It is now my pleasure to introduce Alex Köhler, BASF Investor Relations Officer. Alex joined the company in 2008 and worked in various business development, strategy, and research. He is now responsible for investor relations in Germany, the US, and Japan. Prior to joining BASF, Alex was at GE Plastics, where he worked as an analytical chemist and product developer. Based in Germany, BASF is a global chemicals company serving many industries such as agriculture, health and nutrition, construction and housing, transportation, consumer goods, and electronics, among others. Its strategy is to add value and innovate in order to make its customers more successful. The Chemicals segment supplies the other business entities with basic chemicals and intermediates. It is key to the company's efficient value chain. We note that the company is in the process of reorganizing and implementing many changes, which Alex will go over.
BASF has approximately 893 million shares outstanding, a stock price of EUR 52.20, a market cap of EUR 46.6 billion, and a net debt of EUR 16.6 billion, for a total enterprise value of EUR 68.8 billion. I will now let Alex bring us up to date on the ongoing changes at BASF and the company's future within the global market it serves. Alex?
Yes.
Don't make noise.
Okay. Good morning, everyone. Rosemary, thanks for the introduction. Just a slight correction: I've been with BASF all my life, since 2004. Whether that's an advantage or not, I leave up to your judgment. Certainly grown with this company now for more than 20 years, believe it or not. Thanks for having me, Rosemary, Mr. Gabelli, for the third time in a row, I think. It's an interesting time for BASF, and I tried to convey also to Gabelli that it might be this time around a little bit more interesting to talk about what we actually have done since the last conference, since we have a newly appointed CEO. Essentially, six members or five members out of the six board members in BASF are essentially newly appointed.
There was a lot of change in the 160 years of the history of the company that we now have. What you see here now on the screen, the Winning Ways strategy, is essentially the result that came out of a deliberation between the appointment of the new CEO in April last year until September, where we presented this content at the Capital Markets Day. Obviously, now in the months between from September to today, I had the chance to resonate or to judge how the market resonated to these changes. I think I can today give you the lay down of what we expected here. Let's hope I'm not pushing the wrong button. I think that's the right one. What's our ambition? Essentially, to be the preferred chemical company to enable our customers' green transformation.
I think especially here on the western side of the Atlantic, there is a lot of rollback of a lot of these kind of ESG initiatives, maybe even more so in the chemical sector. We remain committed and stand firm to the goal that we want our customers to be able to succeed in the green transformation. I will come later also to some of the aspects that we tie into that. The four categories that you see here on the slide: Focus, Accelerate, Transform, and Win are essentially, or is essentially, the new strategic narrative that we communicate also internally. When I look at the stock performance of BASF over the last 10 years, I actually did a very bad job in investor relations.
I think the market acknowledges or gives us the benefit of the doubt that there is much, much more potential within the company than the market capitalization of our company would suggest. These are actually the pillars then how we would like to set this into motion. You have the focus. We would like, going forward, to more focus on those things that we actually do good, strengthen the strengths, accelerate via internal programs also to accelerate cost-saving measures and the likes, transform in terms of not only the green transformation, but also continuously investing research and development resources in order to come to superior product solutions that, following the theme of this conference, are actually allowing us to compete also in specialty niches where obviously it is much, much easier to defend prices and with that margins. Ultimately, a winning mentality.
A lot of sports analogies are used within that as well in terms of, like, in the past, BASF was remunerating its employees on the variable compensation from the board level down to the average Joe like myself on the return on capital employed for the entirety of the company. Now this is changing. Essentially, 75% of this compensation package is now linked to the actual EBITDA and cash flow performance of the set businesses where these people are sitting, and only 25% linked to the ROCE of the overall group. With that, you're actually creating, I assume, a lot of friction as well in the corporate structure. That is welcome friction because obviously then everyone focuses on the task at hand, and ultimately that's creating shareholder value. This slide depicts actually the one largest single change that we now have with this new strategy.
Essentially, we are differentiating the portfolio of BASF now into two larger buckets, which are the core businesses and the standalone businesses. When you have followed the narration around BASF before, you might have heard the German proverb of the Verbund, so this kind of synergistic production integration where we are harnessing economies of scale, have a high point of energy efficiency. This still remains an attribute, but this remains an attribute particularly for the core businesses on the left-hand side. The standalone businesses on the right-hand side have a limited degree of integration with the rest of the portfolio. That is why we have charted guardrails for these businesses, how we would like them to develop further. I will go deeper into the details a little bit later.
First, looking at the core businesses, you see the stats down in the bottom left-hand corner, so roughly EUR 40 billion of sales, a bit more than EUR 5 billion of EBITDA. Essentially, just giving you some facts and figures here, what we believe or why we believe these businesses benefit from the level of integration. Just taking one example here, when you look on the right-hand side there on Nutrition and Health, there is a vitamins business in there, which is backward integrated in what we refer to as a citral value chain. It goes all the way up into the Petrochemicals division that you see here on the very left-hand side of the slide.
Obviously, the scale of production and manufacturing that you have on the petrochemicals step is to such degree as you have this dilutionary effect on the fixed costs that are then relieving some of the pressure on the Care Chemicals so they can compete better in the marketplaces where they are. We obviously also have a very high degree of flexibility when it comes to steer product volumes through the different value chains, depending and judging where the most, let's say, profitable market sentiment right now sits, and then can deploy these volumes accordingly in order to maximize the contribution margin from these businesses. One major pillar when it comes to the core businesses where we are currently very well invested, you see the picture here on the left-hand side that's depicting our seventh Verbund site.
We are right now building up in Guangdong Province in the city of Zhanjiang, right at the coastline of the southern tip of China. Guangdong Province has a GDP equivalent roughly the size of South Korea. We are deploying EUR 10 billion of capital into that, which is entirely financed from Chinese sources. It is a 20% equity finance out of the cash flows of the operation that we are already running in China and 80% debt finance via a consortia of banks also in China with very attractive financing conditions. Why are we doing this? Obviously, especially, I mean, I am talking to US investors predominantly, so I get a lot of pushback on this. Essentially, when you look at the growth of the chemical production market globally and you look at the delta from today until 2030, roughly three quarters of chemical production will come from China.
In order for us to participate in this kind of growth and also to outperform the global average growth, we need to be in China. Actually, there, our asset base is not to the same level, let's say, as the domestic sales. In times where obviously tariff curtains are raised left, right, and center, maybe are also then put down again the day after, we do not know. Certainly, a higher level of uncertainty leads us to believe that our strategy to produce domestically in those markets where those products are also consumed is a competitive advantage. That is why we are going ahead with this investment. The scale-up and the ramp-up of the heart of the plant, so the one million-ton steam cracker, is expected to be commenced in October of this year.
With that, then also all the adjacent products, because obviously when you start such a big asset, you cannot store the product anywhere. You need to have your downstream units in line as well. This year is one of the major years for this investment here. The look or the view for this new strategic corridor for core businesses, you see there on the right-hand side the targeted EBITDA, EUR 7 billion-EUR 9 billion roughly. Quite a nice CAGR there. Obviously influenced by the fact that right now we are at peak CapEx and peak invest for this Chinese Verbund site. That will go down significantly going forward. These additional volumes will also allow us to significantly expand earnings. The assumption here being mid to upcycle conditions. Maybe in the Q&A later, we jump also a little bit into the current environment.
Certainly, we are right now not at mid-cycle conditions, but we believe that this will, or we will move back into that temporarily. Now coming to the standalone businesses. This is roughly the EUR 21.6 billion that we have here. Roughly cut between core standalone with a broad brush, two-thirds, one-third. These are all businesses which, as I said, have a lower degree of integration with the core businesses. Their value chains are not so much backward integrated into the petrochemical core that we are operating. If you depict them from the left to the right, and I just move one forward because there you can also see the sales last year, you get an idea of what kind of business size we are talking. Essentially, on the utmost left-hand side, you have the Environmental Catalyst and Metal Solutions business, abbreviated as ECMS.
They are headquartered here just on the other side of the Hudson in Iselin, New Jersey. Some of you might know it as a legacy Engelhard business. This is essentially the catalytic converter business in the transportation sector. We carved out this entity as a fully standalone, still fully consolidated within BASF in the midst of 2023. At that point in time, everyone was asking me, "Alex, when will you monetize this asset? It's a sunset business. Come on." Two years later, and everyone is congratulating me that we did not do this because obviously now with a strong reversal on the BEV front, except China, this business obviously now gets a lot more attention. It is fully invested, high cash equity to BASF. We like it very much, and we keep it for the time being.
Battery Materials, on the other hand, obviously is an antagonist in this play. This business is under, let's say, pressure given the fact that BEV penetration has stalled. We have an installed capacity base for cathode active materials in that business of 190 KT that's spread across all the regions, being China, being also US, Japan, and Europe. Obviously here, it's more about de-risking this path. We have stopped our CapEx into that business. We are now trying to maximize utilization of the capacities that we already have. We still see significant differentiation potential on the nickel-based technologies that we are producing and serving here. We are not a player in the lithium iron phosphates, the LFPs, where actually these endeavors in that market started for us. Third, you have the Coatings division. You might have seen recent news flow in BASF.
We agreed with Sherwin-Williams to presumably sell our Decorative Paints business in Brazil to them towards the end of the year or closing expected towards the end of the year. This was, let's say, the low-hanging fruit because there was very little disentanglement with other businesses. What's still in that division is the Automotive OEM and Refinish business. Pure play competitors here on US soil are PPG and Axalta, as well as a Surface Treatment business. Obviously, Quaker Houghton, later talking later this day, is one of our peers in that space. Here we are exploring also strategic options for that business over the course of the year. The talks are just beginning, so very little detail here. This could also be something that might be better positioned outside of the BASF group as if it should lead to higher value accretion also for our shareholders.
Last but not least, the big gorilla in the room, Agricultural Solutions . Just shy of $10 billion in sales. I mean, street opinion on this kind of business from a valuation perspective, we have not officially published anything, but I think $20 billion plus or minus are fair. You see us here executing a carve-out or like a legal entity separation for that business, including ERP. Obviously, people were surprised then only by 2027, why are you so slow? Keep in mind that this business has been growing organically within BASF and disentangled with the entirety of the company over 50 years. We have the second most complex SAP system in the corporate world, just behind Unilever. This takes time if you want to make it right and simultaneously also guarantee operational continuity. There, IPO readiness by 2027 is the goal.
I mean, here minority IPO is touted. I think there the avenues are still very much open, but this is the current direction of travel that we are aiming for. Also here, what's then the strategic target corridor until 2028? Another EUR 3.5 billion-EUR 4 billion, a little bit of sensitivity in there, of course, which is not so much higher than what we achieved in 2024, but also in 2023. Why is that? Because obviously Ag Solutions had their record every year in 2023. Automotive was recuperating and running very well over the years 2023, 2024. Now it is more like a rollover into 2025 on the automotive side. That gives a little bit of context why that number sits where it sits.
Then coming back to the transformation and the green transformation that I mentioned earlier, we still believe that this is very much a focus area and where we are also able to significantly differentiate us from the competition. Already today, we can offer essentially the majority of all our more than 50,000 sales products that we have in our portfolio in a somewhat, let's say, CO2 or more eco-efficient kind of version. Particularly when it comes to the CO2 footprint, we are offering solutions which are then bio-based, which are based on bio feedstocks. How we do this is essentially via a mass balance approach. We take a renewable feedstock, for example, displacing naphtha with pyrolysis oil.
If we know that we are feeding 5% of the overall volume into the steam cracker, obviously 5% of the product cut are then also via this mass balance approach guaranteed to have a lower CO2 footprint. We sell this ultimately to the customer. This then ends up in a, let's say, more eco-friendly shampoo, for example. For obvious reasons, I'm not an expert on hair shampoo, but I think it's fair to say that at least in Europe, the consumer in general is willing to pay premium prices for these kinds of products. Obviously, we are in very, very early stages. I think especially here in the U.S., this awareness is of lesser developed degree. This does not mean that this can also change. You see the bar on the lower-hand side of the slide.
We believe until a certain point in time depicted here between 2030, 2050, these product solutions will become increasingly important. What we are saying is we are now doing the necessary investments that you see here depicted on the left-hand side, a per annum kind of approximation of the CapEx that we will need in order to maintain the availability of these kinds of products. This CapEx will make sense because we can earn additional income from it, additional earnings from it, because we can command a premium on these solutions. Also here, the core businesses are uniquely positioned because since we own everything up until the steam cracker, where you feed actually these bio-based solutions, actually the entirety of the value chain sits within BASF.
Also there, we are commanding or we can rule in what kind of value chains we would like to push these kinds of products because for obvious reasons, some markets will certainly be more accustomated to these kinds of solutions than others where you're talking about purely commoditized chemicals. Even though for some of these presumably commoditized chemicals, if you have a butane diol, for example, a BDO, which clearly is a commoditized chemical, I would say, even there offering such a BDO at a lower CO2 intensity footprint could in future be something that once again creates, let's say, a blue ocean within a red ocean, if that makes any sense. Quickly and just very briefly coming to our CO2 reduction targets.
BASF stays firmly committed to its net zero 2050 ambition for scope one, two, and 3.1, also to its 25% goal in 2030, which is in full alignment and agreement with the Paris Climate Accord. No changes there. Since I'm seeing that the clock is running down, shareholder remuneration, I think that's an important topic as well for obvious reasons. There is also one quite significant change for BASF. In the past, BASF had a very progressive dividend policy, keeping it stable or increasing it year over year. Last dividend that we posted was EUR 3.40. That was roughly translating to a EUR 3 billion cash out per year. We did this over the last four years, translating to EUR 12 billion of cash outflow from remuneration entirely based on the dividend. That has now been rebased.
We will now be proposing to the AGM in May that we will issue a dividend of EUR 2.25, which is essentially two-thirds of this EUR 12 billion that we had. The EUR 12 billion will remain. That means that the other third will be contributed by share buybacks that we intend to start in 2027, which gives us a little bit more flexibility on the financing and cash flow projections and how we manage our own financial plan. The dividend yield still stands higher than 4%, so remains very attractive. As I said, the whole shareholder remuneration is essentially flat, but you'll see the little letters there. It says at least. We talked about all these portfolio moves that we are also focusing on.
If they should contribute something that is a bit higher than they expected, maybe this can also be increased going forward. Here you see the entirety of the business plan until 2028. We discussed all the numbers. You see the downbreak there in core and standalones. Essentially based, and I have to say that assuming these mid-to-up cycle conditions, we are convinced that we will move from the rather tough conditions that we are still seeing here. Also, Q1 and 2025 seem to be a bit of a slower start, especially in the U.S., considering the freeze that we had alongside the U.S. Gulf Coast. Our cost improvement program will essentially compensate for inflation. The real EBITDA lever is predominantly coming from volumes, which obviously are boosted by the investment and the ramp-up of the Zhanjiang Verbund site that I mentioned earlier.
Here, essentially there's a similar graph just from a cash flow perspective. You see free cash flow right now. In 2024, we had free cash flow at the lowest point. 2025 is going to come out a little bit higher and from there significantly increasing. Why is that? Because on this slide here, you see the CapEx development. 2024 was peak CapEx for BASF deploying those funds into China in order to make that plant happen. Starting in 2026 and the following years, we will move CapEx way below depreciation level. Also freeing up more cash and enabling us to better strike the balance, I would say, on the triangle between the CapEx requirements, the shareholder remuneration, but also and most importantly, the credit rating that BASF has.
I mean, there we are clearly a standout in the chemical sector because we are essentially the only chemical company that still commands a single A rating across all three major rating agencies. We tend or we aim to keep it that way. We just, I think one or two weeks ago, Moody's also once again confirmed their rating and also kept their outlook at neutral. Apparently also the rating agencies seem to believe us. This is just some financials. Just quickly going over them. High equity ratio. I mean, financing is broadly spaced and rather attractive. Our pension obligation is more than 90% financed. Also there we have no skeletons in the closet. You see the reduced CapEx here in the middle of the slide, also the optimization of our net working capital.
Obviously in 2025, you will see a specific effect since we will ramp up the inventories in Zhanjiang given the ramp-up of the production. There you cannot optimize too much now in 2025, but we will continue to do so for the years to come. This essentially brings me to the last slide. Reason to invest for BASF. I will not read this out loud because you can do that on your own. I think there are a lot of interesting pieces that we put into place. Now it is about execution. Our management is very clear that they also now need to show that these changes that they are aiming for are also then ultimately leading to the necessary performance improvements in order to make us a more attractive investment case again.
Obviously working in IR, I have to say, an even more attractive case than we already are. With that, I thank you for the attention of following my presentation. Thank you, Alex, for this very helpful presentation, especially since BASF is going through a major transformation. We do not have a lot of time, but I do have one question. Actually, two. This major transformation was initiated during a different economic and political environment than the one we have embarked on. Can you talk about how the company is operating in the current environment? Do you think it may trigger some additional adjustments?
Yeah, thanks. The second one, I might as well do it now. The German administration has recently approved EUR 500 million stimulus. Can you share how it will potentially affect you and where you will benefit from it?
Yeah, thanks, Rosemary.
I think, I mean, my days right now start very early because the news flow out of the old continent, also from my home country, is rather steep right now. Coming to this EUR 500 million, certainly that's something that was not baked into our full year assumptions for 2025. Will this provide some degree of tailwind? I would assume so. I think our exposure to those sectors at this EUR 500 billion and also the increased defense spending is becooling, is I think not that high, but I think it will raise the floor entirely for just like indirect demand that will also then be to the benefit of BASF. It certainly won't hurt.
In terms of near-term trading, I mean, what we have seen, as I already alluded to in the U.S., especially given the freeze at the U.S. Gulf Coast, that was a slow start to the year. I think when I look at China, we see volume still increasing and performing well, but like pricing power is not there yet. That gives us an indication that markets there are still long. Since then, obviously also the Chinese administration has put some more stimulus measures into place that should long-term or mid-term rather help. Whereas in Europe, these fiscal stimulus measures and maybe the German one is not the only one. I mean, France is also mulling some projects there. Right now it's still trending towards like a lower than historical average kind of level, but we keep it rather positive there on our outlook.
I mean, the GDP projection that we have globally is 2.6%, chemical industrial production around 3% growth in 2025. I think given the additional stimulus measures, this is not out of reach for us.
Thank you very much. We have stolen about one minute from the next presentation, but I want to thank you for coming one more year and look forward to having you next year as well. Thank you. Thanks.