Good morning everyone, and welcome. I'm very, very happy to be with you today in this wonderful convention center which is managed by our teams. We welcome this opportunity to share with you where we are going and how we are going to get there. Thank you for being with us today. My team and I will go through a lot of detail with you during the course of the presentation, but at the outset, I want to really, be clear on the key elements that we will share with you today. First, we are moving at pace and executing our priorities well. This strong execution is driving positive momentum and improving financial performance across the group. Second, we have strong market position and business foundation in some of the biggest and most attractive growth market in the world.
Third, we have a clear strategic plan to refocus and accelerate, underpinned by our ambition to strengthen our position as a market leader in sustainability. When I started leading the group in October 2021, I accelerated our response to the challenges of the post-COVID crisis. I set four immediate priorities to put us back on track to generate sustainable and profitable growth over the long term. We have made fast and significant progress on these priorities. First, the first one was to boost our U.S. Growth. Retention in North America is up 400 basis points compared to last year, and we are now at over 96%. This is the best year we've had since 2005. Development is also up 400 basis points.
For the first time since 2017, we had a positive net new business sign of over 4% which will boost growth next year. First time outsourcing contracts are increasing. They represented 44% of signature last fiscal year. Last week you heard about our Ardent contract win, and it is a great example. All North American activities now report into Sarosh. This streamlines decision-making and simplifies operational management. Also, we have implemented a long-term incentive scheme for 97 members of the North American senior leadership team, and their three-year plan include revenue and UOP target that are specific to North America. We will have many opportunities to seize in the region, and the growth will need to continue, but we are on a much better track today.
My second priority was to accelerate the transformation of our food model to effectively respond to new trends and expectations within our industry. We are developing increasingly attractive brands and offers that focus on high quality, seasonal, fresh food, and locally sourced products. The return to the office is a major opportunity for us because we are a key partner for our clients to attract people back and to ensure that they retain their best talent. We know that food and well-being is a number one priority for people returning to work. 72% of employees want premium food services at the office. Our clients are buying these branded modern offers, and in some cases are seeing headcounts higher than before the pandemic. We're seeing a good recovery in revenues and at a higher margin.
In the UK, we are leveraging Fooditude with clients like Roku, Netflix, and Pinterest with great success. In France, we have helped Havas make their workspace more attractive for the teams and reinvent their catering offer with our higher-end brand, Sogeres, and we get excellent feedback. On the West Coast, in the Bay Area, we implemented a very high-end offer for Salesforce. It is also extremely successful with their teams. We have also created a very attractive food court for LinkedIn and Broadcom, operated by our premium brand, Good Eating Company. We're also transforming production. New generation off-site units to centralize production are key to supporting our advanced food models, such as connected fridges. It makes delivery increasingly flexible to each consumer wherever they are and whenever they want, with a great diversity of high-quality offers.
Together, our premium brands such as Fooditude, Nourish, as well as our central production in Boston or in Beijing, now accounts for 6% of corporate services food revenues. We started from close to zero pre-COVID. Today, our business also depends on the quality of our digital tools. We have put the subject of technologies at the priority level that is required in today's world to drive business performance. Alexandra Serizay will come back on this later in more detail. My third priority was to manage our portfolio more actively with increased selectivity and stronger focus on value. I just mentioned our investment in advanced food models. Recently, we have developed our convenience business, which is a very profitable addressable market for Sodexo, through acquiring Frontline Food Services and VendEdge in the U.S.
We're also actively building our GPO in Europe and organic growth in the region was strong in financial year 2022, and we have made two acquisitions in France, one in the Netherlands, and one in the UK. We have diversified that we have divested, sorry, non-core activities, services, and geographies where density, market shares, and profitability were inadequate. For instance, we have combined our global childcare services with those of the Grandir Group to become a global leader. We told you last week, we are now down to 53 countries. We're going to continue to actively manage our portfolio. My fourth priority was to enhance the effectiveness of our organization. When the pandemic hit, we showed exceptional agility. We were very pragmatic, regional, and close to the operations. This is something I want us to keep going forward.
I decided to simplify our organization and transfer end-to-end P&L management to regions, and I'm bringing empowerment, decision-making, and reactivity to a local level. I also gave our benefit and reward services activity a dedicated governance. BRS development is at the top of the board's agenda. We created a dedicated strategy committee which meets monthly to follow the execution of our strategic plan, and also a dedicated long-term incentive plan aligned with their growth objective is being put in place. We have also introduced a specific BRS guidance. I will come back to this a little later. As you have all seen last week, fiscal year 2022 was a turning point. We are making good progress, we have a good momentum, and we are executing well on our plans.
Revenue growth was strong, and we improved margins and have planned for further improvement this year. Net new business wins were positive at 2% and will support our financial year 2023 growth. This momentum is having a clear impact on our performance, and we are happy to reiterate our guidance for 2023 with an organic growth of 8%-10% and an underlying operating profit margin close to 5.5% at constant rates. Now, for the future, we absolutely need to keep a very strong focus on the long term. Sodexo has strong foundation on which we can build to accelerate our transformation and our growth. We have a cash generative business model. We have leadership positions in the biggest and fastest growing markets globally. We have relevant offers to meet evolving demands of our clients.
We are recognized globally for our experience in food services, and we have fantastic teams around the world who deliver for us every day. Also, I think that our dual mission is a true differentiator for us. When Sodexo was founded in 1966, it was very forward-looking, and it remains completely relevant today. We improve the quality of life of employees and those we serve and contribute to the economic, social, and environmental progress of the communities where we operate. We decided to go further and reveal what drives and differentiates us as a company by formalizing a purpose. It is fully consistent with our people company DNA.
Our people are at the heart of our business model, and I want to take this opportunity to thank them for the wonderful work they do in delivering great services to our clients and our consumers every day. They make our purpose come true, and with our team, we create a better everyday for everyone to build a better life for all. This strong purpose underlies everything we do and supports our ambition, which is to be the world leader in sustainable food and valued experiences at every moment in life. Learn, work, heal, and play. Indeed, we are operating in fantastic markets which are growing. Food is a EUR 240 billion market, of which 53% is still self-operated.
The FM market is at EUR 380 billion and is 51% self-operated. Both markets are supported by structural growth drivers, which represent an effective opportunity for us. North America remained the market that has the most potential for us in terms of growth. In Europe, growth is more modest, and we need to be even more focused on choosing those clients who are seeking valued innovative services. In the rest of the world, GDP and the work environments are growing very fast and provide significant potential for our development. All this means that we have very strong foundations to build from, and we are exposed to attractive growing markets. We know our competition, but we're very confident in our own strength. We must now go further.
We have opportunities to leverage our scale, our leadership position, and to execute more effectively to deliver sustainable and profitable growth. Since March, we have been very focused on refining our strategy to support our ambition and take advantage of these opportunities. I'm pleased to have the chance to discuss our plan with you today. We have a clear strategy to refocus and accelerate, which is built around three pillars, supported by three key enablers. Execution is going to be critical to the success of this strategy, and it is something that I'm going to be incredibly focused and ongoing forward. Our first pillar is to refocus on food services and be much more selective on FM. Food has been part of our DNA since day one. We have leading expertise in this area, and it is what we are recognized for.
We will continue to accelerate the development of advanced food model to support our food focus and address fast-changing needs and behaviors, multichannel, anytime, anywhere, hybrid. This means we will invest more in convenience, aggregation, and off-site production, and we've already planned close to EUR 200 million investment over the next five years, and we will also consider inorganic add-on. In 2025, this advanced food model will represent 10% of our food revenues overall compared to 2% today, with a positive impact on profitability. We're also much more selective regarding the type of clients we target, the first services we provide, and the regions where we want to operate. Our aim is to drive maximum value and ensure strong market coverage wherever we choose to compete.
We're taking a disciplined approach to enhancing our FM services only where they are complementary to our food offers. This means more targeted choices, services that augment our food solutions, that are accretive to our business, and truly bring added value to our clients and our consumers. For instance, workplace management that includes dynamic tech-driven cleaning for our corporate clients or infection control with Protecta, healthcare technology management, and patient experience with Experiencia in healthcare. As a result of this increased focus, we have made the decision to exit certain countries and services where it makes sense to do so. At the same time, we are selectively targeting growth in the most attractive value pools in our markets.
In North America, we aim to grow to be a strong number two by further investing in healthcare and seniors, by reinventing our food offers in corporate services, by increasing our share of wallets in universities, and reigniting profitable growth for Sodexo Live!. Our objective in Europe is to maintain a leading position and generate higher profitability and strong cash flow. In Asia Pacific, Brazil, and Latin America, our ambition is, of course, to remain the number one international food player with a higher end positioning, and we intend to capture the growth in our target markets and deliver higher profitability. We also continue to extend the scope of our food services by developing the full potential of Entegra, our GPO. Our goal is to double our 2021 revenue by 2025.
Our second strategic pillar is to accelerate the profitable growth of Benefits and Rewards, our employee benefits and engagement services. BRS is a gem. It is Sodexo's highest contributor in terms of underlying operating profit. During financial year 2022, BRS organic growth accelerated quarter by quarter, with growth in all regions and an operating margin of 28.6%. I'm convinced that BRS has an excellent development potential. BRS started its digital transformation five years ago and is now 90% digital. As you will see, it has a clear strategy and a strong plan to deliver this growth acceleration, but we also appreciate that BRS has a very specific tech business model which is evolving very fast. This is why we reinforced its governance and created the right conditions to accelerate that growth.
BRS is uniquely positioned to support companies and their employees in this great resignation and work from home period. Our objective is to sustain low double-digit growth and digital. Our third strategic pillar is to strengthen our impact as a market leader in sustainability. I want to drive forwards our efforts in line with our mission and with our purpose. To express this commitment, we have made it one of our strategic pillars, but of course, it needs to be everywhere, and it underlies our strategy and drive the way we do business. We are a global organization with team that operate locally, and that proximity is central to the value we bring and to the tangible impact we can have.
We are a company of 422,000 people operating in 53 countries. Our teams, the clients we support, and the consumers we serve are incredibly diverse, which explains our deeply rooted commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We're about to achieve our gender balance objective at top management level, and we are aiming to cascade this target to the country level so that 100% of our employees work in countries with gender balance management teams by 2025. The aspect of corporate responsibility that I would like to focus on today is climate and impact on the planet. We are continuing our climate change journey to reduce our carbon emission by 34% by 2025, and fighting food waste is a critical part of our efforts to reduce our climate impact.
On sites where we have deployed our WasteWatch program, food waste was nearly halved on average, and we have committed to accelerating the development of WasteWatch to reach 85% of our food service sites by 2025 from 46% today to achieve our 50% reduction global target by 2025. On our contribution to addressing the major challenge of global warming, I'm very happy to share that we have launched a process with SBTi to formalize our science-based 2040 net zero commitment. It will be a first in our industry, and this journey is about Sodexo's mission and purpose, and to take it one step further. I look forward to sharing more on this ambitious and important project with you soon, as well as the action that we will take to transform our business and reach our target.
This is what our clients, our consumers, our employees, and our partners expect from us, and I know that these efforts will provide a competitive advantage and new opportunities for us to deliver an increasingly sustainable, plant-based, healthy, and enjoyable food experience. Our three strategic pillars are supported by three key enablers. Firstly, tech and data. Technology investments are critical, a critical enabler of growth for Sodexo. Our average spend for IS&T, digital, and data is currently EUR 500 million annually. Among others, we're investing in our infrastructure to make it a robust and secure foundation from which to manage our business. It helps us optimize our business processes and applications internally and with our suppliers.
For instance, we are planning to continue to upgrade our supply management technology each year, and this will support our also our increased focus on consumer with more engagement experiences and share of wallet from consumers. By 2025, we aim to have 10 million active consumers on our digital ecosystem. Our second enabler is commercial excellence, supported by strong brands and advanced food models I mentioned earlier. We have already made good progress here, introducing improvement in both food and FM. I'm incredibly focused also on retention and aim to take retention above 95%. It is a key pillar of profitable growth, and it is my personal obsession. If you don't keep your contract, it clearly impacts your ability to grow with them and to develop with new contract also. From this year, retention will systematically be one of the annual bonus KPIs. How do we do this?
Our three zone presidents will talk about their individual retention and development strategies later today, but we are continually working on our commercial excellence. We now have a best-in-class CRM system, and our new digital sales and marketing tools are making a significant difference in North America, with digital marketing leads now accounting for 60% of the pipeline. This process is also just getting started in Europe, and we have strong and successful branded offers. Our third enabler, of course, is our supply chain power. Our abilities in this area have never been more important at a time of global pressure on supply chain and double-digit inflation. To mitigate this inflation, we can count on a high-performing team in supply management, on excellent internal collaboration to optimize our spend, and on the benefit of our investments in data.
Alexandra will share a very concrete example later on of how efficiently we buy today, leveraging technology and data. We are continuing our balanced approach of spend optimization to drive efficiencies with strong category management to drive profitability. At the same time, we are increasing our local inclusive and responsible sourcing. It is differentiating, it gives us access to innovation, and it brings solution to fight inflation and product shortage. We are aiming at purchasing EUR 2 billion worth per year with SMEs by 2025 for on-site services. Increasingly, our supply chain is a selling power machine. Our Evolve organization brings together our supply management and our marketing and sales teams, and it will drive even closer collaboration to co-build strong, innovative offers with our suppliers, which we are able to price better.
We're also continuing to develop Entegra as both a profit center and a means of superior purchasing power. I would like to present the organization and the team that we will implement this strategy. We are moving to a simplified and more effective organization to bring decision-making closer to the ground. Our aim is to keep the best of segmentation, while having P&L management in regions. The implementation of our strategy and our day-to-day operation happen at the local level, and we need to empower those teams to optimize execution. Our three geographic zones are North America, Europe, and the rest of the world, which covers our fast-growing markets in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Brazil, and Middle East and Africa.
To retain the benefits of segmentation in terms of the strategic planning process and go-to-market strategy, we are consolidating all of the segments' expertise into a growth and commercial role. We are also bringing together tech and services function to support us in our tech journey with IS&T, digital, data, and innovation and to drive our transformation in food and FM. A chief impact officer has been appointed to ensure that our purpose, mission, and values are constantly reflected in our operation and provide a competitive advantage. To increase speed and agility in our decision-making processes, our Sodexo leadership team is now reduced to 11 people. I'm very happy to share the organization chart of this team with you, and you will hear directly from a number of them today. Aurélien Sonet will update you on BRS acceleration plan.
Alexandra Serizay, who is heading up tech and services and is also responsible for the strategic planning process, will give you more details about our on-site strategy and our key enablers. Sarosh Mistry, Sunil Nayak, and Johnpaul Dimech, who are respectively heading North America, Europe, and the rest of the world in the Evolved organization, will share an update of their priorities and roadmap for their zones. Of course, Marc Rolland very well already. You can see the other members of my leadership team on the organization chart. Let me be clear. We will execute our strategic plan at pace, and we are ambitious in the value creation we are aiming for. Our plan is to make clear and bolder choices and to go faster.
We focus on Food Services and be more selective in FM services, accelerate the development of our benefits and rewards services, and strengthen our impact as a market maker in sustainability. Our targets for 2023, 8%-10% organic growth and close to 5.5% UOP margins, and for 2024 and 2025, 6%-8% organic growth with a UOP margin above 6% in fiscal year 2025. I'm confident that we are on the right track for long-term profitable growth. We have the energy and the financial means to achieve this, and above all, we have the people because, of course, it is our people who will make it happen. I now hand you over to Aurélien and his team, who will go through our ambitious plan for BRS. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Sophie, and good morning everyone. Let me introduce Viktoria Otero del Val, who is our SVP Strategy, Product & Customer Experience. As well as Subhodeep Das, who is our Global Product VP for Employee Benefits and Engagement. At BRS, we have successfully conducted our digital transformation over the past five years. You mentioned it, Sophie. We are excited by the wealth of opportunities ahead of us. We have a clear strategy to drive accelerated growth and improve profitability. Today I'm pleased to have this opportunity to share our strategy execution with you. First, let me talk you through our starting point and our achievements so far.
Today, Benefits and Rewards Services is number two worldwide in employee benefits and engagement. We aim at bringing to life a personalized and sustainable employee experience at work and beyond. We operate in 31 countries across all continents and being a leader in employee benefits in 17 of our markets. In the U.S. and U.K., where the collective benefit market is more modest, we have expanded our activity into the employee reward and recognition. We have consolidated our global leadership position in the public benefit markets, where our targeted products enhance the citizen welfare on behalf of public authorities. Today, our products benefit over 12 million users in 19 countries. Just recently, we won Klimabonus, an Austrian government program for 1.2 million citizens.
This contract significantly improve the purchasing power of the Austrian population, and it does represent around EUR 1 billion over a three years period. All of this is operated by a fantastic team of highly engaged member, a team of 4,800 people, many recruited over the past three years in digital and in tech. We are also proud of our engagement rate, which is at 18% and which has been at 18% in the last three years. This is a great indicator for any company undergoing transformation, and it's a huge asset for us for the future. Our activity is founded on a virtuous business model, bringing value to every stakeholders.
We provide our 500,000 clients with a way to increase their attractiveness to potential employees and keep their talent engaged, focusing on what matter to people beyond the salary. We help 1.7 million merchants develop their business by driving traffic to their stores. Could be online or physical. We also help them better understand their customer behavior with relevant data analytics. We improve the quality of life of our 36 million consumers, supporting their daily needs, improving their purchasing power, and helping them prioritize their needs. All of this represents over 4.4 million daily transactions today, all powered by data. Last year, we managed a total business volume of over EUR 19 billion. This robust virtuous model is, and we'll see it a bit later, naturally fit for growth.
It delivers a strong financial performance and is highly cash generative. I suggest that we look at this, , the cash circulation at the different stages of our prepaid model. When a client makes an order, we issue the invoice. Once we collect the cash with the commission attached, we load its employees' card or digital wallet. Next, the employees spend their allowances in compliance with the local regulation at our affiliated merchants. Finally, we reimburse the merchants net of our commission, and the cash level goes down. During all these phases, we generate interest on the float, bringing us financial revenue. Month after month, the cycle starts again, making our business model highly cash generative.
Thanks to our value proposition and our virtuous business model, we've maintained a solid financial performance despite the pandemic and while investing significantly in our digital transformation. Our revenue has returned to a double-digit growth last year. We delivered 14.2% organic growth with revenue up to EUR 865 million, of which EUR 805 million are operating revenues. As Sophie mentioned, in 2022, our revenue growth has accelerated quarter-on-quarter to reach 19.8% on Q4. The devaluation of the currency and strong growth in Europe have reduced our reliance on Brazil. Brazil now contributes 26% of our revenue, which is down from the 38% in fiscal year 2017.
In terms of UOP, we are up to a 28.6% margin, which is a 300 basis point improvement versus last year. Our financial revenue has started to bounce back up 43.7% in fiscal year 2022, which is a very strong momentum. It doesn't just increase with interest rates, it is also boosted by our strong cash generation model. Talking about cash, our operating cash reached close to EUR 2.8 billion at the end of fiscal year 2022, and this is EUR 500 million higher than the year before. This pushed our voucher coverage ratio at above 120%. I'd like to mention a few other points. First, we've made a few but successful M&A operations in the last 18 months.
Our main focus has been on strengthening our volume and our strategic expertise in digital. This included the acquisition of Wedoogift in France, and I will discuss it in more detail shortly. We also acquired the clients portfolio in Brazil and in India, building on our core activities. Second point is that we rationalize our portfolio over the last three years. We divested from our operation in Russia, we sold Rydoo, our travel and expense business, and we exited our investment in sports aggregation platforms. At the same time, as we deliver solid financial performance, we made good progress on our digital transformation. We moved from providing meal paper vouchers to becoming a tech-enabled employee benefits and engagement solutions company. Today, all our countries have a digital solutions and 90% of our volumes are digital.
We have 1 million app downloads on average every month since last year. Mobile transactions in France and Brazil increased six times in the past year, and we're already connected to almost 500 delivery and e-commerce platforms across 18 countries. Of course, we are still transforming. 82% of our recruitment in 2021 and 2022 was in IT, sales, and marketing, as we look to reinforce our expertise and to fuel our next phase. Now, at the heart of our transformation, investment in our digital ecosystem has become a key asset and a key driver. Since 2018, we spent close to EUR 300 million of CapEx on technology to create a state-of-the-art, highly scalable digital platform. These investments covered several key areas.
First, we have invested in to improve the client, the consumer, and the merchant experience with best-in-class portals and apps. We've built a wide range of payment solutions, payment options, fully embedded into our Sodexo payment platform, which is a unique and differentiating asset. You may not know, but we were the first on the market to launch the virtual cards, and we are currently testing a solution that is leveraging on the blockchain technology. To accelerate our go-to-market and to industrialize our delivery, we set up a global digital factory and a global data platform. We have also invested in our operational excellence by leveraging common digital marketing, CRM, and customer care tools, all while migrating at pace to the cloud to improve our efficiency.
Finally, compliance with strong focus on data and cybersecurity remain very high on our agenda. This transformation has been instrumental to reinforcing the historic strong relationship with our clients. Our new products, combined with an enhanced effectiveness in sales and customer care, allow us to deliver a compelling offer, and our client KPIs demonstrates this success. We deliver a record year in terms of net development in 2022. Our development rate has continued to increase year-on-year, up by 250 basis points last year. I would like to mention that all countries contributed to this growth. Just to mention a few, client wins have been multiplied by 3 in Turkey, in Israel, in Germany, and in Romania.
This is versus fiscal year 2021. Our client retention rate has been relatively stable at a strong level around 95% over the five years period. Our net promoter score is at 37, which is above the industry average, driven by our client and consumer focused culture. Some of our countries have achieved excellent performance on this indicator, with Brazil at 58, Turkey at 50, and Mexico at 49. Our best-in-class customer care services have been recognized with many awards. I would mention Brazil, Spain, India, and Tunisia. We are proud of these achievements that we've made so far. If we turn our attention to the market in which we operate, we can see that there is still a lot of potential. The employee benefits market is highly attractive.
We estimate it at EUR 1,000 billion, and it remains vastly under-penetrated and with a big potential for growth. As you can see here, the meal and food market alone makes up an addressable market of EUR 190 billion, half of which being in Europe. Of the 190 billion euro of addressable market, only EUR 70 billion is captured, including EUR 42 billion by meal and food voucher provider like us. The SME segment represents a massive growth opportunity. For example, in France, where we estimate the meal and food penetration at 25%, it's only 10% for SME. In addition, we operate in a range of different regulatory framework, which can potentially create other opportunities.
This could include new tax and social charges exemption established by government to support employees' welfare or even simply by annual indexation or cap increase, both of which being a very strong driver for growth in the context of rising inflation. Since January 2022, 11 of our countries have benefited from this kind of measure. Today there is still a significant room to grow, and the global trends are set to grow this market even further. Our stakeholders' needs evolve, and we are very well placed at BRS to address them. The war for talent and the great resignation means that HR clients are looking for solutions that improve employees' engagement for more volatile and post-COVID workforce.
With 600 million workers expected remote workers expected by 2024, there is an increased demand for individualized benefits. Employers need to adapt to people working from home, at the office and sometimes in between. Our new mobility benefits and our work from home offers help us capture this market. Digitization remains a priority for every business, and our integrated digital employee experience is what client and consumer are looking for. Empowered consumers also expect more flexibility and freedom of choice, and this means for us constantly developing new benefits and enriching our merchant acceptance network. Finally, people are more and more mindful of supporting the local economy, and this represent an opportunity for us, another one with an established role connecting people to our local merchant network.
All these trends are already fueling our product development roadmap, and they are steering our innovation. With the access, thanks to the digitization, to a wealth of data, we are well positioned to anticipate the future changes and adjust accordingly. To recap this first part, I would say that BRS today has built a solid platform for growth. Our key assets are our clients, our merchants, our consumers, and of course, our talents. Our global footprint is driving our competitive advantage through scale. We already have a great range of digital employee benefits and engagement solutions. We have invested in a cloud-based digital solution and payment innovation. We've done this, still operating an attractive, proven, and a resilient business model in a market that is still under-penetrated.
We have a world of opportunities ahead of us, and we've built a robust strategy and plan to take advantage of that potential. Let me introduce it to you now. Our ambition for 2025 is simple: reinforcing our leadership position in all our existing countries and accelerating our growth and improving our profitability by unlocking the full potential from all our existing assets. To deliver on this ambition, we have a strategy that is centered around three pillars. The first one is accelerating our core in meal and food market. The second one is augmenting our core through employee benefit and engagement platform. The last one is about diversifying into adjacencies. On the first pillar, we focused on growing our core and accelerating in the meal and food market.
We look at this in more detail, particularly how we'll improve stakeholders' experience through product enhancements and data usage. We will also touch on how we're gonna increase our penetration in the SME segments, and we will also share with you our investments in branding and marketing. Part of this pillar is also about tapping into the under-penetrated markets that we talk about. We want to consolidate our presence in meals and food, especially through selective acquisitions. The second pillar of our roadmap is about augmenting our core by enriching our offers in a programmatic manner. This means delivers a wide range of employee benefits while strengthening our rewards and recognition platforms in UK and in the US.
The third pillar is more a midterm ambition, and this is around diversifying beyond core. For now, our absolute priorities are the first two pillars. We'll share more detail on diversification at a later stage. Each of these pillars will be supported by strengthening our foundational enablers. Because we have been recognized as a CSR leader for a long time, sustainability is fully embedded into our business strategy, and I will share with you later our strong commitment as BRS for the future. Now let's deep dive into the first pillar and see how we will extract the intrinsic value of our portfolio of asset by developing an interconnected experience across our different stakeholders. For that, I'm pleased to hand over to ViKtoria, who will tell us more about this first pillar. Thank you.
Hello, everyone. I am very pleased to be here with you today. Being fully digital allows a very high level of engagement with our three stakeholders. This intimacy means that we can systematically enrich their experiences and generate revenue for us. We are hence moving from a generalist benefit provider to a tech-enabled HR trusted partner. Now, to get there, we have a number of areas that we are focusing on. To start with, we have to retain our existing clients and deepen our relationship with them. In order to do so, we continue to invest in our product roadmaps to respond to their evolving needs. We provide solutions that integrate with their HR systems as well as relevant analytics to show how benefits are used. We advise our clients on their employees' expectations and perceptions. Our advisory role continues throughout the client journey.
For example, the regulatory framework is changing quite rapidly. We are there to advise our clients on this with our own know-how. Brazil is a great case study that we present here. We have been able to systematically support our clients to take advantage of increases in face value in a high inflation environment. We have implemented a very comprehensive program for our sales teams. We brought together marketing and commercial data to benchmark average face values by industry and geography. Of course, with this, our salespeople can reach out to their clients with value-added services. Now, with this, we also managed to increase the business volume in Brazil by more than EUR 400 million in FY 2022. In addition to deepening our relationships, we also work relentlessly to acquire new clients. We adapt the most relevant sales method, whatever it might be, depending on the client segment.
This can be inside sales, inbound or outbound, or it can be in-field sales force. We ensure seamless sales journey, starting with raising awareness and demonstrating the value of employee benefits. For us, at BRS, post-sales is just as important as pre-sales. Once the contract is signed, we make sure that client onboarding and customer care are best in class. By doing so, we are absolutely confident that we will continue to maintain the very high level net promoter scores that Aurélien presented. We will maintain a high retention rate around 95%, and we also will maintain our development rate well above 8%. In addition to the experience that we bring to our clients, we strive to bring delightful digital journeys to our consumers.
We are enriching our digital touchpoints to move from an easy-to-use transactional app to an app that increases engagement with consumers. We work on a number of levers, and of course, we are very much helped by the intrinsic high frequency of benefit usage. We are continuously innovating so that our consumers can use the payment method that they wish to use. We also propose relevant content, leveraging data so that we can offer personalized promotions, discounts, loyalty, and cashback programs. Our consumers can access our embedded CSR functionalities. They can make donations. They can make responsible choices to reduce food waste. Now, all of these features are underpinned by a seamless user experience be it on our portals or on our apps. Let me share actually an example with you to make this come alive.
In Chile, we are encouraging consumers to use their benefits, leveraging data and digital marketing. Through contextualized targeted communication, we've increased meal benefit usage penetration by up to 13 points. What we want is our 36 million users to maximize the value of their benefits, hence we can support their purchasing power. Of course, we monitor our progress, measuring how many users interact with our product on a monthly basis. We have a very solid starting point in our major markets, and we are absolutely determined to drive further engagement. Our ambition is to have 80% monthly active app users in every meal and food market that we are in. Why is this engagement important? It is important because this is the path to monetizing further our existing customer assets.
Now, moving from clients and consumers, moving on to merchants, our focus is to transition from traffic booster to trusted partner helping merchants do business. We have developed very strong merchant relationships to build on. Merchants in Brazil rank us as the top-of-mind employee benefit company according to a recent study by Abrasel, the leading restaurant association. By leveraging massive amounts of data as well as our own operational teams, merchant teams, we have extensive knowledge of our merchants and of their needs. We use this knowledge to continuously improve our tools and processes to ensure seamless, frictionless interaction with them. We also use this knowledge to develop new value-added services with expense reimbursement, insurance, access to discounts, promotions. In addition, we also contribute to our merchants' performance in two important ways.
We enable seamless payment flows with a wide range of payment options, including QR codes, and also embedding online payment in our merchants' websites. We also engage in additional marketing services and lead generation to expand our merchants' reach. Here again, we have a high ambition. Our goal is to increase the number of services we offer to our merchants. In Brazil, already today, 65% of our restaurant merchants use more than one service. We are absolutely determined that we can replicate this success everywhere. Now, I will come back to another area where we can leverage our existing assets, as mentioned by Aurélien. This is the SME segment. Overall, the global meal benefit market is about 20% penetrated. The SME part of the market is much less penetrated, often around 10% or even lower in some of our countries. Clearly, there is room for growth.
Today, 80% of our contracts, as you see in the middle of the page, are with the SMEs. This represents 20% of our total business volume. We have a programmatic approach, including strong investment to capture more of this market. First, we have developed a digital, fully autonomous SME solution that covers the full SME buyer journey. Of course, we continue to enrich this. This solution allows to optimize the cost of acquisition and the cost to serve while proposing seamless journeys to our clients. Our goal, our ambition, is to enable SME prospects to complete a first order in less than 10 minutes. That is how smooth the journey has to be. This, of course, implies simplification of pricing, simplification of flows, simplification of configurations. Now, in addition to this digital autonomous buyer journey for SME segment, digital marketing is absolutely essential.
We are leveraging our strong existing foundations to further invest in raising awareness, raising interest, hence increasing the number of prospects and optimizing lead generation. Now, I will come to the second lever that is very important to capture more of the SME segment. This is to continue to develop our distribution partnerships to extend our reach. We already have very strong partnerships today with banking partners like Millennium bcp in Portugal, Sicredi in Brazil or Crédit Agricole in France. We also work extensively with professional services firms, payroll, accounting services providers in Belgium, Italy, Mexico, Romania, just to mention a few. By offering the best product, the best experience, the best journey, we are absolutely confident that SMEs will represent 40% of our net development in 2025, up from 20% today.
Finally, to unleash the full value of our assets, investing in branding and in digital marketing beyond the SMEs is absolutely crucial. We are currently working on launching a new brand. This will give us a stronger identity, a brand that is recognizable and desirable by our consumers. It will also better reflect the digital company that we are. Now, in terms of digital marketing, I will quickly come back to a few priority investment topics that we are tackling. We are implementing a refined content management system and enhanced analytics capabilities. This will help to predict and anticipate client and consumer needs. It will help to optimize our marketing automation efforts and of course, improve the digital journeys. Around marketing orchestration, we are intensifying our investments. We are intensifying our investments in event-based campaigns, quite classic, but also with always-on programs.
These are designed to deliver personalized communications across different channels. Ultimately, these programs are there to serve the right message through the right channel at the right moment, be it to our clients, consumers, or merchants. As a result of these actions, we are reinforcing our ability to increase traffic and of course, lead generation. Today, we generate 1 digital marketing qualified lead every 30 seconds. Our ambition is to double this, and this is going to be a main contributor to our acceleration. Now that I covered the first pillar, let me hand it over to Suvodeep Das, who will cover the second pillar of our strategy map.
Thank you, Victoria. It's great to be here. As you've heard, the second pillar of our roadmap is around augmenting our core to an employee benefits and engagement platform by enriching our offers. We have already started to make strong progress in this area. Before we do a deep dive into the specifics, let's watch a short video which brings our product vision to life. Hopefully, this video gave you a better idea of what we mean by an integrated, flexible employee benefits and engagement platform. Whatever you saw in this video is either live or under testing in some BRS country, so we are already translating this vision into reality. Creating a differentiated and integrated employee proposition to deliver a personalized employee experience requires us to propose a broad range of offers. We are building and reinforcing them in a programmatic manner.
Meal and food at the core, gift, remote working, well-being, and mobility, to name a few. Let me pause here for a moment to take a closer look at mobility. The employee mobility benefit is gaining strong traction in many countries. We already provide this in nine countries, including key markets like Brazil, France, and India, and there are more to come. Some of our mobility products also measure carbon footprint, allowing our stakeholders to make responsible choices and also supporting our clients' Scope 3 targets. This wide range of benefits fuels our strong cross-sell ambitions as well. We're also complementing our core employee benefits with two strong adjacencies, employee rewards and recognition and employee engagement. We are building a modern and customizable reward and recognition platform that is already a strong need with our clients and also adding an employee engagement layer that will differentiate us further.
With these solutions, we can further leverage the full potential of our cross-sell opportunities. To bring this enlarged offering to the market at the right time, we either build these services, acquire them, or in some cases, partner with external providers, like we recently did with The Happiness Index to provide employee engagement. Over time, we will continue to progressively integrate these services in a single modular employee benefits and engagement platform. This will enable the employees of our clients to choose the benefits they prefer through an intuitive super app. We are already providing this in our key countries like Brazil, France, India and Romania. Our ambition is to have the augmented core generating more than 40% of our growth, as well as an integrated multi-benefit offer in at least 10 countries by 2025.
Let me now hand over back to Aurélien, who will share a good illustration of this build-up approach that we have developed with the acquisition of Wedoogift, now called Glady in France.
Let me now share with you the Glady story. France is a very dynamic and competitive market. There is a rich blend of traditional and digital native players. Fourteen months ago, we acquired a digital startup in gift called Wedoogift. This company was founded in 2013, and since 2016, has been profitable. In fourteen months, working closely with the Wedoogift management team, we brought together the two entities combining the best of both teams. We were able to build the leader of the gift business in France, proposing all formats from digital wallets, cards and paper.
Thanks to this unique value proposition and being well-positioned ahead of the market, we've improved our gift revenue by 30% over the last year. With our product-oriented and our consumer-centric approach, we have also created a one-stop shop for our clients and our consumers using the Glady, which is a new name of Wedoogift, the Glady's technology platform. Today, companies in France of all sizes have a single platform where they can select the meals, the gifts, the mobility benefits that they want. We have also developed a single app for employees to choose and use their own benefits. Now we are in a much better position to cross-sell and upsell our client portfolio. We have also started to integrate gradually the two organizations, creating powerful synergies.
Capitalizing on our combined strengths, our ambition for 2025 is to grow our revenue in France, our consolidated revenue in France by 50%. This great acquisition story reflects the approach that we seek to replicate in other countries. Hopefully by now, our ambition and our plan are clear. Now to execute this plan, we need to continue to reinforce our foundational enablers. First, we need to continue to improve our operational efficiency by reducing our processing cost, optimizing and automating our internal processes, and improving the project delivery, I mean, mostly through embedding Agile. Our efficiency gain will come from fully leveraging our global scale and our continuous improvement mindset, and all of this being boosted by the digitization of our business.
Secondly, growing our competencies in product, tech, and data remains essential. That's why we have invested and will continue to invest in existing and new talents. For example, 84% of our employee have already been trained on data. I'm also confident that our new employee value proposition for BRS will help us reach, engage, and retain the best people. Finally, with regard to our governance, we have put instances in place to steer our execution plan globally. We have also reinforced our performance management system to reflect our growth ambition, improving our target setting and closely monitoring the progress of the execution of our plan.
As mentioned by Sophie in the beginning, another important aspect of this new governance is the setup of a long-term incentive plan, which is going to be specific to the BRS critical team member, about 200 people. This performance share plan will be linked to our results, ensuring that our reward policy is fully aligned with our plan and the success of its execution. Another fundamental enabler for our strategy is to accelerate our investment in tech and product. We plan to spend close to 10% of our revenue on technology CapEx. This is going to be above EUR 100 million per year in the coming 3 years to consolidate our one platform ecosystem. These investments will be focused on the following priorities. First, we'll expand our multi-country solution to boost our top line growth.
We'll continue enriching our payment platform across all our countries. We leverage our state-of-the-art data platform by rolling out data use cases that will generate value for the business. We'll continue to sustain our cybersecurity investments. Finally, by 2025, we'll complete our migration to the cloud. With all of this, we will tangibly enrich our stakeholders' experience. We'll mutualize our solution, and we'll be in a position to monetize the data. Finally, our ambition and our ambitious roadmap, , remain underpinned by our commitment to sustainability. As a role model, our priority is to further embed CSR in the way we operate our business. We want to bring this responsible mindset to all our stakeholders, including our employees.
We are already a leader in sustainability with best-in-class practices that are recognized externally. The awards shown here are a testimony of this. We continue being a trusted partner with our suppliers, as well as positively impacting individuals. We keep on advocating for diversity and inclusion, especially for gender balance in management position, where we are already at 44%. In the communities where we operate, we have a specific goal of driving more business to the SME merchants from EUR 6 billion today up to EUR 8 billion by 2025. With regard to protecting the environment, we are working on an ambitious net zero trajectory, and this trajectory could be achieved earlier than the 2040 group commitment. We have already calculated our global BRS carbon footprint, including the scope three.
We have registered our commitment to the SBTi to set a science-based net zero target. As part of this objective, we set ourselves an objective for 2025 to decrease our 2022 baseline by 34%. We've shared a lot of information in a very short time slot. As a conclusion, I would say that based on everything that you've heard, I'm absolutely confident that we'll deliver on our strategy, which has, , started to be executed. As a result, we will be in a strong position to accelerate our growth and improve our profitability. Now, let me remind you that we expect the overall economic context to remain quite favorable to our business.
High inflation is driving an increase in the face value of the benefits. Meanwhile, higher interest rates increase our financial revenue with a direct flow through to our UOP. With this in mind, our outlook for BRS is positive. For fiscal year 2023, we will deliver an organic revenue growth between 12%-15%, and we'll sustain a double-digit organic growth, organic revenue growth for fiscal year 2024 and 2025. In terms of UOP margin, we will go from around 30% in fiscal year 2023 to well above 30% in fiscal year 2025. Potential acquisition and our long-term diversification objective will come on top of this, of this organic growth. Thank you for listening. With that, I would like to open the floor to questions.
Just before we start, thank you, Aurélien. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you, Thibault. Before you ask a question, can you make sure you've got a microphone in your hands? We will be interrupting the session for questions from the conference call. Thank you.
Bonjour, Geoffrey de Méhaut from Bank of America. 3 questions, please, for me. The first one is linked to the diversifications you talked about. Could you just explain to us exactly what you would like to do? Would you like to expand in new businesses, for example? Maybe a follow-up on that is you are generating 82% of your revenue in employee benefits. How do you expect that number to be in 2025? Secondly, I guess you have generated about EUR 40 million on financial revenue in 2021. How do you see that number to be in 2025 given higher interest rates, please? Thank you.
Thanks for your question. The first one being, could you just remind me the first one? The diversification, thanks. As I said, regarding diversification, our immediate priorities are related to the pillar one and pillar two of our strategy map, meaning, boosting our core and augmenting the core. This is our top priorities for the team. This is what the team is highly, , mobilized on and motivated, , to get after all the opportunities that we share with you in terms of upselling and cross-selling. Regarding the diversification, we'll come back to you at a later stage with our plan.
Regarding the second question, this was on the weight of employee benefits business. Look, in terms of progression, and this is a bit the evolution, , explaining using the core, which is the meal and food, to the augmented core, which is not only additional employee benefits, but all of this being enriched by engagement platform. Somehow I mean, our projection is that in three years' time, I mean, the weight of the entire core plus augmented core will be even bigger than what it is today, if I put, , the diversification as well. Regarding the interest rate, I think that Marc mentioned it last week.
We plan to sustain, , the growth that we had on fiscal year 2022 for fiscal year 2023, which is roughly, , 43% growth. After, I mean, the projection, , of the interest rate after fiscal year 2023, we'll see.
Thank you. It's Leo Carrington from Citi. In terms of the opportunity from SMEs, how do you go about addressing this market and scaling up your selling organization to win the contracts? In terms of SMEs versus larger organizations, is the appeal here just the white space and the scope for growth, or are the SMEs fundamentally more profitable or more appealing than larger organizations?
Viktoria?
Thank you for your questions. Concerning SMEs, there are three factors that we have to take into account. The first is the cost of acquisition, the second is the cost to serve, and the third is the average contract terms. I can tell you that this segment today is fully contributive of our financial targets, and we can have very attractive economics by. It's very linked to what I was describing on the different levers to acquire these customers at the right price. We have a very broad lead generation capability, so it can be from fully autonomous journeys that are triggered by digital marketing, it can be from distribution partners, and of course, we also leverage our existing clients who give us a lot of referrals within their network or outside.
We today have a very optimized cost to acquire, thanks to all these different levers that we can. Cost to serve is manageable, and it's also something that we continue to automate. It's important to have in mind that SMEs are loyal clients. There's very good stickiness with these clients. Much less of a putting in competition, much levels, , fewer tenders, et cetera. SME, it's not just about the volume, it is an attractive segment for us, very contributive of our targets. it does require a lot of ingredients.
We really, I mean, we start to see, I mean, excellent traction from the initiatives that we launched, , in our top countries. It's still a free market. I mean, mostly it's a free market.
Thank you.
Hi. This is Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas Exane. Three questions from me, please. Firstly, on the inflation and interest rates impact. Thank you for reminding us that it's a positive. Could you help us with some sensitivities? What does 1% extra inflation do to issue volume revenue margins? What does 25 basis points higher rates do to finance income, and with what sort of lag? And then, on all the case studies you gave of things that went really well, without spending too much time on the past, I'd be really interested to hear some things you think didn't go quite as well. You want to do low single digits, low double-digit organic growth. You did 14% this year with massive volume tailwinds and inflation tailwinds. what accelerates, really?
What was not quite as good as you wanted it to be in the last 5 years? Lastly, related to that, one digital lead every 30 seconds, that's 1 million leads a year. Presumably, you did not add 1 million clients this year. How does the funnel look like? What are the different steps from the very good lead generation capabilities, and at which steps does the conversion need to improve, please?
Maybe I will start with the first question regarding inflation and interest rate. Inflation, , it's not direct. We need to lead proactively to go and talk to our clients, to have them realize that there is an opportunity for them not only to protect, , the purchasing power of their employees, but also, I mean, optimizing their costs. I mean, we are leading those proactive actions. Just to give you a number, last year, our organic revenue growth, 25% came from the inflation of the what we call the average fair value increase, 25%.
Talking about the interest rate and bouncing back on the prior question, when I say we'll see, , it's more that we consider a stability of the interest rate, , after fiscal year 2023 in our projection. Yes, we run some sensitivity analysis.
the-
No, but it's a good question. As you saw, we have EUR 2.8 billion of cash. Assuming you get a 1% interest extra, it's EUR 28 million, but we don't get it fully because by the time you implement, it takes 3-4 months. I will say 1% higher.
Higher interest.
Interest rate is about EUR 18 million.
Right
of revenue.
This was for the first question. Second question was, I mean, what I mean in terms of, if we compare with the performance before last year, what did not work well? Look, I mean, and Sophie reminded this in a speech, we started our digital transformation five years ago. At the time we were a bit late. We really put our focus on our core business and building, , everything that was necessary to deliver those digital solution, , in each and every country. That was our top priority, and this is why we increased our investment in tech.
That's why we also hire a lot of people because we totally change our business. I think that, , from fiscal year 2022, we start seeing the result of, , this massive investment, this huge transformation that we went through. We also evolve the culture of the company, , increasing even more this performance culture. I mentioned that we put in place this, , this monitoring, this performance monitoring system. Now we are tracking the progress in the execution of our plan. For each and every country, we are sharing a common set of KPI. We also change part of the management teams, , in country and above.
It's a combination. It's like a recipe. We start now seeing, I mean, the first result from this investment. Having said this, I mean, for the future, definitely, thanks to the momentum and last year's performance, and thanks to, , this very solid growth platforms that we built, thanks to also the solid pipeline that we have, and with all those opportunities to upsell and cross-sell, yes, we are fully confident that, , with this team fully mobilized, that we're gonna generate this double-digit organic operating revenue growth, , for the year to come.
Maybe if I can just add to your question on the funnel. Our objective, as I said, is that to have a development rate well above 8%, this is why we need leads. Of course, the journey from generating leads to signing contract is a long journey, but this is where the foundational enablers are key. This is why we've invested in digital marketing. This is why we have extensively invested in KPI-based sales force management tools. These are the levers that help us get the maximum volume and contracts signed out of our leads. Now, I will not go into all the details on how we go through the different stages of the from prospect to opportunity to contract.
All along the way, we have methods and KPIs to be very data-driven to optimize what we do. So, , we sometimes, , we will be able to reuse leads that we have in stock. I mean, there's a lot of techniques to make sure that funnel is constantly fed to deliver our targets. Again, very laser-sharp targets by client segment, by geography, by product. Those are essential to this.
Yes.
Hi. Richard Clarke from Bernstein. three if I may. Just the first question is on your definition of your addressable market you set out.
Is that employees that are getting benefits but not through a provider? Or are you including employees that maybe aren't getting the benefits they could be entitled to? Then linked to that, when you win, when you have this development, are you winning from local providers? Are you persuading companies to adopt new benefit policies? Maybe just explain what exactly you're winning there. Then the third question is on, it seems like you've got some more governance autonomy. You were put on the organizational chart on the top row. What does that free you to do? Are you now able to compete maybe more with Sodexo's catering business? I mean, Edenred talks about competing with caterers quite a lot.
Have you got some freedom maybe to do some stuff you weren't able to do when you sat on the second row of the organizational chart?
I didn't choose, , my picture. No, more so, the addressable market is a total market, meaning, I mean, people who are entitled to get access to those benefits. This is, , our addressable market. Then, I mean, when we win, it could depend on a country from another, but on average it's 50/50. The free market still represents, , at least 50% of our wins. And the remaining 50% comes from clients won from competition. I mean, thanks to, , our digital offers and thanks to our stronger positioning. Regarding the picture, no, more seriously, , the board made the decision to that act.
I mean, to allow BRS to fulfill its full potential, we should really have our own distinct strategy. It started with this, and a strategy, , that is going to be executed by a dedicated team. This is the setup. Definitely we are enabled, , to move at a greater pace. We start seeing even within the BRS organization that we have even more excitement and energy than before. It's not a matter of competing against Onsite. I mean, we still, , push for synergies. We recently launched in France a breakthrough offer, which is called Tocla.
I think that Sunil Nayak, who is the head of Europe Onsite, we will talk about it. We are trying together to capture, , I mean, all the opportunities on the market. it's still, I mean, a matter of making sure that we are spending more time on what really matters for BRS, what is going to move the needle. And this market is much wider than the Onsite services market, I mean, in a way. Because we're talking about small companies, we're talking about sometimes different geographies, and different kind of solution as well.
I think we're gonna take a few questions from the line. Operator, can you open up the call?
Thank you. If off-site attendees wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one. If you need to withdraw your question, press star two. Also, if you are simultaneously watching the webcast online, please make sure you mute your laptop or mobile device to avoid any inconvenience caused by the small delay. Again, to ask a question, please press star one. The first question is from Jamie Rollo of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good afternoon. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, very well.
Three questions, please. First, just on the number of employees, how many of the 4,800 are in sales roles and how many in technology roles? Secondly, linking to that, you've given the technology spend of EUR 300 million CapEx since 2018 and around 10% of sales on tech CapEx going forward. The question is what is the annual OpEx spend, the operating expenses on technology, and how is that changing going forward compared to a few years ago? Just finally, the margin target is given as above 30%. Of course, BRS used to make in the mid- to high 30s before we had the little headwind from Brazil and financial income being smaller. Aurélien, I think you said well above 30% in your commentary.
Well above 30% a bit different to above 30%. Is it still possible to get back to the historic levels? Thank you.
Thank you, Jamie. I will start by the last question. Yes, I said well above. It's true that, I mean, we have a very strong plan and so I'm fully confident in our ability, , to deliver on our guidance. At that time, you said it, Brazil, the weight of Brazil was much bigger with a strong reaction. Having said this, I mean, we have this ambition to really go back to this very high level of profitability as soon as we can.
Again, we have this momentum, we have the plan, we have the opportunities, we have the people, we have the system, , to monitor and to ensure the progress in our plan. With all of this, we will deliver this double-digit operating revenue growth. This is this growth that will help us leverage our scale further. At the same time, I mean, we want to sustain this double-digit growth, and that's why we want to keep on, , investing in sales, in marketing, and in tech. This is our plan for the future.
Now coming to your Second question, I think it was, regarding the investment in tech. So I mentioned that we will invest close to 10% of our revenues, so which is roughly EUR 100 million per year in OpEx. So we'll keep on increasing our OpEx in IT, and we plan to spend another EUR 100 million, so we'll be about EUR 200 million per year, which is 20% of our revenue. It's I believe that this is the right amount of spend in tech to support our plan, given that we are focused on our core and our augmented core. The first question, I'm sorry to me.
It was the breakdown of employees between sales.
Yes. Sorry.
and technology.
Sorry. In tech, it's roughly 800-850 internal resources that are working on our platform. We are also, , working with, I mean, external companies as well. In sales, including customer care, I think that we are 1,200.
Most of that. .
.
.
1,200 people in sales. Client-facing.
The EUR 100 million OpEx on tech, how does that compare to a few years ago, please?
Look, we were around 60, I would say. I mean EUR 60 million. back, I mean, to 2017, , our level of CapEx was closer to EUR 35 million. The amount that we are investing in OpEx was closer to EUR 50 million. We more than double it. We more than double it.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Vicki Stern of Barclays. Please go ahead.
hi there. Just firstly, on acquisitions, could you talk us through your thinking on acquisitions for BRS in terms of what types of businesses, what sort of size are you thinking bolt on or potentially bigger? Linked to that, where you talk about the third pillar of growth to diversify, I appreciate you'll come back on more details on that, in due course. Does that apply to thinking about M&A and how that could diversify the business now? If something attractive were to come along that could help you diversify, would you be open to M&A, on a larger scale today? Second question, just relating to BRS staying fully owned by Sodexo. You obviously didn't get the price that you wanted last year, but just what's the thinking about that now? Does it remain firmly, fully part of Sodexo?
Just a little bit on the regulatory backdrop in Brazil. Obviously there have been changes there in the last week in terms of government, but a lot of changes that have been planned in regulation. If you just touch on your latest thinking about the development there, positive and negative. Thanks.
Okay. Super. Thanks, Vicki. I will start with your first question. Regarding M&A, definitely we have the ambition to make acquisition, and this is going to to feed not only, , our first pillar around augmenting our core. We definitely want to consolidate our presence in the meal and food market. We will try and close some acquisitions there. Same thing for the second pillar around augmenting core. We are, , currently looking for additional bricks that could enrich our offer in employee benefits and engagement.
So we've been, , constantly looking at the opportunities on the market, , assessing what will help us deliver our plan. Just be aware that we're gonna be very selective, so it will not be at any price. Again, I mean, it needs to be, I mean, we need to make sure that we will bring value, and that it makes sense to our strategy. Now, regarding the diversification, cannot tell you more, Vicky, at this stage. I would not say more, but if we enter a new era, , a new domain, there might be, I mean, some acquisition needed to get there.
The question around Brazil. For Brazil, yes, there will be a change of president soon, beginning of 2023. For our business, look, I mean, it will not change, , the overall environment. It will definitely bring more certainty regarding the future of the program that is running our meal and food product today. We see it quite positively. The last question was regarding the process last year. Probably, I mean, there will be a question for Sophie later, or maybe you want to take it now.
Yeah. Thank you, Vicki, for your question. the process we drove last year was one of the option, but it did not, , succeed. Well, we did not go to the end of the process, and we decided that it did not bring the value that we were looking for. Now, , we are in the implementation of the plan. As we are seeing, , the plan is starting to deliver, and we want to continue the implementation.
. As a management team, again, we told you we are super excited and very, , committed to this plan because I mean we have access to the means, , to make it happen.
Great. Thanks very much.
From Jarrod Castle of UBS , please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I just wanna ask a little bit about your 2025 on margins. You say above 30%. one stage got close to 40%, so are we talking midpoint, high point, or low point when you talk about 30%? And then just in terms of getting, , well, 30% plus, in terms of getting 30% plus, are there any implied cost programs, and can you give any color on the size of those programs? Thanks.
When we say 30%, you mean for fiscal year 2025, right?
That's right, above 30%.
This is a low range, indeed. As for the cost program, , this is the core business model of BRS. We've built these platforms. The more we drive volume on this platform, the more we can improve our flow through, and so taking advantage of it. Now what is true is that again, we want to continue to invest for the next three years to sustain, , in the long run, this double-digit growth. I mean, there is a permanent, , effort to mutualize, , to optimize our cost structure, but there is no cost program as such.
I think we need to stop the questions now because it's.
Okay.
. I'm sorry, but we have to break for lunch.
Okay.
We have one hour, so we'll be back here at 1:50 P.M. Yes, 1:50 P.M. 12:50 P.M., French, English time. Lunch is upstairs for those in the room. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your attention.
Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your lunch, and Le Notes Veggie options. Our aim is to influence more responsibility in the plate by providing delicious alternatives. I hope you appreciated it all. Now it's time for the on-site group. Alexandra, can you come and start the session, please?
Good afternoon. I'm Alexandra Serizay, Chief Tech & Services Officer. I'm happy to share with you this afternoon insights on Sodexo strategy to lead sustainable and profitable growth. We operate on food and FM markets, which together represent more than EUR 600 billion globally. Most markets are still more than 50% self-operated, which represents an attractive growth potential. This considerable opportunity requires us to select the best value pools going forward in line with our purpose. The food business, even in a B2B environment, is increasingly consumer-driven, which means that changing behaviors accelerated by COVID opens new opportunities and a need to complement our traditional on-site model. FM business is 50%-60% larger than food and more asset-driven. On the one hand, it enjoys a strong need for optimization, including environmental efficiency. On the other hand, it is a key driver to enhance consumer experience.
From a geographical perspective, the nature of market opportunities varies per region. North America accounts for almost 40% of the global market and remains the largest value pool for food and FM services. It is expected to benefit from solid growth in the 5%-10% range, driven by I mean healthcare and seniors, and more diversified consumption habits in work and learn environment where consumers are more volatile. Europe represents a third of the global market and is expected to have growth in the 2%-5% range. This more mature market is expected to be driven by innovation and corporate social responsibility. Rest of the world includes Latin America and Asia Pacific, with key countries such as Brazil, India or China, where Sodexo has been a pioneer.
Those geographies have in common their lower outsourcing rate and high growth potential of over 10% per year by 2030. Now, how is Sodexo positioned on these markets? In North America, where we generate 44% of our revenues, mostly from our food businesses, we operate in all types of environments. We have solid market positions in both health and learn environments, which still remain key growth drivers as the level of outsourcing is still relatively low. On the work environment, which is more mature, we have a balanced mix of blue collar and white collar, and we'll keep having a sector-focused growth while leveraging new consumption habits to capture targeted value pools. In Europe, which accounts for 38% of our on-site revenues, we have a well-diversified portfolio in terms of service and segment, which reflects the market structure.
Our leading position is a foundation to scale new models and continue to gain in efficiency, both in food and FM. Finally, in the rest of the world, we have naturally a strong focus on the work environment as it is the one leading the way in terms of outsourcing. Our leading positions in fast-growing countries such as Brazil or India will continue to be a strategic growth driver. To conclude on our portfolio management, we operate globally on work and health environment, the two largest value pools, while we have selective regional positions in learn and play. As mentioned by Sophie, we aim at refocusing our on-site services activities to lead in the food experience business. A deep understanding of consumers' behaviors is necessary to adapt our traditional model and complement it with new offers.
We have all witnessed the acceleration of the transformation of consumers' expectations and have qualified it by our own internal studies and observations coming from our presence in more than 30,000 sites worldwide. The need for flexibility in the when, where, and how our consumer access our food offers is amplified in hybrid work environments or in large university campuses. Personalization is another expression of consumers' willingness to be considered as unique individuals and be offered a good-for-me solution with an increased awareness of the food impact on health. CSR concern has been increasing, obviously driven by younger generations and the consideration of a collective impact on the resources used on planet, but as well on the social role a large employer can have on communities. Finally, digital is not only a way to facilitate users' experience but also to enhance it.
In Sodexo, we differentiate through the way we serve. We serve the essential needs of millions of people. Our digital experience will serve this purpose and enable us to enrich our direct link with consumers. In other words, consumers want to get alternatives that facilitate their everyday life and match their expectations. All our environments are impacted by those trends, which trigger the need to constantly upgrade our traditional model and offers and get alternatives to fit consumers' expectations. This upgrading starts with two dimensions: boosting the deployment of consumer-oriented branded offers and continue to invest in our digital ecosystems. First, the deployment of branded offers will allow us to deliver at scale impactful solutions that match consumers' health and well-being aspirations, such as low carbon menus or convenience experience.
Over the last 2 years, we have rationalized our portfolio of branded food offers by about 40% and have now around 60 of them. There is still room for further consolidation, and at the same time, we intend to spend an additional EUR 45 million in marketing over the next 5 years in order to scale these branded offers and our blockbusters. We aim at reaching more than 50% of our traditional food revenues from branded offers versus less than 30% today. The second area of enhancement is the digitalization of our consumers' experience on site, mainly thanks to applications which enable our guests to order and collect, to pay, or to learn about the recipes.
Last year, we have launched a EUR 85 million program over 5 years in data and digital, and aim at reaching 10 million active consumers in our digital ecosystems by 2025. In parallel to this upgrading, we are complementing our traditional food offers with new distribution channels. Convenience solutions match the flexibility aspirations of our consumers. They range from coffee corners, micro markets, pantries, or connected fridges refilled with prepackaged fresh food. Such channel has already a great potential in the U.S. Aggregation of curated offers from local restaurants is also developing. Those aggregation models can be on-site, such as the food court model we have in Asia, Micral, or digital, such as the foodiE offer we have in the U.S. Finally, on-site delivery of freshly prepared food is the third type of concept we are investing in, such as Fooditude in the U.K. or Nourish in the U.S.
These three advanced food models will allow us to better cover the needs of our increasingly volatile consumers and access new markets. Our ambition is to reach at least 10% of our overall food revenues with those models in 2025, starting from less than 2% today, thanks to both organic and inorganic growth, and of course, with a region-based approach. As we are refocusing our strategy on food experiences, it also implies to target FM services that leverage our strengths or specific care touch the way we serve, and it goes with being more selective in FM services which augment this experience, especially in the work environment, where our clients are eager to recreate attractive workplaces to foster team spirit within their employees. Today, FM represents 40% of our revenues globally with different weights by region.
While it represents less than 30% in North America, France or Brazil, it amounts to more than half of our revenues in Asia-Pacific, LATAM, the UK, and Continental Europe, which are very much focused on the work environment. I mean corporate services, government and agencies, and energy and resources. As FM is a huge market, we only focus on those value-added services which are accretive to our overall margin and are either synergistic to our food services to provide an enjoyable consumer experience in our B2B2C transformation. This is the case for workplace management, for instance, or ticketing management in the Pluxee environment. All those services which bring a specific value to our clients and enable us to nurture the B2B relationship. This is the case for healthcare technology management or HTM in the healthcare environment.
These services portfolio refocus will be reinforced by an optimization in both food and FM. We have strong ambition on food off-site production. These new generation culinary units aim at serving our traditional restaurants as well as our advanced models described earlier, such as convenience or delivery, and consequently serve our profitable growth. They allow us to optimize our production with high-quality standards supported by robotization, compliance to our supply catalog, and reduced food waste. In such facilities, compliance to selected vendors is by design close to 100%. It also relieves on-site employees from the most fastidious tasks and low value-added tasks, so that they can focus on specific culinary assembly and customer-facing experience. Finally, it is a better way to adapt to volatility of guest attendance.
The first large scale example of this remote production has been very successful in Chile and the US. France, and China are following with very promising plans. Our ambition is to at least double the number of all the culinary units versus the 30 we currently have. In FM, we aim to reinforce our command centers activity. Command centers are centralized off-site entities through which we enable the optimized delivery of our operational services to our clients and consumers. Today, we have 16 command centers around the globe which cover FM and currently 30% of our accounts. Our ambition is to consolidate volumes further and increase activities of the leading command centers with existing clients at a pace of over 10% per year, alongside ensuring that all appropriate new business is aligned with this strategic model.
This enables us to massify remote expertise and consequently increase our service quality on reactive and predictive maintenance. For instance, we record an increase of 25% of on-time completion rate when managed by command center. It is particularly true where expertise is paramount to our clients, such as remote monitoring through IoT and artificial intelligence, which allows real-time problem-solving with less on-site intervention. For predictive maintenance, which increases uptime by avoiding or better planning reactive maintenance. This means as well shifting our client relationship to a solution-based model where we partner with our clients on outcome and proactive risk management versus pure subcontracting. Of course, central to our strategic positioning, having a positive impact on our planet and people is at the core of the way we serve.
From local sourcing to the composition of our recipes, passing by the way we produce, manage stocks, and reduce waste, and there, control of site production is a key lever. We have to double down our environmental efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. We monitor our carbon footprint and intend to reduce it by 34% by 2025 versus 2017 level. In 2022, we have already reduced our emissions by 27%. Key objective is also to reduce our food waste by 50% in 2025. We have already achieved more than 41%. Our engagement is also to support diversity, equity, and inclusion, and all people well-being. It has always been at the core of Sodexo's DNA and will remain.
We are committed to have a positive impact with our own people with, for instance, gender balance in all our departments, including operations, and to promote equity in all communities in which we operate. We aim at having gender balance in 100% of our management teams by 2025, sorry. To summarize, we aim at being a leader in sustainable food and valued experiences at every moment in life, work, heal, learn, and play. We rely on our mission and our purpose. It all starts with the everyday. We bring coherence with our focus on food business and differentiate through the way we serve, bringing a real and consistent food expertise, selecting and improving our valued FM services to improve the consumer quality of life and nurture our clients' relationships. We benefit to every stakeholder in our ecosystem. Our consumers, through a valued experience.
Our clients, through an efficient and partnering relationship. Our people, through the pride of having an impact. Our shareholders, through our financial results. Before I hand over, it is important to underline that our global strategy for on-site services will be executed by each of our regions with alignment, rigor, and discipline according to their starting points, and in a way to rebalance our portfolio into growing value pools. In North America, large and growing market where we are relatively underweight, we will focus on growth on the most attractive value pools, work, heal, and learn. We will invest in advanced food models to capture the consumer-driven benefits lying in work environment and in the universities. We will keep being obsessed with operational excellence, starting with client retention.
In Europe, our home market, we will focus on profitability improvement with a focus on retention, innovation, especially CSR driven, and scaling new models to support sustainable and profitable growth. In Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Brazil, where we already have leading positions, we keep focusing on growth to maintain and improve our market shares and investing in new models. I now hand over to Sarosh, who will detail our execution roadmap in North America. Thank you.
Thank you, Alexandra. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Sarosh, and I lead our North America business. In the time that we have together, I'd like to share with you the progress that we've made in North America over the last couple of years and why we feel confident about our future. In North America, we are fortunate enough to serve 2,000 clients across 10,000 sites with an energized team of 123,000 members. We have every segment represented within North America, with our largest environment being that of health. There's tremendous potential for us to grow in all our environments, especially in the health environment as well as the work environment. Most of our business is in the food service arena. It's where we started and where we are very strong.
26% of our business is in facility maintenance, and a growing portion of that comes from healthcare maintenance. This business is a growing business for us. It commands 500 basis points higher margin than our food business, and I'll comment about it in a little moment. In North America, we had extremely strong organic growth. We had organic growth of 24% in fiscal 2022. This represents 89% of our FY 2019 revenue. I'd like to particularly call out that in the last quarter, we were at 96% of FY 2019 revenues. It's clear that we have momentum, and we are confident that we will deliver at pre-COVID levels or better from a revenue standpoint moving forward. North America contributes to around 44% of our on-site service revenue and 51% of our on-site service profit.
When we think of leading indicators, we think of retention as well as development. This last fiscal year, our retention numbers were up 400 basis points as compared to last year, and our development numbers were also up 400 basis points, with a growing portion of that development coming from first-time outsourcing as well as cross-selling higher margin services to present accounts. When it comes to development, this year our sales and marketing ecosystem really came together, and together they were able to generate a pipeline at the end of this last fiscal year that was 25% larger than the prior year. Digital leads for us are up 88% compared to last year. Digital marketing leads now encompass 60% of our portfolio value. I'd like to take a step back and put it in relative terms.
2 years ago, we barely had any leads coming from digital marketing, and now 60% of our leads are coming from digital marketing. We absolutely have made progress as a business, and I'll be the first to say that we can continue to improve. From a retention standpoint, we came in at 96.5%. As Sophie mentioned, this is one of the best retention rates that we've had in over a decade. Let me remind you, at last capital markets day, we talked about our need to focus on execution, to focus on rigor, and we did just that, and our numbers are showing it. From a supply chain standpoint, we've also made a lot of progress, and I'll share more about that in just a moment.
North America is a very attractive market with around $236 billion in food and FM. Of that, $100 billion comes from food alone. Our top three competitors make up around $35 billion-$40 billion of that. In the past, we haven't been very decisive with regards to M&A, aggressive when it comes to digital marketing, as well as rigor, which I just talked about. We have learned our lessons, and that chapter is behind us. We're moving forward. We have a clear ambition to be the number two player in North America, and that means widening the gap with Aramark and closing the gap with Compass. Recently, we moved the P&L back into the region, as Sophie mentioned.
This will help us make decisions closer to the customer, closer to the client, be much more agile and nimble, one team with one goal. Our sales engine is clicking. Actually, let me take a step back and tell you why I'm confident that we will absolutely achieve our ambition. Our sales engine is clicking. Our retention is at an all-time high. Decision-making is local. We have a leadership team that has the right tenure as well as right experience. Our supply chain team has been working feverishly with our operations team to be able to combat this high level of inflation. Working with the operations team, we've created operational efficiencies, labor efficiencies, and working together as a team, we've not only mitigated this high inflation, we've also been able to increase our margins.
When you put all of this together, we have net new profitable positive growth, and we expect to see that trend moving forward. Let's take a moment to talk about our health environment. In healthcare, we had strong development in FY 2022, and we expect to continue to have strong development in FY 2023 and beyond. Our retail sales in healthcare, which is our food retail sales, were at 75% of pre-COVID levels. As more and more patients return to hospitals to get elective surgeries, we expect that number will continue to increase, and we will get back up to our pre-COVID levels. I'd like to call out a contract that Sophie mentioned briefly, a big win for us in the healthcare space, which is the Ardent Health Services contract.
We have a team of 1,500 team members that are energized to serve this contract across 50 sites, where we will provide retail food, patient nutrition, and environmental services. In the past, we only provided these services to four Ardent contracts. In our senior business, we've had strong development, and with some of the investments that we've made from a sales and marketing standpoint, and the discipline that we are instilling from an operations and a rigor standpoint, we believe we'll continue to see strong development and growth. Let's move to our work environment. In our work environment, our corporate services segment is the largest segment that we have. We are seeing a gradual movement back of people coming back to work.
At the same time, we're seeing that more and more offices are moving to a hybrid model, and employers are using food to lure employees back into that environment. What does that mean for us? This is fantastic because this gives us an opportunity to deploy our advanced food models of aggregation, convenience, delivery, and off-site production with foodiE, Nourish, InReach, and Pass. As employers lure employees back, we'll be able to scale these models faster. We also have deployed our Everyday app in the corporate service segment. This app helps us get connected to consumers and develop that cohesiveness with them, that closeness with them, and we can use this data and really be able to do data analytics on what they're looking for. This app was ranked number 63 of all apps on the App Store, all of them.
It is the strongest-ranking app from a consumer app standpoint as compared to any of Sodexo's direct competitors. This app allows consumers to have mobile and kiosk ordering, personalized digital wallets, frictionless checkout, as well as delivery options. It's very liked by our consumers. We also have launched The Good Eating Company, which is a high-end brand, around 18 months ago. We already have $36 million in sales with accretive margins, and we are confident that this fiscal year, we will double our sales. We launched our first offsite production facility in Boston, which we branded as The Pass, and I'll speak about that in a moment. Now let's talk about our learning environment. We're seeing a strong uptick in sales with more and more students coming back to universities as well as schools. In universities, we are seeing a very strong freshman class.
I'm very proud of the teams because they anticipated that. We hired frontline recruiters at specific universities for us to be able to recruit that frontline staff. Guess what? Our vacancies for frontline employees now are 28% less than what they were prior year. Now we're able to open more retail locations to be able to meet the needs of this freshman class, as well as all the other classes. In the university segment, we have deployed a lot of technology and partnered with partners who can really help us elevate our level. I'd like to share with you a few examples.
We partnered with a last mile autonomous robot company called Kiwibot, which helps us deliver food autonomously, 100% autonomously, across the university campus, so we can deliver food to faculty and students no matter where they are, all through the day and in wee hours of the night. We have deployed 1,200 robots across 50 campuses, and that deployment will be complete by the end of the year. We expect to deploy around 2,000 robots across 100 campuses. What I'd also like to share with you is, that 90% of all users of Kiwibot give it a 4 or more stars out of 5 from a consumer satisfaction. It's clear that we are fulfilling a need there. We also launched our first completely autonomous store at the University of Denver, and we have branded that eat>NOW.
This store is completely AI-driven, frictionless checkout, and students and faculty can get freshly catered meals there, daily staples, convenience items. By using this technology, our revenues are up 21%. Guess what? Food cost is down 11%. We partnered with the right technology partner and it's working, and we look to scale this across other universities. As I mentioned earlier, with regards to the Everyday app, we've also used the Everyday app in our university segments. We tend to take the learnings from one segment and apply it to another. This year, we've already launched 220 American universities with the Everyday app. Taking the data and really modeling it, we can understand the behavior and the needs of our students. One of the things that we clearly heard is we'd like to see more brands on campus.
We'd like to see more virtual brands. We heard them, and we acted on it. We've deployed virtual brands on campus like MrBeast Burger and Mariah's Cookies. I'm sorry we didn't have them for you today, but they're delicious and our consumers love them. What I love most about them is their double-digit margin, and our consumers love them. Also, we learned through our data that our students, as well as our faculty, are looking for more plant-based products, and we've started introducing more plant-based products. By 2025, 42% of all meals served on university campuses will be plant-based. The other piece that I'd like to share with you is also with regards to our school segment. Moving decision-making much closer to the client and consumer really helps a local business like schools.
We continue to see strong performance in school moving forward. Moving to our play environment. As all of in your personal life, we were all cooped up during COVID, and there's a pent-up demand for people to go to stadiums, arenas, convention centers. We're seeing this in our results. We are at 98% of Q4 FY19 revenues. Clearly, the numbers speak for themselves. There is momentum. We expect that will continue to go up. We also rebranded our Sodexo Sports and Leisure business as Sodexo Live!. Our clients have faith in what we do, which is reflected in our all-time high retention rate of 99%. Let's talk about this market, this market that everyone has talked about earlier today. It's a concentrated market. It's a fantastic market.
It has a lot of potential. By the end of this year, we will be. The market will be at pre-COVID levels. It will continue to grow. There is tremendous opportunity with at least 50% of this market being self-operated, and we will continue to grow and have our share of the market. I'd like to share with you a couple of market growth drivers. Inflation and supply constraints, low unemployment, are they challenging for us? Absolutely. They are much more challenging for our colleagues in the self-operated market. With this happening, more of our self-operated colleagues are looking to focus on their core business and outsource food and facilities, which creates greater momentum for us. COVID has changed the model. I talked about hybrid work.
It's changed the way consumers consume food, where they consume food, when they want food, what they want. This is fabulous because it gives us an opportunity to scale and grow our advanced food models. We truly believe that we are well-positioned to take advantage of these market drivers and make a dent in the self-operated market. We have three strategic priorities moving forward. To deliver technology and innovation. To improve operational efficiencies and customer satisfaction that will help us drive margin and retention. To deploy advanced food models to grow our market share, and to continue to invest in sales and marketing capabilities that will help us drive net new growth. When we think of technology, we think of it in three buckets.
Technology that will help us from a consumer and client-facing standpoint, technology that will help us from an operational standpoint, and technology that will help us with new business opportunities. Let's take a moment to talk about consumer and client-facing technology. I talked to you about Kiwibot. I've talked to you about eat>NOW, which we look to parlay into other environments as we move forward, as well as the Everyday app. These are helping us get much closer and cohesive with our consumers. From an operational standpoint, as I mentioned earlier, our supply chain team has been working very hard and feverishly. Using state-of-the-art digital equipment and data analytics, we've been able to reduce our number of SKUs from 30,000 to 10,000. Yes, 30,000 to 10,000. We've locked our order guides down.
That goes back to what we talked about 2 years ago at Capital Markets Day about having execution and rigor, and we are following what we said we would. We're using AI-based recruiting and labor management, and I'll speak about that in a moment. Also DRIVE, which is our integrated food management system that we deployed 4 years ago. This year alone, we've seen $13.5 million in food saving in just a couple of environments. From a new business opportunity standpoint, our healthcare technology business, where we are striving to be the sole source provider for technical maintenance repair for all non-original manufactured equipment, partnering with our GPO partners like Vizient as well as Premier. By doing this, we're trying to cut the middleman out and provide seamless service to our hospital clients.
Just to remind you, this business garners 500 basis points higher than our food business. It has good retention and a good momentum from a sales standpoint, and we'll continue to invest and grow this business organically and inorganically. Our GPO, which is Entegra, it's the second-largest food GPO. We made investments in this GPO, and we'll continue to invest in it, and they are using state-of-the-art digital technology as well as AI to help our customers be able to provide value to their consumers and navigate this high inflation area. This business is a gem for us, and we'll continue to grow it. How do we bring our advanced food models to life? Convenience. We launched our InReach business in 2022. We expect this business will be a half a billion-dollar business with above-average margins by 2025.
As Sophie mentioned, we did a couple of acquisitions last year, and we grew organically, and we expect to do the same moving forward. We launched our first off-site production facility in Boston. Now we've learned our lessons from it. It's a learning lesson, and we're very glad that we had the learning lessons. Now we're scaling. We're already serving 50 Sodexo sites in different environments from this Boston location. Because we have learned from it, and we see, and we know how to scale. We'll be also looking to fulfill needs across the U.S. and opening 1 or 2 more of them this fiscal year. Our virtual brands that I mentioned, Mariah's Cookies, MrBeast Burger, this is just the start. We'll continue to leverage more virtual brands to meet and exceed the needs of our consumers.
With aggregation, we can provide much more choice to our consumers, and with our consumers being dispersed and them working in hybrid environments, this can bring choice and satisfaction to our consumers. We started testing food delivery from a robotic standpoint with an automated vending program, partnering with a robotic company. We're seeing a lot of traction in this at the university campus where we're doing it. We look to see as to how we wanna scale this moving forward. Now let's talk about the investments that we're making in sales and marketing and the fruits of our labor. Our number of qualified leads are up 53% year-over-year as compared to FY 2021. Our average deal size is 21% higher than in FY 2019. Let me be clear, that didn't happen by chance.
That's because of the maniacal focus of our sales and marketing team to make sure they're targeting the accounts that they wanna go after, and they're using data analytics to help them make those decisions. Our digital marketing leads, as I mentioned earlier, are generating 60% of our pipeline value. Just to remind you, the digital leads are up 88% compared to last year. We've added 15 FTEs to our sales and marketing ecosystem because we truly believe we're getting our return on investment with these additional people. People are at the heart of what we do, and the challenge of hiring and retaining people has been felt deeply by our organization, as it has been felt by other organizations in various different spaces. In June 2021, we had the largest number of staff shortages.
Presently, our staff turnover is at 35%, which is 6 percentage points down from May 2022, and over the last 3 months it has stabilized. If the market continues the way it is and the way we are foreseeing it to, we could be at a historic turnover rate of 30% for this fiscal year. Let me be very, very clear that this did not happen by chance. Our HR team has been hitting this head on each and every day, and they've been working feverishly to change our employee value proposition to provide healthcare and dental benefits to our employees on day one, to provide insurance benefits that our hourly workers can actually afford to completely enhance and change the way we recognize as well and the benefit program of our employees.
Importantly, now we're housing all our employee data in a central location. It's less about the fact that it's in one location. It's about the fact that now we have a macro view of what's happening across all our businesses in this location. Now we can spot geographic trends and be very efficient in the way we address them. In spite of having higher number of vacancies, in spite of the fact that we have unprecedented low unemployment rates, we've improved our time to hire by 10% year-over-year. I'd like to conclude by reminding you of our three strategic priorities. It's to deliver technology and innovation to improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, to drive margin and to drive retention.
To deploy advanced food models to grow our market share, and to continue to invest in sales and marketing to be able to drive net new growth. When you capitalize some of the market drivers that we have of inflation and low unemployment, which as I mentioned earlier, will help drive more of that self-operated market to outsource to us. The permanent impacts that we've seen with COVID, which will give us a fantastic opportunity to deploy as well as grow and scale our advanced food models. We as a team are confident that we will be able to deliver 96% retention, continued net new positive growth, increased revenue from our advanced food models, double-digit growth in FY 2023, and further enhancements in FY 2023 and beyond.
I'm pleased about the progress that we made in North America over the last couple of years, but I'm even more excited about what our future holds. I'd be remiss if I didn't take this moment and share with all of you that I'm extremely proud of the team that we have in North America and for the work that they do each and every day, being true to our mission and values. Thank you for your time today. Now it's my pleasure to welcome on stage my colleague, Sunil Nayak.
Hello, everyone. It's nice to be with you. I'm pleased to lead the European zone from October this year. Over the next 15 minutes, I will share our performance in Europe, how we see the market, and our key priorities to achieve two objectives. One, to enhance our margins and cash. Second, to maintain our leadership position. Sodexo is well established in Europe with a leadership position, as I said earlier. We have strong operational expertise, both in food and FM, and deep client relationships across multiple segments and countries. We operate in 21 countries across Europe, and we partner with over 9,000 clients and 13,000 sites. France and the U.K. account for 60% of our revenue, with the remaining 40% distributed across the 19 countries.
We have a fantastic team of 100,000 people, and I wanna take the opportunity to thank them. I'm also very proud to say that 40% of our leadership are women. Sodexo's success in global strategy accounts and in the public sector has contributed to a strong position in work, which is 57% of our revenue, while 27% comes from our revenue from our expertise in healthcare. Learn is 10% of our revenue due to our selective growth and good presence in France, Italy and the UK. Play, 6% with presence. Play 6% with presence in the UK, France and Spain. Our portfolio is balanced equally between food and FM, but the mix differs across countries.
We have a high food presence in France and in the southern countries, while FM is predominant in the UK and in the northern countries. Over the last 3 years, we have proactively rationalized our portfolio to exit countries and services that did not have sufficient density or growth opportunity, like Slovakia, Slovenia and Morocco, and services like horticulture. Europe is Sodexo's home market, representing 38% of onsite services revenue and 32% of UOP contribution. We have been resilient despite the COVID crisis due to our balanced portfolio of segments and services and our swift response to the pandemic, like winning the UK testing centers. Our revenue is at 95% of our pre-COVID levels, but when we adjust for the sale of assets, it goes up to 97.5% in Q4.
We have grown organically 13% versus FY 2021, primarily driven by food at 21%. The UOP margin in FY 2022 is back up to pre-COVID levels after actions on inflation recovery, exiting of low-performing contracts and leveraging supply chain and operational efficiencies. Moreover, we have been selective in our sales approach, focusing on key markets and sectors. Currently below the group, retention continues to be an area of improvement for Europe, although performance differs from one country to another, and I will talk a little bit about retention a little later. Now let me talk to you on how we see the market. We lead the market in Europe with number one position in France, Belgium and a few other countries. We have a competitive advantage with food at our core and a strong integration of FM services that provide incremental value to our clients.
This is very important in our differentiation. The food market is estimated at EUR 64 billion, with work and healthcare being the largest segments at 80% of the market. The FM market is estimated at EUR 120 billion. France, the UK and Germany are our largest markets, followed by Italy and Spain. The European market is estimated to grow between 2%-5%. However, as , the market is fragmented and has many local players. It has complex legislation by country, which impacts labor flexibility and thus, of course, efficiency. On the upside, it has a largely untapped public sector market. There are also opportunities of white space and profitability in Healthcare and Learning, where about 60% of contracts are still self-operated. In work, which we lead, we have sub-segments anticipated to grow around 5% with tech, smart manufacturing, and life sciences.
When it comes to consumers, we see disparities in the way they use technology by country. We definitely see a big increase in online food ordering and delivery. In fact, the UK market has seen a 50% increase in the last couple of years. Most importantly, more than anywhere else, Europe has a heightened awareness of climate change, which makes sustainability key for our clients and consumers. I visited two sites recently where we have a significant presence of plant-forward diets, great chefs, and really happy consumers. In fact, I'm so passionate about this topic that I am going to go in December for a great innovation contest that we pull together all our chefs across the world to be able to create best exciting plant-forward meals. We can see the change coming in sustainability.
Europe is a dynamic and changing marketplace that offers a number of opportunities. The war for talent, need for efficiencies, and focus on sustainability have created an increased demand for responsible outsourcing and a strong need for food and amenities. Our services have never been more important and relevant. Building on Sophie's strategic pillars and enablers, we have narrowed our key actions to five specific priorities that will meet our two objectives, improving margins and cash and maintaining our leadership position. The first two priorities will directly contribute to margin improvement, while the other three will ensure we maintain our leadership position by value creation and selective growth. First, we want to leverage the simplified organization to drive efficiency.
As Sophie said, we have shifted the organization at a regional level, and we want to empower decision-making and ensure responsiveness at a local level. We want to mutualize resources so we can focus on our clients and our consumers and leverage efficiencies and improve profitability. I want the teams to be responsive and make decisions. The new organization, thank you, will just allow them to do that by avoiding complex approval processes. Moreover, some countries will act as pioneers to test and launch innovation that can be easily scaled and replicated. We don't want to duplicate across countries. For instance, in Sweden, we have developed a dynamic cleaning capability that is being rolled out across other countries.
Our second priority is to drive margin improvement through operational improvements, focusing on supply chain and adapting our delivery model with a deeper focus on some of our underperforming geographies. As we've done over the last two years and made good progress, we will continue to deliver operational improvements, manage inflation, and enhance our commercial and delivery capabilities. In supply chain, we're leveraging our leadership to better manage our spend of over EUR 3 billion through deeper focus on category management and reduction of SKUs while enhancing our focus on sustainability. We have invested in a data platform to support this, which will cover a large part of our spend by the end of next year. This is important. We're also adapting our model, both in food and in FM, as the market changes. In food, we are driving efficiency by balancing our production between on-site and off-site.
For example, in France, we built an innovative food and logistics platform in the learn segment supporting 64,644 delivery points. We've seen the benefits and are now expanding this expertise in work targeting 150 sites in the coming year. In FM, we have 7 command centers that consolidate activities for 44% of our IFM clients, improving our efficiency and enhancing our consumer experience. Our objective is to scale it to more of our operations. Finally, we are leveraging data and technology to adapt our model, both in food and in FM, to bring efficiency. Wando, our FM in-house tech platform, automates reporting and order requests, driving optimal service delivery for over 1,000 sites today. Our data intelligence tool, PowerChef, has been deployed at 70 sites in France to manage food production that reduces our food cost and waste.
While our Everyday app offers a cashless solution at 100 sites in the UK. Alexandra will talk a little bit more about this. All combined, these initiatives are driving efficiencies and will support us in improving profitability. Our third priority, as Sarosh, is to accelerate and scale our advanced food models across targeted countries and cities. The food market continues to be attractive, but with new form of models emerging that give us the opportunity to grow and capture larger consumer spend. Food is an incredible way to connect with consumers, enhance their experience, and meet their well-being needs. Through our food transformation, we see growth potential in key markets like the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, with existing and new clients.
A couple of years back in the UK, we acquired a premium brand, The Good Eating Company, that is focused on good stewardship and good ingredients to produce simple food done exceptionally well. We are successfully growing this brand, and as Sarosh Mistry said, it has been successful in the U.S. after we exported it to the U.S. Investments in urban kitchens like Fooditude in the UK allow us to serve new clients which we never served earlier, such as Netflix and Palantir. In France, as Aurélien Sonet was mentioning earlier, we have combined our on-site offering with our off-site BRS meal benefits through Tocla, which is really a unique offer for hybrid workers and to find solutions for the clients who want to provide flexible workspace places for their employees.
We will continue to focus on our brands like Modern Recipe, that create contemporary food and creative spaces for our consumers and clients. Our brands will allow us to capture more retail consumers in Health, where we see the opportunities for margin enhancement. Of course, digital and technology are key elements of our food transformation. By delivering menu choices and online ordering through our So Happy app in Work, we've seen a 10% increase in spend in some of our sites. Similarly, with the Everyday app in Learn, it has helped us win new business. We are scaling our advanced food models, and they are key for our profitable growth plan, improving our margins. As well, they're very important for us to retain our clients. Our fourth priority is to be laser-focused on our choices with increased selectivity and stronger focus on value and retention.
First, on retention. As I said earlier, we need to do better, and we can do better. The rigorous implementation of clients for life process with a differentiated value proposition and a mix of services will drive improved retention for us. In Work, Vital Spaces uniquely positions us to deliver a comprehensive and responsible range of services. They are anchored in food, along with FM and workplace services, employee benefits, and concierge services. We are targeting growing sectors like technology, pharma, and smart manufacturing. In Heal, our value proposition is designed to leverage our science-based expertise to deliver the right patient experience and care journeys. We have an opportunity to retain and grow by improving the hospital staff and guest experience through our retail brands in the private and public sector. Specifically, we see opportunities in France, U.K., and Spain with first-generation outsourcing.
In Learn, we remain very focused on our existing markets, like the UK, France, Italy, and Spain, and grow only where we can build stronger and healthier learning communities with equity. In Play, we are present mainly in France and the UK, where we see good growth opportunities, leveraging our unique know-how with Sodexo Live to create exceptional moments for our guests. Our final priority is critical for our future and the future of our planet. We're embedding sustainability into our offers because it is core to our customers, and we know it'll be a game changer for our business transformation and our success and a big value creator. Sodexo is well advanced in this area.
We have deployed our food waste program across 40% of our client base, increased our plant-based ingredients to 58% of our purchasing spend, and engaged consumers by providing eco-labeling on the carbon footprint of their meals at 400 sites. Our approach to sustainability has already won us contracts, like Danone in France or with the Schou offer in Sweden. As Sophie said, we wanna be leaders in sustainable food. Of course, all this is made possible by our teams. Our engagement rate, despite the challenges of COVID, has remained strong. With a focus on succession and talent planning, we have set a target for internal promotions and to continue to increase the percentage of women in operations. To sum it up, in Europe, we're almost back to where we were pre-COVID.
We have actively managed the business and are well-placed to execute on the next phase of our growth. We'll be intensely focused on our five key priorities. Empower local decision-making, drive operational efficiency, scale our advanced food models, target select geographies and segments, and impact sustainability in what we do. I am confident with the teams that we will accelerate the execution of our priorities to achieve two objectives, to enhance our margins and cash, and to maintain our leadership position in Europe. Thank you. Now I'll hand over to Johnpaul Dimech, who will talk about the rest of the world.
Thank you, Sunil, and good afternoon to everyone. I'm Johnpaul Dimech, and I head up Sodexo's on-site services across the regions other than North America and Europe. The rest of the world markets are typically fragmented, competitive, dynamic, and differ from region to region. We currently operate in three distinct regions: Latin America, Brazil, APMEA, being Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, across 21 countries with a team of an amazing 177,000 employees servicing 2,000 clients on over 4,000 sites. Among the international players in all three regions, Sodexo is number one in food. We have a strong ambition to excel in food by capitalizing on our strengths, better understanding our client needs to provide outstanding delivery. In LatAm, we are number one in Chile, Peru, and Colombia. Overall, this market is very fragmented with a lot of local operators.
In Brazil, we are seeing traditional large and medium-sized food players investing in FM, and increasingly numbers of clients are looking for more complex IFM solutions. In APMEA, tech disruptors, startups, digital innovators from non-traditional sectors are moving into the food industry. In the FM space, we are seeing large national competitors branching out from real estate into FM. In terms of revenue split, 90% in the zone comes from work, 56% from corporate services, and 34% coming from energy and resources. In corporate services, we have been traditionally strong in the industrial subsector, providing food services in large scale. We have also a strong portfolio of global strategic accounts and key regional accounts, which is growing. The zone has a particularly strong presence in the energy resource sector, which currently makes up around 65% of the global energy and resource portfolio.
Mining and oil and gas continue to be a mainstay of our portfolio, particularly in Australia, Brazil, Chile, and the Middle East. Healthcare currently sits at 8% of Sodexo's portfolio. This is a high margin and high-growth sector. On top of our existing services in healthcare, technology management is a field which we have been investing in and building in our capabilities to expand further. Even though our portfolio in Learning is relatively small, we are very focused on opportunities to grow in specific markets like India and China with higher institutions and private schools. In terms of service mix, we have a balanced portfolio between food and FM, which has allowed us to have resilient growth. We are focused on food excellence while being very selective in FM to support our growth. Sodexo has a clear understanding of the markets that we operate in.
Our key drivers is IFM positioning, differentiation through robust offers, production models, and strong business continuity. With our scale and scope, we are well-positioned to strengthen and maintain our market leadership. These five key markets make up 82% of our total revenue, where we have established our leadership position, having operated there for the last 25-45 years. On the left of the screen, you will see the breakdown of the main sectors which showcase the unique composition. This requires us to adapt and adopt different approaches to optimize our opportunities where we operate. Let's talk about performance. Looking at revenue, we have generated strong growth even during the pandemic. In terms of contribution to the group, our UOP has also increased due to focus management and very strict cost control.
Through strong mitigation and transfer measures, our in-country teams, especially in Brazil and LatAm, are actively monitoring price trends, working with supply chain and our platforms to mitigate costs while engaging with our clients to pass on inflationary measures. Our strong performance has been underpinned by focused actions to boost capability and agility. We have made strategic investments in food capabilities, FM capabilities, and digital infrastructure to boost agility in the market. In the food space, we are partnering with innovative digital platforms. For example, our investment in Meituan in China allows us to connect with more than 10,000 merchants through their digital ecosystem, which opens up an amazing opportunity. We have also built centralized production units across the zone, with 5 centralized production units servicing over 100,000 meals a day in LatAm and APMEA.
This allows us to leverage our scale, provide standardization, and access new markets and drive higher margins. In terms of FM capabilities, we have invested in healthcare technology management over the years, and we've recently acquired TOPMED, a strong local player providing HTM to services to the Chinese market in healthcare. In India, we have pioneered the development of a digital app as a one-stop solution to allow us for all biomedical equipment needs. In India alone, we are maintaining over 50,000 pieces of medical equipment. We also understand the importance of digital infrastructure. Our 6 command centers, servicing over 15% of our FM sites, collect, actively monitor data to anticipate, resolve, and meet clients' expectations, which allows us to be efficient to deliver our FM services. Integrated consumer apps, such as My Village, enhances the work-life experience for workers in remote locations.
Our continued investment in HR technology help attract, engage, and retain our key talent, the face of Sodexo. We are simplifying our business structure. In the last 4 years, we've streamlined our footprint from 37 to 21 countries, resulting in a much more focused footprint. This did not happen by accident. To support our operational needs, we are growing a multifunction shared services center in India to provide support to APMEA and some of our global functions. We also have plans to further develop the same concept in South America. The group's reorganization is helping us become more simpler and more agile. Our countries are better empowered to make decisions. We're investing resources in countries where we have the most impact on our consumers. This started during COVID.
This will allow us to proactively lead and react to market trends and demands, but being proactive in creating and deploying offers at speed. We are very excited to drive growth in such a diverse and exciting market. The rest of the world covers 62% of the world's population. This is amazing. This is the place where the majority of people will work, heal, learn, and play in the coming decades. High GDP growth and high GDP per capita growth is expected for the zone, indicating growing purchasing power. There are variances within the zone, with LatAm, Brazil, and APMEA having different growth rates and facing different economic outlooks, but we believe the growth potential in the countries where we operate. The median age of the zone is low.
Latin America and Asia Pacific have a median age of 31 and 32 years respectively, with young and competitive workforces and a growing middle class. This also explains the increasingly competitive labor market. Building and retaining strong talent pools is critical to support our business growth, which we are absolutely focused on. The market size and potential is undeniable. The total market size in the zone is EUR 200 billion. The outsourcing rate is estimated to be around 40% in a market which is growing at a rate of more than 10% per annum. The work sector remains the largest market for both food and FM services, with the healthcare market growing rapidly. Our strategy reflects this, and you will see on the next slide in our 5 big markets.
Our strategy for the zone is focused on achieving food excellence while leveraging FM expertise for growth in our five big markets. Food remains the core of our business, and we will continue to achieve food excellence to grow with our clients. We will continue to focus on client retention and grow at speed in these five big markets. We recognize that FM also provides exciting opportunities selectively. In Brazil, our focus on food is offering high-value consumer experiences enabled by food transformation program, which includes ready-to-eat meals, digital restaurants, and grab-and-go retail stores. We've seen increasing demand from our clients for IFM services. Our suite of IFM services and positioning will allow us to cater to new ways of working, surpassing what traditional players can offer. This increased scope will solidify our market leadership and position in the industrial sector.
We also plan to expand in the offshore energy market, riding on the 25% market growth that's expected by 2030. We're committed to growing our healthcare business organically, with the market forecast to grow at 8.3% CAGR between 2022 and 2030. In Australia, our recent divestment of our non-ENR business will allow us to remain absolutely focused on the mining sector where we hold our leadership position. Sodexo are also partnered with many energy clients to provide holistic and integrated food, hospitality, and FM services supported by our command centers for their business needs. In Chile, our growth is based on strong operational business continuity and differentiation through our pre-production models. We are the market leader in Chile, and we have very strong presence in the mining and the industrial sectors.
Our refreshed offers, such as Kitchen Works, are crucial for us in providing nutrition tailored to the industrial workforce, and you heard both Sarosh and Sunil talk about those offers that we've leveraged globally. We have great ambition for China. Given the size of the market and its unique business opportunity, we have a China-for-China approach, especially in the food space. It's one of the first foreign professional services company to provide food and FM services to Chinese enterprises. We have grown alongside many fast-growing tech unicorns and large enterprises. In healthcare, we've established ourselves in grade one hospitals, and we continue to expand with healthcare institutions, delivering patient nutrition and staff dining, as well as specialized cleaning, infection control, and high value-added and high margin HTM services.
As we continue to pursue food excellence in China for a China-for-China market, we've invested in partnerships that will allow us to provide a suite of branded offers adapted to local preferences. Consumers are increasingly wanting convenience, such as pre-ordering, delivery, click and collect, loyalty programs, and food courts. To address the demands of more specific menus, we are providing more local culinary choices with both Sodexo and third-party brands, including healthier options. India has always been a very exciting market with scale and growth opportunity for the market. With more than 70% of our business centered on the workspace, we are focused on penetrating into the sub-sectors of manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries, bringing greater convenience in the food services to our consumers. The health sector is also an area where we've identified new opportunities in healthcare technology space with hospitals.
We want to reinforce our leadership position, and this requires strong operational performance and continuous innovation to stay ahead of the game. We look to three pillars that underpin us by tech and data, sales and marketing, and brands and supply management to achieve this. First, accelerating food transformation. Consumers value convenience. Our smart retail solutions further complement the dining experience with digital checkouts and vending solutions in digitally enabled restaurants. Our consumer insights present contemporary brands and offers, such as Kitchen Works and Modern Recipe for different consumer profiles. In the health space, there is a growing demand for specialty nutritional solutions. For example, in China, postpartum nutrition based on traditional Chinese medicine allows us to have value adds and showcase our expertise and ability to innovate. Sodexo believes in strong sustainability.
From our food sources to the way we deliver and package our food, this is a real differentiator. The growing awareness and trend in the zone towards sustainable sources of food and plant-based menus engages our clients and consumers who appreciate responsible and sustainable offers. Away from the consumer, we also recognize changes to the environments that we work in. An increasing number of new clients have limited kitchen facilities or cooking capabilities. We utilize smart oven technology, such as Evolution, and we are deploying them in new and existing sites. The centralized food production units in China, India, and Chile are allowing us to serve clients with no kitchens, catering to large volumes with variable needs.
In China, we're expecting more than 40% growth in our food revenue over the next 4 years from our investments that we've made in our centralized production units, which will focus on new brands catering to local flavors. Second, we wanna focus on FM enhancement. Increasingly, our workplace consultancy services help clients connect and collaborate as they operate in new hybrid working models. We will continue to enhance our FM capabilities selectively, focusing on developing IFM solutions with the support of our command centers to best meet our client needs. As a key element, we're also elevating the consumer experience through digital solutions. Smart visitor management systems, AI robots helping our visitor destinations, and smart restroom solutions are just some of them. We've also deployed digital FM portal, Wando, that Sunil talked about, to facilitate our service requests.
Wando is powered and enabled by our centralized FM command centers. Between food and FM, there are strategic opportunities for us to cross-sell our services to clients who value an integrated approach. Finally, targeting investments and partnerships. The client and the competition and the landscape is changing very quickly. To accelerate our growth, we will systematically look for value-driven opportunities to strengthen our capabilities and expertise, access new sectors, or consolidate our position. For example, TOPMED in China, we've invested in an HTM company to strengthen our capabilities and expand our reach to more hospitals in China. We are excited about this dynamic zone. We are fully committed to delivering on our growth agenda, and we've shown that. We're clear on the mission in elevating our consumer experience.
We will stay focused on our mission to simplify and remain agile to capitalize on the growth opportunities, and we will deliver on the steps we need to take to retain our clients and reinforce our market leadership position by achieving food excellence while leveraging FM opportunities and growth, consistently investing in our scale and core competencies through food transformation and FM strategies, and focusing on our big five to reinforce our market position in our respective markets. In Brazil and LatAm, we are performing well, and we are confident that we will enhance our profitability in APMEA. In a nutshell, with such exciting times ahead, the team and I are crystal clear on what we need to do to seize these opportunities, accelerate our growth, and delivering higher profitability. I now hand over to Alexandra, and thank you for coming today. Thank you very much.
Me again, huh? Thank you, Johnpaul. Now, as mentioned by Sophie this morning, tech and data is one of our key enablers to execute our strategy efficiently. Sodexo has started its journey on digital and data a few years ago. We started small, with proof of concept and minimum viable products. Now we're going bigger, scaling what is working with the right level of return on investment. To support this ambition, part of the EUR 500 million spending per year on IS&T, digital, and data specifically has been spent to re-internalize some key tech profiles, such as data scientists, UX designers, DevOps specialists. The creation of tech and services will support even more this ambition.
Today, technology is at the core of everything we do and in all types of interactions, from the way we manage our clients, the activity on site, to the way we create intimate digital relationships with our consumers, or the way we optimize our operations and ecosystems of partners. For example, supply chain management. I will now describe three business situations and illustrate how technology and data, in particular, supports us to be more efficient and to generate more intimate relationship with our consumer and clients, and consequently, driving increase in our sales and retention. Let's start with our clients and put ourselves in the shoes of a site manager. We have developed Foresight, a database product which leverages transactions or consumer feedback from our e-point of sale or applications. We also integrate external data to enhance operational decisions and ultimately client relationships.
First, it allows us to predict and estimate the footfall on the site. Driving more predictability, especially in a volatile environment, is key to improve our efficiency through better control of staff cost and raw material cost. As a reference, our algorithm has managed to deliver 30% more accuracy than site manager estimates post-COVID. The consumer satisfaction module enables us to understand pain points and take proactive actions to drive better satisfaction. Something like the fish was too cold will make our site manager take concrete action and take the packaging, for example, the takeaway packaging. Our natural language processing asset is key to identify occurrences and give efficient and actionable feedback to our staff.
A satisfied consumer means he will come back and spend more, driving up like-for-like revenues and increase client satisfaction. Another feature I would like to present is about nutrition, as it is key in our sustainability commitment. Health and well-being is a growing concern, both for individuals and across many of our clients' organizations. We can now have complete data to show the evolution of consumption trends oversight. Supporting our clients' expectations to deliver healthy options to their consumers and encourage better consumption habits is a key lever for retention. It is a core component to drive our 96% retention objective. We also added features such as performance benchmark between sites and carbon footprint measurement. In summary, this tool is a differentiating game changer in the way we interact and strengthen our client relationship. It helps better monitor back-to-office trends.
It drives consumer satisfaction, loyalty, and well-being. It improves our efficiency by optimizing food and labor costs, thanks to better predictability, and it supports our waste management reduction. It was a key differentiator factor versus competition, contributing to some of our new sales this year. This asset is currently live in more than 250 sites in the U.S., the U.K., and France at Sanofi or Salesforce, for instance. We aim to more than triple the deployment this year and to scale it globally on our corporate services sites by the end of 2025. The second business situation I would like to illustrate is related to growing revenues through a more direct and omni-channel and digital-enabled relationship with our consumers. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of a student on a university campus.
Sarah starts by downloading the Everyday app, the one that Sarosh has mentioned. As a reminder, our Everyday app deployed massively in corporate services and universities in the U.S., is one of the sector's best-in-class app with a grade of 4.8 out of 5 on the App Store. On the university campus, Sarah has the choice between diverse food options, and she will multiply the touchpoint. She can go to the restaurant or favor click or click and collect options. Our eat>NOW offer, that Sarosh has described, is a frictionless checkout-free grocery store leveraging smart connected fridges. Payments are made directly through the Everyday app. Sarah can also choose to get delivered through a Kiwibot, the subscription-based robot that delivers meals autonomously in several universities. All these options are added in our app. Sarah will evaluate all these interactions and share with us qualitative and quantitative feedback.
At the end, all these interactions are captured and processed through our algorithm to push the right offer to the right consumer at the right moment for better and seamless one-on-one personalized experience. Doing so, we increase the spend of our consumers and the loyalty and stickiness to our services and brands. We also use this data to better understand consumption trends, identify opportunities, business, and define actionable insights with our sales and marketing teams. This journey is a reality in 50 of our universities, and our Everyday app is already deployed across more than 220 of them. We plan full deployment in the next 2 years and expect to realize a positive financial impact in our retail sales by 15%-20% by 2025 through the increase of our students' average share of wallet.
The last situation I wanted to share with you illustrates how technology and data can support the optimization of our supply chain, which is even more important at a time of inflation and shortages. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of a food buyer. Currently, we have got a bounce back from COVID with increased demand and volume. We are in a context of hyperinflation on most product categories. The supply chain is facing unprecedented disruptions with shortage issues and unclear geopolitical context. In such an increasingly volatile environment, we have made a significant investment to enhance data quality and supplier information and have developed a data product to automate the potential swap of product SKUs based on specific criteria. Supplier A increased its price by 10%. Supplier B has a shortage in fish, et cetera, et cetera.
All these micro changes occur every day, and they are collected, considered, and assessed by our algorithm in coordination with our buyers to take fast actions and be proactive in the way we manage our supply. Our data product suggests top swaps every day. We are able to work specifically on SKUs under tension or to optimize a work category of food products. I will now let you look at a short video explaining how Product Swap works.
Volatile market conditions with increasing inflation, shortage issues, and an unclear geopolitical context, pushes Sodexo to be more agile and innovative in its supply chain activities. Product Swap aims to support the operational challenges of supply management and the food operational teams in their product portfolio optimization and evolution. Product Swap is a scenario-making tool proposing SKU swap opportunities with their associated impacts. The impacts considered include price, but they also consider other elements, such as product composition, the recipes impacted, allergens. Let's take a real-life example. When looking at the meal category, swapping options may be required due to a market price's increase. Before Product Swap, to find any suitable alternatives would require significant manual administration and the investigation of many and varied data source references. Now, Product Swap will suggest opportunities for swapping and their impacts by automatically comparing all aspects of the products within the product catalog.
This includes accreditation, allergens, delivery conditions, among many others. This allows buyers and chefs to review all those swap proposals at scale and accept those that are operationally and commercially advantageous. The tool can do it either for a given product and on a larger scale for a whole category or a supplier. Unlike humans, the tool allows potential swaps to be proposed every day and on all product categories.
Sodexo, unlocking the power of data.
. Going further, we will also track and measure the carbon footprint of our purchases automatically and daily. We will add such feature in the calculation of preferred swap to favor more sustainable products and supplier. More broadly, it will give us the ability to measure and manage the carbon footprint of all products, recipes, and menus. It will also allow us to have consumer-facing labels to provide information and potentially nudge behaviors. In summary, this asset is part of the ongoing digitalization of our supply chain function. We have managed to increase by 2%-5% cost savings on the categories deployed to better react to external events and to increase our negotiation power with suppliers.
Today, this specific asset covers 5% of our raw material costs, and we intend to deploy it at pace to reach 75% by 2025, covering our main geographies, France, UK, Brazil, and NORAM. As a conclusion, we see with those examples how technology and data, in particular, supports the business in bringing more depth, more power to our expertise. It enables us to create more value for our consumers, our clients, and our people, and consequently, it supports our sustainable and profitable growth. We are spending each year more than EUR 500 million in technology, and we launched last year a 5-year program coupling data acceleration with digital services. This program has already delivered 8 data products, including the 3 examples I have just described. They are now ready to scale in each of our regions and represent an exciting opportunity to accelerate.
More broadly, as you have heard during the day, significant progress has been done in pivoting from our traditional B2B model to a more consumer-centric one, with the support of branded offers, advanced food models, selective FM services, and supported by data and digital assets. We will now scale our initiatives and accelerate their deployment. This opens exciting opportunities. I now invite Sarosh, Sunil, and Johnpaul to join me on stage for the Q&A session. Thank you.
We'll now start the Q&A session. I can see already some hands raised. Please could you ask one question at a time? You can keep the microphone for 3 questions, but one at a time. It's nicer for everyone.
Hi. Thank you for the presentations. One at a time, I think there were some pretty impressive tech tools being presented here. Could you maybe recap either as a whole or for each where you are in the implementation and what's the headroom? There's the carbon accounting tool, the Product Swap tool, the customer satisfaction tool. I'm sure I missed a few. I think for carbon accounting, you said 250 pilot sites, gonna be 700 next year, and then. I'm curious, , where you are.
Overall, as I mentioned, this data program has started one year ago. We have created products. They are pretty small at the moment. Our objective in the coming years is to scale them. If I take, , the example of the first use case, we are on 250 sites today. We plan next year, I mean, this coming year, in 2023, to deploy it over 900 sites. The one on supply is extremely powerful. It's going to be deployed region per region. Some use cases are deployed with a segment approach, some under regional approach. Each time we have a mix of them, depending on the feasibility and depending on the potential we have region per region.
Thank you. Secondly, on North America, maybe more of a remark than a question. A lot of what was presented was, if I may, a little bit backwards looking. I think you referenced all that has been achieved since the 2020 Investor Day, for example. Could you help us with some color on what changes to take you to the next level? If I take one example, your retention target for 2025 is 96%. That's where you are right now. Where does the acceleration come from, please?
Susre. It's a great question. Firstly, 96% is far and best in class. We continue to go ahead and do everything we can to go ahead and improve. As I mentioned, , it's a journey. From an execution and rigor standpoint, we're implementing it. Now, why do I believe that we'll succeed in the journey? I think that's what you're getting at. Is that, is that your question?
I mean, if, for example, I think organic growth this year for North America was what, 24%?
Sure.
Remove the COVID recovery, remove inflation, which presumably doesn't stay where it is right now. I'm curious what you think is the current clean organic growth. You need to get to 8%. If North America is not at 8%, the group is never gonna get between 6% and 8%. What are the building blocks there?
We can expect that organic growth moving forward will be double digits. We expect that, and it's coming from various things, right? It's about net new development. It's about making sure that we have the right level of pricing. It's making sure that the right new advanced food models are deployed, which can garner higher margins. It's not one silver bullet, it's a lot of pieces put together that'll get us there.
That's double-digit, not in 2023, where you have some more volume, some more inflation. It's a normal year, 2024, 2025, North America, double digits.
That is right.
Thank you for clarifying. Lastly, I think the average tenure at Sodexo for the executives I'm looking at right now is 10 years or more. I don't want this to sound misleading. It's not the tenure in your current role. You're new in the role. That's part of the plan, and people who were in the role before are not here today. Is there more fresh blood elsewhere in the organization below you, some hires from competitors or from other services companies? you also had pretty senior roles in the previous organization, which we're now told didn't work. I think you have a head of corporate services here. What's been the change below the radar for us, please?
Sure. I'll let Alex handle it.
I've been here for five years. Definitely, I mean, we are recruiting, we keep recruiting new talents everywhere. Definitely, tech and services is tech and data is by definition an area where we are investing. In all our regions, and especially I'm looking at you, Johnpaul Dimech, in some regions where the turnover is extremely high, we recruit lots of people. It's the case as well in North America. By definition, we are recruiting new talents. One of the opportunity that we have is as well to recruit in our businesses some talents who have an operational mindset, but as well, a more digital mindset in order to shift to this tech-enabled services company.
I just wanna add to this. This business is about everyday operations and change. This business unit, it's not about doing a revolution, it's an evolution. Experience is important in leadership, as much as having new talent with knowledge. We're really mixing up our management model around having experience, which is important in this business, but also bringing in knowledge with data and technology, with sustainability. If you see our leadership team in data and technology, they are of a different generation. If you see our leadership in sustainability, they'll teach us a lot more about sustainability than we know. We're shifting the model on new areas when it comes to new expertise and knowledge. When it comes to everyday operations, I think we need to have the balance of experience.
Thank you.
I think maybe just to add on to what Sunil was saying. we're in a fast-paced environment, and we are attracting young talent. Again, what is young? I think age is a number. Certainly what we see is that people are joining us. It's a very competitive environment, but people are joining us because we have a purpose, and it means a lot today in the workplace. Not only for our clients, but also for us. We're getting great talent, as Sunil talked about, different types of people that are bringing great expertise to the organization as we evolve.
That's all for me. Thanks.
Hi, Richard Clarke from Bernstein. So I'll start in North America. You've name-checked your two main competitors. You don't normally do that at these kind of events, but you've done it. You're saying you can grow faster than Aramark, you can catch up with Compass. I'm not sure if that's on growth or absolute revenue dollars. Maybe clarify there. Where is your point of differentiation, ? Why do you think you can grow faster than those two competitors? What would you pick out as being the differentiation point?
Sure. First, I'll clarify. It's not on dollars, it's on net new growth. That's a great question. I can't point to one thing, so let me start by why I think we'll be able to do that, right? Firstly, people in North America, as , you give them a target, they have to have a goal, and they have to be incentivized by that goal. As Sophie mentioned recently, we put a North America scheme to be able to compensate people for what the results are in specifically North America. We're putting our money where our mouth is, and we're making sure we're holding our people accountable for what we expect. That's one piece of it. As I talked to you two years ago, we did not have any digital marketing leads. We made significant investment there.
We're seeing our return on investment, and we'll continue to do that because we can see how it's moving us forward, right? Two years ago, we told you about rigor and execution. We've delivered against it. Hopefully we're giving you confidence that when we tell you what we're gonna do, we're gonna follow up with that.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe moving over to Europe, if I may. The ambitions there seem a little bit more muted. You talk about defending your position, not catching up with maybe competitors. I guess Compass' messaging has been they believe they can accelerate in Europe. Maybe not match U.S. margins, but accelerate the growth. You're showing a similar level of outsourcing rate in Europe to the U.S., so why can't Europe grow at a similar pace to the North American market?
I think the Europe market, we expect to grow between 2%-5%. There are opportunities. Undoubtedly, there are opportunities, but it is 21 countries. It's different legislation, , and it's a lot more complex than the U.S., which is one market. When you move in that one market, you can move faster and quicker, and it's not the same case in Europe. We are preparing for growth. We expect 2%-5% growth. As the growth opportunities open up, and they open up a lot slower in Europe, and that's the nature of Europe. It's about slowness. It's about, , enjoying the things in life. It works that way. We wanna capture the opportunities when they come in with Europe, for sure as they come, and that's our strategy.
We have a great opportunity to improve our cash and profitability. That's as important for us. If you improve cash and profitability, it gives us opportunities to grow because it will fuel growth. I'm sure Marc will help me grow more when I get more cash and profitability. Right, Marc?
Okay. Makes sense. Maybe just one for all of the regions. I mean, if I kind of maybe a little bit less rest of the world, but the messaging seems to be quite selective on FM going forward. A bit different to what you said back at the last capital markets day. That looks like it's forward-looking, but is there anything backward-looking? Are there any contracts you're looking at where you say, , "This doesn't fit with what the Sodexo of the future looks like?" Is there gonna be any sort of inorganic or organic exits we should be looking to hit that target?
Maybe I'll take that one first. Look, certainly as you saw in my presentation, going from 37 countries to 21 in 4 years was very targeted. It was a combination of product mix, positioning, margin. There's nothing that really springs to mind in my part of the world that says, "Look, we've got, , some FM business that we don't wanna do." As we said, we'll be very selective of where we focus. We've got some markets where it's interesting to integrate and other markets where it's a cross-sell opportunity.
Yep. Just to add on to that is I think, nothing's gonna change from a, , a market perspective. As Sophie and Alexandra said, we wanna be selective in FM. When we say selective in FM, we want to be growing where there's value. Value comes from experience for us. We have 420,000 people working on client sites. The power of our experiences through our people is fantastic. We want to leverage that by pivoting our FM services, by investing into, of course, our people. It's about investing into digital and technology, putting in command centers around workplace. We don't wanna play in the FM market like everybody. We want to be able to complement it with our food and really position it around our valued experiences in learn, heal, play, and work.
With North America, as I said, , 76% of our business is food. We're gonna lead with food. 24% of it is facilities management. I don't have any planned acquisitions or divestitures at this time, and we will be selective on what we do in FM. We've always been selective. We'll continue with that discipline. We'll continue to grow our healthcare technology management business, which we believe has tremendous potential.
Thank you.
It's Leo Carrington from Citi again. The workplace environment seems to be the sweet spot for delivering value from a Sodexo contract. On what timeline do you think the transformation and new food concepts can drive a full recovery from the lost revenues from work from home?
It's a good question. Work has been hit by COVID, which has accelerated new trends, but those trends were here. Structurally, if we consider that today we are in normal environment, the structure is minus 10%. As it was mentioned, now our clients in the work environment have a completely different approach. Actually quite interesting and exciting for us. We are not a commodity, we are not just a subcontract, we are one means to attract their employees on site and to foster innovation, team spirit, and so on. It's a very good opportunity for us to upgrade our offers, and we can see that. The structure of our value creation in work environment today or tomorrow is going to be different, and actually more exciting and more valued versus what it could have been in some environments yesterday.
We have great ambitions to accelerate in our food transformation. For example, convenience, which is already extremely attracting and appealing for consumers in North America, we have ambition there. In other regions, it will be more focused on offsite production because it's an area to improve our efficiency or delivery in Europe or aggregation in Asia. We have one global strategy. We execute it in each of our region, depending on the feature of each of the region. We are very confident that this year we are, I mean, from a pure financial point of view, we will be at the pre-COVID level, but with much more valued offers and proposition. I don't know if maybe on aggregation, because we have already started.
. Look, it's a good point. I mean, if you look at across Asia, two main trends and the areas we're investing in is the offsite production model. It's not only allowing us to be systematic in our approach, it's not only allowing us to be more efficient in the way we deliver the service, but it's opening new markets, which is giving us higher margin in those markets. It's giving us multiple touch points that in the past we didn't have access to. In aggregation, as I talked about with Meituan, we get access to ecosystems that we didn't have access to before through partners.
Okay. Thank you. Second question. The focus on branded offers is accelerating. What's driven this focus? Is it simply triggered by the move away from a matrix organization? In implementing this and hitting the targets referenced, does this essentially mean that all tenders going forward will be under some kind of branded offer?
Branded offer is basically part of the fact that food is increasingly consumer driven, and we need to be appealing to our consumers. What do they want? They want brands on which they can identify themselves. We have and we are working on having different brands which will cover different set of personal, , consumer perceptions or willingness. We are in the process to segregate and to position, to map our brands with different features. It's going to accelerate. It's exciting. In corporate services, which is a market that you've known well, it's something which is already there. In universities as well. Those two segments are very much consumer driven, and that's a big driver for us to pivot to these branded options.
It's really the B2B to B2B2C, factor, which pushes us to work more and more in depth with our brands.
Thank you.
Geoffrey de Méhaut from Bank of America. Just one question regarding your GPO. Could you please give us a bit more details on what are the actions you are taking there, and how it could affect, your well growth and margins profiles going forwards, please?
Our GPO, mostly in the U.S. at the moment, we are working massively at the moment in leveraging technology so that they can better manage or increasingly manage real time the relationship with their suppliers. That's where we are investing at the moment. We have the ambition to double our revenues with our GPO by 2025
A lot of salespeople .
We really hired a lot of salespeople in the US because before there were very few, so now they are quite a few. We are also building the platform in Europe. We started with an acquisition 4-5 years ago, but now we've done 4 more small acquisitions to build on the platform. We are very excited about the development in Europe.
Thank you. It's Karl Green from RBC. Three questions, so one at a time. The first question, just back to this point. Sorry.
Back to the point, about the de-emphasizing of facilities management. Organically and inorganically, where do you anticipate the mix being in OSS between FM and food in 2025 or fiscal 2025?
We keep growing in our facility management. It's a key activity for us. It represents today 40% of our business. What we want to make sure that it is still accretive on our margin. We have already progressed a lot over the last two years to raise the bar more than 100 basis points, and we need to maintain that. It goes with being selective in terms of services. The portfolio of service in FM, we are going to be selective to make sure that they are either synergetic to our food in order to provide a better experience or to be specific and to nurture our client relationship, HTM, for example. I mean, that's the most obvious example that we have. We want to keep working and being more efficient, so we keep investing in FM.
It might be definitely organic or inorganic. I take, once again, the example of HTM, where we need to. It's a very specific expertise, so we could consider such acquisition. It will be a mix.
Okay, thank you.
Focus on margin and focus on value.
That, that's great. I think you've slightly preempted my second question, was just as best as you can determine it, because I appreciate on things like integrated facilities, management contracts, it's not always easy to break it out. What is the margin differential between FM at the moment and food? I think, Sarosh, you slightly threw me when you said that in some instances in your region, you've got some FM margins running 500 basis points above food. Could you just clarify that? What's going on there? Certainly keen to understand the differential at the OSS group level, please.
Sure. Happy to clarify that. When I mentioned that, I was specifically referring to our healthcare technology management business, and that business does garner around 500 basis points higher from a margin standpoint than our food business. As I mentioned that, we're seeing good retention, good growth in it. We look to grow it organically and inorganically, and our retention is high in that area.
Otherwise, I mean, the margin, I mean, I will not describe the spread of margin. What I can tell you is that we have progressed, and in some region, we are extremely profitable in terms of FM and IFM. Maybe GP, you can tell us, in LatAm, for example, it's a market or in some areas in Asia-Pacific.
I mean.
Some areas where it's highly profitable.
In the rest of the world, we've got 21 countries, so it's different in different markets. Certainly, as Alexandra said, , there are some markets where, , the FM does help us boost that profitability. when I said we wanna be selective in our growth in FM, today, we're 51% FM, 49% food. We want to grow faster in food. It doesn't mean we don't wanna grow in FM. We wanna be selective, but we wanna still grow because the market's moving at 10%, so I wanna stay ahead of the curve and make sure we continue to keep our leadership position. Again, to be very clear, we need to be selective, but we still wanna grow fast with margins that are accretive to the position we're in today.
That's really helpful. Thank you. My final question, but a very quick one. Just in terms of plant-based menus, what do the margins look like on those versus the sort of more classic offering, please?
Let me answer that. First of all, I think when our clients are asking us for offers and solutions which are sustainable, they're ready to put a better price to it. We're seeing definitely, , clients wanting to pay more, and we see opportunities to create value. I think that's the first thing. Second, just from a menu mix, , we expect the cost of unsustainable products to cost higher through legislation in time to come. We gotta be ready. We gotta be prepared, where we create the best menus, and our clients will say, "Great, , I love to have your menu, which is 70% plant forward, and my customers love the food because it's gonna help us, , help the client reduce his or her carbon footprint.
It's gonna help us become more efficient from a cost perspective and prepare us because it's definitely gonna come. There's gonna be more and more legislation coming in, which is gonna cost more for high carbon products like beef and meat.
Hi. Neil Tyler, Redburn. First question for Sunil. In your prepared remarks, you mentioned the public sector market as being largely untapped. I think that's about all you said about it. So whether there's any intention to try to tap that market, and where , and how that contributes currently to your business, and if the answer is no, then why might that be? And the second question for Alexandra, it's a long shot, but any metrics on either margin or perhaps retention that you'd care to share, for those sites at which , some of the or the ForeSite data system, for example, has been rolled out?
Thanks for the question. Just to answer your question, absolutely. Europe is a market which is private and public. That's the reality of the European market. Specifically in some sectors, like in health and learning, it's really public. Today for us in Europe, nearly 36% of our revenue comes from public sector. If I would look at my numbers last year, I think 37% or 38% of our new wins came from the public sector. We have opportunities to continue to grow in specific areas like in health. For example, in health, in France, if I'm not mistaken, over the €6 billion market, around 80% is public sector and 20% is private sector. We have a strong position in private. We have...
In the 80% public sector, 90% is in-house, 10% is outsourced. We're now going after that market, and we recently won a contract. We're really systematically want to continue to grow in some of the sectors in the public sector as they start outsourcing more.
For the question on the ForeSite, obviously, I mean, we don't have, years of analysis, but we estimate exactly on this use case that it has an impact, a positive impact on retention between 20% and 30%.
If there are no more questions from here, there is one or two questions on the conference call. Can we put the operator on, please?
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1. The first question is from Jamie Rollo on Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks. The first question is just please elaborate a bit more on the divestment plans because the presentation clearly talks about divestment from non-core activities and services, but it doesn't sound like there's anything material in FM or additional countries. maybe you could just give us a rough percent of revenues that you think might be sold over the next few years, please.
Johnpaul?
. Thanks, Jamie, for the question. I think, as I demonstrated, 37 countries down to 21 in four years, we made a very concerted effort to reduce in the rest of the world. Cyril also talked about in Europe, a number of countries that were divested. in terms of my 21 today across rest of the world, I would expect, within the next couple of years that this will be under 20. There are some areas that we are looking to potentially divest, and we're very focused and systematic on looking at where are the profit pools, as Alexandra talked about, and where are we able to have market leadership, how can we leverage our supply chains, how can we make sure that we're very focused.
That's certainly not only from a geographical point of view by countries, but we will also look by activity within those countries, as we've done with things like horticulture and some very specific retail in Belgium, for example. Moving forward, as we look at this, we'll obviously announce that when we can.
Okay, thanks. I mean, that was really a question for the whole OSS business, but maybe Marc can talk a bit about that in his finance section later if there are any numbers. Secondly, you've given us the retention target for OSS overall, and I think I saw a development target for BRS of 8%, but is there a development target for OSS overall? Apologies if I missed it.
Well, what we factor in our revenue bridges is that we are aiming to have a retention above 95%, and we've seen that some regions are already at 96%. We want to remain disciplined so that the development is 7%-8%, and the combination of which is a net new wins, which has to be positive on a regular basis and sustainable.
Thank you. Just to follow on from that 7%-8%, is that the same definition as the old development target of 7.5%, or are you now including the extensions and cross-selling?
. 7%-8% is without cross-selling. I don't know which target you're referring to, but for us the 7%-8% is new clients, new contracts. The cross-selling comes on top.
Gotcha. Okay. Finally, that obviously gives you sort of 2%-3% net new, and I think someone tried to ask this question earlier, but bridging the 2%-3% net new to the 8%-10%. Sorry, 6%-8% group number, how do we get to that sort of 3%, 4%, 5% like for like benefit? How much inflation are you factoring in into 2024 and 2025, please?
Well, I will tell you that after the break.
Touché. Thank you.
The next question is from Jarrod Castle of UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. You spoke about where you want to be relative to Aramark and Compass, but be interested in any views on competition that's not directly from large catering suppliers, i.e., digital takeaway and convenience restaurants, how you see that over the next 2, 3 years. Thanks.
Take him.
Sure. That's a very good question. I mean, I was specifically talking about those two from a competitive standpoint, but when you look at what we're developing from our new food models and the technology that we're putting behind it and the partners that we have, whether it's AFI, whether it's Kiwibot, well, we are not looking just to go ahead and compare ourselves to the old competitive sets. The reality is the consumer goes wherever he or she desires, and our perspective is we wanna capture their share of wallet and continue to grow that share of wallet for us.
Okay, thanks. This might be one again for the next section, but, , CapEx is going from 2.3% to 2.8%. You said BRS is around 10%. Just in terms of the CapEx for on-site, how should we think about CapEx going into contracts, especially new contract wins, and tech for on-site and other initiatives? Thanks.
It's also part of after the break, but just quickly here, because they are here. We have modeled the CapEx by zone. For instance, Sarosh will probably see the CapEx going up to 3% given the market he's in. We also looked at the IT and data CapEx within on-site, which is currently sitting at 16%, and we believe it will go closer to 20% of our total CapEx spend.
On that, I think we'll stop the Q&A session. Thank you very much to the on-site team. There's a quick break, 20 minutes. If we could all be back at 4:25 P.M. That's in 20 minutes.
Hello. It is great to be with you today. Today, I would like to cover the following points. Sodexo finished fiscal 2022 strongly across the group. We have clear ambitions expressed in our midterm guidance with aspiration beyond that. We will continue to focus our CapEx on client-facing investments. We have strong cash flow and a well-managed balance sheet that can support our investment in the business and selective M&A. Our capital allocation will remain disciplined. First, as a reminder of what we said last week, we had a strong finish to fiscal 2022, a strong recovery in revenues and profitability, and by Q4, we were back up to 2019 revenue levels. We had positive net new business. Our net profit is back up to pre-COVID levels. We have a restored balance sheet and good debt ratios.
The board is proposing a dividend of EUR 2.4, which is up 20% on last year, and our ROCE is back up to 17.2% from 9.9% in fiscal 2021. We now have a solid balance sheet again. Net debt is EUR 1.3 billion, which is split between EUR 5.7 billion of debt and EUR 4.5 billion of cash and cash equivalents. On the debt, 96% is at fixed rates, 71% in euros. The average cost of debt is 1.6%, and the average maturity is 4.8 years. Our issues have come back to pre-pandemic levels. 1 turn of EBITDA for the net debt ratio and 29% for the gearing. Actually, our current net debt ratio leaves room for action.
As we presented last week, we are back in range in fiscal year 2022 on all our key financial targets. We will have been well over 100% in cash conversion without the negative non-recurring elements. Our net debt ratio is back to 1 turn at the bottom of our target range of 1-2. Group ROCE was 17.2, well above our target of more than 15%. Gearing is well below at 29%, and the dividend proposed by the board is in line with our dividend policy. As we heard from Sophie, we are expecting 8%-10% organic growth for the current year, and then a 6%-8% growth for fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025.
For the UOP margin, we are planning to be close to 5.5% at constant rates this year, and then progressing to above 6% in fiscal 2025. The acceleration in growth will come from several buckets. We are aiming to maintain the net new business momentum with our retention above 95% and a discipline and focus development in the range of 7%-8%. We should therefore be generating a net new business at a regular rhythm of 2%-3% per annum. To make a link to the earlier presentation, this is for instance supported by the Foresight use case presented by Alexandra. On top of the net development, there is a cross-selling of new services on existing sites which we have been generating steadily each year.
We also expect some inflation in fiscal year 2023 at a similar level than in fiscal year 2022, but then declining the following years. We should also benefit from some ramp up in fiscal year 2023 in corporate services, Sodexo Live and universities. In fiscal year 2023 only, we will have the testing centers closing impact weighing -1% on the top line growth. We continue to expect volume growth in our regions and segments, supported by such initiative as a share of wallet use case in universities presented earlier. Entegra will also provide us with some growth, especially in North America, but the impact will be modest on the top line given the revenue model. This will mostly come from development, i.e. more clients, because we hire more salespeople, and also from enhanced compliant purchasing from existing members.
Of course, BRS will contribute to the group top line growth. I shall come back in more detail on the BRS guidance in a minute. This also needs to be adjusted with regard to scope change. You should assume a minus 1% impact for fiscal year 2023. This said, in the absence of any major macro issues, our internal focus and ambition is to hit the upper end of our medium-term growth guidance. Our objective is to return the underlying operating margin to over 6% in fiscal 2025. Our levers are the following. First, operational efficiency. This bucket regroups all the work that is being done in the countries on workforce management, off-site production that you've heard today, alternative food models, we covered that today also, branding, positioning and share of wallet initiatives, menu and recipe standardization, SKU rationalization and supply chain initiatives.
For instance, this is where the use case three on the Product Swap that Alexandra presented contributes. Of course, all of this will be helped by more accountability and better country level execution supported by the regionalization simplification. Next is a contribution from stronger growth, which regroups cross-selling, better retention, focused development, volumes, et cetera. Cross-selling, improved retention and volume growth are immediately accretive to margins. On the other hand, development needs time to reach the expected level of profitability. However, over the next three years, the development will be accretive to margins. As you heard throughout the day, our discipline and focused commercial development and an improved retention ambition beyond 95% will also support this.
We support our on-site strategy, refocus and accelerate through specific investment in segment initiatives and commercial excellence at country level to push for more growth in enablers such as IT and supply chain, and you've heard of it today, in marketing, also brand and offers. Those investments will be made through additional OpEx. We also have to factor for inflation on our SG&A as well as some additional savings. There is a contribution from Entegra. I remind you that the plan is to double in size from fiscal year 2021 to fiscal year 2025. This is a high margin business. The contribution of Entegra is a lot more significant in Europe than it is in revenue. Finally, BRS, given its higher growth and higher margins, will bring a positive mix impact as a result of its accelerated development.
Clearly, our margin objective does not stop at 6%, and we anticipate that many of the drivers will continue to provide leverage beyond fiscal year 2025. We expect also that the on-site margin trajectory from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2025 should contribute at least 100 basis points. As already outlined, the objective for BRS is to deliver a 12%-15% organic growth in fiscal 2023, and then low double-digit organic growth for fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025. In terms of margin, we are getting to around 30% this year and well above 30% for fiscal 2025. The first component is portfolio growth.
Here you can see that a large part of the growth is coming from the portfolio, which means new contract wins, less losses, solid cross-selling of multi-benefits and engagement services, and obviously this is supported, for instance, by more SME-targeted activities, new digital offers, multi-benefits expansion. All the drivers that Aurélien and the team covered in this presentation. Second is face value growth. This is the increase in daily allowance that we call face value, which is supported by inflation and purchasing power enhancement initiatives. This is phased over time, since most employers seek to protect their employees' purchasing power, but they also do so with some lag. There is the contribution from the progressive increase in interest rate that we are seeing all around the world. We already benefited in fiscal 2022 from a significant hike in certain countries, in Latin America and Eastern Europe, for instance.
We have factored further increases in fiscal year 2023, coming mostly from the Eurozone. We stabilize the average yield thereafter. The combination of increased volume and ever higher cash balances contribute to, well, to the top line growth. On the margin, the major bucket is portfolio growth, given the overall volume and revenue increase we are expecting. Face value increases will also contribute significantly as we usually manage our cost to grow at a lower rate than what we observe on the client side. Financial revenues are a direct flow to margins. Finally, we should be investing more to stay ahead of the pack in tech and continue hiring more sales and marketing people to boost our future growth. There will also be some inflation on our SG&A. Now let's turn to CapEx.
We have decided to focus more on growth CapEx because it gives you a better idea of what resources we are committing to winning and retaining clients and upgrading systems. As you can see in the chart, we expect growth CapEx for the group to move up over the next few years to around 2.8%. This is split 2.5% for onsite and up to 10% of revenue for BRS. Here, I wanted to show you a bit more detail on where this CapEx goes. BRS is already spending 93% of its CapEx in IT and data, and this will continue. This will amount to an average of above EUR 100 million a year for the next three years, compared to EUR 300 million in total for the prior five years.
In Onsite today, more than 75% of our CapEx is client-facing to help retain existing clients or win new ones. As you can see, there is a clear focus on retention. The IT and data share of CapEx is currently at 16% of our Onsite CapEx, and we intend to continue to increase this, probably closer to 20% of the total CapEx by fiscal 2025. When you look at it by region, as you can see in this chart, and not surprisingly, we will be investing more in North Africa to support the ambitious growth objectives, the strong focus on food and alternative food model, but also the significant exposure to Sodexo Live, universities, and also investment in IT and digital tools.
In Europe, we expect investment to increase back up to circa 2% of revenue going forward, but the level will remain below group average because of its revenue mix between facility management and global strategic account and lower growth expectation. We can expect also some IT and digital CapEx here. In the rest of the world, similarly to Europe, given the portfolio mix, facility management and global strategic account, we should also see CapEx to sales moving back up to 2%, but not more. Usually, the levels of CapEx are lower in these regions unless we are mobilizing the equivalent of a Rio Tinto. Now let's move on to free cash flow and financing. At the group level, Sodexo has a strong cash generative model. We operate both businesses with negative working capital.
Even during the COVID in fiscal 2020, where we had a particularly difficult couple of months in onsite, this only lasted a quarter. At the same time, BRS benefited from COVID with higher cash balances due to slow reimbursement as restaurants were closed. In fiscal 2022, our free cash flow was EUR 631 million, despite non-recurring cash outflows of EUR 363 million, as I explained last week. When we correct for this, the onsite services 62% cash conversion become 125. As you can see, apart from the COVID years, our onsite cash conversion stays slightly above the 100% mark, whereas BRS is around the 200% Marc.
As we come out of the COVID crisis, we are seeing our ratio improve, currently back up to 17.2% in fiscal 2022 and already above our group target of 15%. We intend to keep on improving the ratio in the years to come. On M&A. Our pre-COVID transactions have not yet been successful financially due to COVID, and we need to further push the recovery execution for assets such as Centerplate, Novae, or PSL, which is the first GPO we bought in Europe. Sophie has clearly stated to the team that we will do very focused M&A in specific countries and for specific activities. We may do market share M&A, but it will have to be high-quality assets. The M&A will be very disciplined.
With this said, we have the intention to do some M&A in On-site with a focus on food transformation, where we can find companies that can bring the technical bricks, the innovation of the brand positioning we require to grow in alternative food models. In GPOs, to expand our European portfolio and consolidate our position in North America. In On-site again, in healthcare, where we want to build our capacity in HTM, especially in North America and Asia. Finally, if we can find targets, we might go for some market share M&A in On-site. In BRS, Aurélien has already highlighted that we are looking for opportunities to boost our meal and food growth in existing markets through bolt-ons, and add new bricks to our multi-benefits and engagement platform to augment our core.
Going forward, the M&A will be accretive in margins and contribute to consolidate our ROCE well above 15%, and be a source of cost and growth synergies. I wanted to take a moment to remind you of our financial policy. We target to deliver regular growth in the dividend at a payout ratio of 50% of underlying net income, and to keep the net debt to EBITDA ratio between 1 and 2 times. We target to maintain a BBB rating. BBB+ rating, sorry. We target to maintain group ROCE well above 15%, and to execute focused and accretive M&A. In conclusion, we have a disciplined and robust financial framework to ensure independence. We will continue to have a disciplined approach to investment and cash debt management.
We have a strong cash model with negative working capital in both On-site and BRS, and it is not going to change. This supports well the CapEx need and the organic growth of both On-site and BRS. We have the means to do M&A, but it will be focused and accretive. I thank you for your attention, and now Sophie will join me on the stage for the final Q&A.
Thanks so much. Richard Clarke from Bernstein again. I'll do them in order again, I guess. If I was, I guess, to encapsulate maybe some of the skepticism that some people might have about the guidance today, it's that we've had a couple of very odd years because of COVID. We've seen other firms that have had good years because of COVID, and maybe have extrapolated them a little bit too aggressively. Of your guidance you're giving through to 2025, how much of that is in the bag today? How much have you signed or you're having discussions with, and how much of it is just an extrapolation of the performance you're seeing, and what gives you the confidence that you can therefore achieve that?
In the organic growth guidance we are giving for the midterm, there is a net new loss component. The difference between win and retention. Obviously we have to deliver. I think the 7%-8% development is. I think we've practiced that territory before. The 95% retention, we are working towards that. We are at 94.5, and there is a clear focus. So the net new loss is what we have to work on, and to deliver a 2%-3% net new win, more than new loss, net new win a year. We need to work on retention and keep on working on retention as we've been doing last year. That's why we spoke a lot about retention today.
Okay, that's clear. Your debt guidance has always been 1-2 times.
It's normally been interpreted, I guess, by yourself as one or slightly below one. Is that? What is the actual policy? Where do you actually want the debt level to be?
I think we like to have cash on the balance sheet, and I think in today's world, it's not a bad habit. We walked out of Covid where it was a little rocky and bumpy, let's say. Right now, we have a CEO telling us to be focused on M&A. We have opportunities for BRS. What we want to do is give it a year to see what M&A we will do in fiscal year 2023, and we can see and talk about cash allocation in a year time, but it's too early to speak of a revised cash allocation now.
Okay. Okay, that's fair. Maybe one last one. It looked like your CapEx guidance kind of steadily increases.
Yes
From 2022 to 2025. Obviously, 2023 is meant to be the year of fastest growth. I know that's probably volume recovery, but why do you need to spend more CapEx in 2025 to deliver the same amount of growth you're gonna achieve, apparently, in 2023 and 2024?
The CapEx will grow, because, as you saw, we are investing a lot of CapEx in retention, so that helps the drive to bring retention above 95%. There was clearly a focus, and I don't think we are the only one investing in CapEx to drive retention up. I think it's something we've copied, but clearly we are focusing on this. Development may need some CapEx, especially in North America. when we sign an Ardent contract, we need CapEx. The quality of the development may need or not need CapEx, so it really varies from a year to another. What we've seen, for instance, is that in global strategic account, normally we don't put much CapEx.
I mean, the pharma client or FMCG client do not necessarily want our CapEx. It all depends what we do. What we think is that as we will be growing and retaining better, we will commit more CapEx. And it will vary from one year to the other. What we are clearly seeing is that we will spend more in IT and data. Today, it's 16%, and I could see us getting close to 20% for IT and data. CapEx is good to help and support the net new win.
Okay. Why specifically would it be higher in 2025 than 2024 and 20-
Because we will grow in appetite, and
There will probably be more development. Right now, we are building the pipelines, and there is some CapEx in our pipeline, but I think there will be more and more CapEx in the pipeline as the year go.
as Marc said, , we want to put more CapEx also in the retention. to keep those contract, , you need to invest. Sometimes you need even to invest before they go out to bid. Also in Noram, where you see we're going to put a lot of CapEx in Noram. We have segments like universities with big contract that need CapEx, or we also have an ambitious plan for Sodexo Live, and some of those contract also will need CapEx.
Okay. Thanks very much.
We may spend more CapEx faster.
Hi, it's Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas Exane. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, on organic growth, everything you showed makes total sense.
You seem to have sourced, , market growth estimates, hopefully from reputable sources. If I knew nothing about Sodexo, I'd be 100% convinced. On your organic growth bridge, have you done the exercise maybe of rather than building it from scratch, from a blank page to 6%-8%, have you done the exercise of building it from your track record? I think in the five years pre-COVID, you did between 2%-3% organic growth. How do we get to 6%-8%? For example, the first improvement, if you do 95% retention, historically it's been 93.5%. That's amazing. That gets you to 3.5% to maybe 5%. Then what are the other sources of improvement? Have you done that math?
Do you want to answer?
Well, first, I think we've said it many times, but on organic growth, and I'm absolutely convinced by that, the first layer is retention. I think we've put a lot of pressure on the team, and it has been. They even said that I'm obsessed with retention. Yes, I am. There is a reason for that. It is that in our business, if you don't keep your clients, then you're in a bad situation. Why is that? Because keeping your clients means that they are satisfied, and we're going to increase our sales with them, , so it's going to help us increase our cross-sell. It's also going to help us increase our new development.
Because if we're doing well at a client, , client will talk about it, but it will help us sell new business. I think there has been put much more account management and pressure on that. Today we see that we are at 96% in 60% of the business. First, we need to stay there, and that's what, , Sarosh committed to in the US, which is important because if the US is doing well on an indicator, you said it earlier, , it's going to have an impact on the rest of the group and a good impact.
Of course, North America has to stay at that level, and then we need to take the other region that are at a lower level to that level too. I think it is. It's not going to be sufficient. Maybe we didn't do the exact analysis why we were at 2% or 3% before, and now we want to be at 6%-8%, but we want an ambitious plan. I can tell you that a big problem there was because we didn't have sufficient retention. We kept saying we were going to get better, and we never did, and that's not acceptable.
Today, I can tell you that, , when people are not going to keep their accounts, well, they will have problem. For a site manager, but a district manager, regional manager, that's how we are going to look at the business and the performance of our teams. That's a little change, , accountability. Accountability in what we said and what we want to deliver. I don't know if you remember, but last year when I started at that period, , when we didn't have a capital market day, we had the analysis and the presentation of the results. I said, "There is one topic I'm going to concentrate on.
It's going to be retention." I think some of you said, "Did you change the definition?" No, we didn't change the definition. We made progress. I don't know if that answers your question, but that's, , that's what we want to do.
In addition to that, don't forget that, , the regionalization move is driving a lot more accountability at country level and more focus, and I think it's supported by that too. It's true that we may not have a great track record, but it's a different setup and a different focus.
Thank you. My last question for today, thank you for all the time, is on management incentives. Do you plan to layer a three-year LTIP strictly on the duration of the plan, with the target being for all the ExCo. If we don't deliver 6-8 and 6% margins, no one gets paid, or will it be a bit more subtle than that, more regionalized?
It will be subtle.
We're in the process of discussing the next plan, , because it's going to be. We decide that in the end of January. I'll keep that here.
Thank you for your input.
I guess my question was more around, is it gonna be regionalized and differentiated, like you started?
Well, it's going to be a little difficult, . At the same time, it is important that some region, , like North America, and I think Sarosh's explained it well, and also we are putting a specific focus on BRS. At the same time, I think it's important to have a global incentive plan. I mean, of course, people have a bonus, , and have a buy-in according to their perimeter. We will have an LTI plan for the group, specific for North American team and for BRS.
The North American one has 10% organic growth?
Yes.
The coming one will definitely.
Geoffrey de Méhaut, Bank of America. Just, again, questions regarding organic revenue growth. If we focus on your third block, which is inflation and volumes, it seems to be a 2%-3% positive impact, , on the organic revenue growth bridge. So not sure about 2023, but how do we need to think about 2024, 2025 for this specific block if we start to see normalizations in terms of inflation and maybe pressure on volumes because of a macro backdrop?
thank you for the question. In fiscal year 2023, what I said last week, and I repeat it today, is what we factored in a similar inflation than in 2022, so between 4% and 5%, so that's, I was very clear on that. When we look at 2024 and 2025, we are factoring the fact that the inflation will lower in 2024 and lower even further in 2025, but it won't become zero. It will stay at a lower one digit, but it will still be there. We spoke about the net new win earlier. The volume now depends a little bit on what's happened on. we talk a lot about recession coming. We don't see it in our numbers.
Clearly, I mean, we trading so far has been pretty good. We looked at what happened in 2008, 2009, and 2010, and we saw that, yes, there was in some region a couple of quarters where the growth was negative and so forth. The way it's going, we do not see any macro backdrop hitting us before Q3 or Q4. We factored that a mild recession impact will be within the range we provided of 8%-10%. The missing element you have is cross-selling. Cross-selling is important. There is a ramp-up in 2023 from corporate services, Sodexo Live and universities. Normally we have volume growth.
the initiative, Alex and I spoke about the share of wallet, well deployed as a potential for volume growth, which is quite significant. Right. For 2023, 8%-10% with a mild recession in the second part of the year is what we are comfortable with.
hi. It's Karl Green from RBC. Just a fairly boring one for you, Mark. I do apologize, but I think it's relatively important in terms of just modeling free cash generation. Just given the nature of CapEx being skewed towards technology and IT, one would assume therefore slightly faster depreciation profile of assets like that
Just in terms of thinking about the depreciation and intangible amortization as a percentage of sales over the next 2-3 years, can you just help us?
How we should think about that? Thank you.
. The IT CapEx, IT data digital CapEx will probably be between 4 and 5 years maximum. The contract and the new development and retention CapEx, it really depends on the length of the contract. Obviously, if you are in university, you usually go for the tenure of the contract, which is very often 5 to 10 years. In Sodexo Live, it's also very long. in corporate services, when you do CapEx, the CapEx is usually for a shorter period of 3 to 4 years. I don't know if I've completely given you the answer you wanted, but yes, IT and data CapEx is probably on the shorter side, 4 to 5 max.
André Juillard with two questions, if I may. You mentioned briefly earlier this afternoon Rio Tinto contract, and could you give us feedback on this mega contract and some more color about potential new ones, if you have the intention to and the opportunity to?
The second one was about the governance and the cash allocation. Considering that there is still a participation in the Bellon SA and the Bellon SA is owning 42% of Sodexo, do you still have in mind to simplify the structure or not? Thank you.
On Rio Tinto, it's a contract we've had since 2016, and Johnpaul Dimech can probably give you some color. We are happy with it to have the client, and I think we do a good job. Margin-wise, it's not as we would have expected, but Johnpaul Dimech, maybe you want to.
Certainly. Thank you for the question. As Marc said, we do a great job. We've got a great partnership with Rio Tinto. we're coming up to 6 years in of a 10-year contract. We've learned a lot. We've got a very solid base of what we do. We're able to leverage the learnings from the Rio Tinto contract. We've got a great partner who's working with us, that we're able to deliver efficiencies for the client. We're also able to openly discuss the margins and how we can be more efficient and how we can increase that margin, as Marc pointed out. We have a great relationship, and certainly it's a client and a contract that we want to continue to evolve.
Okay, on the second question on Sofinsod. There are no plan to do anything at the moment, but it is a topic that is discussed at a board level, and it is kept under review. We'll let , if something needs to be known.
Good afternoon. Sabrina Blanc, Société Générale. I have two questions. The first one is regarding Entegra. You have provided some targets in terms of revenues and an idea of a good margin, but could we have more granularity concerning Entegra and globally concerning the GPO also in Europe in terms of size? My second question, you have mentioned cross-selling, but it was mainly within the on-site business. Could we have more idea of cross-selling between the on-site and the benefits and rewards?
On the first one to start with, the cross-selling between on-site and BRS, I think that we have some experience in France, and Aurélien was mentioning the Tocla, , service we are providing, but it is very modest in value. It's not going to be a fantastic growth driver, but it's a nice offer we have in France. The cross-selling, BRS has a lot of cross-selling because they sell multi-products, multi-services, multi-benefits to one existing client. So you sell gift to a meal client, you sell employee benefits to a gift client, and so forth. The cross-selling, I don't know, Aurélien, if you want to say something about cross-selling at BRS, but it's a very strong process.
Yes, Marc. Actually this is what we pointed out this morning, that the cross-selling will definitely, feed our double digit operating revenue growth. It's a big lever, and that's why we are focusing on augmenting our core, absolutely.
In Entegra, I don't know, we've never given numbers before, but it's going to become a multi-hundred million business, and it will double. It is a high-margin. It is very accretive to the group. There are lots of synergies with the supply chain when handled carefully, and especially managing the catalog. I mean, there are levers to be pulled. We are very excited. It's not new. We've invested now for quite a while. It's been a couple of years that we've invested heavily in Entegra. We keep on investing, and now we are coming to the point where we see the investment bearing fruits, and we're very excited about the development on Entegra. I think it was in 2016 we started to look at Entegra in Europe.
That's why we bought PSL to start with as a platform. We did a lot of greenfield opening. It was very challenging, the greenfield opening. We decided at some point that we had to do small bolt-on acquisitions, so we bought two assets in France, one more in the UK, one in Netherlands. We are looking at expanding geographically with small bolt-ons because it gives us the base to work for. We believe Europe will be 10% of the Entegra business in three years' time.
We've also had a new management, , for the last couple of years coming from outside, and it really has given, , a very different momentum. We have a new-
New blood.
New blood.
In Entegra, we definitely had new blood.
we have new blood. Also, as Marc said earlier, we've also hired a lot of new people on the team. promoted some people inside, but also hired people from outside and a lot of people in the sales team. So.
It's really a point of focus, and it's been now for two, three years.
It will be for the next few years.
As Marc said, we keep investing and we have. There is a very good momentum.
Hi. Leo Carrington from Citi again. Following up on the cross-selling in OSS, what exactly is the definition here? And in the bridge that you've shown us, is that, how is that level comparative to what you saw through the last cycle pre-pandemic? And again, in that bridge, the Entegra component shown, is that pure incremental revenues, or does that encapsulate the benefits provided to retention, to like-for-likes, et cetera?
No, Entegra, it's purely the revenue incremental growth. as I said, the revenue model makes it very small in revenue but very large in margin. The typical cross-selling you have on the contract is you are doing food, and one day there is a cleaning contract coming up or reception contract coming up or hard FM contract coming up, and you cross-sell. And this has been a steady feature over the years. I mean, we've always been doing cross-selling, and we've seen that cross-selling the last two years we've been doing cross-selling. It has nothing to do with ramp up or whatever. It is really additional services we sell to an existing client, and it's been there for quite a long time before COVID, and it will last.
In the food business, we can also cross-sell like,
Retail.
You can do retail. It's an additional service.
Executive dining.
. Today with, , more of the hybrid model and innovative offers, , like we can sell Fooditude or Nourish to a Google account. At some point, , for a specific account, they want something different. They want something more high-end. They want, to spend more money and get, really key talents or key teams. cross-selling is an important piece. Of course, during the last couple, three years, it was very much disrupted because we were not in a normal phase.
Compared to pre-COVID situation, I think some of our speakers, , Alexandra and Sarosh explained, , that today really our clients come to us and ask us to be innovative and creative. How can we help them to get people back to work, especially in the U.S.? I think it is an opportunity, and even I gave some example, , like the Havas client in France. I can tell you, I was managing France corporate services ten years ago. It was not about innovation. It was about price, price. Today, they've realized that they are in a creative business. No one wants to come to the office, and they won't be able to do their business if people don't come back.
We're having different conversation, and I think it is very important, , to have those conversation, and it's going to feed our cross-sell business.
Okay. Taken all together, the cross-sell opportunity is as high as it was given all of those factors but maybe offset by selectivity in FM or net-net is cross-sell opportunity higher?
No, I think as the team explained earlier, the selectivity in FM will probably mean we sell differently. Whether we will sell less in volume, I'm not clear yet, but it will be more accretive. It will be more selective. Will there be erosion from the 40%? Maybe there will be some erosion, but it's not going to be a massive erosion. We're not going to become a 25% FM company, . I think we will stick to the 40% and around 40%, but it will not grow anymore. I think it will reshuffle within the portfolio of FM services.
Cross-selling will still be there, but instead of cross-selling, , a low price cleaning, we will be cross-selling reception or concierge, which is a lot more appealing and with better margins.
We, in that we have made choices. For example, we have made the choice not to do FM and hard FM in the school business because we realized, , that it was not accretive. There were a lot of competition, , in the big countries where we operate. We decided not to go for that business anymore. It doesn't mean, , that, of course, we are not going to continue and work in the government business that we have in the U.K., or that we are not going to support our GSA clients globally. It's about making choices.
Okay, thank you. Different topic. To what extent are the focused climate targets tying into your financial ambitions, particularly with margin? Is there a benefit here, or is this a commercial endeavor and it's about your clients?
I think it's really, we've always been, , a company with a mission, a purpose, and I think it's part of who we are. I think today, , it's not at all contradictory with our financial target. On the opposite, I think it is what our clients need. It is what our consumer wants, and it is also how we're going to attract people. For me, , if you take the Scope 1 and 2 of our carbon emission, it's only 1 or 2% of our carbon emission. The 98%, the rest, is from our clients. If we are ambitious, if we are a market maker, we're going to help our clients doing what they have to do.
We're going to also attract, , and please the consumer in what they want. Also we're going to retain our best talent. For me, it's totally aligned. You know? It is not opposite, and it's a strong conviction.
Thank you, Sophie. Marc?
It's Joanna Jordan from Oddo BHF in Paris. One question on the capital allocation. Maybe could you give us some color on your firepower that you could estimate for M&A? In case of no transformative deal in M&A, would you still be open for, let's say, a shareholder buyback, in the coming months? Thank you.
Well, our policy of distributing 50% of our net income and recurrent net income. As our cash conversion is usually above 100% of the net income, half of the next three years net income will become cash available, knowing that the CapEx are already included in the free cash flow. We will have a lot of cash coming from the P&L. Then you had one turn of EBITDA in, because we are at one turn, and I don't think we will go up unless we do significant M&A. It gives you an idea of the firepower. We are in billions, not in millions.
If there are no more questions in the room, we'll take a question from the call. Operator, could you put Jamie through?
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one. The first question is from Jamie Rollo of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
thanks again. First of all, I'm still struggling a bit to bridge to the 6%-8% in 2024, 2025. This year's obviously much easier with what you've explained about inflation and so on. yeah, you've still got 4%-5% to get you from the net contracts of 2%-3%. Could you please just quantify how much you're assuming for inflation and cross-selling? And also, what was the cross-selling contribution before COVID each year, please?
. I think we've covered the net new win range of 2%-3%, I think earlier. Inflation, well, you could imagine we could get down to 3% or maybe 2% at some point. I think you can use those kind of numbers. The cross-selling was usually above 1%. it gives you an idea. I think we can do better than that. then the volume, the tricky question is the volume. We have a volume growth on our sites. We explain what we can do with the share of wallet. The volume growth is the adjustment part.
I see , if I don't look at the macro outlook, and if I stick to a normal situation, there is volume growth, because we have initiatives to drive some volume. Now, this is the adjusting part. You put the numbers you want to put, but we put not a huge number. We put something on volume growth. Then there is the Entegra and the BRS contribution. They are modest, but they count, especially when you are in a 6%-8% range. I mean, they count. Then you get within the range, depending on how much you want to stick to volumes.
Okay. Thank you very much. Again, coming back to one of my earlier questions on divestments, and so on. I mean, you talked about -1% scope this year from U.K. testing contracts and other factors. Should we think about anything else over the next few years that's sort of material?
I don't know what's your threshold for material, but right now I got the team to pull out all the disposal we did. We did quite a few transactions. Altogether, it amounted to EUR 650 million, so the equivalent of 3%. We did a lot of disposal over the past three years. In value, it was that. We've guided you for your modeling for fiscal year 2023 at -1%. there could be a little bit more in 2024, but it's difficult for me to give you a quantum. if you want to factor in something for 2024, I'll be comfortable with that. It won't be huge again. I mean, I've given you all the numbers we had on disposal.
We had 3% over a few years and -1% coming in this year. You can extrapolate.
Thank you.
Thank you. Sorry. Just finally on the margin recovery after this year. Is it fair for us to assume a sort of linear improvement over 2024 and 2025, or do you think the margin growth will be front-end or back-end weighted?
If I were in your shoes, linear would be good to me. Obviously, we have a different model. I think you're not making a huge mistake by using linear.
Thank you very much.
There are no further questions. Back to the Sodexo team.
I don't think there are any more questions in the room. Sophie, maybe you'd like to conclude.
Thank you very much for your participation today. I think my team and I have been very happy to share our plan for Sodexo with you, as you have seen. Our ambition is to be the leader in sustainable food and valued experience at every moment in life, in the learn, work, heal, and play environment. We have a clear strategy to refocus and accelerate. We are refocusing on food services and being more selective in FM. You have heard from Alexandra how we will continue to upgrade our models to enhance consumers' food experience and focus on FM services that augment this experience.
You've heard from our zone presidents how this will be executed across our geographies. In North America, we are targeting new opportunities to drive growth. In Europe, we are transforming to drive profitability and generate more cash. In the rest of the world, where we have been a pioneer and where there is a great potential, we are developing with great agility to grow fast. We have a clear plan to accelerate the profitable growth of BRS, and you have heard from Aurélien that we have added this ability, the ability to move at greater pace to the very solid foundation of this business. We are also strengthening our impact as a market maker in sustainability. Our commitment in this area underlies our strategy and drive the way to do business everywhere. We are strongly committed to our founding.
We are very strongly committed to our founding values, our 56-year-old mission, and our purpose. We will continue to conduct our business in a sustainable way and support our clients in their journey. We will keep encouraging diversity and driving inclusion, contributing to fight climate change, promoting healthy foods, and providing a positive environment for our consumers. Tech and data, commercial excellence, and our supply chain power are the key enablers that will ensure that we execute successfully. We are 100% focused on accelerating the sustainable and profitable growth of Sodexo, closing the gap with our best-in-class peers, and creating value for our shareholders and all our stakeholders. We are working with our teams, who are our most valuable asset, and we support our clients and our consumers every day with an outstanding commitment.
You have also heard from Marc that we will be disciplined in our investment, our spending, and in the terms of our new contract. I'm confident that we have turned a corner in 2022. We have the potential to grow faster than we did in the pre-COVID decade. Our objective for 2025 is 6%-8% organic growth with a European margin above 6% in fiscal year 2025. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to us today. Goodbye to those of you online, and especially Jamie. For those of you who are here with us in Paris, please join us for a drink. Thank you very much.