Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our Capital Markets Update. It's a pleasure to have you join us here in Antwerp, as well as online. We are streaming this first part of today's event, the keynote and the subsequent Q&A, live from our Verbund site in Belgium. The other parts of the program will not be live streamed. However, PDFs of all presentations will be available shortly before they begin. Later today, you will find replays on our Investor Relations website. Please let me begin with a few organizational remarks. Today's presentations contain forward-looking statements that may not prove to be accurate. We do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements above and beyond the legal requirements. Please be aware that we will only take questions from analysts and investors in the room today.
Please just raise your hand if you would like to ask a question later in the Q&A sessions. In the unlikely event of an emergency alarm, the manager of the conference center will inform us what to do and where to go. Now, moving on to today's presentations. Markus Kamieth, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, will kick off our Capital Markets update with a keynote, which also includes a section that will be presented by Dirk Elvermann, Chief Financial Officer. Later today, the four presidents of the relevant divisions will present on the polyurethanes and ethylene oxide value chains in two separate sessions. Now, let's get started with the keynote. Markus, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Stefanie. Also, welcome from my side here in Antwerp. Somebody's phone is ringing. I hope that's good news. Let me first give a few introductory comments. First, you have seen a small video to kick us off today. Some of you might remember the words that were said in the video. This was also the video we kicked off our Capital Markets Day with last year, roughly one year ago. However, this time we underlayed it with some pictures of our event from last year, where we had our kickoff event with our executive team in Copenhagen last year. The voices were also real BASF managers, underlining again what the essence of our strategy was. This was creating a winning spirit, our winning ways going forward. I thought it's a nice kickoff today.
Of course, we are here to give you an update one year into the new strategy, where we are. We also today want to distinctively take a closer look at our core businesses because since last year, since we differentiate in our portfolio steering between standalone and core businesses, we've spent a lot of time talking about the direction of travel for our standalone businesses. I will also give you an update on this today. Of course, we want to today focus on the core businesses. What better place to do this than in Antwerp? Antwerp is, as you have seen, maybe on the one or the other side, a very proud site. It has a motto that I will not try to pronounce in Flemish, but it says something like: "De straffste site in de chemie." Something like this. This translated means something like the coolest site in chemicals.
You will see today that this has some merit to it. It's really a very cool site and a very successful site. Why are we in Antwerp today? It has a lot of good reasons for it. First of all, it's, of course, the strategic relevance of Antwerp, not only for the chemical industry, but particularly, of course, for BASF. It is the second largest Verbund site of the BASF group in the world. It is a site that really symbolizes the concept of integration and Verbund very well. For example, it has one of the highest degrees of energy integration of any chemical site in the world. I think at least in some parts of the year when the temperature is not too extreme, the site, for example, is energy neutral. You don't have to have any steam production here on site because the energy integration is so well.
You will see this later on. It is, of course, a strong footprint for our core businesses. All our eight core business units or operating divisions are present here in the Antwerp site. The four divisions that are going to be highlighted today along the two major value chains that we will discuss today are, of course, big asset owners here in Antwerp. The site was built 60 years ago and roughly 30, 35 years ago, we started up the steam cracker here in Antwerp. It is still, until today, Europe's largest steam cracker and will also stay Europe's largest steam cracker for quite some time, I would guess.
We have, as I said, today the opportunity to take a look at two of our major value chains here in Antwerp, the polyurethanes and the ethylene oxide value chain, to show you a little bit how we think about our value chains, their value, their characteristics, and why this matters so much to us. Antwerp in itself has, of course, a lot of advantages. For example, being close to one of Europe's most, let's say, capable, most powerful, I don't know whether it's the biggest, but certainly for chemicals, one of the most important ports and has an excellent location. What you can also see here in Antwerp is sustainability in action. As I said, high energy integration and a lot of ideas how to drive the green transformation, which is so important to us and our industry along the lines that we have described in the strategy.
Here, you can all see this in action. This is why we're in Antwerp today. You can experience later also on a site tour the coolest site in chemicals. As I said, winning ways strategy, we have launched this last year, roughly one year ago. I think it's fair to say that we set a new course for BASF to get BASF on its winning ways for the future. We focus predominantly on the topics of portfolio steering, capital allocation, and also establishing what we call a performance culture or winning culture in BASF. That was the start a year ago.
I think when you reflect or when we reflect one year back, first of all, I have to say also with all the things that happened over the last 12 months, and it has not been the most steady time in the world, as you know, we still, from today's perspective, think we have picked exactly the right topics to transform, to initiate change, and to focus on in the course of the strategy. Despite all the macroeconomic developments that we have seen, we stay very convinced that we have picked the right strategy. Also, the areas that we picked as focus areas are the right ones. We will show you today that we are making significant progress on implementing our strategic initiatives for the strategy implementation, despite all the headwinds that we are seeing currently in our markets.
We are just increasing our appetite to focus even more on self-help measures. We will talk about this later, that in the current environment in the chemical industry, this is absolutely key. Just a quick reminder of what our strategy was all about. This was the, let's say, narrative structure around our strategy that we presented a year ago, always starting from our ambition to be the preferred chemical company to enable our customers' green transformation. We have structured our strategy implementation around these four levers: focus. This is a lot about what is the portfolio we're going to strive towards in the future. How do we create and unlock value out of our broad portfolio in BASF? How do we improve capital allocation, internal capital allocation for businesses?
Accelerate is a lot of internal transformation, making BASF leaner, making BASF more streamlined, faster, and at the end of the day, also a much more productive company. Also, bringing AI as a new enabler and as a new muscle, if you want, into the organization to really bring BASF to the next performance level. Transform was all about how to shift focus in the green transformation away from a target-driven transformation to a market-driven transformation, lowering our risk profile, and making our green transformation pathways more adaptable to the quite volatile way that green transformation happens in our customer industries, and also to the unpredictability that we are seeing in the regulatory environment. I think we made great strides here. Of course, it was about making our European sites more competitive.
This means a lot of focus was put over the last year on getting our costs down in Ludwigshafen in particular, but also in other sites around the world. We will give you an update on this as well. Last but not least, we said our pillar win is all about culture, driving a performance culture in BASF, top to bottom. From the boardroom all the way to the shop floor, it has a lot to do with how we deal with each other, which kind of behaviors we're trying to promote in the company. I have to say this is a topic that I'm very passionate about. We're making great progress.
If you talk to BASF people, many of them will tell you that over the last year, the conversations in the company have changed a lot when it comes to culture, performance orientation, output orientation, and also speed, for example, of how we make decisions and how we move the company forward. We have also introduced quite a number of, let's say, more hardwired things in this win column. For example, we've changed the entire performance management system in the group, now also for all employees. For all more than 100,000 employees worldwide, we changed from a very monolithic performance management, how, let's say, annual bonuses, for example, were paid to a very, let's say, agile and also more targeted performance management system where each individual is, at the end of the day, rewarded based on the performance of his or her respective division.
Overall, that was the canvas, so to say. That's the solution suite for our strategy implementation. As I said, from our perspective, we're on a great way. We will try to convince you that you see it the same way after today. Let's start with portfolio. Last year, we've introduced the concept of separating BASF's portfolio into what we call core businesses and standalone businesses. You can see this on this slide. Our four segments: chemicals, materials, industrial solutions, and nutrition and care, along with the eight operating divisions that compose these segments, are what we call our core business. You can see that we have laid out clear financial ambitions for the year 2028 to take it from EUR 5.4 billion EBITDA, the core businesses, to EUR 7.9 billion over the next years. On the other hand side, we have what we call standalone businesses.
These are the businesses where we do not have a strong connection to the core. They are not integrated in our value chains. They are also competing in the market, typically with companies that are, let's say, doing nothing else than this one. A much different business environment, a different competitive environment, and also different success factors. We have also said that we want to look for ways to unlock the value that we have in these standalone businesses that often, where there's quite a number of times a situation where these businesses could command a clear premium over the valuation they have as part of a chemical company. We will update you in the next slides on where we are with all these standalone businesses. The main focus later on will be on the core.
We will talk a lot today about the value chains, about the Antwerp site, and about four of the divisions that are part of the core. That's the focus today. Let's start with an update on the directions of travel, as we called it, for our four standalone businesses. Let's start with our, we call it ECMS business, our automotive catalyst and precious metal services business. As you know, we have already started the carve-out, the internal carve-out of this business quite a while back. I think we started in 2022, if I remember correctly. I have to say, in hindsight, this internal carve-out and the repositioning of this business towards a, let's say, low growth, maybe eventually even a declining market in automotive catalysts has been a real success story.
The team has done an outstanding job in reinventing themselves, in creating new structures, more targeted, fit-for-purpose structures, and also, of course, significantly reduced the capital requirements. We are now putting this business really in a mode where we have the optimum set up to extract quite attractive cash flows from this business for quite some time. In the market, I have to say, even over the last year, the expectation for the length or the market development for the automotive catalyst market or for the internal combustion engine also has changed quite a bit. I think today many people would subscribe to what I also said at the last Capital Market Day in September, where I said if this is a sunset business, it will be a very long sunset. I think this statement holds now more true than it was even 12 months ago.
We believe this business has a bright future. It has still a long future. With the setup that we have chosen, we also gave it the right environment to be a very successful business in BASF. As you can see here, we are expecting from 2024 to 2030 a cumulative cash flow contribution from this business to the group of roughly EUR 4 billion. It's a very significant cash contributor to the group based on the new operating model. This also means that BASF is a very good owner for this business because, of course, we can value the cash flows typically higher than any other company would do at this point in time. We believe that this business is set up stronger for longer and also will remain part of BASF Group for quite some time in this more standalone and independent fashion. Short update on batteries.
Here, the market situation has turned out to be as challenging as we described it also last year, especially outside of China. A lot of developments in the market have been very volatile in the battery market, both with cell manufacturers and with battery materials manufacturers. I think also here our path that we have chosen last year proved to be exactly right. We have reduced significantly our fixed cost and basically ramped down our capital spend to zero, basically de-risking our pathway at least for the next year significantly because of the volatile market environment that we have, especially in Europe right now around battery manufacturing. I think this was the prudent thing to do. The team has done an outstanding job of restructuring this business based on these market volatilities and headwinds.
We have worked very hard on delivering on this idea to create partnerships along the value chain that help us to enter the phase of profitable growth once the market comes back. You have seen maybe also that we have announced one of these collaborations with the market leader in battery cell manufacturing, the company CATL from China. We have agreed to form a strategic supply relationship here with CATL. We are very confident that we will now, over the next years, fill our existing assets. We have 190,000 tons of capacity for cathode active materials. We can grow a long way without having to build new capacities in this business. Overall, I would say in a tough market environment for everybody, in the chemical, in the battery value chain, I think we've chosen exactly the right path. Short update on coatings.
You know that we have approached this portfolio journey or the direction of travel in two separate steps. The one actually we have concluded last night. You might have seen this. It was published last night that we have actually successfully closed the divestment of our decorative paints business in Brazil, the so-called souvenir business. This has been divested to Sherwin-Williams for an overall purchase price of $1.15 billion. This transaction was closed last night. This means that from announcement to closing, we have done this in one year, which also plays a little bit into our strategy theme of speed. I think this was a very successful transaction. The rest of the coatings business, roughly EUR 3.8 billion in sales, we've also announced that we are looking for ways to unlock the value out of this business in either forming a joint venture or divestiture.
We've started the process in the second quarter, went to the market, got a lot of interest both from the financial sponsor side as well as from strategic investors. We are currently in discussion with, I would say, highly motivated parties to come to a conclusion here. We expect that there is a decision then going to be published in the fourth quarter. We are in the middle of it and stay confident that we have chosen actually the right approach. We are happy with the response that we got from the market. Last but not least, the fourth standalone business, of course, our most valuable business, so to say, if you want. This is our agricultural solutions business. Quite a lot of noise in the agricultural solutions space over the last days, I would say.
We have decided to also here pursue this pathway of carving this business out internally, setting it up in own legal entity structures and giving it also the right process and IT environment to operate as a standalone entity, and then prepare this business for an IPO. We target IPO readiness by 2027, then to take a partial IPO then as a next step. I have to say, I'm very impressed by how the team has taken this and how far we are already in this process, extremely diligent and professional. We are very confident that this IPO preparation phase, so to say, will be on time and according to our expectations. Overall, we can report here good progress and that we stay on course for this direction of travel that we have published.
Let me also, based on the recent news that you've seen, say that we are very firm and we are very convinced that our strategic model, so to say, of having an integrated business model between crop protection and seeds is exactly the right one with a strong focus on crop systems and our key drive countries as we have it. With a focused approach when it comes to crop systems and target markets, this is exactly the right one. We believe that this is the winning model, at least for BASF also going forward. With this, I would just briefly introduce this and then would ask Dirk to join me here on stage to go through the financials.
I just want to reconfirm that for 2028, we had announced the financial targets in a way that we have said EUR 10 billion-EUR 12 billion of EBITDA before special items, a cumulative free cash flow of EUR 12 billion over the period 2025 to 2028, and a targeted ROCI by 2028 of greater than 10%. Today, despite the fact that certainly 2025 for the chemical industry in general has turned out to be much more challenging, we want to confirm the targets and stay focused on self-help measures and everything that is in our control to execute what we have under our wings to stay on course to deliver those targets. With this, Dirk, I would ask you to take it over from here.
Yeah, thanks, Markus. We confirm, ladies and gentlemen, our midterm financial targets. Markus, you just said that.
We are also confirming the share distributions that we have announced last year. We will stick to the dividend policy that we have announced last year with a strategy saying that at least EUR 2.25 per share we will pay out to our shareholders each and every year, plus share buybacks, which should bring the overall shareholder distribution in the period between 2025 and 2028 to at least EUR 12 billion. With this confirmation of both the corporate financial targets and also the distribution policy comes a new capital allocation framework that we have already introduced last year to you. I would like to present an update on this one, giving quite specific examples also of what we have done in the meantime in order to reinforce our capital allocation framework. Basically, it is about three things.
First of all, maintain our financial strengths, which will require that we are protecting our balance sheet, will require that we are deleveraging the current debt level of the company. Secondly, grow with high capital efficiency, which will require that we are using our capacity reserves that we have in the system. You might remember last year we gave you one data point saying each and every percentage point of additional utilization that we are getting from our machine park will bring us around about an EBITDA contribution of EUR 30 0 million plus. You will see where the value pockets within BASF are sitting. Thirdly, we are sharpening our portfolio. We already alluded to this one.
This will allow us to channel the funds that we have available in the company to those activities that are moving the needle for us and avoid funding it to things that are rather distracting us. Now, let me give you some more substantial information, also some examples about our capital management that we have started since launching the strategy. First of all, we will bring down our CapEx in this period until 2028 significantly. With the completion of the Zhanjiang Verbund site, with the completion next year of the MDI plant in the U.S., we are considering ourselves as a very well-invested company. The big things, the big program that we had is then done and we are well invested. This means for us that we can live with the machine park that we have for quite a while.
It allows us even to further reduce the CapEx amount that we have announced last year. Last year at the strategy launch, we told you that we'll probably until 2028 spend CapEx of EUR 17 billion. In the meantime, we are very comfortable to say it will be at most EUR $16 billion. We drive the asset utilization, which I already alluded to. Going forward, also very importantly, we are directing more of the CapEx, the majority of the CapEx to growth regions and growth businesses, which also tells you a little bit how we are thinking about our capital allocation going forward, being more selective. On this slide here, you see on the photo a very recent image of our new Verbund site in Zhanjiang. I'm sharing here with you three examples of how we are spending or not spending CapEx going forward. Let's start with Zhanjiang.
This project has been executed according to schedule. We are very confident that until the end of the year, the site is up and running. It has been delivered significantly below budget. We are alluding to this since quite a number of quarters, but now I have a number for you. We are completing the project with a lower CapEx of EUR 1.3 billion. The EUR 10 billion project that we have announced is basically an EUR 8.7 billion project. That is thanks to a very disciplined management approach that the team was taking. It's thanks to some rescoping, not in the portfolio field, but rather in the field of technical setup, which helped us to save some money here.
It's thanks to a very smart procurement approach, which also was leveraging on the tight and tense conditions on the engineering market during COVID and after COVID, so that we can now safely say with procurement savings and some rescoping, we are achieving this project at EUR 8.7 billion, which I think is also news for you. A second example, we are also not shy to not do certain things if the situation is changing, if the environment is changing, and we have the feeling that deploying capital right now is not the best use of our money for a certain project. This was the case for the joint low-carbon ammonia project that we evaluated with our partner Yara, where both partners came to the conclusion this is actually at that point in time not the best use of capital.
We stopped that for good and rather said for the ammonia demand that we have, let's go to the market and source it and let's look into other possibilities. We stopped this project. The third one is a smart investment into our integrated site in Ludwigshafen, where we have announced already the investment into a semiconductor-grade sulfuric acid plant. This plant will come on stream in 2027, which nicely coincides with the demand that our partners have because they are also expanding capacity for their semiconductor business up into 2027. That's an investment that is planned exactly for the demand that we already see coming for us. We are doing things cheaper. We are not doing certain things. We are smartly investing incremental capacity in those businesses which are yielding good profits. This picture you are probably very familiar with.
You hear me repeating that we are on very good track with our cost-saving programs. I say it again, but then also would like to give you some good examples for that. We are indeed accelerating our cost-saving program. We have a current program of EUR 2.1 billion, as you know, which is basically addressing 10% of the overall fixed cost of the BASF group. If you look into the addressable fixed cost of the group, you would even say it's 13%, 14%. It's quite a big program, I have to say. We have accelerated this and are confident that we will achieve savings of EUR 1.6 billion as a run rate already by the end of this year and the remaining EUR 500 million by the end of last year. Fully on track.
We are now also gradually seeing the effects of this cost saving in the P&Ls because apparently the one-time cost to achieve in delta to the run rate that we are achieving now, the gap is getting wider and we are seeing the effects that we wanted to see. This is in full swing. It is accelerated and it will be delivered as planned. Notably, once we have ended the project, and this is one of the questions we always get, are you then done? We as a board, but also as a management team, say under certain current conditions, we are never done, but the cost savings will continue. We go into a continuous improvement, continuous productivity improvement mindset. We will deliver the EUR 2.1 billion and then we move forward. Let me also here be a bit more specific. On the page here, you see the site in Ludwigshafen.
We are addressing the Ludwigshafen site specifically with a program which is part of the EUR 2.1 billion of EUR $1 billion. What are we doing there? We have a number of project groups to achieve these savings. I would like to give you three concrete examples of what we are currently tackling. A is the further streamlining of our asset park. We have already announced a couple of planned closures after we have looked meticulously into each and every plant to see whether this is competitive under hard current conditions. We have already announced the closure of the Adipic acid plant, of the Sedon plant, of the Seapalm plant.
Now we take the next step and have also announced the closure of the Hydrocyphal plant in Ludwigshafen, which is a plant that is not contributing to the earnings of the site anymore, which is not per se critical for the Verbund model itself. We have a clear case to close this plant also. We are going to do that. Big saving potential we do have in the non-operations part, including all the services, all the site services. Here, we have just taken one measure to consolidate all the central maintenances into one unit in Ludwigshafen. Sounds a little bit trivial. It was so far scattered in various units. We are consolidating that. By that, reducing a lot of interfaces. By that, also achieving a significant headcount reduction, which is exactly the way to go. The third example is in site procurement.
We are not solely addressing the fixed cost side, but we are also addressing variable cost. With a new procurement approach, using vigorously not only AI, but also game theory, we are currently in the position to significantly lower our spendings in Ludwigshafen. Another aspect is the working capital. As you know, we have, together with our strategy, also set a very clear and distinct cash target. It's not only about earnings, it's also very much about cash. We are setting cash flow targets for the units, and each and every unit in the meantime is laser-focused, I'd say, on the working capital levels. We have already proven that we can reduce our working capital. Between mid 2023 and mid 2025, we have taken roughly EUR 3 billion of cash out of the system by simply reducing the working capital. This trend will continue.
There is, of course, some offsetting now when we are ramping up Zhanjiang. We have to fill the plants. This will lead to new inventory levels. The overall trend, bringing down the inventories, bringing down the DSOs on the accounts receivable side, this is to be continued. This will lead to what we see on this page, namely the inflection point, I would call it, for the cash performance. Going forward, we are now assessing an operating cash flow until the end of 2028 of around EUR 29 billion. We have reduced our CapEx plan, as I've already said, to EUR 16 billion, which will then enable us to reach at least EUR 12 billion cumulative free cash flow by the end of 2028.
With that, I would like to conclude my part with a little bit of a longer slide on the cash contributions and cash allocations, including some good news that you partly already heard also from Markus. Let's go first to the left-hand side to the cash contributions. We have executed the sale of our food and health performance ingredients businesses on September 30. We have agreed with our partner that we are not disclosing the purchase price and the commercial terms. Alone, the fact that you find it on the slide tells you that it is for other meaningful things. It's positive news. Markus, you said it, the Brazilian decorative paints business is now successfully closed and sold to Sherwin-Williams. This happened last night. We are also making good progress on the further monetization of our oil and gas assets.
In terms of our participation in Harbor Energy, we have, you may have seen this, recently participated in the share buyback program that the company has set up. We are receiving our base dividends. Together, probably this year, we'll get a cash inflow from Harbor Energy in the order of magnitude of EUR 200 million. On top of that, the federal investment guarantee that is sitting in Wintershall Dea is making good progress. I know I also say this since quite some time, but now I can confirm that it is really concretizing. We see first smaller money inflows via dividends out of the federal investment guarantee from Wintershall Dea. There is a bigger payment made to Wintershall Dea, still sitting in Wintershall Dea for booking reasons. What I can say is we are trending there in the right direction.
I am reasonably optimistic that within the year 2025-2026, we will be able to resolve the majority of this topic. Of course, on the cash contribution side, if there is a successful coatings transaction, this would lead to meaningful cash inflows. The same goes apparently for the potential IPO of the minority shares in the AG business, where we confirm that we are targeting IPO readiness by mid-2027. Going to the right-hand side, what are we going to do with the money that we are expecting? First of all, and I come back to my first slide, we are confirming the ordinary dividend on the level of at least EUR 2.25 per share annually. Secondly, we want to deliver and support our balance sheet. We want to maintain the current single A rating that we have with all three agencies that are rating us with a stable outlook.
We want to maintain this. There is also a commitment of the management team. Thirdly, we are focused on the share buyback programs that we have already announced. You know, we have said the latest beginning of 2027 and at least EUR 4 billion until the end of 2028, we want to deliver. Under the current circumstances and depending on a successful closing of a coatings transaction, we may consider to accelerate that and to start even earlier with a share buyback program than by the beginning of 2027. Acquisitions, here we would say large acquisitions are currently not in our focus. Small or mid-size acquisitions, and with mid-size, we mean up to and around EUR 2 billion. This is always a possibility. The firepower of the company is always there to do this without distracting us too much. This is a possibility, but also here, do not expect something imminently.
This is a possibility that we would not rule out going forward. For CapEx, I think I said my part. We are invested now. We have to make use of the invested assets that we have. We will certainly invest for the next couple of years until the end of 2028 below the depreciation level, which is probably on a level of EUR 4.5 billion. That's the depreciation level annually. We will certainly stay below that, Markus.
Yeah, thanks, Dirk. This is very clear. Let me now switch back to the topic of the day, our core portfolio. We're taking decisive steps to increase the earnings in our core businesses. As you've seen, we have ambitious targets to drive earnings growth in our core businesses. We have, of course, already described the strength of our core business. We go much deeper today, but we've described it already last year. Some of the characteristics of the core, I think, are worthwhile to spend some time on. We're building on very strong key value chains. I'm going to show you some examples of this and how relevant this is. I think this becomes clear then why we believe this core is actually fundamentally a good portfolio to have and to run and why this also belongs together.
As Dirk said, we are focused very much on filling existing capacities now. We are coming out of a wave of high investment, of years of high investments. We have capacity to grow partly by design because we've invested, partly also because the last year, certainly in terms of volume growth in all markets, have been below expectations. We have ample opportunities to grow. We're doing this based on very strong market positions. In our core business, 75% of all our businesses have a top three market position in their respective markets. We are often operating from a position of strength. As you will see later in quite some detail, also in a position of good competitiveness. Last but not least, the core is and remains the innovation engine also for BASF.
You will see that over proportionally, this part of the portfolio, the core, contributes to profitable growth coming from innovation. Let's start with one project that Dirk already announced. You showed a nice picture of our new investment in Zhanjiang. Here again, I just want to reconfirm we are on track to start the site up in late 2025. That's the current plan. Dirk has already alluded to the CapEx budget, EUR 8.7 billion. This is all in. Everything we spent from 2019 all the way to 2028. As we also discussed in length, I think over the last months or in many individual discussions and in many calls, the site now starts up in a Chinese market that is very different than what we thought when we made the decision for the plant. It's much longer. A lot more capacities came on stream that were not necessarily all anticipated.
The Chinese market growth has been, at least during the COVID years, somewhat lower than expected. Overall, we see much longer markets in most value chains. That also means that in these markets, the players who have competitive capacities are on the low end of the cash cost curve and have, let's say, a strong right to run at high utilizations. That's actually the expectation we have also for our Zhanjiang site. Most of our plants will be in very favorable cost positions also in the Chinese market. We expect a fast ramp-up of our capacities as basically given by our technical capabilities. However, due to the fact that we currently see very low margins in most of the commodity markets in China, we will have a slower than anticipated ramp-up of the overall profitability.
We still expect most markets and value chains to rebalance in China over the next years towards the end of the decade so that we confirm our overall outlook of the site profitability of EUR 1 billion-EUR to $1.2 billion EBITDA before special items. If you want to ramp up towards this, the time will certainly be more challenging. We are also looking next year at a lower than originally expected EBITDA contribution, which might be either slightly positive or even negative, depending also on the ramp-up costs that we have to incur and, of course, the market development. Overall, we stay confident on this site, its cost position, its competitiveness in the Chinese market. We stay overall also very confident of the rebalancing of the Chinese market in most value chains based on strong demand growth, which we continue to see in China even today.
Also, some of the measures that were prominently discussed over the last month in the public space, for example, the anti-involution measures that they are now called. Some of these will certainly be concretized in the upcoming five-year plan. Overall, this is the outlook for the Zhanjiang site. As you can imagine, with a tougher market environment that we already see, we have, before even starting up the site, already initiated efficiency programs to make sure we're reaching benchmark cost positions also in the non-production area, so services, overhead, and contracting, for example, much earlier than originally anticipated. The pressure certainly is on. We will deliver a great project in a tough market with a strong earnings outlook mid-term. I have already talked about the core portfolio is the engine of innovation for BASF. Here you can see also some numbers.
Products that were launched in the last five years, products that were introduced new to the market, make up 15% of the sales in core businesses. The number is EUR 6 billion. This is a very sizable part of the portfolio we crank out of our R&D machine every five years. The projection is that this number even goes up now over the next year. The big driver in the core business and the innovation is the trend towards sustainability, the green transformation. All of the divisional presentations that you will see later will have examples also that you can see really what we're spending on, how we're spending our R&D money, how we're driving the green transformation, and how that leads to a relative improvement of the competitive position of BASF and how we really make this, transform this into profitable growth for us.
We're very confident about our capabilities to make a difference through R&D, through innovation in the core. I say this so prominently because sometimes over the last year, I got the feeling that the perception is that our core is a very commodity-heavy portfolio, which it is not. If you look at really the composition of the core, this by far is still the largest specialty chemicals entity in the world and has, of course, a certain base chemicals, commodity chemicals character because of the upstream divisions. There's also a good reason for it. That's what I want to introduce today because today we will talk a lot about value chains and why this matters so much to BASF. I brought one value chain as an example that will be discussed in much more detail later with Mary and Thomas, which is the EO value chain.
I just want to go through the general logic in our thinking so that you also see why we are making such a big deal about value chains. If you look at, for example, the current restructuring of the chemical industry in Europe, we are not so much alike other chemical companies that have made announcements, for example, when it comes to cracker restructuring or asset rationalization. This is a very rough and very high-level depiction of our EO value chain. Thomas and Mary will show you this in much more detail. We start with ethylene. Typically, when BASF makes ethylene, we make it with a steam cracker. We have mixed-feed steam crackers in all regions of the world, and we make ethylene. We are not making ethylene to make predominantly market products based on ethylene plus one.
We're not in this ethylene market to make MEG or to make polyethylene. This is not our business. Our business is to make magic with ethylene and to make many, many different products out of ethylene, partly with a value add that increases then 10x and even higher over the course of this value chain. You see the outlets that we have for ethylene oxide here on this chart. It goes all the way from still relatively commoditized products where you're talking, for example, about commodity surfactants, ethanolamines, stuff like that, all the way to specialties in the agricultural formulation or even in the pharma excipient space where the molecule of ethylene experiences a huge value add. This is basically what we talk about when we talk about Verbund.
I know we have abused the word Verbund for many things in the past, but this is really what the core of the Verbund is. You can see the value add over a molecule of ethylene for us looks very different from somebody who has a non-integrated business and runs a steam cracker, maybe even an ethane steam cracker, makes polyethylene out of it, and then is merchant with polyethylene. This is a completely different exposure to an ethylene cycle and so forth. We are exposed to the ethylene cycle as well because it's a key raw material for us. Of course, we have a very different perspective on why we, for example, also run a cracker than other companies. It is very important to understand this.
This will be the core theme of our presentations when we look at the polyurethane and the ethylene oxide value chain in the course of the day. Here are four examples of our key value chains that we have in BASF, the ethylene oxide and the polyurethane value chains we will discuss today. We have other examples like the C3 acrylics value chain or the C4 isobutane value chain. These four value chains represent roughly 50% of the entire core business. 80% of the core business overall is linked to one of our value chains, and these four represent 50%. These are very meaningful parts of the core portfolio, which means also that it's for us not a very straightforward idea that sometimes is floating around in capital markets to say shouldn't BASF split up the core any further.
For us, this is a very strange thought because we believe the value destruction potential of splitting up these very powerful and very well-positioned and competitive value chains has a lot of potential to destroy value. This is why this topic is so important to us. If you look at isobutane for example, it's always a fascinating example to me. Isobutane is, if you want, now sorry for some petrochemicals experts, but let's say isobutane is a bit of a byproduct in a cracker. Most people actually in the world, probably two-thirds of all isobutane, get made into MTBE or rubber. We make sophisticated stuff out of isobutane because in the last decades, BASF chemists have invented great technologies to upgrade this isobutane molecule into really fancy things, like for example, fuel additives, like vitamins, like fragrances. Our entire fragrance portfolio is built on isobutane.
This is what we do with chemistry. This is what the Verbund is all about. This is why we are different, despite the fact that we have an upstream business. We run crackers, but we are not a, let's say, cracker-centered company. Thomas might see this a little bit differently from his perspective, but we run crackers to make magic with chemistry along our value chain. This is what I wanted to say with regards to this setting up the presentations later. Last, I also will address that we have issues in the core portfolio. We have what I call construction sites. In the portfolio of our core, we also have pruning opportunities. We said this also last year. You've seen, for example, yesterday or the day before, we have announced that we are looking now for strategic options of our feed enzymes portfolio, for example.
We also have a lot of businesses where we feel the gap towards target profitability is still substantial. Our attitude here is really to look very carefully. What can we fix? What do we have in our control? Where can we focus on improving profitability? Here, we want to be quite open with four construction sites that we have where current profitability levels are not according to our expectations. This is partly due to significant global overcapacities, like in the case of butane diol, or I would say partly also upstream polyamide value chains. Partly, this is due to, for example, increased competition, like in plastic additives, where a lot of Asian competition has emerged over the last 10 years, or even asset-related issues, like in our vitamins value chain. As you know, we had also issues with our own production assets.
We are very much focusing on this also as an executive team because these construction sites, if we fix our issues, so to say, and we put ourselves in the position to have the steering wheel here in our hands, we can actually lift the profitability of the core quite a bit. These four construction sites alone, and we as a board have spent quite some time really deep diving into these. You can see some of the measures, which are quite assertive, often include asset restructurings here as well. We will deliver an earnings lift of EUR 400 million by 2028 by addressing the obvious pain points here. There is a lot of self-help that we also have in the portfolio when you look at parts of the core portfolio that are not performing according to expectations. We also put pressure on the organization to get leaner, to accelerate.
This was the topic of accelerate in our strategy. Of course, the current headwinds in the macroeconomic environment are a strong trigger to accelerate this, making the company leaner and overall, let's say, creating a more fit-for-purpose setup for the core also means that we can accelerate here. Here, just two numbers and what we have seen so that you really also see there is a lot happening in BASF also on this side. Dirk always talks about these savings, the EUR 2.1 billion savings. If you look at what is really happening in BASF, it is quite remarkable. Over the last year, we have announced this also last year. We have dissolved the regional organization in BASF. We have taken an entire axis, so to say, out of our three-dimensional matrix organization. We have, of course, focused a lot on restructuring existing organizations, for example, in Europe, in Ludwigshafen.
Dirk has given you some examples. That led to the fact that since last year, we have reduced 10% of all our senior executive positions in BASF Group. We have reduced the number of employees by 3,000 since 2024. That is before the buildup of Sanjiang. Of course, in Sanjiang, we have to add now operators to run the site. If you take Zhanjiang out, we have reduced 3,000 positions. It means a lot is happening in BASF. There is a lot of, let's say, self-help that we really focus on now. It is also partly planned, but partly also accelerated based on the currently difficult market environment. Overall, our core businesses, we feel, have a very strong setup, strong leading market positions, strong technology positions. You will see this also. We have the ability to run the business now for quite some time.
As Dirk said, at lower CapEx levels, the core businesses will, roughly out of the EUR 16 billion over four years that you have shown, have a run rate of EUR 3 billion or less per year for the core businesses. We will continue to build our strength based on these deep and long high value-add value chains that we run across our portfolio. Of course, we are preparing our core more and more. You will also see some examples of this later for enabling the green transformation of our customers, increasing our offer for sustainable solutions when it comes to low carbon footprint, high circularity, or bio-based materials, where the Verbund and the value chains that we run are the perfect setup to drive this green transformation with a low risk profile. This is a program for the core businesses. You will deep dive later.
I will close with a chart that I've also shown as a first slide in the Capital Markets Day a year ago. This is what we want to leave behind as a current Executive Board. We want to leave behind a path for BASF that is focused on value creation, value creation for our shareholders in particular. We want to leave behind a winning culture. Especially in tough times like we have right now for the chemical industry in general, execution is the number one, the number two, and the number three priority for us. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Markus and Dirk. We are now open to answer your questions. Please, as I said, raise your hand. We begin with Laurent Favre, BNP Paribas Exane.
Thank you. Can I ask a question about slide 16? That's the one where you show operating cash flow, CapEx, and NFCF. I mean, without a magic ruler, it looks like you see 2026 operating cash flow in line with 2024, which implies about EUR 1 billion of improvement compared to this year. I'm just wondering, can you talk about the different buckets of EBITDA, working capital, and other to get to that number? Does that include the federal guarantees, which I assume it does?
Yeah, Laurent, let me take this question. It includes two assumptions. First of all, a certain push apparently also from the earnings power that we have in the company with all the self-help that we also have explained. Then also dividends from equity-reported companies, which once cash inflow is happening, would also be reported as free cash flow. This is a contributor as well. Yeah, I confirm that.
The federal guarantees?
Yeah, that would be part of it because once we are receiving money, Wintershall Dea, as an equity-reported company, has to book it and then distribute it via dividend. It would flow in as an equity result from the franchise.
We now move on to Christian Faitz , Kepler Cheuvreux, and then I have noted Chris Counihan.
Yes, thanks. Two questions, please. First of all, can you give us a specific example of the scope reevaluation you were talking about in Zanjiang? The second question is, I mean, if you won EUR 10 billion in the lottery or generated through cash flow or asset sales, which region would you invest this in in the current geo situation? I mean, we are in overregulated Europe, unpredictable U.S., and an oversupplied China.
First of all, we're not playing the lottery, just for the record. We try to stay away from this. We have better ideas to what to do with our money than playing the lottery. First question on Zhanjiang. We had originally planned when we designed the project between 2018 and 2020, we had designed even the project in several phases. We have also still ideas today on paper where we could say we could extend some of the value chains even further downstream. Given the current market environment, this is not something we have a strong appetite for. I think we are focusing on rounding out the Verbund as we have it in what we originally, at one point in time, we called it phase one. We added a few minor assets to where it was smart to actually do this.
We're approaching now every asset decision that we would build in Zhanjiang, basically in front of the current market environment and with a strong make or buy focus as well. We have actually decided, for example, to source certain materials in the Chinese market for quite some time because the market is long, it's available, and that seems to be advantageous right now. That is not a stop for investments in Zhanjiang, but I would say the time that this project gets any kind of air cover because it's a new Verbund site is over. Every investment project now that when divisions have an idea to put a new asset into Zhanjiang, it has to fulfill our overall profitability expectation. Right now, we would say for the time being in Zhanjiang, we're done.
If we would have, let's say, if we have a focus area for further investments, I mean, we have been very outspoken also in the strategy about our capital allocation when it comes to regions. From my perspective, it is very prudent to look at Asia and continue to look at Asia as the market for growth. In the next 10 years, more than 80% of all growth of the chemical industry will happen in Asia, will happen in seven countries in Asia, China, India, five ASEAN countries. Today, 2025, more than 100% of chemical market growth globally is in China. The rest of the world is shrinking. China continues to be the growth engine of the chemical industry. We are well invested in China. China has become a more cyclical, a more competitive place.
We are, of course, now changing our focus very much to South Asia, meaning India, but also Southeast Asia, ASEAN as the next, let's say, opportunities for us to invest. The challenge is these markets are significantly smaller than China, but they offer opportunities because you will see strong growth of a domestic manufacturing and domestic chemical industry in these markets. This would be, if I could make a wish, my next areas for hopefully very profitable organic investments for BASF.
Okay, we move on to Chris Counihan, Jefferies, and then Tony Jones after that.
Thanks so much. I found the China ramp-up slide very, very interesting, showing the overhang in startup costs, but also the limited earnings contribution or still loss making, as you said, in 2026. While I'm not trying to draw you on a 2026 guidance, it appears you're implicitly saying upstream markets globally remain under pressure, not just in China. What are the implications of this across the broader BASF upstream portfolio into 2026 and beyond? How should we be thinking about that path to 2030 towards the EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.2 billion and how the market balances over time?
Yeah, I mean, I start, maybe you can complement if I forget something, but you are right. Our current view into 2026 for most markets is actually not that we are sitting here and expect end-to-end markets and/or, let's say, chemical markets to change significantly in momentum in 2026 versus 2025. We are seeing now since April 2nd quite, let's say, difficult end market development, very little volume growth in most end-use markets, and a continued challenging environment in especially upstream commodity markets with low margins across the board, discussed many times. I don't think this scenario will fundamentally change next year. We might see some improvements. We have some, let's say, positive triggers certainly next year, things like in Europe, for example, which is still our biggest market.
The stimulus package of the German government, generally the appetite to invest more in defense and other sectors will certainly be a bit of a tailwind, but it's not going to change the picture fundamentally. That is why we have not gone through the exercise now with all our divisions of doing operational planning for 2026. Our guidance is don't plan with too much growth next year unless you have a particular situation. You're starting up a very competitive capacity. You have locked-in contracts. You have certain market segments where you launch a new thing. In general, don't expect too much from the market and focus on self-help measures. We have a big machine, both in terms of cost and in terms of assets, where there's a lot of self-help. There is always the question, how fast can you execute this to actually drive your profitability?
That's where we put a lot of effort, focus, and pressure. Also
want to be as quick as possible because I don't expect a lot of tailwinds for 2026, particularly not in upstream.
I couldn't agree more. Maybe just one more data point. If you look into our volume performance year to date, and that goes upstream to downstream, we are holding up in terms of volumes. It's rather prices that are the challenge, and even more so FX.
FX, yeah.
I think FX most of it. I think it's fair to say that the company is holding up quite nicely in the volume development. As we said earlier, we are in a position now to use our reserve capacities, I would call it. There is room, I think, on the basis of the safe have that we do to push more into the market. I think this is one lever that we will also pull in the next years.
As I said, right now, if you look at the picture that I just showed you, that I just described, China is growing as a chemical market now. The rest of the world is rather contracting, probably slightly negative numbers for 2025. The last number I've seen this year to date, we are still volume positive year to date versus last year. You know that we are rather small in China. Our footprint in China is not big. We have only 13% of our sales in China. That shows you that we're holding up volume-wise also fairly well in this difficult environment. That shows the strength of our businesses. It's a tough market and will stay probably challenging for 2026 would be my guidance.
We move on to Tony Jones, Rothschild & Co. After that, Tom Wrigglesworthh sworth.
Oh, there you are.
Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two. Firstly, if we see more China production volumes exported to Europe and less to the U.S., how do you see the BASF and market response if margins stay low for longer? On the Verbund, years ago you used to talk about roughly EUR 1 billion of savings from the Verbund model. I don't think you've disclosed that anymore. With the portfolio changes and the new China complex, could you update us about what the savings could be to the group? Thank you.
Yeah, I start with the second one. I know the billion, we have communicated this in the past. This was probably based on a lot of questions. Can you somehow put a number to this Verbund advantage? For me, it's a bit of a theoretical thing. Think about the value chain, the ethylene oxide value chain that I've shown you. You can, of course, now do calculations, transport costs of not transporting stuff between sites. You can come up with inventory that you don't need because you have this all in one site or in one company. I think this is, at the end of the day, a bit theoretical. I don't know whether this billion has ever been really tangible.
What at the end of the day you have to realize is if you have this value chain and you are competitive on all steps, and that's always the prerequisite, right? A long value chain does not help you if you are uncompetitive at certain steps. You have to make sure both on your upstream side as well as on your late last downstream asset you are competitive against your respective peers. The true value comes, of course, from resilience because, of course, upstream and downstream markets are very different price volatilities. It's, of course, supply security and it's, let's say, value transfer and steering opportunities that you have. That's the true value.
If you would split this up into, let's say, 10, if you split our ethylene oxide value chain up in 10 companies and they all have to negotiate with each other every quarter for pricing, for volumes, for green attributes, for how to share value, you can already sort of sense that this is probably not going to be over the cycle a very profitable setup versus ours. Of course, if you have situations where upstream markets are long and everything's available and commodity prices are down, you could get away with a non-integrated downstream business and be really happy with it. Over the cycle, I think this long value chain setup, if you have it competitive on each step, is a really strong, robust segment and setup. That's why we are pretty happy with it. Your second question was?
was on the inflow from China on the imports to Europe.
By the way, just one thing, and we talked about it with Thomas a few weeks ago. It's right now, if you look at the imports into Europe, it's not only China, it's also U.S., of course, right? Because in the U.S., especially C2 value chain built at the U.S. Gulf Coast based on ethane crackers, based on low input cost and low feedstock cost. That was all built for China. This material is now not going so much into China. There's also a lot of stuff coming into Europe. This is predominantly, again, cracker, cracker plus one products. From China, it's more, let's say, C3 downstream products. This is more what we see in our portfolio coming from China. You have to be very careful with making these assumptions. You know, China is flooding the European chemical market with chemicals.
You have to look at value chain by value chain, but the pressure is certainly increasing. You can ask also later the four Division Presidents. I think in all their divisions, they're struggling also now with more import volumes from opportunistic exporters from China, but also, I would say, especially in Thomas' case, from the U.S. now. Think about the tariffs also went away. It was 6.5%, now it's 0%. That also brings tailwind for U.S. competitors. Europe is a more vulnerable place, I would say. That only means that in Europe, you have to be competitive against imports. Of course, you are never insured and insulated against, let's say, not so value-oriented behavior of competitors that dump products that are very opportunistic in export businesses. There's also an increasing number of anti-dumping cases now in the EU. That extreme end of the spectrum, I think, can be handled.
If we would be faster, that would be better. In general, what only helps is you have to have competitive assets in Europe. We told you last year, and we stick to this, that most of our assets that we run in Europe are competitive also against imports from China, from the Middle East, or from the U.S. We feel we have a good setup. Of course, if there's overcapacity in China, China is half of the market. A little overcapacity in China is a big overcapacity for the rest of the market. It will only finally go away when China rebalances. That will take a few years. We brace ourselves for stronger competition also in Europe. Here and there, certainly, we will also address this via measures like anti-dumping cases where they're justified. At the end of the day, there's no golden bullet other than run competitive assets.
We believe that not everybody in Europe will be set up as robust as BASF. We will show you later as well.
Tom Wrigglesworth, Morgan Stanley, and we will move then, I think, Matthew Yates also, and then Chita.
Thanks very much. Kind of two maybe follow-on questions. I guess what we're talking about here is, to some extent, pricing power or the balance of pricing power. You have cost-saving programs to keep you competitive. At the moment, what we've seen is we don't see any effect on the P&L. Maybe that's unfair. In essence, you kind of give away your cost savings because of the competitive nature in the market. How do you strike that balance? When we look at the core, how much of that business is taking those molecules as far downstream as they need to versus being sold as a C plus two or a cracker plus two step? That's the first question. Second question, if I may, is again around this. Clearly, the coatings business has a lot of value.
What assurances can you give shareholders today about value realization there that you'll be able to really extract the medium-term prospects in a challenging market for that business? Thank you.
Yeah, first question. I think you will see some data around the degree of integration also, at least for the two big value chains that we will discuss today. Later, we will have even some numbers also how integrated this is. I think the value chain never is perfectly set up because typically what you have is you build upstream assets as big as possible because you have to be competitive. You need scale. You never have the perfect downstream integration. You always have outlets that you also need upstream to be in the merchant market to play. This is why this is never a fully closed value chain. We have, because of the fact that we run these long value chains, a significant merchant exposure with upstream commodities, which in good times is a wonderful thing. In bad times, it can be challenging.
That's just a cyclicality of the upstream portfolio. There's not much you can do about it. On your dynamic of the P&L, the way you describe it, it's, I think, a little bit backwards. At the end of the day, for most of the cyclical, more commoditized chemicals, these are, yeah, these are commodities by nature. Everybody in the market is a price taker. You get the price that the market gives you. The cost, the cost efforts we take in the company is, of course, to compensate some of the margin losses that we expect in low-price environments, as we see it today for many chemicals. These are almost not, you don't do this one because there's the other, because the cost savings and the becoming more competitive, becoming more productive, making your assets, getting your asset effectiveness up, these are all non-regret moves.
We would do this even if the margins would be better. It's not a reactive move as it is a, let's say, move to become mid-long term as competitive as we can be in an environment that will no longer allow us to have any kind of fat. Short term, the margin level that we achieve or that you achieve in commodity markets is not something that you can influence. The only thing you can really influence is, as I said, your cost position and your competitive position and how, let's say, high your utilization is. If you're the marginal player, you have a tough time these days because then you cannot run your assets and you will not be able to place your volumes. That's what we see. We see quite a big gap in utilization rates. I always quote the example in China because it is out there.
I've said it many times. In China, the average cracker utilization is 70%. By the way, in Europe, it's not much higher. In Europe, it's also 75% cracker utilization, and cracker utilization in the U.S. is also in this area. We run our Nanjing cracker at 95% plus. We run it as hard as we can because we are at a very low point in the cash cost curve. We can still create value out of the ethylene and the propylene that comes out of the cracker when a lot of other players in China who don't have that downstream integration can no longer do it, and they have to shut down. That's why you see this shutdown and startup mentality of many of our competitors, because they don't have the cost position and the integration. This is really the key. That's what you can influence.
This is why I'm always preaching so much about how we have to have competitive assets in Europe. Despite the fact that the weather is bad in Europe, we will still be able to win our races.
Coatings.
Coatings.
Value realization.
I can give it a start. I think, Tom, you are spot on. We have to capture the value from this business. This is what we will do. This is also why we said we are not disposing the asset because we have an urgent need of cash or so. What we want to do is to unlock the value of the business. If there is a transaction, we still say there might be different kinds of transactions, whether, Markus, you said it is a joint venture or is a straight sale. At the end, we will only decide on a transaction if we have confidence that the full value of the business is also reflected in this transaction. This is why we gave us the time to do it with all the speed attributes that, of course, are important for us.
Also, we said we are a little bit agnostic to what a transaction structure would look like because we have to make sure that the value is unfolded and that we are, with our share, participating in the full value of this business.
That is why I, for example, never like when I read that this is a disposal process. It is a value. For us, it is really an unlocking value exercise. That is the lens through which we look at this. That is why we are agnostic. We are open, I think, also towards different ways on how to do it. We are fully aware that there is a lot of value you can leave on the table if you do it wrong. The assurance I can give you is only that we take this part of that consideration very seriously. You have to somehow trust us that we are not eager to throw value away.
Okay, we move on to Matthew Yates, Bank of America.
Thanks very much. Maybe just to follow up on coatings. I'm trying to understand the accelerated share buyback as to what is different today versus a year ago. I wouldn't necessarily think the balance sheet is stronger than you would have thought a year ago. Is the delta that a cash transaction in coatings is now more likely than a JV or some other structure? Is there any other reason why you feel you're in a position to accelerate the buyback?
Maybe let me take this, Matthew.
I hope you take this one.
I'm more than happy to do it. Let's maybe move away a little bit from a specific transaction. I think if there were a transaction, then it is obviously a valuable one. It's a rich, it's a big one. The fundamental thinking is we are now carving out the standalone businesses and have various forms of transactions for them. The core business is, for the time being at least, getting a bit smaller. We also have to address, apparently, then also the capital structure, starting with reducing the debt levels, which will also allow us from a position of strength to do the shareholder distribution that we have promised. Currently, our confidence level is as such that we say if there is a quoting transaction coming, then we are in a position that we can do A, upholding our promise on the dividend. That's very clear.
Secondly, can do meaningful deleveraging with a clear goal to maintain our single A rating and C, also accelerate share buybacks.
Let me just add, the question of share buybacks is also dependent on, we believe the company today is significantly undervalued. Timing is not bad for share buybacks right now because the value of the company is low, is attractive. It's an attractive buy for us. It's my simplistic view on this.
Markus, I have a separate question about this idea of value chains. I'm sure by the end of the day, we will have learned a lot more about it. Do you think the value of that is the same as it was five or ten years ago? It strikes me that there's more capacity, there's more competition in multiple parts of these value chains. If we think forward five to ten years from now, will the value of that integrated strategy still be the same?
My answer would be yes, but your hypothesis is still true because all of the businesses in my little iconic chart there with the ethylene oxide value chain with all these outlets, in all of these businesses, they have all commoditized. They have all more competitors now than they had ten years ago. The value capture, so to say, in each of these outlets has been under pressure more than it was ten years ago. That's true. Generally, the delta between running this integrated or non-integrated has stayed the same. It just both has been, let's say, it's more difficult right now to capture high value adds and overall competitive pressure is there. That's what we are seeing in the chemical industry now for, let's say, quite a number of years and decades that there is this sliding commoditization of most products.
You know we're working against this with our big R&D machine cranking out new products. Overall, there is this trend. I still believe the relative advantage of running this in an integrated fashion has stayed the same.
We move on to Chetan Udeshi now, JP Morgan.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. You're not taking questions from audience on the webcast. I'm getting a lot of questions on one common question, which is, you know, we heard you provide some trading update last evening. Maybe for a broader audience, if you can just provide a bit more granular update on how you see things. For me, the most striking thing was not that margins are under pressure in your chemical business, but more was the comments on AG starting to come under pressure. Maybe if you can provide that some granularity on third quarter, helpful. The second question, sorry, I've noted down a few questions. Second was German insurance payment. Can you remind us the magnitude? At some point, it was EUR 2 billion, EUR 2.5 billion. Is that the magnitude we are still looking for from a BASF perspective?
The third question I had was actually on cost savings. It feels like cost savings are just neutralizing the fixed cost inflation, at least from what I can see. Will that change next year? Are you expecting cost savings to actually more than offset the inflation? You have a net contribution. Last question on Zhanjiang. Will the EBIT loss be worse next year than this year? You also will have a big step up in DNA, I suppose. If EBITDA is not improving, can the EBIT loss be higher than what you have this year? Sorry for four questions.
Oh, four questions. It's CFO heavy, I would say. Oh.
Yeah, I start with the first three maybe and then go. Let me start with the FIG. We are still not disclosing the exact amount, have never done this. There's a lot of speculation how much it is, but the rules of the game are to stick to confidentiality here. I think I gave you a couple of data points today where you see we are making concrete progress. More, unfortunately, is not possible. It's not reflected in our books though. Whatever we are collecting is an upside to the current investment case, I would argue. On the cost side, for sure, inflation is the biggest counter effect to our ongoing cost saving measures. I showed you the one slide where the cost to achieve, apparently for the program, they are stopping by the end of the year.
This will be helpful because the run rate delta versus cost to achieve is getting bigger and bigger. That's helpful. We also have to be very clear. We have to address the inflation bucket and see which parts of inflation as part of the self-help you can influence and do that. Thirdly, there will have to be one point where pricing power will have to come back in order to sustain the model. That's also very clear. You cannot just do it on cost saving each year alone. For the time being, we feel in this tough situation where we have to come out, cost saving is the way to go. Current trading, yeah, I'm building on what we said at Q2. Q3 is trending, I would say, in the same direction. We are holding up volumes quite nicely.
Prices, I would say, a little bit subdued, but also not significantly. The big thing for euro-denominated companies, obviously, is also then the FX effect. Overall, don't expect a significant shortfall, but also don't expect at this point in time recovery. What we also said yesterday was there are some pockets where we really have nice results. The semiconductor supply was already mentioned yesterday evening where we have a strongly growing business, admittedly on a smaller basis. The auto business, with a particular emphasis on China, is holding up quite nicely, which I think is also better for BASF than for other companies with auto exposure. Especially to the AG business, as you asked, we are very confident that the AG business in a not easier environment is delivering on what was planned at the beginning of the year.
On Zhanjiang, I will not give you now a 26-detailed breakdown of the P&L. We probably will get a little bit more precise when we get closer to it and also do our planning for next year. Roughly, since you also mentioned depreciation, I mean, we gave you the CapEx number, EUR 8.7 billion. We depreciate over 15 years, so no rocket science. We will be facing roughly EUR 500 million, roughly depreciation. Order of magnitude, I don't know whether it's the real right number, so don't crucify me if it turns out to be a bit different, but that's my back of an envelope calculation. We have startup costs this year. The startup costs will still be significant next year, so we will have a spillover.
Technically, we will start up the plants at the end of the year, but you know when you run a big asset, there's quite a lot of hangover of real startup costs of additional people you need to make this stable. It's a bit of a dynamic picture. That's why I cannot be as precise as I would like to be to give you a guidance on what the net EBIT impact will be from Zhanjiang next year. We'll do our best to do this maybe in one of the next calls to give you a bit of an impact there. Right now, I don't want to pull this number out of my pocket. That depreciation number gives you one element that can help you bridge these numbers maybe a little bit.
Thank you.
Given the time, I would like to ask you to limit yourself to one question now. We have the next analyst, Alex from Santander, and we will then have James Hooper. Yeah, Alex, go.
My question is about the decision to keep the environmental catalyst division. The rationale on that, if you tackle the market and you thought the potential valuations were not attractive enough, you can elaborate on that process. Thank you.
That's right. To be simple, it's as you have said it. I mean, we have, of course, when we carved out this business, we've received a lot of interest. Also, people were asking, what is the future of this business? We prepared to do the internal carve-out, actually already, you know, a potential strategic option. As we said, even in the original announcement said we are willing to look at strategic options. What it shows is that, you know, a business that has this sunset character, I call it now, because eventually, probably we will see a declining market, has, of course, by most people that would be interested in taking over such a business, they assign a very low terminal value to this business.
That leads to a valuation that at the end of the day gives you potential EBITDA multiples, let's stay in that very easy, easy part, that is lower than what BASF Group has. With a business that I feel is doing operationally very well, we are gaining market share in this business. We are doing operationally very well. We are in the right markets with the right technologies. I have ample opportunities through the carve-out to rebase my cost structure. I have, of course, now a time where I have to spend only very little CapEx. I can extract quite a number, quite a good cash flow out of this business. I gave you a number today, which, you know, is also an updated number. That is roughly a run rate of EUR 500 million cash to the group every year.
You can compare this also to other people in this industry of similar size. That's a very attractive cash flow. I believe that given my valuation as BASF Group, my investors can value these cash flows higher than a potential person who buys this business from me. That's why I say not only am I a good operational owner of this business because I'm showing I can run it really well, or my team runs it very well. I don't run anything. I'm also a good financial owner of this business if I maintain this cash flow strength. I believe personally it will last even beyond 2030 for quite some time.
Okay, so now we move on. James Hooper, Bernstein.
Hi, thank you. I just wanted to ask about the CapEx cut from EUR 17 billion to EUR 16 billion. What were the key drives of this? Is this the Zhanjiang saving or is this higher hurdle rates? Also, does this leave you flexibility for other kind of growth investments? You mentioned Southeast Asia, India, and in your presentation, obviously, the German government is doing a very large infrastructure defense program that probably will need help from the chemicals industry.
Yeah, true. Starting from the end, you're right. I mean, the stimulus package in Europe is an upside. There's also other upsides. I think there's pent-up demand in infrastructure in many economies in the at least Western world, particularly in Europe. The infrastructure spend of the bucket of EUR 500 billion now is a clearly compartmentalized, you know, bag of money that will come. It will not come as fast as some people think. I think it will take some time. German bureaucracy, planning processes, permits, and so forth. We will see this probably towards the latter half of 2026. It will make a difference. Still, I would say today, looking at the asset setup that we have in Europe and most other chemical companies have in Europe, this will not trigger investments in capacities in Europe. Let's also keep things in perspective. It's EUR 500 billion over, I think, 10 years.
It's not going to now put Europe into space in terms of growth rates. It's a tailwind for sure. We will capture this. We are very strong, by the way, also in all things that go into, especially the construction sector. Because don't forget, for every building, for every school that's been built, it's not only the cement and the construction material. You need to insulate the building. You need to put carpet in. You need to put paint on the wall. You need to put plugs and cables in these buildings. This is what drives chemical demand. Building like no other chemical, in like no other industry, drives chemical demand. There's this upside. Now, is there room for additional CapEx? For sure. However, we will, over the next years, run a tight ship in CapEx. That's basically the answer to your first question.
Coming from EUR 17 billion to EUR 16 billion, there is no, let's say, strategic guideline we give out. This is going through all projects and challenging every project to say, what can we move out, given the latest and greatest market outlook that we have? What can take a year longer? What can we postpone? What can we maybe also put on the waiting list? This is not a very strategic discussion. It's very operational. It's very execution-driven. You can ask over lunch, also the division presidents, CapEx is a tough discussion right now in the company. Dirk is running a really tight ship here. I think it's appropriate. However, we have ideas. Dirk also mentioned this on one of the slides. We want to allocate, of course, from our growth CapEx. We want to allocate this to the markets that will eventually grow.
We are very committed to doing all of these smart investments in areas where markets will grow. We're talking always about a timeframe 2025 to 2028. Even if we would decide today, let's say we do make a big project in Vietnam or in India, the spending would come towards the end of that period. It is not going to make a big dent in it. I think we have to reassess this also over the course of the next years. For the time being, the direction is clear. We will stay very disciplined on capital.
Just one small addition. The reduction in CapEx is not financial engineering. It's real.
Being mindful of the time, I would like to close this Q&A. With that, we are at the end of the livestream. We thank you very much for joining us online. Replays of the keynote and the Q&A, as well as the two further presentations, will be available later today.
Thank you.
We will now take a short break and resume the program with a presentation on the Polyurethanes value chain at 11:00 A.M. Please feel free to refresh yourself and have a drink, etc.
All right.