Welcome everybody. Hello to everybody who I haven't seen yet. We'll have the opportunity to have a chat over the drinks. You probably received the document that you can see on the screen, which is the universal registration document, 196 pages. I know that some of you are a bit cross when you receive it. That's because this document is very big, and over the coming days, we're going to be writing to you by mail or by post so that you can confirm whether you wish to receive this paper document, so that we don't send it to you if you don't wish to receive it. It's not by pleasure that every year we increase the number of pages.
It's so that we're in line with regulations, and next year, we will probably have to add some more pages to take into account extra financial regulations that are becoming even stricter. I have the honor of presiding this bureau. Patricia Mavigner, who is still welcoming the last arrivals, is secretary and Deputy CEO of the group. We have two scrutineers, Torsten Hans. Where is he? There he is. We have a shareholder who's been with us for many years, who holds 9% of the capital, and who sends us a bilingual representative. Perhaps he will be saying a few words later on, we'll see. Yes, he will, when the questions come up. We also have the pleasure of welcoming Françoise Genin, who is the daughter of the founder, who represents Guy Vincent's and her own votes. Françoise, are you here with us? Yes, there.
Thank you for agreeing to act as a scrutineer. The second shareholder of the group is not present physically, but he's given me his powers, and that is Crédit Mutuel Equity. The first estimation, no surprise, look, we've gone over the quorum quite significantly. 25%, and we're over 70%. We'll see whether we go beyond last year's score, which was already quite big. The number of voting shareholders is over 1,200, and the president's powers are slightly over 16%. We have reached a quorum, and we can therefore deliberate. I declare this general assembly open. We'll start with our teams. There are 800 people in the Thermador Groupe. You can see the staff numbers that are going up every year.
But in 2023, we didn't have any external growth, so we're at a constant scope, and we can see that the recruitment pace has slowed down after all of the recruitments that we had to organize following growth in 2021 and 2022. In 2024, that recruitment pace will probably be stable. We will have a year that is probably going to be challenging, as the Americans might say. Two facts that I'd like to point out. Just like last year, we're looking especially at the rate of absenteeism. You probably saw that on the first page of the echoes. It's one of the concerns of the public powers, but also it's one of our concerns. People are increasingly absent for health reasons, and this is the case of the Thermador Groupe too.
We would like to really do everything necessary so that this rate goes back down to what it was. This will probably be challenging, but we will do everything it takes, especially through some questionnaires that we are going to be sending out to employees. 2024 will be the year for working conditions and quality barometer questionnaires. It is an essential tool for our managers so that they can know what the opinions of employees are about the quality of life at work and working conditions. A second subject that is important for me is the number of accidents. The number of accidents at work has gone up. We have gone from 8 to 12. These are not very serious accidents.
However, I would like us to be much more attentive in 2024 so that we can come back to almost zero, because that is the objective that we have now. You might say that 12 out of 800 people, that is not the end of the world. But at the same time, these are signs that have to be dealt with. Anyway, thank you to our employees for the efforts in 2023. As you know, without them, the group would not exist. Now, we are going to talk about the business of our subsidiaries. We are going to go back through the figures that you had in letter number 113. We are going to be making some comments about the companies and shedding light on the context for 2023. We are going to be starting with the consumer channel subsidiaries. Companies, there are three, Mecafer, Domac, and Odrea, representing 80% of the group's business.
The year was very important for Mecafer. It came out of a record year. Mecafer and Domac managed to keep a high revenue. We can see a drop on this slide, but Mecafer benefited in 2023 from generator set sales that were quite exceptional. In 2024, things might be a little bit more difficult. However, in 2023, Mecafer kept hold of its profitability, allowing Philippe Bories, who is the current director of Mecafer, to retire with record results. It is also the opportunity for this general assembly to thank Philippe. Philippe has been with us since 2015, which is when Mecafer was bought. He has been there as the general director, and he decided this year to hand over the baton. He is still young and dynamic.
He has got lots of projects, and after spending so much time with us in the Thermador Groupe, we want to thank him, and thank him for handing down the baton. We hope you really enjoy your retirement in good health. Now, the transmission has been done. It took some time. It took a long time for Marie-Hélène, but there she is. She is free now, and as of the start of April, she will be wearing her general director hat. Marie-Hélène Batta. Marie-Hélène, can you perhaps stand up? If you have any questions about Mecafer or Domac, you can ask Marie-Hélène during the drinks. Marie-Hélène will be in charge of the fate of these companies, and we know that the year is going to be difficult because the records were high. Well done with this new assignment in your professional life. Now, Odrea.
Odrea is a company that had a record year last year. It is the result of the merger of two companies, Dipra and Rousseau. In spite of the merge, you know that merges are always difficult periods. It involved a lot of IT migration for Rousseau, and yet Odrea has managed to maintain its turnover. The customers were a little bit unsettled at the beginning of the year, but Odrea has maintained its position and has reestablished the results, and they are quite suitable. These teams have managed to pass on price increases to customers. So a great year for Odrea, and I would also like to underline the performance of our Spanish team. They did some miraculous work in their lovely country with turnover on the up and up. You know that in retail markets, there were two subsidiaries that saw a downward trend. Building and public works.
Let us start with Isocel. Isocel is specialized in the sale of components for the makers of boilers. So it is very much involved in the sale of components to heat pump manufacturers. There was a great start to 2023, but then sales crumbled because there was a phenomenon relating to energy renovation bonuses that had an impact. The business went down in France and Europe. The manufacturers of heat pumps saw a lot of temporary layoffs, and especially this had an impact at the latter half of the year. Aello, our swimming pool specialist, EUR 20 million in turnover last year. This year, in 2023, it was slightly lower than that on a market that was seeing a 15% downturn. So Aello is resisting, and especially thanks to a better distribution of sales teams across the land and its number of active customers.
It is working on intelligent solutions so that it can offer swimming pools that are responsible, that do not use too much water or energy. A noteworthy point for the Thermador Groupe is the presence of DPI over the course of the year. DPI is an important company from a turnover point of view, EUR 42 million in 2023. If you see EUR 9 million in 2022, it is because it only became part of the group over the last two months of 2022. So the EUR 42 million has a global turnover of over EUR 60 million for 2022. So a considerable drop in turnover due to the drop in raw materials and the non-renewal of a certain number of contracts for DPI. However, DPI has kept hold of its profitability, which is the main thing.
Today and in 2024, the main objective for DPI and its teams, so Grégory and his teams, is to stabilize the business and the results and to invest in its structure so that its integration in the Thermador Groupe can be speeded up. It was a great year, a record year for Jetly, which surfed on the sales of solutions for water recovery. It is a family of products with a small turnover, but there is a potential. Water is becoming scarcer. Water is going to be more expensive in the future. So these are essential challenges that we need to rise to. The Jetly team is now complete. We have got all of the management positions filled. The plans are clear for next year. They will continue to grow, won't they, Franck?
I'd just like to specify that all of the directors of our companies are with us today, and I'd like to thank them for this. There's just Anne-Sophie who stayed in Strasbourg. If you have any questions about companies, please go and see the people concerned directly. Thermador. Thermador to put up with the effect of the habitat improvement agency 's actions that brought down the bonus for energy renovations, it decided to tighten things up and control public financing. This meant that there was a slowdown in financing, notably, payment of the MaPrimeRénov' bonuses, which had a huge impact on all people working in the energy sector. This was felt in the turnover of Thermador. It started well at the beginning of the year, but like Isocel, it ended up with a big downturn. We did keep the figure quite high, though.
In 2020, Thermador had a turnover of EUR 51 million. Thermador has actually doubled its turnover in the space of two years. There was a slowdown in 2023 and probably that will be the same thing this year. Hopefully the market will be freed up again when the bonuses are reactivated. PBtub and Thermacome, they're exposed to the risks of new housing. You can see that they're marking the pace in 2023, and this will be the case for 2024. The new housing market finished with -22% over 12 sliding months. That's a disaster for this market and for companies that supply materials for new houses. The impact has been huge, and that's been the case for these two companies that are really exposed to this risk. We are only exposed to 10%. Let me just remind you.
We sell mainly products for maintenance and renovation. It was a key year, 2024, for Thermacome. We've decided to migrate the IT system to this company acquired in 2020. We're continuing the IT integration push. Axelair, created in 2013, specialized in air circulation, had a stable figure in 2023, but that hides the progress made by its core business and the considerable variations of cyclical products like mobile air conditioners. There was a double negative effect in 2023 because these mobile air conditioners didn't sell very well. The stock remained high and interest rates went up. You can imagine the impact on the accounts of Axelair that were only just breaking even.
We've decided to depreciate that inventory, and so in the universal registration document, you will see a negative income statement, and that's why we've reinvested in the company because we really believe that the Thermador Groupe has a card to play when it comes to air circulation. We've increased it by EUR 1.5 million so that we can give the company everything it needs to become profitable again. It was a record year for Sferaco. When one of our big subsidiaries, there are two others that are making sparks. It was a great year also for Sferaco. It made progress on its three main markets of building, water cycle, and the industrial markets. Sferaco is one of the most enterprising companies in the sustainable development field. It published this year its first FDES, so its environmental and health report. That involved a lot of work.
They also are the ones who started to work on eco-design, the eco-design of certain products, and they have established the first carbon trajectory. Thank you, Sferaco for the great work and for all the work you are doing on sustainable development. Let's move to the world of industry. In 2023, the building and public works world, you saw lots of negative figures, but there is more resistance in the industry world. We saw this with Sferaco. It is also the case with Sectoriel that managed to stabilize its turnover after years of growth. Sectoriel has gotten more product references for air compressors. It has recorded a new agreement with a manufacturer of plastic valves, ASV-STÜBBE. I do not know whether I am pronouncing that correctly. For Sectoriel, that is an opportunity to develop its products in France and also to continue to make progress in e-commerce.
Sectoriel is one of the pioneers of the Thermador Groupe when it comes to its ability to open up its business to customers via a website. Every year we are seeing sales, e-commerce sales, going up. Sectoriel is also a company that is very imaginative and very enterprising when it comes to product repairability, and it will help us to decrease our impact in the future. Since we bought Distrilabo, this company specialized in measuring instruments in 2019, so 2020, so that is quite a few years. Distrilabo has consistently increased its turnover. This was the case last year. But we have reached our limits and now at Distrilabo, we have to have a bigger management team. This is one of Anne-Sophie's priorities, to recruit a sales director and a purchasing director so that we can move on to the next rung of the ladder with Distrilabo.
It was a very difficult year for FG INOX. It was a year of transition. FG INOX saw Philippe Bernardet leave to retire, and I would like to thank Philippe for providing us with all of the support he did since the acquisition. Management has handed over to Jean-Philippe Paul, who is just in front of me. He has taken over the general management of FG INOX. He did this in the middle of last year. Jean-Philippe is known to the Thermador Groupe. He spent a lot of time in the Thermador Groupe as sales director of Sferaco, for example. We are counting on Jean-Philippe to make sure that FG INOX has the commercial punch necessary in order to go back to a growth situation. This drop in figure can be explained by two main phenomena. First of all, there is the price effect, a smaller price effect than with other businesses.
There were price drops for certain stainless steel products. Customers were unsettled by the change in logistics that took place about a year ago. We need to reconquer those customers over the next months. It is about a commercial reconquering at FG INOX. FG INOX has, as you will see, a fantastic logistics tool. Syveco had a so-so year if we compare it to Lionel's ambitions. His ambitions are always very high. At Syveco, the year, well, it started off well, but the last part of the year was much more difficult, and this was linked to the European market that was more difficult. However, at Syveco, the ambitions remain intact. The market share per country is still low. I will not spoil things because we will hear more from Lionel later.
We finish now with Sodeco, our Belgian country, managed by Peter, who is here, who managed to beat last year's record. He says that this year the figure is going to be very bad, but nobody believes him. That's just Peter's sense of humor. It's true that he's in a difficult business. He works a lot on projects. Sodeco is a company that became part of the Groupe in 2017, and in the Groupe, it has shown good profitability. It's well managed today. It's making progress on a regular basis, and it's working on industrial fittings projects with industrial customers in Belgium and the Netherlands. We also saw a turning point. Dieter De Cock, who is the co-founder of Sodeco, left the company. He's not present today. He voted remotely, and I'd like to thank him for the support that he's provided.
The world of industry has done better, and this is going to help us with our resistance in 2024. I'm now going to hand over after having commented on the graph. Now hang on to your hats. I'm going to turn around so that you can see what's going on on the screen. We've seen the price effect, the increase in prices and volumes over three years. Here, 2021. It was a party year. Average price increases of 4.3%, increase in volume 16.8%, increase in turnover 21%. 2022. There, inflation, or at least the price effect, increased, and then the volume effect went down, and last year we found ourselves with a greater 12% increase. Now, this year, you can see the volumes are going down. At constant scope, the turnover is down and inflation is down. So three exceptional years.
We need to keep in mind this price effect on these 3 years. We've never seen that in the Thermador Groupe, the price effects of this nature. Lionel, it's over to you now. Lionel Monnerot, who is the delegate DG for the Groupe. He plays a specific role in Thermador Groupe. He will be replacing me if ever I had a health problem or another kind of problem, because 3 years ago, he is the Deputy General Director and may take over from me if there is some kind of emergency. And he's also in charge of Syveco.
Now we need to switch the microphone on, please. Is the microphone working? Yes. I'm going to talk to you about international business in 2023. Guillaume has already said quite a lot of things. I'll try and bring those facts together and explain them.
On the map, you can see our international coverage. There are some factors that are not in orange, some countries that are not in orange, so in the Middle East. Today we cover all of Europe, part of Africa, and part of the Middle East. That's our area of intervention. In 2023, we kept to the same sales percentages internationally as in 2022, a little under 17%, and this was made possible thanks to several phenomena. The great performance of Sodeco, Ecovalve based in Belgium working in Benelux and Germany in the industrial market, so with some great projects in 2023, which produced this EUR 25 million turnover. Then there was the work of the FG INOX and Syveco commercial teams, who really fought hard to recover market share in Europe and in Africa, and mainly from the distribution channel. And there was the great performance of Odrea.
Audria in Spain, in its specific area of expertise, continuing to work with DIY superstores. Today we have some teams that really speak different languages. Over 20 languages are spoken by our different teams. I think we will be talking about the prospects a little bit later on. As you wish.
Let me draw your attention to this page six in the universal registration document. It is on this page. This is where you find all of the distribution channels, the products, the subsidiaries. Today I would like to talk about FG INOX and its logistics system. It is Anaïs Deragopian, who is a director of the supply chain for Thermador, who will be presenting this subject. Anaïs, over to you. Let me just give you the pointer.
Hello, everybody. I suggest that I answer a question that you have been asking yourselves.
Why have we decided to roll out an automatic solution on part of the FG INOX platform? Very quickly, we noticed that the Corbas platform would not be big enough to support the growth of these subsidiaries. So we decided to build the Saint-Quentin-Fallavier platform. We went from 4,400 square meters to 6,700 square meters. The challenges to be expected were major. We had to have better efficiency, traceability, and productivity. We had to densify our inventory and storage by reducing the footprint impact. We had to improve working conditions of our employees, but also make sure that we could get around the problem of the fewer people available to work in logistics in the region. So we set up a multidisciplinary team, FG INOX Thermador Groupe, with different fields of expertise, IT, real estate, logistics, but also many people working directly on the platform itself.
This team, supported by a specialized company in terms of intralogistics, worked for two years, for a very long time, analyzing the data, analyzing the different flows, so that after identifying the different technologies applicable, it could select the solution that you saw in the film behind me. That solution today makes it possible to use 320 square meters to store the equivalent of 500 square meters. Let me present to you some figures. The total investment for the platform at FG INOX on equity basis was EUR 2.2 million. That was to fit out the platform. If we talk about the automated platform, that was an investment of EUR 2.2 million. We can wonder about productivity as well. We wanted to gain in productivity and efficiency, we said. As you saw in the film, we automated preparation, but also we have manual picking too.
For the automated part, for one employee, we have an average of 700 lines, even up to 1,200 lines on some days are picked. Now, if we think about manual picking, we have 2 employees, so that is the equivalent of 2 employees working on manual picking, and together they can prepare 100 lines. You can see that there is a big difference between the automated solution and the manual solution. Now, in this solution that you saw in the film, there are 9,600 bins, and out of those, we use 5,900. So it is about providing long-term support to this subsidiary for its growth. Out of the 5,900 bins, we are storing almost 80% of the products referenced. Now, there is one last question which is not up on the screen, and that is ROI. So we calculated, Anaïs, what does ROI mean? It means a return on investment.
We've made sure that we've made the right investment. Initially, when we did the calculations, it was a four-year return on investment. But now when we redo the calculations, it's 6 years. However, we're very happy that we took this decision, and we consider that for the subsidiary and the group, it's a successful project. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Anaïs. Thank you for that excellent work. As Anaïs said, it was carried out by a multidisciplinary team. This is also what we noticed in the project. It's the great ease of the teams at FG INOX to adapt to this tool. We're now going to focus on some very important pages in the universal registration document, pages 10 and 11. If you've only got two to read, these are the two that you should be reading.
On these two pages, we have our long-term objectives, our strategies for achieving the objectives, and we also summarize the main challenges of the Thermador Groupe in the next five years. The first challenges are human challenges. We need to be able to attract talent and make sure that people who work for us are loyal. We need to encourage diversity, and we need to be better when it comes to equality. We should have 40% of men or women at all levels of governance, and that's not necessarily the case today. So we've still got our work cut out for us. We've got more ambition today when it comes to taking on peoples with disabilities. Sustainable development. It's a huge challenge linked to European decisions, but also our own convictions and regulations that are becoming stricter and stricter.
When it comes to business, as I said last year, we want to have better knowledge of the customers of our customers. For the moment, we're mainly suppliers of wholesalers. We're not very familiar with the end users, and increasingly, we want to get to know these end users and maybe carry out key opinion leading operations. We want to have greater international development. France International, the balance is not good today because it's 85% for France and 15% for international business. So over the coming years, we want to rejig that balance and have something that allows us to spread out the risks, and one of the means is external growth, and I'll talk about that later. We also want to continue to integrate the companies that we've already bought.
Since 2015, we've carried out 12 acquisition operations that require a lot of work to make sure that these companies feel good. Digital transformation. These are two words that everybody is using today. It's a challenge that applies to all companies, including the Thermador Groupe. Our subsidiaries are constantly asking us to do IT developments to increase their productivity, their commercial impact. We have a team of 17 people in the holding. They're multidisciplinary. Tom Aguenier is present, the DSI. He will be able to answer any questions. He's in charge of information technology systems. The team works in different fields to help subsidiaries with their productivity and their sales. Digital transformation is important, especially for companies that are listed on the stock exchange that are more attacked. In terms of the supply chain and logistics, it's about wellbeing.
We have lots of employees working in the supply chain, working in logistics that are over the age of 50, and we want to make sure that these employees continue to work in the right conditions. We do not want them to suffer from musculoskeletal disorders or other health disorders. We have to pay attention to these employees. As we did with FG INOX, we want to optimize the current buildings that we have because room is going to be even scarcer and more expensive in the future, and we want to do this by increasing our efficiency. Of course, there will probably be more automated picking. Finally, a geopolitical challenge. This applies to any company, but especially for the Thermador Groupe. Two-thirds of our procurements come from Europe. One-third, 29% come from China.
Our objective is to balance out the risks in the future because geopolitics can have some surprises up its sleeves, as we have seen in the past few years. Our objectives are the same. We want to have regular growth, an average of 7% a year over long periods, 10-year periods. While at the same time respecting stakeholders, our employees, shareholders, customers, suppliers, and any other stakeholder together with the environment. I wanted to draw up this graph just to remind everybody of something. We have started to talk about the 7% trajectory and doubling size as of 2019. In gray, you can see the theoretical path, and in, let us call it mole skin color, we have got the reality of the situation. Post-COVID, growth was quite extraordinary and unexpected for the Thermador Groupe. Now, how can we grow in the Thermador Groupe and in the different subsidiaries?
We have got different drivers. Organic growth is one. We can increase our market shares or increase the number of products sold and share price increases with our customers. That is another way of increasing turnover. We have got international development, as Lionel mentioned. We can create subsidiaries. The last one was Aello in 2015. In the next few years, we can create subsidiaries based on an activity that we take from a company, or we can create a subsidiary based on an idea, a team, and a number of suppliers. This is something that we did with Aello and Axelair as well. External growth, and especially abroad, for the moment, we do not have any big operations up our sleeve for external growth. We are in discussions with a group of companies. There are three companies in the group. They all have the same commercial locomotive. It is compteur-energie.com
Is Olivier with us? Thank you, Olivier, for coming. I do not know whether Thierry was able to come, but Olivier is one of the two directors of these companies. If you like, you can ask him some questions over drinks to talk about energy meters. Anyway, this is initiative of Sferaco. They sell energy meters. The arrival of this metering specialist is probably a good opportunity for the Thermador Groupe. All of that has to be in line with our sustainable development path. Now, talking about sustainable development, I want to quickly give you an overlook of what is happening in terms of sustainable development in 2023, and you are going to see this as of page 62. There is the declaration of financial performance, which is a long document.
It starts with the forward of the president, which is supposed to summarize all success stories and difficulties. Among the success stories, we are still on track to achieve our objectives for 2030 with respect to the 19 indicators that you can find on page 21 of the universal registration document. Out of the 19 indicators, there are four at the moment that are below what we hoped. So the share of employees in capital, the absenteeism rate, cars, the emissions of our fleet of cars. We have not managed to buy electric vehicles yet. They were not available. And the carbon impact of the products that we distributed. These four indicators are behind, but there are many other indicators that are allowing us to stay abreast. As I said last year, but it has been confirmed this year, 95% of our carbon footprint depends on the products that we sell.
It is indirect. We are not the ones who manufacture the products, but we have to take that into account in our calculations. If we want to reduce our complete impact, we are going to have to work really hard with our suppliers in order to reduce the impact of the products sold. The first idea explored is the use of recycled materials, but our suppliers have not waited for us for this. Many of them already use a lot of recycled materials. That is part of tomorrow's drivers. It is a driver that will not be essential from our point of view, but this needs to be specified. It is not the essential driver. The essential driver is probably the energy consumed by our manufacturers. What energy are factories using, the factories making our products? Are we talking about decarbonized energy or not? And where are the factories? Do these countries provide decarbonized energy?
These are questions that we need to ask our suppliers so that we can focus our purchasing in order to decrease our impact. Ecodesign, I mentioned this earlier on. We have taken our first steps in the Thermador Groupe. We realize that it is a process that is going to take a lot of time, and I think that if you design a product or a range of products, you can have results in five years' time. You can imagine what that means for thousands of items. It is titanic. However, in spite of all of the uncertainties and difficulties, the directors of the Thermador Groupe have committed to reducing their impact in terms of carbon intensity by 17% between 2022 and 2030. Carbon intensity, that is the quantity of carbon emitted in relation to the volume of products sold.
We will probably be helped by our suppliers who are European and who are also going to be subject to the CSRD. That is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive that is going to be obligatory as of next year when it comes to extra-financial reporting. And our suppliers, who are European, who are of a certain size, will also have to draw up these extra-financial reports one year after us, and that will provide us with a lot of information and maybe some ideas for making progress. From a concern for transparency, this year, we have communicated the amounts invested in person time on these subjects, EUR 800,000. That amount is not going to be going down in the next few years. When we talk about sustainable development, we often forget that governance is part of the stakes.
Now, there have been movements in the Thermador Groupe, and perhaps there will be movements this evening because among the resolutions, there are some changes on the cards in terms of governance. The first movement concerns the board of directors and the appointment of a lead director. You will see what her role is in the internal regulations that were updated in December. We've appointed to the board Laurence Paganini as a lead member of the board, a lead director. There she is. You will also be able to ask her about what her role is over drinks. Why have we done that? That's because many investors, notably Anglo-Saxon investors, look at the CEO position with a certain level of doubt. They say that it's not normal that we have the same person as a CEO and the general director of the group.
They want to separate those powers. It's a very French tradition that we have, and in fact, lots of small-sized companies like ours do this. Like us. They're used to this governance process. I think we can maybe take a step towards our investors and offer a director with more powers. What about the powers and role of this lead director? They can talk with an investor director when it comes to governance and remuneration questions. That person can convene a board of directors meeting. That person can act on the agenda of that meeting. As of January, I've been sending the agenda to Laurence. Laurence can also organize meetings outside of the executive meetings. She's also in charge of the self-evaluation of the board of directors.
You can see that Laurence has all of these additional powers, and that's to ensure that the CEO is not omnipotent, let's say. We've also renewed Patricia Mavigner's mandate. You know Patricia, she's just here. You'll be hearing from her later on. The question of individual shareholders was why this new mandate? Inside the board of directors, Patricia acts as secretary, but she's not actually a director of the board. It's not the shareholders who appoint Patricia, but the board of directors that appoints Patricia as a deputy GD. She's in charge of the group's finance and real estate. The mandate has been renewed by the board of directors, and she will be taking the floor later on to talk about the figures. We also wanted to change the board of directors, and this depends on your votes.
We wanted to satisfy our Anglo-Saxon investors and rating agencies by giving over 50% to independent directors of the board. Through the departure of two of our directors, Jerome and Philippe, who after two years, they're going to be leaving their positions as directors as planned. We're going to be replacing these two positions by one director position so that operational directors are no longer over 50%, and so that we've got 55.6% of independent members of the board. Finally, with the objective of increasing our employees' share in the capital and with the objective of attracting new talent, we've put forward two resolutions in relation to these fields. Patricia, it's over to you now. Patricia Mavigner, who's the deputy general director of the group.
one, two, three.
Yes, it's working.
I think that I've seen everybody because I was at the entrance, so I'd like to say hello to you again. I'm going to be talking to you about figures, so I need the pointer. As Guillaume showed us, we're ahead of the game when it comes to the 10-year trend. 2023 marks a gap where we have gone over EUR 500,000 in terms of turnover, EUR 500 million. In a context that's been complicated, we had the contribution of DPI. DPI was a subsidiary that joined us in November 2022. In 2023, its turnover covered the whole year. This explains the figures. Without the acquisition of DPI in 2023, we would've had a downturn in the turnover, 1.8% down, for several reasons. Because there were fewer sales on some of our markets, because we continued to benefit from inflation, 5.9%.
Through the months and semesters, the price effect went lower, so there was less of a positive effect on the turnover. There was the energy renovation bonus that had provided a lot of growth over the past three years. That kind of came to a standstill situation, and over the quarters, we saw the growth in turnover decline. 2023 was a good year. Now, in terms of results. The operating income, so growth can be seen. A slight drop in the net result can be seen. The turnover, you can see it. The idea was to preserve our commercial margin because we were coming out of this time where there was an increase in prices and there was inflation. The idea in that year was to get back to a controlled commercial margin for brand purchasing.
We had stability for the margin, for this commercial margin. For the consumer channel in 2022, the subsidiaries present on the market had suffered because they saw purchase prices going up that they weren't able to pass on to their customers. For some it was in October, some it was in August that they were able to do it. Mechanically, in 2023, the negotiations with customers made it possible for these subsidiaries to pass on the prices to their customers, and that was found in their commercial margin. The results were better. I can see Philippe, who's winking at me. Laure, I think it's the same thing. The group's markets are sometimes challenging. It was a positive year from a commercial margin point of view. We made the most of the currency exchange between the USD and EUR.
29% of our purchases are paid for in dollars, and 2023 was more beneficial. Once again, when it comes to the consumer channel, subsidiaries buy a lot more from Asia, and mechanically, that is beneficial to them. We also talked a lot about the price of containers, and that has another impact on our purchasing prices. In 2023, there were drops in the container prices, and the companies importing from Asia made the most of this. All of this was beneficial in terms of the commercial margin. It's what allowed us to maintain our operating income at over EUR 80 million. With respect to the important factors that need to be underlined, once you've got your commercial margin, you have to shoulder your expenses. In the group, our reputation is that we manage our expenses in a very lean manner. We've continued to do this.
The biggest expense is the payroll, so there was an increase in staff numbers. 3.6% increase in staff numbers, and we wanted to continue to make sure that our purchasing capacity, the purchasing capacity of our employees could be maintained. 10.8% of our turnover was what it was. In terms of other costs that we have got, sales transport, and we made savings of over EUR 1 million in this field. How did we do this? There were positive and negatives. There were fewer volumes transported, which meant fewer transport expenses. But a lot of good negotiations were carried out in terms of transport prices. This was done in two periods. In January 2023 and in August, there were new negotiations with express services. This made it possible to reduce that expense, and it also contributed to our operating income.
There is a sales transport group made up of three people, and it is also the reflection of their work that is done at group level. Another point concerns energy costs. We had communicated at the end of 2022 about the fact that the energy costs were going up. We had had prices that were fixed between 2021, 2022. In 2023, we found ourselves with electricity and gas prices being multiplied by three or four. The challenge was to absorb part of that increase and to work on sobriety plans focusing on energy. That is what all of our subsidiaries did. It is about making sure that it is not too hot, it is not too cold. This was important, and we are going to continue to work on energy sobriety, but it allowed us to reduce the impact of increases. The other factor was the production of our photovoltaic panels.
In Belgium, we produce electricity based on our photovoltaic panels. In Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, it is the same thing, and that is going to be part of the investments that we are going to continue to accompany our sobriety plan. This brings me to expenses. The operating income saw a growth, and the net result saw a slight decline. Let me explain. The tax rate for all of our subsidiaries, whatever country, is at 25%, and yet we have got a tax rate that is over 26%, an effective tax rate, that is. We decided to cancel the tax savings that we have in our account every year that was generated by former deficits recognized by Axelair. We decided to cancel that tax saving, and that had an impact of EUR 600,000, and that explains why we have got a tax rate that is higher because there is that additional charge.
However, the results are good. Let me pursue now with these indicators. We have got two indicators that we follow every year, that we have been following since 2012, 2013. There is the return on capital employed. This ratio is the operational profitability. It is the generation of cash flow, but it is also about how do we manage our working capital requirements. You can see the figures, 21.7 for 2023. That is a good figure. That is above 2014 and 2015. Then we have got our operating income over turnover, and they were at 13.7%. We knew that that would go down, that we would not go above 14%, and we had anticipated that. It is linked to the building of the DPI business model where the operating margin is a bit lower than the average of the group, and that is why we had anticipated for that.
DPI did have a good year in spite of all of that. I am now going to move on to the financial structure, because we usually say that we have a financial structure that is very healthy. We are going to be talking about our stock, we are a distribution group, and it is important to talk about those assets. 55% of our current assets. In months of purchases consumed, it is 180 days. It is about improving things compared with the previous year, and that is what our purchasing team has been doing. It reviewed the stability. It stopped price increases. We had a lot of stock with high purchasing prices. All of that has to be managed. Then there were sales volumes that had started to decline. How do you adopt your purchasing volume to your sales volume?
Our purchasing teams were very much involved in working on those things, and that in fact optimized our inventory management. Linked with the cash flow, we also managed to manage our customer settlement times. We saw improvements in the Spanish subsidiary, for example. If you review the general assembly from last year, we said that we had an action plan, and the action plan paid off. We need to continue the work, but there has already been an improvement. With the optimized cash flow management and payment times that are better, that are stabilized, we have managed to generate cash flow, EUR 35 million in cash flow. For us, that was a positive factor. It meant that we could finance our investments. You also have to take into account that the cash flow for subsidiaries with a surplus is remunerated.
The operational management teams have taken into account this contribution, and this means that it is going to encourage them to generate a positive cash flow. Now I am going to talk about loans and debt. Our loans are linked to the financing of our external growth strategy. We have started. We have come to the end of certain loans that were taken out in 2017. We have paid off those loans. We have not taken out any new loans in, we did not in 2023. The other important point is that we are talking about fixed rate loans and in euros, so we do not have to manage currency effects or currency exchange effects. That makes our work a little bit easier. To finish, what reflects our healthy situation is the amount of equity. We are not far from EUR 340 million in terms of equity.
I am now going to go through investments. I have talked about the cash generated, a positive situation. That cash is going to allow us to finance our investments. Our investments are financed on equity. If we have a look at 2023, we financed over EUR 7.7 million in investments. Out of the EUR 7.7 million, we are talking about over 50% linked to real estate. I do not know where Olivier is, but that is Olivier Houdique, who joined us in 2022 and who manages things with me. That is one of the investments that we coordinated together this year. Real estate investments. The rest concerns investments in subsidiaries. EUR 7.7 million, that is in line with our average. This is a question that people ask us on a regular basis. What is the amount of our investments? It is an average of between EUR 7 million and EUR 8 million.
2024, we will be making more investments, so EUR 9.7 million. These will be equity investments. 44% will be linked to real estate. There will be an additional building being bought, and we are going to continue investments in order to improve our buildings and in line with the energy renovation rules. CEICO will be carrying out work. They will have to move and adapt. We are also going to continue to work on photovoltaic panels. We are going to, in line with our sobriety plan and plans for sustainable development. I think I am now going to hand over to Guillaume.
Thank you, Patricia. We have got things balanced in the Thermador Groupe. We have got institutional investors taking up 40% to 48.6% for the others.
You can see this on the slide in the center that the percentage of capital held by employees, both active and retired employees, has gone down. This is the opposite of what we want to do. We have lost three-tenths. 6.7%, that is the percentage of capital held by employees. Some of them have FCPE investments, too. Among the individual shareholders, we have a number of specific investors. We have got founders of the Thermador Groupe, Guy Vincent, represented by his daughter, Marc de Cherey, who is with us, too. Is Marc here already? Yes. Thank you, Marc, for being so loyal when it comes to our general assembly. Then we have Hubert Fournier, who has also arrived, and Geneviève, who I saw earlier on. Thank you to all of you for being so loyal and coming to the general assembly.
It is great to have the founders in this general assembly. I also mentioned the Borde family, who gave its powers to the chair. A thought for Pascal, who has health problems, who said that they will be here next year. Institutional investors, we showed you this last year and you liked it, so let us use it again. We have got some well-known names among the institutional investors. The first, as I mentioned already, is the Crédit Mutuel Equity. Then this year, the big event is the threshold that has been overstepped by Fidelity. That is an American investor that also has funds in England. We have gone over 5%, and of course, that has to be declared, as you know. There are also institutional investors who have a great reputation in the list.
What we are seeing with Patricia is that the number of Anglo-Saxon investors has gone up, because now we are talking about 28.7%. The number of investors is also going up, and that follows on from the increase in institutional investors and also individual investors. It is a trend in France. It is great to have some young people with us as well. They are all going to open up a PEA or other kind of share savings plan when they go out of the room. We have seen during COVID, we saw new young investors become more interested in the stock exchange, and we are benefiting from that. We work in a traditional field, but we are benefiting from this contribution of young shareholders. That is a good sign for us. Now, let us look at the long-term changes of stock exchange prices. Let me just remind you that the dividends have never gone down.
That's a specific characteristic that we have. Some of our individual investors would have liked to have had an increase in dividends. Let me just remind everybody that dividends do not enrich shareholders. It's just a transfer of funds. Some are maybe not in agreement with us, but when you do something about the cash, the cash is freed up. It's a zero sum. I know that individual shareholders like dividends because it means that they can improve their everyday life, and it's important for them to be regular. What's more interesting for me, given the return on capital employed, which is the key ratio for finance, it's interesting to look at the actions that are reinvested. If you look at the website of the group in orange, you can see Thermador and its path over 10 years.
In green, we've got the CAC 40, which had great performance. Dividends reinvested 9.7%, and Thermador Groupe went down as compared with last year, even if the performance was quite respectful, and I think quite honorable. Another point that is interesting to note, especially for institutional investors, but also for individual investors, is this increase in volumes. When you have more volumes on the market to be sold or bought, this means that institutional investors can come in or go out, and this means that there are not too many variations in prices, which is what we saw recently. A few words about prospects. Unfortunately, I don't have too many short-term good news to share with you. New housing, the situation is pretty disastrous. The latest figures at the end of figures, we're looking at -25% over 12 sliding months. That's a really difficult situation.
We think that we get to the bottom of this cycle. We think that we're going to get to the bottom of the cycle this year. For Thermacome and PBtub, there might be possibilities for growth at the start of next year. MaPrimeRénov'. The public powers have realized that they've tightened the purse strings too much, and this has had an impact. A decree, therefore, was published on March 23 to free energies and funds again. This decree is going to make it possible to get back to the delivery rates for solar boilers and heat pumps that is more normal. For this subject, you can interview Yves, who's just opposite me, or Medy, who's somewhere in the assembly, who's our specialist. When it comes to solar boilers, he's familiar with that subject.
Good news, but for the second half of the year. The figures for wholesalers have been negative since the beginning of the year, -6, -6.5. From the consumer channel, the figures have been negative since the start of the year, so -4. So, a very negative start to the year. Industry now. We're seeing this on the PMI indicators. When they're below 50, the market is growing. It's going down. When it's the opposite, it's growing. So, we've seen increases in the European indicator. It's at 46, and for several months we're seeing growth. So better news for industry, therefore, keeping in mind that for these industrial markets, the market share is lower. So there's always the possibility of growth in the future. The water cycle, I talked about this last year. It's a very long-term subject.
The public powers have made some announcements about water in France that were loud and clear, but we haven't seen very many effects, because what's being done is very modest. We're sure that this will continue to be an important challenge for the next 10 to 15 years. That's positive for DPI, Jetly, and for COHU cell pipings, fittings, pumps for water, and the water cycle for tanks. From an international point of view, Lionel mentioned this earlier on. We're talking about industrial markets mainly for us, and the prospects are very good. Even if this year, in spite of everybody's ambitions, it will be a year for transition. A price effect estimation. This price effect has helped us over the past three years. My personal estimation in terms of increases passed on to customers in 2024 was 3%.
We're going to have a more specific estimation done at the end of the first quarter. Company directors don't want me to do this calculation, but we want to have something specific in terms of the price effect, and it will probably be below 3%. That's my feeling anyway. We'll hear more about that later. Just to finish with prospects and stop punching your morale. You can see the profile in terms of organic growth for the Thermador Groupe. You can see that this year, 2023, that started off well and that finished at -10 in the fourth quarter. It's quite probable that that trend will continue for twp more quarters, but then the colors will come back to our world. As we're all long-term investors, we look at five to 10 years' time. This little jolt, it doesn't really concern us.
We'll just continue to work as we always have. Auditors, something new this year. During the voting and resolutions, we've got a specialized auditor for extra-financial reporting. It's somebody who's in charge of checking extra-financial performance reporting, and it's Isabelle Loste who will be presenting to you very quickly the work that she was able to do in the Thermador Groupe. In a few words, she'll be able to talk about this famous CSRD, the Corporate Sustainable Reporting wave. She set up her company a few years ago, Finexfi. I think we were the first listed company that she had as a customer. Finexfi was then taken over by KPMG, which is why we have these two logos up on the screen. Over to you.
Thank you. Hello to everybody. Effectively, I've been working on these subjects for 25 years.
I started my career at KPMG in 1998, where I started working on governance. In 1999, I focused on sustainable development. In fact, I coordinated the whole department through to June 2010, and then I left KPMG to set up my own company called Finexfi, and Finexfi stands for extra-financial financing. We'll see the link with the CSRD later on. The Thermador Groupe is especially important for me because they are a legacy customer of Finexfi. It was the first listed company that we audited as part of the Environment Grenelle approach. Now I'm back with KPMG. KPMG is also working on its audit transformation plan. There will be a transformation from financial to extra-financial focuses. We provide support with that, and it's with pride that I can say that the Finexfi team is recognized in France in terms of ESG challenges.
What have we done? We have validated the slides shown to you at the beginning of the session. You saw the activity. You started with the employees, and employees are part of ESG. I have been focusing on this for 25 years. It is because I believe in it. I believe that extra-financial leads to financial factors. We have got a context, a geopolitical context. We saw the companies doing well, and then we talked about water that is recovered. We have seen the DPEF. The question is, how do companies put ESG at the core of their business, and how can that help? What is happening today is that we have really got this convergence, and with the CSRD, we are going to recreate links between ESG impacts and financial impacts. In other words, there are water problems. Is this a risk or an opportunity for you?
People, if they use less water, they are going to be happy to have equipment that allows them to retrieve water. Perhaps you are going to say that today there is an impact. Maybe there are opportunities out there. Maybe there are investments that can be made so that we can be even better in this area. That is the kind of thing that we check.
Isabelle, do you consider that extra-financial reporting in Thermador, with all of the uncertainties that we have with respect to extra-financial effects, reflects the reality of the group?
Yes. I would say that if we look at the other groups of the same size today, and we can say this, and you can be proud of it, you have got a great sustainable development report. You have done a lot of groundwork. You have been doing a lot of groundwork for many years.
You have done an awful lot of work when it comes to your carbon balance. I saw the presentation for Scope 2 and Scope 3. These are themes that everybody has expectations for. Customers, regulators, employees, all of your stakeholders, and you as shareholders, because when you are an institutional body, you have reporting obligations, so you want to finance somebody who is on the right path. You are top of the class. Yes, a great report. You have done an awful lot of work on taxonomy, and this is one of the challenges of the future regulations. You have anticipated on a certain number of things, but the regulations are very strict, and you are still going to have to step things up. Given what you have done compared with others, you have taken a step in the right direction.
The regulations are going to be asking even more of you in the future.
Thank you, Isabelle. We are going to ask our auditors to say something. Patrice Choquet is not here for family reasons, so it is Serge Guillot from ROYER who is going to come up. Yes.
Hello, everybody. Serge Gui, Cabinet ROYER, and Sigata Coulibaly for Deloitte. We are going to be presenting the conclusions of our financial auditing work on the consolidated corporate accounts of Thermador Groupe. Our work was carried out throughout the year, according to a dense schedule. There were presentations, detailed presentations, given to the audit committee. Feedback was given to the board of directors on February 28. All of these presentations are very detailed.
The audit was carried out in good conditions, and we would like to thank the management team for the welcome and their availability. They answered all of the requests, and there were many requests. For 2023, and for the year's consolidated accounts. Sorry. For the consolidated accounts, first of all. The audit report covers a key point, tests in terms of depreciation of intangible assets in goodwill that are treated in 13 of the appendix. on December 31, 2023, the net value of the goodwill is EUR 79 million, 15% of the assets. We considered that the assessment of goodwill was a key point in the audit because, first of all, we are talking about something significant in the consolidated accounts, and also the assessment is based on estimations. Secondly, there is a certain sensitivity to specific hypotheses.
We assessed the audit procedures with respect to identified risks, and the audit procedure confirms that things have been treated properly in the consolidated accounts. We also checked the financial information transmitted in the management report, and the information does not require any comments on our behalf. Following our work, we can therefore certify that the consolidated accounts presented according to IFRS rules are regular and sincere and reflect the results of the year, as well as the financial situation and assets of the group at the end of the year. Our report certifies the consolidated accounts with no reserve.
Hello, everybody. I am going to talk to you about the annual accounts. As the consolidated accounts, our report includes a key point, which is the assessment of shares held by Thermador Groupe. This is treated in note two to six in the corporate accounts appendix.
We are looking at EUR 126 million. Like the consolidated accounts, we considered that this concerns a key point of the audit, given the importance of the amounts and the determination of the values, and because of certain hypotheses. We carried out our audit procedure based on the risks identified, and the audit procedure confirms that the annual accounts were treated properly. Checking the information given in the management report and the report on the company governance does not require any comments on our behalf. We can therefore certify that the corporate accounts are presented according to French accounting rules. They give a faithful representation of the situation of the company at the end of 2023. Therefore, we certify the accounts without any reserve.
As we are up here, we would like to present our special report with respect to regulated agreements, because there will be a resolution a bit later on on this subject. We would like to indicate that no authorized agreement was made in 2023. Approved agreements, previous agreements continued, so agreements concerning business lease management and rent of different companies. Rent charges paid to Thermador Groupe, EUR 2,847,000. Rental on turnover, EUR 4,607,000. Equipment rental charges, EUR 1,140. The second agreement concerns end of career indemnities that might be paid to directors, but no indemnity was paid out in 2023, and so the agreement did not apply. There we are. That is what we can say about our reports.
Thank you to both of you, and thank you for working alongside our teams. Now this brings us to question time.
We have questions from the room or comments from the room. Torsten will probably have something to say. We also have questions from the webinar. This is quite frightening because in some assemblies, we finish at 3:00 in the morning. Arlette is going to sort through questions so that questions of a similar nature are grouped together, and so that we can focus on questions and answers. We need a microphone for the person. Now the microphone is working.
Torsten Hans. I represent investing Tieckow-Foulen Science. That is the name. It is a very complicated name. This is a German fund that is made up of 400 family entrepreneurs. For several years now, I have been following Thermador very closely, and I have to say that every year, the indicators have got better. Except for this year.
I have to say that faced with the different challenges and the contrary winds that we have talked about, I have to say that the Thermador results are much more than just respectable. I wanted to congratulate each of the 800 employees in the group for their resilience. It is thanks to your involvement and your motivation on a day-to-day basis that Thermador is a great company. I also wanted to congratulate the management team for their communication. It really is exemplary. We saw that in October of last year, but also this evening. You are very transparent, and this is all the more important given the context where we have hard times. For all employees, I would like to say that we trust you. We trust in the fundamentals of the Thermador Groupe too.
We are convinced that you are going to be strengthened given the current situation, especially if you stick to your strategic priorities. Last year, I made a note of 3, and I am happy that I heard the same earlier on. First of all, the integration of new entities. 2, internationalization. 3, digital transformation in all its aspects. Better understanding the customers of our customers. These are very important things. Even if you could step things up, this will strengthen the group in the long term. Perhaps, let me say something about the resolutions. Generally speaking, we are very much for long-term remuneration plans for employees and managers. However, we are usually against free shares. We recommend a reduced price offer, reduced price in relation to what the market is offering. We do respect the decision of the board of directors, and we are going to be voting for this mechanism.
It is also to show our recognition towards the employees and the management team. I would also like to thank the auditors for their work. Thank you.
An exemplary shareholder. These questions also help us to make progress. Are there any questions in the room? I have got two microphones floating around.
Hello. We did not see each other earlier on. Hello. Hello, everybody. Well, it is done. I am an individual shareholder. I work for a specific company. First of all, Alex, I am very happy to be here in Lyon. You are allowing us to see a place that we did not know. I was talking to the German director. You are starting the 2024 season, and I am delighted that it is starting here. Here, I hear things I do not hear elsewhere. I hear that we are proud to be owners of the real estate, and France should draw inspiration from this.
I hear that you are ready to invest in human beings, and that when a company is in difficulty, you recapitalize. Well done for all of that, and well done for all of those who drew up the reference document. It is a bit thick, but it is very comprehensive, and that is why I do not have too many questions. But I do have three questions all the same. "I would have been surprised otherwise," says Guillaume. The first question, I am not going to talk about the proportion of shareholders, the employee shareholders, but the employee savings plans. 80% have subscribed to it, 10% are outside of France. Is that because not everybody is involved because some countries cannot take out this kind of savings plans, or is it because employees have decided not to take part in the savings plan?
Is there an employee who did not take out a savings plan who can explain why? Because I do not understand. Well, I do. Monaco employees cannot today do this. That is the first reason. And I would like to apologize to Monaco employees. It is because our middleman does not have an organization for doing this, so we are trying to work on that to make it possible. Then there is the question of cash availability. When you open up the FCPE window, the first EUR 700 are matched by our own contribution. So for 10, we give 30. So maybe 10% of employees, they might forget or maybe they just do not have the means of investing, they do not invest therefore. I do not have any other explanation. I always tend to encourage people to do this. I say, "Do not miss this opportunity.
It is an opportunity that we are giving you." Is there an employee who would like to explain why they have not taken part?
Well, we will not talk about personal cases, but if 60 people have not been able to do it, we know out of that 60 that 20 in Monaco were not able to do it. So that is already part of the answer. Let me shed some more specific light on the question. FG INOX had a difficult year. There was no profit-sharing for that company last year, and their participation in the employee savings plan went down. These are explanations too.
Second question. This is a figure that I was surprised at, so I am going to share it with you. It is the drop, the considerable drop that did not have an impact on the turnover. In page webs visited, we went from 6.2 to 3.8 million. Do you have an explanation why was there that drop?
Well, I do not think that is the right figure. I am going to ask the team to check. I read that too, and to be honest, it was not long ago. I am not sure that that is the real figure because that is not what the trend is. We will have a look at what the reporting says, but I think there is a mistake there. You obviously read the document in detail. There is no reason for the number of clicks to have decreased in that way.
Last question. It is a $5 million question, and that is the additional price for DPI. Was this paid? When will it be paid?
It has been paid. The cash has come out of the accounts, and it has gone to the former shareholders of DPI. Okay, so it is not something that is going to be withdrawn. No.
It was already in the figures for 2023. We had made provisions for it, but not for the cash withdrawal. Patricia, do you have an explanation for the web pages? I think there was restructuring of this website at group level with Odrea notably, and that might explain why the statistics have gone down. We need to dig into that subject because we don't have an immediate answer. Our internet site had a better performance at the same time.
Are there any other questions in the room? A microphone is coming to you.
Mr. Robin, hello. I arrived in BlaBlaCar from Avignon. I haven't been for 4 years. I sent you a mail. I don't have any more shares at Thermador and I would like to buy some. How should I do this?
I don't know by what miracle you were able to get into this room, first of all. She was authorized to come in. Mrs. Wagener used to be a shareholder. It's very simple buying shares on the internet. If you don't have internet, it might be a bit complicated.
I have internet, Mr. Robin, but it's complicated. I'm at the Crédit Agricole. It's not always easy. What I suggest, it's a bit technical. It's a very personal question. Well done. You've all done some great work.
Thank you. I was talking about students earlier on. The young generation buys those shares easily with digital tools compared with 10 or 15 years ago. It's much easier and less expensive to do this online. Do we have any other questions from the audience? Yes,
hello. I'm a shareholder. I found it difficult with my bank. I went twice to ask for an admission card, and every time I'm told, "No, no, we don't give out admission cards.
" That's typically I don't want to know who your bank is, but this is what bankers do. They don't want to hear about director shareholding, and I think that's terrible. It is a service obligation that they should fulfill. Maybe look at other solutions, maybe change your banker or maybe use a digital platform, because it's true that your access vote, it's easy to use now. That's what all our shareholders have. We have specialists in our team, Adeline and Gevork. They know the access votes for all banks, and they guide our shareholders. Logically, you should be able to do this without having to go into your bank, and Crédit Agricole subscribes to this.
If you have a digital access to your account, you can vote, you can ask for your admission card via that. Yes, I understand, but your communication is very good with your shareholders. Bankers, they're a bit reticent. It's not in their interest to send director shares. When you're a banker, it's better to sell more complex products. Either they're not trained or they just don't want to promote direct actions. I'm sorry about that. Perhaps you can find a better banker to help you with that. That would be difficult for me. My wife works in the bank. Maybe you need to settle the problem with your wife first. Do you have any other questions? We're not taking any more questions about banks, just questions about the Thermador Groupe. Are there any webinar questions, Arlette? You're all hungry and thirsty.
Arlette?
Yes, there's a first question. Thierry has three questions. The first. With the climate changes and the floods that we're seeing that concern unusual regions, is your logistics following?
Are you able to guarantee inventory? For the moment, we haven't had any problems, any major logistics problems following floods. Now, is our inventory following demand? Not always, but better than competition because we've got more inventory than competition. When we needed a lot of generous sets, for example, the Mecafer and Domac figures really went up because we had a substantial amount of stock. But this didn't mean that we didn't have problems with stock. But we can say that we're better armed than competitors. We've got a better-sized inventory, let's say.
We have another question from Thierry. In the long term, can we not imagine a smart home where home automation will be integrated into the products that you sell?
Well, that's referred to as IoT. It's nice to talk about things like that. The Internet of Things, you know it's about connecting technological devices. These are things that we're thinking about. It's also, for the moment, we don't have any globalized solutions for device connection. I don't think that Thermador Groupe will be a specialist in home automation because there are other players on the market that specialize in this thing. But what we do need to work on is the fact that our products need to be connectable to what's available on the market.
There are specialists with our metering company who will help us to make progress in this field so that our products can be connected, so that they can provide information and receive information in real time. What was the third question that Thierry had?
It's more of an international question. What's trade like in eastern countries? Lionel, do you want to answer that? Come up onto the stage.
Eastern countries, European countries that are part of the European Union have no problem. They're perfectly integrated. We work with them without any difficulties. Some countries in Central Europe, like Serbia, they're not part of the European Union, but we have no problems working with them. There are some administrative formalities. We don't work with Russia, though. We had some business with Ukraine before the conflict broke out, but that's it for those countries. No specific difficulties to report.
There's another question with respect to trade in the East. What are the priority countries for international development? This is Lionel. Lionel is an athlete.
All countries, the 61 countries, plus those that are not on the map, they're all priorities. Our approach, we've got great commercial teams, great sales team, and they go to all of these countries, to all the different continents. There are no limits. And we've got a low market share from one country to another, so we need to make progress in all of the countries. There's no specific prioritization.
Now, historically, I think the first country visited was Belgium, and obviously for French people, that's normal, and it's probably thanks to the arrival of Sodeco that that's where our market share is biggest. No? Are there any other questions?
A last question from another Thierry. Are you going to provide shareholders with free shares or some kind of loyalty bonus because this is what you want to do with employees?
Shares that are free. When we do this, it's not because it's a present. You will have understood it. It's like with the dividends. This is something that I am ready to defend. It's a drawback for listed companies. It's the cost. Free share operations in the past came to a very prohibitive price. It's invoiced by Euronext, and that's why we stopped our free share operations. Let me just make you aware that if you were to compare companies distributing free shares and those that don't, well, compare the reinvested dividend curve. That's the real way of comparing companies and their performance. 1 for 6, 1 for 5 in terms of shares.
There's an effect, and that has an impact on dividends. In terms of loyalty shares, some companies, notably Air Liquide, has this kind of plan. Air Liquide has no problem with cash flow, so it tries to make its individual shareholders loyal in this way. We've got 2 million actions every year. We want to increase the cash in the future because it's beneficial for all shareholders. That's why we haven't set up the shareholder loyalty plan because we're seeing that we've got individual shareholders who are already loyal. Some have spoken out today, and they reflect their loyalty. On forums, I hear about people who've had shares for 10 or 15 years, and they're quite happy with them, without any specific bonuses. Now, to be more specific about free shares, 1 for 10, 1 for 5, whatever. 1 for 2, 1 for 1.
1 for 1, that's the nominal division by 2. But nobody talks to me about that. Free shares to be transparent, well, Euronext is sensitive to this subject, and it has notably decreased its prices. Maybe in the future, we'll go back to this kind of operation, but it would be more about promoting the idea of taking shares in the company than anything else. That's it for the chat. Okay, so we can vote on the resolutions now because there might be some discussion about some of the resolutions, so we need to have enough time for that. Wow! What a great score. Participation rate above 77%. With Patricia, we didn't want to go too high so that next year we'll be a little bit better, but we've really gone over and above there.
Thank you to all of our shareholders, whether they're here or following us remotely. It's the sign that our general assembly is working well. The number of voters is also up, and powers for the president, they're also up. 21.4%, I don't know what happened between this figure and what I told you at the beginning of the meeting, but my powers have gone up. Now, the technical team, would you like to do a trial resolution before we kick off? Technical team. Ah, yes, this is the test question. Okay. Are you for? You all have your boxes, your voting boxes, right? If you're asleep, please wake up because this is when you need to press on the right buttons, please. The voting is open. Now voting is closed. That was quite a short amount of time. Have you all managed to do it?
So for and against. No, let's not start a controversy. Who is against? No, it's just a test. Is there a problem with the boxes, the voting boxes? There's a voting device that doesn't seem to work. Now be careful. There are several devices that are not working. What should we do? We need to deal with those voting devices that don't seem to be working, maybe. But we've picked up all of their signals. Yeah, we can see them. They might not light up much, but if they beep, they're working. Okay. So they're working. And we've picked up all their signals. Okay. So let's move on to the resolution voting. There are 20 resolutions. One's going to take a bit more time. Resolution number 1, approval of the 2023 annual accounts. The voting is open. Voting is closed. So the resolution is adopted, 99.99% for.
Resolution number two , approval of the 2023 consolidated accounts. The voting is open. Voting is closed. So the resolution is adopted, 99.99% for. So in Thermador, things are quite specific. We allow employees who are owners of savings plans to pre-vote. In other words, we worked with employees beforehand, so they've already answered these resolutions. So we had 7.6% and 7.3% abstaining and against. So resolution number three, distribution of a dividend of EUR 2.08 per share. Voting is open. Voting is closed. So resolution approved 99.99% for. So employees, 15.6% against or abstained. Resolution number four. Franck, where are you, Franck? Franck Bourgois, who is in charge of Jetly. He's spent a lot of time in the Thermador Groupe, and we're putting him forward as a director of the board. So we've got two GDs at the moment.
We'll only have one in the future, but Peter will also be present on a regular basis in the board. And next year, we'll switch around so that there will just be one seat for two people. And so most of the seats will be held by individual people. So resolution number four, voting is open. Appointment of Franck Bourgois as the new director for a term of office of one year. The voting is closed. And the resolution is adopted by a percentage of 99.67%. Well done, Franck, and welcome to the board of directors. So 30.6% against and abstained, and that was the result for the employees. So investors want to have more information about the remuneration of Lionel. So we'll go through these resolutions. So my pay for 2023, so that's resolution number five. So you can vote on that now. The voting is closed.
96.34% for the resolution. Resolution number six, approval of Patricia Mavigner's salary for 2023. So voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted, 96.42%. Now, the employees voted against, 21.1% voted against or abstained. So now, Lionel Monnerot and his salary in 2023. Voting is open. Voting is closed. So it's adopted, 96% voted for. Employees, 26% from employees. So resolution number eight. So this is a reference to L. 22-10-8. Is the remuneration policy in line with the article in the laws? So voting is open. Voting is closed. So it's adopted, 99.88%. Employees voted or abstained, 26% again. So resolution number 9, approval of information relating to paragraph one of Article L. 22-10-9 of the commerce laws in the company's government report. Voting is open. Voting is closed. So the resolution is adopted, 98.85%. 17.1% of employees voted either against or abstained. So resolution number 10.
If you have read the universal document, we are talking about 2023, but also the remuneration structure for 2024. As far as I am concerned, the resolution concerning my remuneration is for 2024. This is resolution number 10, and voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted, 96.10% for, 21.6% of employees voted against or abstained. Patricia Mavigner's pay for 2024. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted, 93.77% voted for. This is not a great performance for Patricia, and that is because institutional investors believe that if the free share package is favorable to Patricia, it should have been linked to specific performance objectives. As we suggested that 50% be based on loyalty and presence in the company, some institutional investors believe that that was not good enough. Resolution number 12, approval of Lionel Monnerot's remuneration for 2024. Voting is open. Voting is closed.
The resolution is adopted, 96.15% of people voted for. 22.4% of employees voted either against or abstained. Let us move on to the remuneration package for external board directors. It was EUR 110,000 last year. We want to move it up to EUR 220,000. That is because we are going to ask them to do more work. The remuneration of external directors is going to go up by 1.6%, but as well as additional meetings, they are going to be asked to do other things. EUR 220,000. The maximum remuneration of members of the board. Voting is closed, and the resolution is adopted, and 99.84% people voted for. Regulated agreements explained by the auditors. The voting is open for their approval. Voting is closed. 99.98% vote for, therefore the resolution is adopted. Regulated agreements, 14% of employees voted against or abstained.
It is 28% for others. We have not explained to people that the presence of external members of the board is useful, so we need to continue our educational drive in that direction. Resolution number 15. We can act on the market to buy shares for a maximum price of EUR 113 without exceeding 3% of the capital. Voting is open. Voting is closed, and the resolution is adopted, 99.95%. 20.4% of employees thought it was not necessarily a good idea. The appointment of Finexfi as chief auditor in charge of certification of information when it comes to sustainable development in the person of Isabelle Loste, who you met earlier on. Voting is open. Voting is closed. 99.9% of people have voted for, so the resolution is adopted. Welcome, Isabelle, as chief auditor, et cetera.
This brings us to resolutions that have led to a lot of debate in the Thermador Groupe. Every year, we organize two pre-general assembly meetings where employees are convened twice in two phases. We explain to employees that an allocation of free shares is not exactly free, for example. This leads to a lot of debate, so we asked them to pre-vote on these resolutions, and I will tell you about the results later. Resolution number 17, that proposes an allocation of free shares without exceeding 0.6% of the capital, with between 63 and 175 actions per person. The idea is to offer you every year a reasonable resolution so that we can get new employees on board in the capital, and so that we can promote loyalty and increase the share of employees in the capital of the groupe.
That is the initial idea, linked to two conditions, the presence and the achieving of extra financial objectives. Resolution number 17, voting is open. Russia must be attacking us. We can hear a strange noise. If we are hacked, we can go and have drinks straight away. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted, 95.59%. 38.7% of employees voted against or abstained. 8.9% abstained. A lot of people against that resolution, therefore. Yet it was a resolution for them to begin with. Resolution number 18. The same thing, but for managers. Just 15 corporate officers. This concerned me in the past. Eric Mantione, Lionel Monnerot, Fabien Bochet, Xavier, these people have already benefited from free shares, so they are excluded from this plan. 0.06% of the capital. The voting is open. Voting is closed.
The resolution is adopted. 89.65% voted for. Institutional investors didn't like this. They want free shares that are not exactly free in the long term for directors. They want those shares to be linked to performance and not just to presence, and that is why we have that protest. Employees, 52.5% voted against or abstained, so that is a very significant sign. 11.6% abstained. Now I want to hand over to Bertrand. Bertrand, come up to the podium. He is one of the two representatives of staff on the supervisory council, and he is going to give us a summary of the reasons behind the protest of employees.
Hello, everybody. Yes, as Guillaume said, we created a pre-voting system a few days ago. It was for everybody involved. There were 650 members, and there were 450 who voted. 70% voted for the resolutions.
Concerning resolution 17, the plan for employees, 28% voted against, and 9.8% abstained. This reflects concern in terms of the operating results of each entity that can lead to a drop in the envelope allocated. There is a lot of concern from employees, and that is why before the meeting, there were lots of questions that were asked, and I think we answered these questions. Concerning Resolution 18 for corporate offices, over 40% against or abstained, 52% voted against. This is more a question of fairness, the difference between the number of shares according to categories set up for the resolution. We will be there for drinks, where members of the supervisory council with Marion and colleagues. If you have questions, come and see us over drinks.
You are not alone. 50% of the Thermador staff are here in the room.
If you turn around, it is quite probable that you will talk to somebody from the group. The resolutions have been voted on. But as operatives, as executive managers, we will review our position, maybe imagine something different. These are proposals. Even if things were not completely successful today, it has been the opportunity to talk about things with our employees and to imagine plans that are better in line with their expectations, which of course can be different according to each employee. We are going to give ourselves time to think about things, and it is quite probable that the resolutions that we have just voted on are not applied, but we will let you know about that.
We will come back next year with something that is more adapted, because we are convinced that we have to help employees to be part of the capital in order to achieve our objective, which is modest but difficult. 8.7% of the capital between now and 2030. The 19th resolution, increase in the capital EUR 2 million maximum. Voting is open. Voting is closed, and the resolution can be adopted 99.09%. The last resolution, legal formality powers. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution can be adopted. 99.99% people voted for it. Oof, goodness. That was a long general assembly, a little over two hours long. You might say that it is too long, but we wanted to give you some specific information about the activities of the group, the different prospects. There is a subsidiary we did not mention, and that is Opaline. Opaline that organized this general assembly.
Thank you. Now, I would like to just pay tribute to Adrien. He was the main organizer. Adrien, 25 years old, who accepted the challenge of organizing the general assembly. I think that is great that a young person might accept a challenge like that. Well done, Adrien. I would also send a message. I started with the young people. Let me finish with the young people. Do not believe that all older people believe that you are incompetent and lazy. That is not true. I think that young people have a lot of courage. They have a lot of talent. If one day you are interested, well, come and knock on our door. Maybe we have something for you. Long live youth. That is a message that I wanted to share with you at the end of this general assembly. Now, Camille works at Opaline. She is going to organize a virtual reality action.
You can visit the virtual house of the Thermador Groupe and other buildings. Thanks to Camille during the drinks. I would also like to thank the holding team that organized the general assembly from an admin point of view. Adeline, Gevork, Martine, and Patricia, of course, made sure that we achieved 77% of voting, and they really went out to get those votes. They went to see all of the shareholders, reached out to them. Let me finish by talking about the DAs, so the administrative directors. We just had women with us today, and they were at the entrance, so distributing the voting devices. Thank you for taking part in that organization, and let us now go and have our cocktail. Patricia wants to say something. It is just to say something about those website clicks.
Adeline sent me a text message, but I had not seen it. In fact, now the websites are done in-house. Before it was an external service provider. Now everything is in-house, and we have a filter on in-house clicks. In-house clicks are no longer counted. We just count external clicks, customers, prospects, suppliers, et cetera. I just wanted to add that. I do not want people to think that the figure was wrong. It was not wrong. It was right. Thank you very much.