaign, but we'll be able to say more, I mean, when we will disclose the Q2.
Florian Gueritte. [Foreign language] J'avais une question. Pardon, [Foreign language] j'avais une question sur... Sorry. I had a question on the breakage in the balance expiration. How does that kind of financially wor- financially work when the employee doesn't spend the balance after the given period that... And do you have to reimburse the tax system? How exactly that works financially, and is that meaningful for the profits of Pluxee?
So, your question is about the unused balance?
Yes.
Well, it's, you know, it's intrinsic to the system itself. But, but for Pluxee, we are talking about a very, very small and limited amount in percentage of our volume.
Maybe I can follow up with some question from the webcast. How much of the 4.7% employee benefit take-up rate is from client versus merchants?
Right.
So we don't provide details on this take-up rate. As you can understand, clearly, there are some sensitive business information behind it. What we can say that the portion of merchant commission is bigger than the portion of client commission.
So I will follow up with some more technical question from Vicki Stern from Barclays. So how best to think about depreciation and amortization growth over the coming years? On cash conversion guidance, it seems to imply something like EUR 100 million of working capital each year, which is slower than the last few years. So is it conservatism to have this 70% guidance? And the last one is about future interest cost on debt for fiscal 2024.
Sorry, what is the last one again, please?
It's on the future interest cost on debt-
Okay.
for fiscal 2024.
Stéphane, okay.
Okay. So, so regarding depreciation and amortization, the amount of depreciation and amortization of our CapEx is going to increase going forward, fully related to the increase in CapEx. Although, because we are growing fast with this low double digit, even though we are targeting a 10% CapEx, sorry, 10% of our revenue as CapEx, mathematically, thanks to the growth in revenue, we will have depreciation and amortization remaining below this 10% going forward, as long as we deliver growth. But so the percentage of revenue as depreciation and amortization is going to increase a little bit, but will remain below 10%, provided that we deliver growth..
The 70% guidance in terms of cash conversions fully reflects the fact that there might be some unpredictable events hitting favorably, as this happened in 2024 for a change in regulation in Brazil, or negatively, as this happened with the COVID consequences in 2021 and 2022. So we are cautious on our guidance in terms of cash conversion in order to make sure that we can meet our target. And then regarding the last one, which is on the future cost of debt, so we have secured this financing package. All the details are available in the prospectus.
So overall, right now, based on this financing package, we have had the cost in the first quarter until tomorrow fully related to an intercompany financing from Sodexo, and the cost of which was close to 4.1%. What we are going to have in the coming days, so based on the Euribor one month plus thirty basis points as a margin, is going to be the same 4% for the initial part of the year. Afterwards, when we go out to the market in order to refinance this package, that will depend on market conditions. So you know that the mid-swap have been significantly reduced in the last weeks.
So we'll see at the time of the take out for us, what the market are going to be, and we will have to market our case in order to make the spread as low as possible.
Maybe a last follow-up question from Vicki. What do you see as leverage target consistent with investment grade?
This one is your favorite, Stéphane.
Sorry, could you say it again, please?
Leverage target.
Okay. So we don't have a specific leverage target in mind. I mean, in term of M&A, as you noticed, our balance sheet capital structure was set fully consistently with our strategy to seize opportunities in term of M&A. Meaning that, we have quite significant flexibility, firepower to seize opportunities. We have clearly in mind that we should not exceed something like, you know, no more than, in all cases, 2x EBITDA in net debt. But we are very far from this right now because we have a negative leverage with a net cash position.
So we have this kind of thing in mind, but the priority for us will be to seize opportunities that we consider attractive versus organic growth. I mean, to complement organic growth with, again, a key focus on organic growth. So, you know, we'll see going forward, once we have delivered significant M&A, in case this was to happen. But yes, no more than 2x in terms of leverage ratio.
So maybe we can come back to the room if any additional questions? Okay, so let's continue with the webcast. So how much of the recent increase in legal face value limits have you already reached? What is the typical process and timeline of recognizing maximum face value cap?
So, it's, you know, it's a product by product and country by country analysis. But to give you an idea, we estimate that we are between 70%-80% at the maximum cap as authorized by the law. So we still have, you know, I mean, what I would qualify as a, you know, still significant gap to bridge up to the cap. So this is... I mean, that's why we are so confident in our ability to generate growth thanks to a face value increase.
Could you give us more details on the drivers of organic operating revenue growth slowdown in Q1 compared to Q4? Are there meaningful one-off tailwinds, headwinds we should have in mind for 2024?
Stéphane?
So we had in the year before, in 2023, end of 2023, some significant tailwinds, thanks to the change in regulation in Brazil with the ban of discount and negative commission. But otherwise, we are still delivering in term of operating, and because the question is on operating, so excluding-
Yeah
... the float revenue, we are still delivering low double-digit growth. There is one specific item which I mentioned during the presentation, which is this high comparison basis with two public benefit contract that we had the year before, so in Q1 2023. Which represents in terms of, just to give you an idea, in terms of percentage of growth that we are missing to some extent this year. For other products and services, it's up to seven percentage points, so quite significant. For continental Europe as a whole, it's close to a bit more than two percentage points. And for the group as a whole, it's a bit more than one percentage point. So meaning that this is an explanation.
And then, as explained by Aurélien and Viktoria, you know, all the mega trends are here, so we are confident. Although this is true, that inflation is likely to decrease, and we were highly supported by the inflation momentum in the year before, which is likely to be lower now. But we are still targeting to deliver a low double-digit growth in the coming months and years.
Maybe a question on the margin guidance. So how confident are you in achieving this guidance while float revenue momentum is likely to slow meaningfully over the next two years?
You take it, and I complete.
Yeah. So we are guiding on total revenue and in terms of EBIT, EBITDA margin on total EBIT, recurring EBITDA margin as well. So as I was saying, answering the previous question, so we have all these mega trends, which are going to be, you know, the key ingredients to feed the face value increase, the portfolio expansion and cross-selling, and the new clients level. So these levels are going to remain the same. In the past, we've been able to deliver significant growth, although we didn't have these very significant float revenue tailwind that have been there, yes, for the last two years, especially in 2023.
But a year when we deliver the +25% of growth, which is very significant. So, you know, we are confident in our ability to deliver on this low double-digit total revenue growth, even with some slowdown in interest rates, which will make the float revenue growing a little bit in a slower way. And I should add, I should also mention that we will benefit from the increase for the growth in the baseline for calculating the float revenue, because even though there is some interest rates decrease, the business volume insured is going to grow fully, consistently with what we are targeting in term of revenue growth.
Any remaining question from the room? So I think we can finish with this one on gift. So how will Glady be positioned in the Pluxee offer? Will Glady become Pluxee Gift? And will card Spirit of Cadeau and check, Tir Groupé product be abandoned in favor of digital?
So, Glady is definitely a brand which is part of the Pluxee universe. Are we going to abandon the Glady brand right now? The answer is no. But definitely we will integrate this brand, you know, within the Pluxee brand architecture. And after regarding the specific product mentioned, Spirit of Cadeau, Tir Groupé, that now, you know, Tir Groupé, it's mainly on paper. I mean, the good news is that we have already transferred all the volumes on our digital platform. And after, this is a decision, you know, made by clients or consumer to order for a Spirit of Cadeau product or a Tir Groupé or...
On principle, what we want to sustain in the future is this wider offer, which is unique on the French market, and that only Pluxee is able to offer, thanks to Glady.
And maybe just to finish, two final questions. I think we have not answered the last question from Ed Young. So is your intention to reduce the revenue concentration on employee benefit following our M&A strategy? And what is the normalized level of CapEx to expect going forward as percentage of revenues? Is 2003 an exception with higher investment, or should this repeat in coming years?
So regarding the amount of CapEx, so we are targeting CapEx around 10% of revenues going forward. This is true that 2023 was a bit higher, but this was on purpose, benefiting from the very strong momentum we have experienced in the market. We consider that that was the right time to invest significantly in term of CapEx and in OpEx as well, as explained by Gabriel. We had significant investment in term of tech OpEx in 2023, again, on purpose, benefiting from this strong momentum. So going forward, we are targeting 10% of revenue for CapEx for the time being until 2026. And the,
I take the-
Last question.
I take the first one, I mean, if I may. I mean, again, we will do M&A to accelerate the execution of our strategy. And our strategy is not to reduce the revenue in employee benefits. Our strategy is to boost our growth and indeed to increase the contribution of the non-meal and food benefit, but still employee benefits and engagement product in our total growth. So what we're gonna do is to boost the overall growth and make sure that, you know, we keep on pushing meal and food, of course, but also all the other employee benefits and engagement solutions.
Thank you very much, Stéphane. Thank you very much, Aurélien. So many thanks for all your questions. Do not hesitate afterwards to catch up with me or with the team for any further additional questions. And before I hand over to Aurélien, just to remind you that we will have a drink in the other room just after the end of the CMD. Thank you.
Thank you, Pauline. So in conclusion, at Pluxee, we have the right recipe to successfully deliver our strategy and our continued profitable growth. As a recap, let me remind you of the five key ingredients of our story. We are a leading global player in the employee benefits and engagement market. We operate a highly cash-generative and scalable business model. We have a massive growth opportunity as we operate in a large and growing market. We have a clear strategy and execution roadmap in place. And importantly, we have an experienced leadership team that is fully focused on achieving the next phase of the Pluxee growth story. I'm confident in our ability to deliver on this strategy, and I really look forward to updating you regularly on our progress. Thank you for your attention, and see you soon. Cheers.