Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to Bilfinger Capital Markets Day 2023. A welcome to you people outside watching us via stream, but especially to all of you being with us today here in Frankfurt. Good to see you in person again. My name is Bettina Schneider, I'm here together with our Group CEO, Thomas Schulz, and our CFO, Matti Jäkel. Safety first. In the case of emergency, please follow the green lights to the emergency exit in the back to the right and here to the left. We will now start with the financial figures of 2022. You will have several opportunities to pose your questions. With this, I hand over to Thomas.
Thank you very much. A warm welcome from my side, too, especially here to the auditorium as well as to our guests online, and a very special hello to all our colleagues around the world where we know they watch that webcast, too. The year 2022. When we look into, we delivered that what we promised on the outlook for 2022. We said that we will have a significant increase in the revenue, and we delivered that from EUR 3.7 to EUR 4.3. It shows the effectiveness of our business and especially our business model in the market. EBITA, EUR 121 we had in 2021, and we had with the efficiency program a reduction in the fourth quarter of roughly EUR 62 million. That gave us EUR 75 million for the full year.
We look into the free cash flow, we promised to be on the same level. We actually outperformed the level of 2021 with a EUR 136 million. The highlights of the year are: we have a growth, an organic growth in the order intake of 14%. We have an organic growth in the revenue of 14%. Our EBITA margin adjusted, and we do that for transparency reasons and like for like check, where Matti will go more into the detail where it comes from, is 3.2%. We have in all countries, all technologies, all industries, a positive market momentum. There was not one area which was not growing and having a positive outlook in 2022. In that, we have to say that we were more negative up to October in that area.
Most likely very much influenced about all the discussion of upcoming recession and so on. The fourth quarter didn't show that. In the capital markets strategy explanation, we will explain where that comes from for Bilfinger. We have a free cash flow, which is quite an increase of EUR 136 million, which makes us actually quite happy because it's a very good indicator for management capabilities, and we propose a dividend of EUR 1.3 per share. The efficiency program, what we announced with a lot of attention, I have to say, in the capital markets, is on track and well under the way to be finalized at the end of this year.
The outlook for next year in that market with that what we do with the company, what we come to with the strategy review, is EUR 4.3 billion-EUR 4.6 billion for 2023 in the revenue and EUR 3.8-EUR 4.1 in the EBITA. Important in our business, important in the so-called being of Bilfinger in the market is the ESG target set. We as Bilfinger, if we sell what we do, efficiency and sustainability, we have to be efficient and sustainable too. On the left side, you see the GHG target set Scope 1 to Scope 3, what we now report on up to Scope 3. You see not only in absolute in Scope 2 and Scope 3, or especially in Scope 2, that we actually reduced the CO₂ equivalence quite significant despite having a 14% revenue increase.
On the right side, it's about safety, which is an unbelievable important indicator for our capabilities within the industries where we act. The trend, what we see here, is not positive. We move away from, slightly from the zero target. We do a lot, and in 23 too, to get that trend back towards the zero. In comparison to the industry, we are actually quite leading in safety, and a lot of clients are trusting us a lot that we help them to improve their figures. Out of that, the orders. If you look on the movement, what we have from EUR 4 billion to EUR 4.6 billion with a 14% organic growth is quite significant.
It follows a typical pattern what we have, roughly two-thirds in service and frame contracts, very normally longer time in the how the contracts are looking like, then roughly one-third in projects. Our order backlog grew quite significantly, and we have a very healthy book-to-bill with 1.07. On the right side, you see the revenue. The revenue, the same as the order intake, grew 14% and more or less the same ratio between the service contracts as well as the projects, with two-thirds to one-third. With that, I give to our Group CFO, Mats.
Yeah. Thomas, thank you very much. Warm welcome here in Frankfurt and on the stream. This is a great turnout here and on the stream, so thank you very much for taking the time to join us today and listening to us. I think we have an interesting program, not just on Q4, more importantly on the strategy. As you have the chance to visit our booth upstairs, give you a little bit of a flavor what Bilfinger is really all about. Just to shed some light on the fourth quarter. I call this tailwind. 21% organic growth in orders received, 20% organic growth in revenues. If we think back about three, four months, everybody was talking about recession, and it was recession, and it was nothing else but recession.
That really subsided in November and then in December and more so in January as we've seen in all the publications in the newspapers. We were carried through the end of the year on those growth rates. Gross profit increased to EUR 121 million. EBITA margin adjusted, and I come to why are we also showing adjusted in a moment, 4.3%. Good cash flow above prior year of EUR 124 million. Last but not least, interestingly, the SG&A ratio, which we have reported for the last couple of years very intensively for the first time below 7%, 6.6% on a high turnover. Looking at the quarterly development of our revenue, you see that Q4 2022 has been the strongest quarter of the last eight.
Even compared to last year, a 20% growth rate. All segments, all businesses, all technologies, all the way through growth rates, growth rates and growth rates. In the end, EUR 4.3 billion, a total of 14%, so the growth has increased over the year. Looking at the gross profit, EUR 121 million in the fourth quarter compared to EUR 107 million in the last year, for a total of EUR 437 million. Quite a nice increase over the EUR 387 million in 2021. SG&A, as I alluded to before, 6.6% in the last quarter compared to 7.8% in Q4 2021.
For a total of 7.1% year-over-year, you see the cost did increase EUR 307 million to EUR 291 million, that's only 5.5% increase compared to revenue growth of 14%, which took the percentage down. Briefly on the EBITA, here is why one reason why we also show adjusted. In 2021, as you can see, we had adjustments all the way through the four quarters. In 2022, EUR 10 million, that was the adjustment, the provision that we took on exiting Ukraine and Russia. While we stayed in Ukraine, we completely exited our Russian business by the end of 2022, which is driven and has been driven by increase in sanctions. It made us impossible for us to stay in the country and continue to work.
Two quarters, two and three, no adjustments. We decided on the necessity and implementation of the efficiency program, and we took a provision of EUR 62 million in the fourth quarter. You see here that adjustment did hit in the fourth quarter. For the total year, reported EBITA EUR 75 million, 1.8%, but EUR 65 million in total for adjustments. That's the efficiency program.
Capital gain.
Hmm?
The capital gain.
Yeah. We had a capital gain, on selling a business that had to be reversed.
Yeah.
That is, that also went into the adjustments. For EUR 140 million, 3.2% in 2022. On the efficiency program that was announced in November, we also had the investor lunch in December. The program in itself has been confirmed. We look at a capacity reduction of about 750 workplaces with a savings potential of EUR 55 million annually starting in 2024. Out of that EUR 55 million, we will reinvest into education and training of our employees, 25% of the EUR 55 million. We're looking at a net improvement around 1 percentage point on revenue. One-time cost of EUR 62 million has been included in the financial year 2022. We're making good progress on designing the adjustments to the organizational structure. We come to this in the strategy part of this.
We're looking at further savings in procurement, you will see the first improvements of the run rate should be visible in our P&L, starting with the second quarter of 2023. This is a busy slide, I know that, I felt it was important to go into a little bit more detail here, demonstrating why we're also reporting adjusted figures. Starting off on the left-hand side on the bottom chart, with EUR 137 million in adjusted EBITA, special items of EUR 16 million, EUR 121 million. The financial result positive impacted by tax credits or interest on tax credits and the write-up on Apleona for an EBIT of EUR 115 million. We had huge tax credits in 2021 from the years 2005 to 2009.
A positive tax number here for an earnings after tax of EUR 123 million. Here, again, a positive impact, EUR 7 million in the discontinued business also has to do with the Apleona deal. On minorities, not much. EBITA adjusted translated into a net profit of EUR 130 million because of those positive effects. Looking at 2022, I would say more of a normal year and a normal development, except for the special items, mainly the efficiency program with EUR 62 million, taking the EBITA adjusted down to EUR 75 million. A normal financial result of -EUR 24 million gives you an EBIT of EUR 52 million.
A higher than usual tax rate because we're not capitalizing tax losses carryforwards in certain countries, taking off EUR 20 million for earnings after tax from continued business of EUR 31 million, and then minus EUR 3 million for the minorities for the net profit of EUR 28 million. If you look at 2021 and 2022, you see very different developments, and hence that's the reason why we're also showing adjusted figures for 2022. Cash flow. Good operational improvement. Quite a bit of an increase. You may remember that in the free cash flow of last year, we had positive contributions from sale of real estate and taxes.
If we compare the 115 to the 136, there is even more operational improvement included in the 136 that you would see on the first phase. I think that should be it for the numbers on quarter four and the full year. As I said earlier, there was a lot of tailwind that carried us through to year-end and also into 2023. How that is going to carry us forward, that's up to Thomas.
Thank you, Matti. The market for 2023, of course, we only give a glimpse here on it because in the following strategy presentation is a lot of information about the market and where we act in. A very short view on energy. The energy transition, the volatility in energy prices drives our customers quite a lot in improving efficiency and in the longer-term sustainability. That market is great. Volatility in supply cost, in production cost for our customers always means good business for Bilfinger. Why? Because we can help them to reduce it. We can help to produce more with less. That is our specialty. Another part in it is the revival of nuclear power, what we see as a green energy resource. We are in the demobilization in Germany, we are involved in the building of nuclear power plants outside Germany.
We are leading in helping, supporting customers to deal with nuclear waste, no matter if it's fresh waste or very old waste like the minesite Asse in Germany. The other big business, vertical industry where we are in is chemical and petrochem. The customers have quite a fluctuation and volatility on the resource costs, raw material. They have quite a fluctuation on the energy. At the same time, they have to keep their prices, their products competitive in a global environment, which is tougher than 20 years ago, which is tougher than 10 years ago. That volatility is a big, big need and demand to help to support them to get that production part stable and actually that they can forecast it, what the cost is. Here we are as a Bilfinger company in the key, in the core of the industry to help them.
The other part is pharma, biopharma. Pharma, biopharma enjoys a de-globalization. No matter that for a lot of people, myself included, de-globalization doesn't sound that nice. In pharma, biopharma, it's very nice because it means that the idea that you have one or two global big production sites to serve the whole world with vaccine or pills or anything else is gone. Based on Corona, they localize. Localization means fast build-up of smaller plants, what we call modular plants. You have examples here, and we are leading in that container-based fast build-up of highly efficient, sustainable biopharma and pharma plants. With our Bilfinger support is possible. We have oil and gas. In oil and gas, there was a lot of negative talk about, and still maybe it is.
The facts are the industry didn't invest a lot in the last few years, most likely in the last 10 years. Now it's the time to invest to get the assets, which are partly a little bit worn down, back on track, especially in 2023, as long as the oil and gas boom is ongoing. These customers all have net zero targets, too. They invest heavily into carbon capture. They invest heavily into biofuels, hydrogen, and so on. No matter that the market in itself is still small, but this is a big market area in the future. It's one of the products what Europe will be able to sell worldwide in 10 years , 20 years to come. The outlook for 2023 from our point of view is positive. Of course, we won't have the coming out of the Corona crisis.
From a growth rate, we have to be more, let's say, humble in it. We look into the outlook, the forecast, what we give, we give a forecast up to EUR 4.6 billion in revenue. A EUR 3.8-EUR 4.1 EBITDA, which brings us, of course, a step closer to the promised target in 2024 to be above 5% EBITDA. A free cash flow of EUR 50 million-EUR 80 million, which is of course impacted by the outflow of the more than EUR 60 million this year.
Good start to the first question and answer. We have the possibility for you outside via stream to pose your questions through the chat, and I will read it out loud. Alternatively, of course, for our guests here in the room, please give me a hand sign and you have microphones in front of you. Is there any question to financial year 2022 and outlook 2023? Strategy we would do after the strategy session. Too early for question?
Uh, it-
No? We see one, Mr. Kuglitsch.
Press? Yes. Maybe you could just thank you for the presentation so far, could you just maybe give us a sense how much of the cost saving benefit is already in this year's number in 2023? How much are you already baking in, you crystallize this year? Then maybe the second question is obviously a wide range on revenues. I think your book-to-bill was 1.07. You had a really strong Q4. The lower end of the guidance kind of implies no revenue growth. The question is that just being cautious, or is there something going on that we should be aware of, why you would be that low on the low end?
Are you taking the-?
I'll take the first question. Yes. We announced the program very late last year, in November, you know, the cost efficiency program. We're still going through the design phase and the implementation of the measures will happen in the second quarter of 2023. We see quite a steep increase of the run rate towards year-end. There will be some cost savings that will hit the bottom line in 2023. It's a bit too early to be more specific. We will report on progress every quarter, first time in quarter two. We can be more specific on how much of the cost saving will already hit P&L 2023.
Exactly. If it comes to the outlook for the revenue, yes, we have a low point, which is more or less a side move. That has to do with the volatility, what we see in the market. It has nothing to do with the Bilfinger. It's actually the look and the forecasting how the global industry and the global market is developing, especially North America, Europe, and Middle East. The high end is what we see in the market if it goes on to develop as we had it, for example, in December.
Thank you. That's clear. Thank you.
Okay. Is there another question explicitly on the financial year 2022 or 2023? Not as of now. I would suggest let's start with the more interesting part.
Yeah.
Going to the strategy.
Let's make a two minutes break or now the movie comes.
Exactly.
Yes. Exactly.
We will start now with the movie and then move into the presentations again.
Yes.
In a changing world, courage, expertise, and resources are crucial. Here at Bilfinger, we are ready for change, ready to meet tomorrow's challenges. We are a powerful partner to our industry customers and aim to become their number one when it comes to efficiency and sustainability. With our end-to-end range of services, we support companies in achieving their goals in these areas, no matter if they grow or decline. We focus on our specialized competencies in the energy, chemicals and petrochemicals, pharma and biopharma, and oil and gas markets. We can utilize our core competencies over all process industries equally. Efficiency and sustainability are particularly important in energy-intensive industries. Demands on them are growing constantly. Increasing our operational excellence offers additional opportunities for Bilfinger to grow. By bundling and standardizing our solutions, we create a unique offering for our customers along their entire value chain, no matter which industry.
Across the globe, digitally and through innovation. At Bilfinger, our people are at the heart of this growth. We systematically invest in the training and professional development of our team. We foster innovation and expertise to provide the best possible service. That's how we become our customer's number one partner in efficiency and sustainability, and pave the way for them to meet their financial and sustainability targets. Bilfinger is indeed the efficiency and sustainability partner of choice for an industry in change, today and in the future.
Now we start with the strategy explanation and going very much into details. Before we go into that slideshow with all the information and guiding you through what we will transform the company into, I would like to start with that. I started in March last year as the CEO. Coming from an industry or from industries by far more volatile than Bilfinger is, believe me that, and by far more exposed to more difficult markets than we as Bilfinger are. What I found is a company with a significant upside potential in supporting customers, in helping them to actually earn more money, and to help them to move them closer and on the net zero target set.
I found a company with more than 30,000 highly competent, motivated people in North America, in the Middle East, in Europe and some other parts what we still have on the list. I found a customer group who is demanding more from us. I can be quite transparent here. The first 20 customer meetings I had, there was only one who had one negative sentence in it. All others asked for more, faster, organized, and "Please help us more, Thomas, wherever we go in the world." That's the world of Bilfinger. The world of Bilfinger is, too, that we lack a little bit self-confidence. Why ever? That we are maybe playing from time to time in fields where we should not play because they are not highly profitable or profitable at all or too risky or anything else.
That all came fairly quick, like, yeah, quite a sledgehammer on me in it. And that's the but, I was never alone and we started immediately to work on to look into how to make a strategy. We announced it. We had in July already the so-called Team Twelve, actually more than 12 people, to internal people to look into how to build the future for the company, where to place the company in the future, where to go with all the more than 30,000 people to have our space in the core of the industries. Based on that, yes, we implemented a top management, a functional organization from the top. A Group Executive Management where HR, procurement, products, innovation, the segments, finance, and so on are reflected. 8 people.
When we are in one room, the whole company and all the customers are reflected. I'm a big fan, and thanks God, Matti too, of simple, less management level team approach in the business. That is what we run for. I'm very happy that as the newcomer, the new kid on the block, having a CFO with me with more than 30 years experience in that company. When we look into what we will do with our company is actually nothing really new in total. It's a next step of development. We will put Bilfinger as the number one in industrial services to help and support customers to enhance them to earn more money by improving their efficiency and their sustainability. The market for that is unbelievably big. The competence what we have is huge and gets further developed.
In a first direction, we have to get our operational excellence under control and done. Efficiency program is the first step. We announced it in November, it will be finalized in December, and we will deliver more than 5% EBITA in 2024. Then we go on with standardization, bundling, and so on. The other part which is really new in that strategy is that we place us in the efficiency and sustainability corner. Whatever is not supporting that will exit the company. If we look into the financial targets, we will grow 4%-5% in average per annum for the midterm. Midterm is three years to five years. Why not more specific? In the volatile times, where corona came out of the nothing, where the Ukraine war came out of the nothing.
We had some presidents in North America making some issues too, and so on. It is actually not really fair to go on five years or 10 years specific and to say what will happen. The likelihood is then too low. Here with the midterm, three years to five years, we build a bottom up to show how we achieve that. You can measure us because it will be transparent and it will be over-communicating into the market. Our EBITA margin will increase in 2024 to 5%+ , as we call it, and the years after to 6%-7%. You will see how it will build up.
The cash, which is so important for us, not only as a financial figure, actually as a figure to drive performance in the company, will be with a cash conversion of more than 70% in 2024 and more than 80% in the years to come afterwards. What's the growth? The 4%-5%. We see in the market where we work in a growth rate of around 2% for the next three years to five years. We have as Bilfinger what we call a self-propelled growth. A self-propelled growth is easy to describe. If we start to sell all the profitable products what we have into the existing markets, what we already have, this is self-propelled growth. We have customers demanding that from us.
It is not so that we have to knock on the door. They ask us, "You do that here in that village anywhere in Germany, why are you not doing it in U.S. with that too? Because it would make our life as a customer of you significantly easier." We can do that. Then in the next phase, we can look to go with these clients maybe out of the territory where we are acting in. At first, we deliver that what we said with the more than 5%. On top of it is M&A. One word to M&A. We are interested to strengthen the core of Bilfinger. We are only interested in investing there, which is supporting us in our strategy.
We are not interested to go into new endeavors, not from a geography, not from a technology point of view. We are in the core of the industry, and we can gain more. There's a lot of more business to go, and that is where we will strengthen ourselves. Today, Matti and myself will guide you through the overall strategy. Our three segment heads, Jürgen, Christian, and Thorsten, will go into their segment strategy, and you will recognize it is a sub-strategy of the overall. You will recognize there are KPIs, timelines, clear figures, what we do, where we go, how we achieve that. Why is that the case? We do that you actually help us, and you help us in one thing.
If you look into the KPIs, how we perform, you make actually our organization aware that each and everyone who's working in Bilfinger is contributing to that result. Internal communication, the best is you have a good external communication. That's the transparency. Be aware there are quite a lot of KPIs. There are quite a lot of targets in the different action points, what we call lever. These colleagues will guide you through with a lot of examples what we already do. A lot of that, what we say, we already do. Not everywhere, maybe not that well organized as it should be, but that's a strategy for. Look into the new normal, sit in a chair of a CEO today. Take any chemical company sitting anywhere in Germany as an example, and compare that with 30 years ago.
In between the financial crisis, immigration crisis, Euro crisis, Greek crisis, Mr. Trump, Mr. Xi Jinping. I can go on for hours, which kind of high volatility and impact on the business happens. Overall, it's deglobalization, it's overpopulation, over-regulation, climate change, the education gap, lack of skilled workers. Yeah, it is all over you, and there is no break. You know it yourself. You come home, you open the newspaper or actually your iPad, and you get the same message what you have in the job. This is where our customers are sitting in. What is that asking for? Making your own life easier in the business. With that high volatility, you still get people like you and other investors, maybe myself, asking for a good forecast that you fulfill it. Everything is volatile, but you should hit a number. What are you doing?
You go out and ask for help. Outsourcing, make or buy, partnering up, solution partner. Please, Thomas, take that. Come here to Rotterdam, take that and just do it, and give me each year an improvement and show me that we get more sustainable, so that my overall target for the group, what I have, is fulfilled because I said I will be net zero in 2050. I don't know how to do that without having a good maintenance, turnaround, consultancy, engineering business from you guys. The world for Bilfinger, our world, my world, Matti's world, all the world of the colleagues is this, investments like hell. Governments, the state of Hessen, where that beautiful Frankfurt is in, is having targets for net zero and climate change and would like to invest. Companies are doing it. This is a huge field.
Do you really think it will end in five years? Never, ever. This will go on for decades until we achieve that what we want to achieve. The important part is, yes, it is important to go into new technologies, but it's at the same time more important for the next few years to improve the assets what we have, because all the people are working there and they need income. There is where we have the CO₂ production. We as Bilfinger are sitting in. We sit on the sites. We have the knowledge, the competence, the digital, the people, we have it. Yes, we have to organize a little bit more standardized and more easy to read, not only for you, for customers too. The field is great. Let us look into the market. You judge us on verticals. Why ever?
The 4 verticals, energy, oil and gas are here a lot, actually more outside than internal. Pharma, biopharma, chemicals. This is the addressable market of Bilfinger. In energy, more than EUR 60 billion. In chemicals, more than EUR 30 billion. In biopharma, pharma, more than EUR 20 billion. In oil and gas, more than EUR 20 billion. The growth rates you have on it. We have that what we call others. Others. I will come to that what others means. Others means ketchup, diaper, whatever. You will be actually quite surprised where we all work on. That growth rate of that market is 2% for the next three years to five years, as we calculate as an addressable market, a market where we can act in. In North America, Europe, and Middle East.
Not Australia, not Latin America, not China, not India, because that's not our market. If we look into that special niche in the market, where especially in Germany, the whole world is always talking about it, the green technology. No matter if it's hydrogen, battery plants, biofuels, carbon capture, you have examples on it where we already work on it. This is not new for us. This is absolutely not new for us. We are in, and we are in with project business because there is no maintenance business yet, because the plants are yet to build. If you don't have a plant, there's no maintenance. We are in that business with the project, and that is what we will do in the future too. Why? This is one of the main products what Europe will sell in the world in the decades to come.
That is where we are leading. That is where everyone in the world is talking about. I know definitely what I talk about because my whole career, I did actually in most of the part of the world except Europe. They know that Europe is green, and they know that Europe is on sustainability, and they know to look into Europe to make that happen. That's the reason why a country like India with 1.4 billion people has a green deal with Denmark, with five and a half million people. Nice greetings to my Danish colleagues. Out of that, what is it what we really work on? It's the horizontal market because it doesn't matter which industry. If you have pipes, if you move gas and liquid and it's complex, it's us. If you have high energy costs, it's us.
If you have complex work with thousands of pumps and electricity and a lot of people around where you need education, it's us, it's Bilfinger. That's a horizontal market. 80% of that, what we do in all the industries is similar, which means I can move. We can move our people from one industry to another if one industry goes down. That is not happening because if an industry goes down, they call us to help us to get down with the capacity. These assets are billions of value and no one comes on the idea to say, "I shut them down." You saw that when the gas from Russia was gone and everyone said, "Oh, then we take gas from Northern America." You know that each gas is related with the deposit.
It has a different chemical setup, so you have to treat it differently. Who did they call to make it happen that you can take gas from Northern Africa? Bilfinger. That's exactly where we work. That is the vertical. 80% is equal, similar between the industries. 20% is domain knowledge. If we weld on pipes in nuclear, then you need specialists for nuclear welding. That is what we have, too. If you build biopharma and pharma, you need specialists out of our Salzburg office to make that happen, and they do that very well. That's the domain knowledge. That domain knowledge, we have to be able to offer to each client in North America, Europe, and Middle East. Other companies are doing that for decades over Global Product Centers, and we will do so, too. That's functional organization. That's the efficiency program. Nothing else.
There's a clear plan how we realize it, steps where we deliver, where we have milestones, so that we engage the people and make them accountable and getting the self-confidence up. If you then look on that slide, you see on the left side the frame and service part, which is the recurring low risk, actually quite profitable business, what we really love, and the project business. We will decrease the project business from roughly 1/3 below 20% in the future. We will do projects, as I said, for the green technology and where long-term customers with a potential for maintenance, for engineering consulting work afterwards to help them with their investments. That is where we are really great in it already today. That's our world.
Our world goes from consultancy to help customers to come on site and to tell them how good their site is. Not everyone likes that, what we say, I have to say that. To engineering, modification, maintenance, supported heavily by digital products. There we are on the innovation. We as Bilfinger don't need to develop rocket science. We utilize startups, universities, well-established high-tech companies and combine it to a product what we need for our clients. We have an example with NDT drone-based on the upper floor here. Watch each thing is an own innovation from a company, and we as Bilfinger combine it to offer it to the clients, and they are more than happy about it. We then go on. What do we offer? The value chain you got. We are more than 30,000 people in 27 countries.
More than 90% of our customers are buying more and purchasing more than once from us, which is very nice and very healthy, a stable business. We are organized in three segments, we are roughly 70%. Actually last year, a little bit less, Jürgen. Not 70%, 67% in Europe, the others more or less equally around. Which shows we have huge potential in North America and Middle East because they boom and the colleagues will tell you why they boom and how they boom. If we then look into the customer again, if I would sit on your place, I would think, "Yeah, sounds nice, but is really the market ready for that?" Yeah, the market is ready because customers develop. When I started with my career in the 1980s, last century was that. Sounds very old.
When I started my career in the eighties, what was important in service? You knew the customer, that the customer knew you, and that you had people on site. A little bit technical competence. It was growing in the technical competence. On top of it, digitalization came. Digitalization didn't come 10 years ago. It was already before that. We didn't call it like that. We called it automation. Out of that, we are now in the digital phase. Now with all the volatility, what they have for their production units, wage increases, resource increase, energy up and down like a roller coaster. They have to have a product which is always priced the same, and if possible, competitive to the Chinese and Indians and who else. That is efficiency. They run for improved efficiency.
Make my back line stable and each year an improvement in cost. That would be great. The next thing is, with the EU Taxonomy and the whole world regarding the climate change, is the sustainability. They all have net zero targets. All. How to achieve them? The OEM suppliers, the big equipment, where I worked before quite a long while, they make roughly 60% of the sustainability on the site. Who is taking care of the other 40%? Who is doing that? The thousands of small business here and there, highly complex. Not high tech everywhere, but highly complex. We as Bilfinger, we can go out and say, "Come to us. If you buy one or two, you can get the full package from us." When you look to the right side, that is what we do with our company.
We are today working in an efficient, little bit sustainable, sustainability-related area, as you see on the YX. On the right X, on the XX, you see single trade. What does it mean? Single trade means if we compete with a mom and pop shop with all respect in scaffolding. Of course, they are cheaper. Of course, they are sitting around, they have no headquarter, they have no stock market, they have no internal, external communication. Very often, the CEO is the papa and the mama is the CFO. That's the thing. All respect, great business, great people. If you would like to work on efficiency and sustainability, this is not enough. This is not enough to get really a step ahead. For that, you need to combine the business. You have to make, in that case, ISP. Why?
You get the advantages regarding sustainability and efficiency. If we can build scaffolding and immediately putting the insulation in, we can be up to two months earlier in the energy reduction with that system what we have than anyone else. two months of 2% less energy cost on a big chemical plant, I can tell you it's a double-digit million euro figure. We are not getting a double-digit million euro figure paid for. That's a little bit of pity. That's our part where we go in. High profit, high entry barrier. Not a lot can do that. If you play in that area, you have hundreds of competitors. You know if you have hundreds of competitors, your profit margin is low. We go here and others can follow us, and there we are maybe a handful doing that today, partly.
We have in our area the best offering for it already. What I'm talking here about is actually that we look into that what we have as single trade, scaffolding or insulation or painting or consultancy or, or. We have to combine it into an end, and at the end as a together. That is the multi-trade. Then the solution partner, where we have already today clients coming to us and saying, "I don't want to look into that. I really, I don't know how to deal with it. You take it. We go there, you just take it." The only thing what we have as customized each year, you prove that you go down in the cost. We make open book policy. We say, whatever cost we have, how much money we earn, we can make open and transparent, no problem.
That we are because we sit in the same boat. If you have a higher profit, I get more money. If you don't have a higher profit, we work both on it to make it happen that I get more money. That's the model. Are all the customers asking for that? Not today. When they come to the net zero target set from a timing, close to it and seeing, "Oh, that we are very far away from it," then latest, we are really top in it. We do it already today. Solution partners, we have quite a lot of customers doing that. Multi-trade, we have a lot who are doing that. Single trade, of course. If someone buys from us a single trade, one product only, they know that we know the other products.
They know if they make a mistake, we will tell them, "I would not do it like that. You should do it like this and that. We can help you." That's the competence, and it's not for free. We look into our business model, our business model is built that we enable customers to earn more money. That's the business model. That is the vision what we have, to be the number one. The number one is not the most beautiful, intelligent, or the biggest in revenue. It's the one where the customer says they are the best competent company in efficiency and sustainability improvement, and that is where you earn the most money.
With our step of 6%-7%, we are in the upper quartile, the upper 20% in that sector in North America, Europe, and Middle East from a profitability. We then go into how to do that, because that was how to do it. In a strategy, it is important that you have clear action points, transparent and with clear targets set on time, on where you have to look, who is doing it, when they are doing it, and so on. We call that strategic levers, and we divide them into three pieces. Efficiency program. In that efficiency program, functional organization. The second is operational excellence, standardization, bundling. The third one is positioning.
As I said at the beginning, when we go into markets like North America, where we are not offering a lot of the great products what we already do with the same clients in Europe, very profitable. That's market expansion on the product offering. This is self-propelled in the growth. When we look through these different strategic levers, you will see them several times today. Of course, because what we set for the group, the segment managers choose and pick what they need to make their segment into that financial area, what we demand from them and what they are able to deliver. We track that on. What is it? I take here in the efficiency program, the functional organization, which will be done and implemented up to the end of this year. It will impact the profitability. Timeline is 12 months. You can judge us on it.
Competence development, unbelievable important. We have a lack of skilled labor. They talk about schools, and I don't know what they all talk about. We need to educate our own people more. Why? Because they can do it. They are intelligent, and they are willing to do so. It makes us more competitive, more competent. We are significant better in efficiency and sustainability improvement, makes us more attract or more attraction towards all any other peers. With that competence in the value chain what we have, great. We move with that into the position number one. Procurement. In the new sustainability world, in the Scope 3, you look to your clients and you look to the back, to the ones who supply to you.
You know, when we look, I'll come later to that with how much we cover of the CO2 with our own company, because that's very tiny. If we then look into competence in itself, because that's always an important part, we will invest more than 0.5% of the revenue each year onwards. It's calculated into the figures what we presented as financial targets midterm and for 2024. On top of that, what we already do. Why? Because it increase our competence. It makes us more attractive. It makes actually more fun with our own people when you see that they grow and they want to have a career, they want to learn. This is not white collar only. This is actually for Bilfinger more on the blue collar side. We have great developments, and others would like to have it too.
It makes for younger people really fun if you take a German welder and send him to U.K. for education and then on a plant in the Netherlands to work on. Bilfinger can do that. We can offer that. You see here our colleagues on the roping. This is highly attractive for young people because if they get our education, they actually can go, "No, I don't want to have you in the Himalaya," but the Alps would be actually quite nice. That is what we can do. This is competitive advantage to attract good young people. Being willing to go out to the industry and to help to make sustainability and efficiency happen. Not sitting in on a sofa and having nice speeches. Really going out and doing it each day, each second, each minute. We can do that.
Of course, we as an employer of choice, if we are placed there, this is a hell of a good branding and makes us, towards our clients, unbelievable attractive. If we then look into the operational excellence, the next package of levers, there we have standardization and bundling. Standardization is not only product standardization. I'm an absolute fan of standardization. You would not imagine what I standardized in my own life. Standardization is fantastic. It means that you focus on that what is important and not to reinvent a thing what already exists three times, four times a day. You take that module, and you put modules together, and that is what you work with. As an example, in shared service, as you mentioned it, Matti.
If we have shared service, they all work the same, because if you then have a labor shortage in shared service location A, I can take people from B and putting them in. That's it. That's standardization. Standardization gives you, as an employee, free time to focus on that what is most important, the customer and to generate profit. You don't need to reinvent a product. They are already standardized. Service products are definitely capable to get standardized. Our Team Twelve proved it and worked that fantastically through in the last six months. De-risking. We want to be in a business which is low in risk. We don't want to go into a business where we don't know what comes out, and then at the end, we don't have any business afterwards and only paying money for it. This is not what we want. De-risking.
Matti will talk more about it. Digital and innovation. I said it before, we combine high tech from others into a product for our clients. As we have it with the entity, the drone, and the people upstairs, what you can watch. That is, for us, innovation. We don't have an R&D department. We look what is needed. We call partners in. Startups, universities, big technology companies, and then we take the best of them, combine it, and make a product out of it. That is competitive. That is highly competitive in predictive maintenance. To help customers, to tell them months before a disaster happens, that they can still avoid it if they let us on the site and doing the right work. If we then go to positioning. Positioning for us has three elements. Market expansion.
I talked about that we sell all the products what we have in all existing entities. That alone is a hell of a good self-propelled growth. As a next step in that market expansion, we would like to go with our clients when they go into what we call adjacent market. If we have a German chemical company. No, I take now biopharma. A German biopharma company, and they would like to do something in France, why are we not going? Come on, it's only a virtual border. I'm from région de la Sarre, I'm half French. Not a problem to go over and to make the business. We will do that when we are done with the efficiency program, operational excellence, and getting all our products in existing countries sold, then we go into the next step. That is in the three years-five-year scope. Sustainability partner.
In the future, you will see, in 10 years, you will see that clients are actually not asking for, "I need scaffolding, insulation or anything." They will ask, "I have that CO2 tonnage equivalent, and you have to help me to get that down, because otherwise I pay tax like hell." There are industries like cement. If the EU CO2 cost is coming through with EUR 130, they will have a problem to have any profit left if they are not dramatically improving their CO2 setup. That is not in cement, but in all industries. We can help them. We can go in and making their life simpler and showing them an improvement track record over years by utilizing our competence, our products. We can measure it in CO2.
You will see very quick, we already do it partly, not everywhere, not everywhere. On each quotation, what we send is a sustainability part. If the client wants it or not, because they will grow into it. When we say, "We do that consultancy, it will save you the following energy cost." That means in your energy mix, that reduction in CO₂ tonnage. We can say that money per ton, what you pay to us, is your reduction in CO₂. With that, they will go out and getting a better rating towards their clients and towards their employees and towards their societies where they have the plants in it. We as Bilfinger, we can do it already today.
The last thing is, if you go out and tell people how to do better in efficiency and sustainability, I think it's clear that you have to be on your own efficient and sustainable. No one would go to a dentist having only black teeth. Minimum, not myself. That's exactly. You can smile about it, but that's the truth. Customers look into that, how your setup is. If you tell a client, "I'm offering you efficiency," and then he has to call 20 people to get one answer, do you really think they believe us? Not a second. Internal efficiency is unbelievably important because you create an environment of efficiency and sustainability, what you then put into the business. What does it mean for us?
We committed to the SBTi, science-based target, the commitment to the 1.7 degrees Celsius, we work on it. No matter what people say, it doesn't matter if we achieve it or not, we have to work on it with everything what we have. We have to earn money on it, otherwise it will not fly. The second thing is we will have a full GHG reporting in 2025. For 2030, carbon neutral, for 2050, done, net zero. You will see most likely these time targets will change in getting shorter. Over the time you develop and you see what you can do more as we see it with our clients. On the top of the page, you see four of the 17 sustainability development goals.
As you may know, I come out, I was my whole lifetime in chemical construction and mining. The former company I worked was mainly in mining, 70%, 80%. I was actually nominated in 2021 as one of the sustainability managers of the year in the most green country in Europe, Denmark. How? Because the same what we do here, we focus on some areas of the sustainability. If you focus on everything, you don't focus at all. We can contribute and making a real change in four, seven, eight, and nine. Of course, we do in other sustainability goals a lot too, but this is our focus package. One part of it is what you see on the right side.
The EU taxonomy, which is not that easy to understand, to make it nicely, is not covering a big part of the industry, surprisingly, and absolutely more or less, I think, less than 0.1% of industrial services when we are actually on all the industry and all sides. That will not help us to get transparency to you and to drive the performance and development internally. We classify, as you know it, in A, B, C, D. Where do you know that from in the private life? Refrigerators, heaters, whatever. It's actually fairly simple classification, and we use that too. We have today less than 10%, actually around 5% of the business, which is not showing an efficiency or sustainability improvement. That we will exit. It's not about selling big companies or so.
It's a business down here, not doing that business there, labor lease not there, and so on. We have roughly three-quarters of the business in the C class. C class shows for the client clear improvement in efficiency. It's quite a bridge to build to show what really the sustainability is. We will do that. If we do, coming back to my beloved scaffolding and painting and insulation, if we make a 2% energy reduction, we actually can calculate how much tonnage of CO₂ we save for the client. That is then the class B. The class A is the green technology. When we work on hydrogen, carbon capture, biofuels, not LNG. Not LNG.
In that area, we invest a lot by doing more and more work because we have a lot of competence, we will move Bilfinger in that picture with that business, what you see with 77% in 2021 and 73% in 2022 towards the A and B class. The future Bilfinger will be in A and B. That's where we will position the company in it too. You see that we already did in 2022 quite an improvement in that area. Nuclear, for us, is a green technology, to make that clear because we are in Germany. Out of that is the overall what we do with the company. To set it up a little bit again, we have two main directions, efficiency program, operational excellence, and the new positioning into the efficiency and sustainability.
That's the Bilfinger, what you will see in the future. With that, I give to Matti, our CEO.
Yes. Okay. Thank you, Thomas. Let's take a breather.
You.
Global warming, huh? Good. How does that, what Thomas explained to you, translate into the financials? A brief recap. Growth rates, what we expect in the midterm, 4%-5% revenue growth over the next few years. EBITA margin, 5%+ in 2024 and midterm, 6%-7%. Cash conversion increase 70% 2024 and then 80% as we measure cash conversion, free cash flow divided by EBITA. Looking at the starting point, if I exclude 2020 as sort of the COVID year, our operating platform is about 3% EBITA. Are we happy with that? Certainly not. If I look at the competencies, at the reputation, at our people, client relationships, and so forth, 3% is not where we should be operating.
There's significant profitability potential in what Thomas Schulz showed you in terms of better efficiency, operational excellence positioning. This is how we see that we can develop and improve our EBITDA margin. That's our journey for EBITDA progression. The efficiency program will deliver 1 percentage point to the bottom line by the end of 2024. Program initiated this year, implemented 2023, full run rate improvement in 2024, one percentage point. Operational excellence, midterm, 1 percentage points to 2 percentage points. Again, this is something that is on us, in our control. That is us to become better and more profitable. Positioning. Another percentage point in the midterm. A little bit more flavor on the details. Standardizing core functions. You know, creating a functional organization. Shifting transactional tasks to shared service centers. Nothing new. Something that's already at work in Bilfinger.
There is more to be had, and I come to this in a moment. Optimizing our IT. We've spent a lot of money in the last few years, which was one of the reasons for adjustments in the past. We have built the foundation for a much more efficient and effective IT. This is something we need to deliver on. Procurement. We have instituted category management, there's more to be done to drive the maturity level up in supply chain. Make or buy. What do we do ourselves? What are we buying? For example, in IT, we are still performing low-level basic services ourselves. Nobody does this out there. Where you are all coming from, standard is you have a service provider. That is what we're looking at to implement in Bilfinger. Have we made progress in the past on SG&A?
Sure, we have. From 8% in 2019 pre-COVID, we're at 7.1%. 7% in 2022. That should improve to 6%. Midterm, the expectation is that it's less than 6%. That would put us into the upper quartile of our peers. Why is the efficiency program so important? If you look to the left-hand side, we still have quite a number of, I call them operational silos. Do we have HR in each of the legal entities? Yes, we do. Is HR performed in a standardized similar way across all our operations? Not yet. That is where we are working on with the efficiency program to come to a situation where a function, an administrative function is done the same way no matter where you are in Bilfinger. Standardization.
You can then move people from place to place. They still find, okay, here is Bilfinger. I know what to do. I know where to find. shared services. We do have shared services. Quite a professional shared service center in Germany in two locations. We have similar organizations in other countries. Are they working the same way as the one in Germany? No, not yet. Okay? Let's get it standardized. Make sure that we have shared services across all our operations. Support them so they can focus on what's important for them. Sell and execute. Operational excellence. Very close to my heart, having been in the company for a long time. We can do better. Number one, de-risking our contract portfolio.
Right now, as you have seen on the numbers for 2022, the revenue share between framework contracts and project contracts is about 2/3 to 1/3. There is so much more work to be had in frame and service contracts that we can allow ourselves to rebalance our portfolio, de-risk the portfolio, make it more visible, easier to predict when we go to a percentage that's more in the 80 area -20 area. Why is that important? Look at the frame contracts. They have an average tenure of between three years and 10 years. A project has a duration of six months, 12 months, 15 months. You need to constantly go out and bid in competition. That's different on the framework contracts. We have a repeat rate of 90% plus.
When we are on an installation on a site and we are the incumbent contractor and the contract term comes to an end. In more than 90% of the time, we get the renewal, the renegotiation, the extension. You can call it what you want. It's repeat business year after year after year. The longest tenure with one client is 80 years for Bilfinger. Jürgen will show you later on about the relationship that is 50+ years on and on and on. Standardization. Uniform product definition drives productivity. That's not a secret. That is what everybody does in a production environment, huh? Why not us? We can do this as well. When we standardize and when we bundle, huh, we have instances where we work on the same site for the same client with three different services and three different contracts and three different teams.
Does that sound efficient? I don't think so. Bundling the service under one contract reduces interfaces for ourselves, for the client, for everybody else. Gives us profitability potential. Digitalization in processes internally drives performance. We do use quite a bit of robotic process automation. Simple things, very simple things. In Norway, which is a little more advanced than Germany on digitalization.
A little.
A little more, yeah. You have the right, and in future, the obligation, to send all your invoices in digital format. Right? How do we do this? How were we doing this in the past? Well, you produce your invoice in SAP, you print it out, or you make a PDF, and somebody sends an email. No more. This is routine, mundane task. It's boring. We have a bot working. Once the invoice is created in the system, the bot makes sure the invoice gets to the client. Yeah? Faster time, helps you on working capital management, helps you on efficiency, and so forth. A little bit more flavor on contract selection and execution. This is the heart of our business. We're a contractor, we are working on contracts. Opportunity selection, and I think a lot of this has been talked about already, huh?
We have set defined risk criteria. What are we willing to accept and where are we not willing to go? This becomes very important when you're tendering, when you're negotiating, when you're sort of out there hunting, huh? Trying to win the new work, trying to win a new contract, trying to convince the client of our ability to help them with efficiency and sustainability. Yeah. Let's make no mistake, we're in competition. When you tender, when you negotiate, you must remain steadfast within your risk corridor. That's extremely important. It is being tightly controlled within Bilfinger. For sort of the finance guy, the most beautiful contracts exceed the margin that we plan and the cash that we plan. It's not the nicest picture on the marketing brochure. Delivery capabilities. This is about, you know, when we enter long-term relationships, it's almost about a marriage, huh?
Do the capabilities of both partners fit together? We know what we can deliver. We know what we can do. We need to ensure that the client understands what we can deliver, and we understand what the client can deliver. If you look at large construction projects, that is where it oftentimes fails. You get into long-winded tail risk discussion about, you know, who is at fault and so forth. Typically, the contractor is in a weaker position. Make sure that when you get together, you know each other. The last one is probably more speaking to myself and our organization. KPIs, performance measurement, performance measurement, performance measurement. It is key to success when it comes to contract selection and execution. Market positioning.
We're talking about, you know, in the first place, first part of the journey, we're talking about scale effects. As Thomas explained, we're in a location, we're selling certain services to the client. We have the ability to offer the client more services. Do we need a new organization there? No, we don't. We have one. Do we need new people there? No, we don't, because we have people there. That will help us add another percentage point. If we look at the sustainability partner aspect of the strategy. This will change our product mix. We will have a higher share of planning, project management, engineering type resources that we're selling within our contracts. That gives us the opportunity to command more and better prices. Hence, more money to the bottom line. As we have more responsibility, we have better control over our workforce on site.
It's very expensive if you have 100 people or 200 people on the ground, and they are standing idle. If we are reactive, waiting for the client to tell us what to do, that tends to happen. Are we getting paid for this? No. Going forward, we have more control over this, and obviously on being sustainable ourselves, we look at cost savings. You have seen the reduction in CO₂. We will change the energy mix. We have put in place and are putting in place solar panels to generate electricity on locations that we have. That will also help add to the bottom line. Now, even more important, cash. Cash conversion, which is an efficiency measure, as you well know, on how you utilize your working capital. We look at making improvements there.
Main driver for cash generation will be profitability, obviously. Working capital management is another part of it. Have we made improvements? Yes, we did. We refer to NTA, which is net trade assets, yeah. Others refer to trade working capital. Yeah, these are terms that you can use interchangeably. We've made another good progress in 2022, where the DSO reduced from 67 days to 62 days. That's the year-end view. I'm of the opinion we need to look at average because that is when you bring your working capital down. Here we're looking at the average NTA as a percentage of revenue. We've made progress there from 14.5% to 12%. There is more improvement to be had through the levers that we talked about.
De-risking contract portfolio that enforces a faster cash generation. It doesn't take months, and sometimes years to negotiate the final settlement and the final payment with the client. Standardization of our offering or the positioning, all of this will optimize our billing process. In Germany, in 2022, we have sent invoices with more than 100,000 individual billing items. That's a huge administrative effort. Selling bundled services will reduce this substantially. Makes it a lot easier for the client to check the invoice, sign it off, approve it, and move the money into Bilfinger's bank account and not the client's bank account. As a summary, we're looking at revenue growth continuously. We're looking at EBITA progression. We're looking at cash conversion. All of this will enable us to have a net profit that allows us to continuously grow our dividend.
You have seen the proposal for 2022, EUR 1.30 per share, which is up from EUR 1 as the floor, showing our confidence in our ability to deliver what we have and are showing you today. investment grade rating has been extremely important to Bilfinger for a number of years. We're not giving up on that goal. investment grade rating is important and remains important to us. It forms an important part of our financial policy. Continuously growing dividend, funding organic growth, funding M&A, if and where it makes sense to support the implementation and delivery of the strategy. We spent EUR 100 million in 2022 on a share buyback program. Are we going to do this year after year? No. Share buyback is a tool in the toolbox when you think about creating total shareholder return.
If and when it's appropriate, that's something that we will address and communicate. With that, I think I turn it back to Thomas.
Thank you, Matti. As Matti laid out, these are our financial targets, 2024 and 2025-2027. You will see after the lunch break, will you please mingle with the technical people upstairs. I don't know if it's allowed, but if some would like to rope a little bit.
No, you need three days introduction. If somebody has time for three days.
Now to be serious.
Yeah.
I hope you see that this strategy is built up from the bottom, clearly over action plans, clearly over transparency, clearly over KPIs, over timeline. As I said before, it is important that we are that transparent and communicative on it because your comments each quarter and each time we meet, how far we are, we can report on it, you can track us on it, and it will drive our internal performance too. Because with that, we will lift up the accountability and all our colleagues will see which great job they do each day to fulfill these targets. If you have only one target, like return on capital employed, it's fairly difficult to explain a colleague out of the blue collar area, which kind of impact they have on the return on capital employed, which is reported once per year. That's not working.
That drives accountability, and that puts us with self-confidence into the market where we have a big competence and customer relation. All opportunities to be in the core of all the industries. No matter if we produce ketchup, which is nothing else, with a lot of pipelines, where a liquid, which is red, getting pumped through with some air in it. If we produce raw material for diapers, which is a liquid, where you have pieces of paper or wood in it.
Pulp.
Pipes.
Pulp.
Pulp and paper, as you maybe know.
Mm.
Or if you go into vaccine production and little pills and, yeah, vegan cheese, what we will hear today about what that means to replace cows on the grass field. That is where Bilfinger is involved too. No matter that we smile a little bit when we talk, we are unbelievably proud of our people doing that. We are unbelievably proud that we are in the core, and that will drive motivation and our self-confidence to achieve that, what we have here. Our strategy to move the company into that right upper corner will happen. That's a given. It will happen that we make the operational excellence, and it will happen that we position us there.
The mood and the tailwind, what we have in the organization, is significant bigger than we see at the moment, the market momentum for us in the growth and that what we can do.
I think we're prepared to open up for questions again. Once again, for those watching us via stream, please use the chat window and I will read it out loud. For here in the room, please give me a hand sign and I can direct the question to you. First question comes from Michael Kuhn. Press the button.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. Michael Kuhn, Deutsche Bank. Maybe on cash return to shareholders quickly. I think you sent a confident message with the dividend proposal today. You mentioned share buybacks as one tool in the toolbox, but not something happening every year. Have you defined for yourself some levels of excess cash where you would think about a share buyback or, let's say, what would trigger a share buyback going forward?
Hmm. Good question.
The question is if you let it out.
Yeah. No. Did we define specific triggers? No, we didn't. I think we need to look at how we develop, how the market is going. Thomas was talking about the volatility that we're all living in. What you saw on the second last slide is a priority list, huh? Where we look at growing the dividend continuously, funding our organic growth, funding M&A if and when appropriate, and as an additional option to look at share buyback. We will have to define sort of the criteria for this. That is not something we have gone through specifically.
Okay. Next question comes from Christoph Dolleschal.
Hi. Actually, three questions, if I may, starting with the project business, which you want to have below 20% in 2026, 2027. Does that, first of all, mean no more projects within E&M? Because I just did the quick math, so it either means no more projects within E&M, or shrinking the technologies business. The question, the second one is related to that, because project business, I think, is, if I also understand you correctly, one of the... Well, actually, not your driver, but one of the industry drivers right now, because obviously there is a huge gap or a lack of, energy transition that has happened in Europe, why not participate in that? It's rather timing as of when do you wanna get there. The third one is an M&A-related target, E&T.
I mean, I know it has been on the list to be sold for quite some time. The numbers actually didn't look that bad now. Is there probably a revision of plans for the business? South Africa, right?
Yeah. Let's start with the project below 20%. You will actually see exactly how AM Europe is doing on project business technology and, of course, AM International. That is, of course, clear. It's very important. We are not exiting project business. We will actually enforce to make more projects in the green technology, and we will do their projects with long-term customers where we have a good chance and an opportunity to go into maintenance and so on and turn around later on. Only to do projects for the sake of projects for single client coming only one time in 30 years, if at all, with a high risk is not project business. It's actually a way to let profit go out of the window, and we will not do that. We have very competent people. They will focus on that where we will develop.
When you take it like this, then the reason why the growth rates are not so high is because we decrease this non-profitable, high risk, old-fashioned construction-related project business. If you see that new project business, that grows quite a lot. We have in the next 3-5 years, a decrease in the project, old project business. That gives that figure with the 20%. Second, the how to participate. Not every project which is built from a supplier like EPC or so, and we are with them, is then for us a project. If we go in and sell modular, you see that actually upstairs, where we built a very modular plant very quick. The whole system, everything is from us. This is not EPC. This is not for us a project. It's a product, how we do it.
It's a product, how we do it. The profitability is higher, and the risk is not there. We don't take any process guarantees of something what we can't influence. That is the de-risking part in on one side. On the other side, it's the growth to go into that green technology. That's the reason why, as I said, I'm not so sure if I said it here on the stage, if a country like Austria is looking into to transfer the gas pipeline network into a hydrogen pipeline network, we are on. It's us, Bilfinger, working on it. We would not call that a project. It's actually a thing what we work with. The last one is actually your business, Jürgen.
Yeah, my business, yes. My most favorite business, South Africa. Now the plan to divest has been in place for a number of years. It's quite difficult to divest in a country where nobody wants to invest, you know. Very tough to find international investors. There's interest, but it does take time. South Africa is not the fastest country in the world. Am I confident that we can get a deal done in 2023? I'm not so sure, but we're working on it. Yes, the business has performed quite well in 2022 on the back of a new contract with our largest client. That contract is for 4 years. Are we in a rush to exit? No, we're not. The business is making money, real good money.
From that point of view, we can take our time to find the right successor to Bilfinger as the owner. By the way, South Africa is the last business in E&T to be divested. We sold another business at the end of 2022.
Is there another question in the room? Next one from Mr. Löwe, SEB.
Maybe one question. You mentioned the very strong repeat rate of 90%. Can you shed some light how this rate has developed over time? You could also have the question, should you be a bit tougher on the price negotiation with these clients and lower this repeat rate a little bit without harming long-term relationships?
You should come to my management and sales meetings to make exactly that. I am completely of your opinion. We should be tougher on the pricing. That's clear. Why? Because we add a very good value. That the client understands that. The company who provides that need a clear strategy communicated towards the customer and your own people. That is what we do exactly today. Out of a good work over the last more than half a year out of the own organization. If you don't have that confidence when you go out to clients, it's very difficult to argue why you should get more money. We will enable our organization to have that backbone back and going with a strong face and look out and asking for more money because we will get it. What was the second part of the question?
Beside that we have to make a sales meeting where he is invited.
Yeah. If the repeat rate.
Yeah. I know.
how that has developed over time. It has been high. Traditionally, it has been a high rate.
Mm-hmm.
When you're on the site, when you're the incumbent for a type of service or various services, it's very hard to get thrown off the site unless you really fail the expectation of the client. You know? Because we acquire domain knowledge. You know, in many instances, we know more about the plant and the production than the client himself or herself.
Yeah.
Hence, it is in the interest not only from us but also for the client to have a high repeat rate.
Mm-hmm.
Whatever is true on the pricing is true. You know?
Okay. Next question, Gregor Kuglitsch, UBS.
Thank you. Got a few, actually. I mean, maybe one sort of maybe big picture one. It all, it obviously all sounds great from a numbers perspective, but in your view, what could go wrong? It's the big picture one. Maybe two technical ones after, but I'll give you the opportunity to answer that one first, maybe.
Yeah, I can take that first. What can go wrong? When we look into, we don't see that the market really is the big issue. We could have a lower growth rate if the market growth would go down to zero. Then it's for each and every one, then I think you will look to other things too than only building, huh? The self-propelled growth is a, is a clear thing what we can do. What can go wrong? If we don't execute, if we don't do that what we promise, and you can judge us on it. That was our special wish. Matti and myself, they have a KPI list. They have a clear, what we call lever, strategic lever list, which is communicated to you that you can check us. They deliver on that what they promise.
Each capital market, we will come back and show you the levers, how far are we? Internally, every segment, Group function too, takes the levers, what they need to achieve, and we can track them. The summing up of all the levers in the organization actually gives the Group levers. That makes it simple to communicate, simple to track, and very important. I come out of a culture of motivation, not penalty. We do good things, and if you motivate people to go on good things, you get a great result. That's actually the meaning behind that, too. It's transparent, and if we perform, it gets highlighted. It's in our hands. The strategy is purely in our hands.
The positioning, when we do it and so on, of course, if we get another war where we have sanctions and so on, come on, then everyone is limited. What we see, it's in our hands.
Looking quickly, this is a technical question on the free cash flow conversion. I wonder, what's the gap? Why is it not 100? You do give yourself the tailwind, I think of approximately EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million, because you're dividing EBITDA divided by sort of pre-lease cash, right?
Yeah.
It's a pre-lease cash number.
Free cash flow divided by-
Yeah, it's before leases, right?
Yeah.
There's a bit of tailwind there. The fundamental question is, what's the leakage? Is it CapEx investment? Do you have to invest a lot to get there? Is it working capital investment or is it something else? Maybe tax, I don't know. You tell me.
Yeah.
The second question is maybe a simple one, but I guess we can kinda calculate. If you actually break down the business today into OpEx and CapEx, what's the CapEx part, the third of the revenues today making, right? What's it supposed to make? I know that's not how you report it, but I'm sure you know. Because it seems to me that's the delta, right? That your CapEx business making no money today, and you wanna shrink it and make it, I don't know, a profitable business. That's actually a big tell. Can you just tell us what's the actual margin on the third of the revenue, roughly speaking, that's CapEx related or project-based? Therefore the other two-thirds.
You start with the first part.
On the cash conversion, yeah, there are some items between free cash flow and EBITDA that don't allow us to go to 100%. It really depends on what level you are working on, and you have the growth that needs to be funded. It's, that's that. OpEx versus CapEx business breakdown, the two-thirds and one-third is that.
Yeah, I can take that.
Hmm? Hmm?
What the profitability is on the two buckets.
Actually, the we don't report like that. What we can say is, and that is what you see, especially in E&M International, which was not break even. We were getting close to it, but we were not break even. Of course, we have old style projects, what we will exit. They are not positive on the bottom line at all. You can't generalize projects as not profitable and recurring business is the only profit maker. That's not the case. You don't need a lot in some projects regarding failure and so on, to have a negative result, which has quite an impact. That business is all old style, actually should have leaving the company years ago. Business what we still have or had, it's gone, and impacting our result.
What you will see in the future is that the project business will be in the same profit range as the other business. Where is that coming from? At first, the green technology is a new technology. For the customers, it's very important to get highly competent companies in to build it. Otherwise, it's a failure in their first pilot plant, big setup, and so on. That is well paid. That is well paid. The second part is to go with our long-term customers. We have that open book policy where we can tell customers, we do that for you. This is what it will cost us. This is the amount of money what we need. Otherwise, we can't set it up properly for you.
From that point of view, you will see, as then Thorsten says in the technology segment, how the profitability for that segment will be.
Okay. The next question comes from outside and then you, Greg. The next one is from John Campbell, Bank of America. There are two questions. I start with the first one. Please, could you provide an update on U.K. Hinkley Point C project and nuclear projects more generally?
Would you like to take that?
Hinkley Point? Hinkley Point.
No, regarding the payment. Can you repeat the question?
Yeah. Hinkley Point. update on Hinkley Point C.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. U.K.
Yeah, that.
Nuclear generally.
Yes. That is easy to explain. It's actually quite public how HPC, the Hinkley Point company, is reporting. We are exactly in the same loop as they are. We work full time on it. It is from our point of view, I was several times there, it's a fantastic site, well managed by the British and the French colleagues. Top work from EDF. It goes as they announced it. There was a delay in it, what they announced mid of last year. Of course, that is what we then enjoy and going forward, and that actually moves things only from a timeline ahead. Regarding nuclear business in general.
The real interesting part for us is no matter that I'm quite vocal or we are quite vocal that nuclear is green and we should have nuclear power out of several reasons, we actually earn money on both sides, if we build something and if we demobilize. Actually, we actually earn more money on it, and we had a fantastic good year, actually, in nuclear. We quite increased that business because when there is waste handling issues, like with us, take that, of course, a mine site, always beautiful to go underground. There are a lot of old barrels. We have to recover them. It's Bilfinger doing that.
Up to the level that we built a plant to clean, light wasted nuclear wasted pipes so that you can bring them back into, yeah, steel mill or anywhere else and utilizing the raw material further on. We are actually in all areas of the nuclear business. Why is it important for us? It is important because we see all over the world, Japan included too, India, China, US, Poland, Belgium is expanding, Sweden, Finland, UK, France, wherever you look, only not Germany, the nuclear business going ahead. We have the expertise and we have the willingness to participate. It's in the core of that, what we can deal with, and customers like it that we are with them.
The numbers, the Hinkley Point revenues have grown to EUR 60 million in 2022, and we anticipate further growth in the years to come on that. Second question from John. E&M International was guided to achieve at least break even in 2022. What are the reasons for this miss?
Yeah. The miss is not that big, no matter that it's a miss. We didn't like it. Christian will come to it in the presentation for the segment. Of course, what hurt us were old type of projects, what we definitely will exit. It's part of the strategy.
Okay. Next question. Craig, I think it was you.
Yes. Thank you. Yeah, just a technical follow-up question from my side, following up on Gregor's questions earlier on free cash flow. I noticed this morning also when you were giving your free cash flow targets, you also mentioned the CapEx will now be normalizing. If you could just follow up and give us an indication of what you're looking for in terms of normalized CapEx going forward. Thank you.
2022, the CapEx into fixed assets was around EUR 50 some million.
Fifty-two.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Without deducting for the sale of real estate, we see a number in the EUR 70 million-EUR 75 million range as our normal CapEx levels.
It will rather approach the 1.5% of sales again.
Yep.
Okay. Are there other questions in the room? Michael Kuhn.
Yeah, maybe one more on inorganic growth and M&A. You said, I think you won't go into new endeavors, but still you were talking about adjacent markets. Could you maybe line up where you think you would need some extra competencies or where do you see the biggest potential for M&A over the upcoming years?
Yeah. At first, when we talk about M&A, the very important is we are not driven to run now one M&A after the other, to make that clear. It's what we call scale deals, not scope deals. That is what we look for. We have labor shortage in some areas. Of course, M&A is an opportunity to cover that up fairly quickly. What's the advantage of it? You get competent people in. We don't want to have headquarters, administrative functions. We have that on our own. You can bolt them on no matter if you talk about 50 people, 100 people, 500 people, doesn't matter. You just implement them in your system. They are from day one Bilfinger and nothing else. That's a typical acquisition we look for.
The market expansion, which what we call the second step in market expansion to go into adjacent countries. We go there where customers of us are already in. You would be actually surprised how often we get the request from long-term customers to go with us into a country where we are not represented today, and we can't follow them, and we are reluctant to go there. When you go into a country with industrial service, you have to recruit hundreds of people in, you have to educate them, you have to build up a setup, you have to make a legal entity, and all these things. That is what we can do if we have our house in order.
What we said to make the operational excellence and the easy step in the self-propelled growth, which is selling all the products, what we have today in all the areas where we are already today. when you look into, you will hear that from, especially from Christian and from Thorsten too, and from Jürgen in Europe too. We have areas around us with huge growth. we have areas in our portfolio today, like North America, which is booming. Go to U.S. For the ones who were in China, as I was actually living there in the 2000s. Wherever you went, everywhere, construction places, big cranes and so on. Go to U.S., it looks like China plus McDonald. It is fantastic. It's a hell of a good market. That bill, what Biden initiated, gives a very good push.
We see, of course, the concerns of the industry in Europe, especially in Germany, looking around where to invest, where to go with the capacity of the future. We want to be with our clients. They trust us, and they are focused on how to set up a plant, how to get the equipment. Everything else, please, Thomas, call your people and do it.
All right. I think it's perfect timing for lunch.
Already.
Yeah. You're happily invited to join us for the lunch buffet, which will be placed, in five minutes, upstairs. There will be also, again, the exhibition's open for you. Please use the colleagues, talk to them, let explain the work we do. After the lunch break, at 1:00 P.M. sharp, we will continue. This is explicitly important also for you in the stream. Please follow us for the segments head again at 1:00 P.M. CET.
Yeah.
2:00 P.M.
Oh, sorry, that was UK time. 2:00 P.M. CET, we will be back.
Only 10 minutes done. We're not that efficient.
No. Not yet.
If the Group Executive Management could stand up, please. Because we already stand. Please stand up. That's the GEM. They are here to answer all your questions, whatever you have. Not football. That's, we have no alliance there, I can tell you that. They are around too, the same as the colleagues as Bettina said. Thanks a lot and bon appétit.
See you upstairs.
Welcome back from lunch. Now we go more into the details. Actually, we go into the segments. In the segments you will see the market, what we do today, what we will do tomorrow, and which kind of strategic levers we will trigger to achieve that. Very important, our segment heads will show you examples of existing business what very often was already announced, where we do already that what we target for the whole group. The first one is E&M Europe with Jürgen. Your stage, Jürgen.
Thank you, Thomas. Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming back and joining us in the afternoon. Appreciate it. My name is Jürgen Liedl. I am Executive President of the segment Engineering and Maintenance Europe, so E&M Europe. I'm with Bilfinger for a little bit more than 10 years now, and I'm also part and member of the Group Executive Management team that you've seen at the beginning. What I would like to share with you in the next 30 minutes is what we aim to achieve within E&M Europe in the next few years, how we are going to achieve it, and why we are confident we will achieve it. Let me start with the what we want to achieve with the financials.
The segment E&M Europe, it covers about 2/3 of the Bilfinger revenue overall and also 2/3 of our workforce. It's really the backbone of that company. Yes, the volatility in our markets has increased in the last three years, but we do see underlying developments and market drivers that makes us confident that our addressable market growth is going to be on average 2% year by year by year. What you can see here in the midterm CAGR. We're also in a very good position, due to our current coverage already that we can benefit from that above average. We will add another 2% self-propelled growth, and that brings us to about 4% year-by-year growth that we are targeting despite volatility set out there.
I will come to that in a minute, explaining how we manage those volatilities and how they, in the end, also add benefit and opportunities for us. Looking at the profitability, the segment E&M International has generated a 5% EBITDA margin last year and also 5% EBITDA margin the year before. That is good, that's not where we want to end up. We have a plan in place that brings our profitability, our EBITDA margin midterm to 7.8%. What are the individual levers or steps to do so? I will also explain in further detail later. It's the efficiency program that Thomas and Matti have explained in the morning that we will of course also roll out throughout Europe.
Further strengthening the function organization standardizing administrative work, bundling things, transactional works, especially in the shared service centers, so that the business can concentrate on what it should do, i.e., the client and the business. In addition to that, we will further work on increasing our operational excellence. We want to grow in profitable segments, so that will add another 1 percentage points to 2 percentage points over the next few years. Let me talk about the market. Thomas has shown and explained the kind of new normal that we, our peers and our customers are in. What are the specifics for Europe, especially in the Engineering & Maintenance? Again, it starts with inflation. I'm sure you have heard a lot about this. Inflation is something that has kept us busy for the last 12 months- 18 months, and will continue to keep us busy.
The wages of our workforce have increased, depending on the country, between 4% and 12%. Raw materials like steel have gotten more expensive for all the insulation materials. The good news is we have been able, and we are able to pass on a big chunk of debt to our clients. Two reason. First one is because we have contracts in place that allow us to do so partially. The second one, that comes with the labor shortage. That brings me to the next lever, labor shortage. This is something that has been in our industry there for quite some time. If you look at the average population on a chemical plant, on a steel plant, on an energy plant, it's not the 25-year-olds, all right? It's more like the 55 years old.
Attracting and retaining qualified labor is something that is a task for our industry overall, and it has been. What has happened since the COVID time is that the mobility of workforce has also decreased across Europe, huh. In the past, and still, people from Romania or Poland, they travel to do work, they commute to do work in Belgium, in Netherlands, in Germany, in Scandinavia. As the wage differences between those parts of Europe is getting smaller and smaller, the excitement of the Eastern European workforce to do that is going a little bit down. That also, in addition, creates labor shortage. What's the way out of that? Efficiency. Efficiency, efficiency. That's also the discussions that we have with our clients. It's a limited amount of labor that is available.
The labor is getting more and more expensive. We work together with our clients to apply that labor that is there in the most efficient ways. Again, we are in a good position to do so. That's also why our clients are willing to pass on, to take on, inflation effects from us. That you can also see, if you look at our EBITA margin in 2022, it's not heavily affected by wage increases. We have maintained the same EBITA margin level as we had the year before. That also brings me to digitalization. I hope you have seen and talked to our colleagues up there.
They have Dennis and his team somewhere, have explained to you on how we are bringing out the paperwork from the operations on site and how we increase the efficiency in the administrative work, but also in the operational work out of that. We will continue to do so. Deglobalization, number four. It's something that we are seeing as the supply chains of our clients is getting more and more disruptive. We do see productions being shifted closer to the customers, and that means modifications of plants, and that means also new investments. Again, that is a revenue stream for us. You, you may cite the German chemicals industry now not importing any gas from Russia any longer. Like 12 months ago, that was still 60% of the feedstock for gas was coming from Russia.
As per today, it's zero. That means our clients, they need to modify the plants. We are there to do so. We also see biopharma. Thorsten will explain more about this afterwards. We see quite a lot of pharma and biopharma investments in Europe. Once these plants are operated, someone needs to maintain them. We are there to do so. We also see similar things now. First, sites being built again in some chemical clusters in Europe, in the chemical industry. That helps us. Overall, that leads us to a market growth of about 2% year-by-year that we expect. There are some specifics. I was mentioning biopharma, where we are sure it's going to be an above market growth.
Chemical industry was the big question mark, not only for us, but for everyone, especially in Germany, with the inflations in gas prices and the questions about the availability of feedstock. As you have also seen in our auditing technology in Q4, that has proven much more robust than we were concerned about. This industry we see more stable than we had expected, which is good news. This industry also invests a lot now in sustainability, in changing their power supplies and these kind of things. Oil and gas has seen quite a catch-up effect in the last year out of the COVID crisis and oil and gas crisis.
We are positive that if you look at carbon capture projects, if you look at changing the gas infrastructure from conventional gas to hydrogen, there will be quite a lot of work in the European oil and gas industry for the next five years , 10 years. Then we will take it from there. In the meantime, of course, we are aiming at limiting our exposure to that industry. Overall, 2% growth in a volatile market because many of those dynamics are speaking for us. We are adding 2% of so-called self-propelled growth. Why are we confident we can grow above the market average? Simple reason is because we are already today the number one.
You will not find a lot of service providers in Europe who can cover that whole value chain, from consultancy, to engineering, to modifications, to maintenance and turnarounds across all of those industries. As we are active in chemicals, oil and gas, energy, pharma, biopharma and others like steel and so on. We are active in many countries, but not in all countries. If you look at our strategic markets or the one countries, the countries with the dark blue. In Germany, we are the number one in the industry and independent reports confirm this year, by year, by year. In all the other dark blue countries, we're already between the first three of our market player. There's good potential to do even more. Another specific thing, Thomas was explaining the horizontals.
If you look at E&M Europe today, 75% of our work is framework contract. Again, we are there on the sites for years, if not decades. We have three years-five years framework contracts, and usually the client expands them. That's why 90% of our work is repetitive, if not more, and we know the clients. There's a big intimacy between us and the clients. We know the sites, we know the players, we are there, we are aware when things are changing and we are investing. All of that is also reflected if you look into the financial development of the segment. Revenue is now close to EUR 2.8 billion, so above pre-COVID level, which with a good catch-up and some nice entries into new products in the last two years.
Our EBITA margin is 5%. As we have managed to catch up and be even better than before COVID in 2021, we have confirmed this now and delivered this again in 2022. Is it where we want to plateau? By far, not. We have a plan in place to grow it further to 7%-8%. How do we want to be in the future? We want to do more of all of those good things that we are doing with new clients on new sites and also in new countries. You will see that we want to fully cover our maintenance and turnarounds portfolio in all of our core market. Market is always a combination for me between country and industry.
We want to significantly grow in the engineering, but also in the consultancy, because that allows us to provide higher margin services and higher value services. We will hold our position in new builds and modification, coming back to what Matti has explained, to manage our risk portfolio. You don't see any major changes in the verticals, in the industries that we will address. Yes, as I said, we will reduce our dependency on oil and gas. We will focus more on our core industries. Oil and gas is going a little bit down compared to the previous page. Others is going down, and we will grow that, more in pharma, biopharma, and energy. What we will also do is, you know, selectively enter into new countries, into adjacent countries.
We want to be present in more countries, going there with our customers for a product, for a service, for a client where we are confident and comfortable that we will do this. What are our strategic levers? You've seen all the strategic levers in the presentations in the morning. I would like to address the ones that are of, I think, highest significance for E&M International and not walk you through all of those levers. What we did, of course, you know, we took the levers, we said, "Okay, what does that mean in detail for our business in Europe? Where does it have an impact?" Some of them growth, some of them profitability. You see it on the chart. What's the timeline for that? I wanna start in the middle. Digitalization and innovation.
Sorry, not fully in the middle, a little bit above the middle. I wanna start with standardization and bundling. Why? Again, we have one of the broadest coverage in the industry on those sites. What we will do more and more, you know, is develop a standardized way of executing also the operational work. Not only what we will do in administration, we will do something similar also, in the operations, in the different services. I'll have an example with that, with me on that later on, how that works and what the effect is. We are installing so-called Product Centers, not as something new, but where we bundle the know-how within our existing management and workforce on defining best practices that we're doing on various site, and then rolling out those good practices or best practices across the site. That increases the efficiency.
That means for us, a higher margin, but also higher attractiveness for the client, as we are also more efficient for them. That has a big impact on profitability. What we will also do more and more, and we're seeing the first examples, I have one with me as well, is bundle these individual services into solutions, you know, to increase the efficiency from us and to reduce the complexity on our client side. moving from single services to multi-trade, where we already are, to the next step then, to these bundled solutions. Digitalization and innovation. Again, you have seen all the beautiful tools and apps that we have upstairs. You have also seen, hopefully, our drones. That is one example where we're using in the offshore oil and gas industry, but also within confined spaces.
When you have a tank, you're using drones to do inspection services. It does not require less manpower. It also exposes our colleagues to less to risky environments, and it combines individual things that we are doing. We are also using the first robot. This is right now still dedicated to certain use cases, mainly when it comes to blasting and when it comes to painting. We're working together with technology companies, with universities, and these kind of companies to find use cases where we can apply this. We bring in the know-how and the intimacy of the client. Our partners, they are bringing in the technological know-how. What do we need for that? Competency development.
Again, I said, okay, of course, we will implement the efficiency program when it comes to efficiency. But we also need and will develop the competencies to do so. If a worker on site or a foreman, a supervisor has to provide a complete solution, not only one services, you need a completely different skill set of that worker, of that supervisor, of that foreman. In terms of technology, in terms of communication with the client, but also contractually. We are investing 25% of the savings, as an example, into these kind of things. We need to educate our workforce to be able to offer and to execute all of that. When it comes to standardization, we are rolling out lean management, you know, to help us, you know, drive these standardizations throughout the group.
We are building training centers, you know, where we then teach our people off-site on how to apply those, you know, those different types of working. That will feed into our growth and into our profitability. This is something, it's not new for us. We are taking it more seriously. We are dedicating more funds to that, you know, because we want to accelerate it. This will be ongoing. It's not a one-year effect. We will continue to do so because, of course, the development never stops. Market expansion will feed into our growth because we want to cover the full chain, value chain in all of our existing markets. It will also feed into our profitabilities because we want to further focus on higher margin segments.
Again, engineering or technical consultancy and the bundling of services is something where we see our clients are willing to pay a premium for us, and we will benefit from that. Then we will selectively expand into adjacent geographies. Sustainability, you know, part of that we are already starting to do, but this will keep us, you know, busy for the next five years. First start with the full coverage of what we have and bundling, then selectively go into new geographies within the map of Europe that you've seen before. Finally, sustainability partner. This is something where we have started, I would say two years, three years, four years ago in developing product solutions for our clients that help them assess their CO2 footprint and reduce the CO2 footprint. Nothing new for us.
Something that will be there also for the next years, where we have quite some good reference cases in the meantime. Again, there is quite a lot of level of detail behind that, yeah. We have a plan, we have a timeline, we have an effect on the revenue, and we have an effect on the profitability, and it adds up to the numbers that you've seen before, both in Thomas and in Martin's presentation. Now, let me give you some examples on how we are already doing this specifically. I will start with something which I'm really proud of. That's a new product that we have developed. It's the so-called CO2 master planning. What is the challenge for our clients?
As you know, we work in the chemicals industry, in the pharma industry, in the food industry, in the steel industry. All of our clients, they have a huge CO2 footprint. They are all measured significantly by their investors, by their clients, by the public on reducing the CO2 footprint. Now, what you usually see is that our clients, they know their core process quite a lot. If you go to a chemical plant, for example, where really the chemical fluid is flowing around, this is the core competence of our clients. They have, of course, the capabilities, and they do so to design that production process in a way that limits resources and limits emissions.
If you look at what we call the outside battery limits, so everything around the surroundings, the utilities, the power generations, things that are much more agnostic. This is where we come into place. This is not in the focus of our clients. This is where we have huge experience because a boiler is a boiler, and a motor is a motor, and a converter is a converter, no matter whether it's in the steel plant or in the chemical plants or in a refinery. It's always the same equipment, and it's always the same way we operate them. This is where we bring in know-knowledge. We have developed an approach out of our technical consultancy teams, where we go to a site, not in the core process, but everything around.
We assess all of the auxiliary equipment and how it's managed and how it's operated. We measure, for example, you know, the effectiveness of the installation. We measure the efficiency of a drive. We measure the CO2 emissions of the combustion systems. We benchmark it. Yeah. We have this know-how also out there on what other companies, how other companies are performing when it comes to sustainability. We go there, we measure it, we benchmark it. Then we go into meaningful discussions with the clients on what they can do differently. We have done quite a few of those projects, contracts, product services last year. They have been adding up to a CO2 saving, a yearly CO2 savings of 120,000 tons per year.
If you remember our Scope 1 and 2 emissions, this is more savings that we have generated our clients only through this one than we, as Bilfinger, pull out every year. You see, we have a huge impact on the CO₂ emissions in the industries. This is, by the way, these 120,000 tons, that's not only, you know, the ideas from us. No, those are really those ideas that the client has implemented and where the plant is now operating in a different model. Of course, we are coming up with much more ideas, but then we also always have to calculate the cost benefit issue. This is really those things that have been implemented. This is real savings on the CO₂. We cannot only do this on paper, we can also do it in real life.
This is where really the beauty of our business model comes, as we are covering the full value chain, we are also doing the things that we are proposing. Another example here is electrification of boilers. The chemical plants, the steel plants, many other plants, they use a lot of hot water, steam, hot gases. That all has to be heated. In the past that heating was done in boilers, who were driven by coal, gas and oil. That's not good for a CO₂ footprint. In the future, all of those boilers will be powered by electricity, and the electricity comes from wind, from solar, or from green hydrogen. As an example, we have been working with one of the biggest industrial parks in the Netherlands, where we have designed the new e-boiler system. Taking it from conventional to electricity.
We've designed it, we've done the detailed design, but we also took out the old boiler system and installed a new boiler system. That again, is something which is very unique because, again, you will not find a lot of companies within Europe who can do all of that. This is how we really add value to our clients. In that example, it was 30,000 tons nearly of CO₂ reduction within one year by year, by year by year. This is something where we distinguish ourselves from those companies, from those peers who are only providing single services, individual services. You will see us doing more and more of that. These examples also, you can see for in the chart where we've shown that we have doubled our revenue within those green technologies, green services.
That's just two example of that. I just realized the time does not count the minutes, but it's the time. Okay. You see me doing this for the first time. Okay, I'm learning. Five minutes to go. Bettina trick me on this one.
All five.
Yeah. That's good. Sorry. Back to serious. Standardization. We were talking about standardization. To give you one example, how are we going to do this? Again, this is a live example. You see a beautiful scaffold that we are building behind that. We have I don't know how many tons of scaffolds standing around and being built and being demolished day by day across Europe. Now, what we did in Belgium, we were looking at a typical level 1 scaffold. This is. Now, that's a quite an unexciting level 1 scaffold. We are building this everywhere across Europe. What we did in Belgium, we went from 1 site to the next, and we were looking at the crews and how they are building the scaffolds.
Someone was standing there with the stopwatch and taking the time and looking how they are building this, where do they start, where do they finish. Believe it or not, there is a huge time difference on how this work is executed. The result is always the same. It always looks like this. Some of the teams, they managed to do in 13 minutes. Some of them, they required 45 minutes because they did it in a different way. What we do to do out of that, we defined a standardized way on how to build such a scaffold. We've done the technical documentation. We put that to our training centers that we have in Wiener, in Zwijndrecht, and in Roosendaal as an example.
All the new scaffolders that are coming on when they have the regular training, they are now trained to do that kind of job, not in 45 minutes, but in 13 minutes. 70% less time. Benefit for us, that of course we partially move on to our clients. As I explained, we will do this more and more and more. We are organizing ourselves also around Product Centers who will drive this type of standardization. Now comes my favorite example. Shell Moerdijk and rope access. This is a very nice example on how we work more and more together with the client and how we can add value that no one else can. Shell Moerdijk is a big chemical plant outside of Rotterdam.
We have started doing work there since 1969, when we first had our first framework contract and insulation. Since that time, day by day, week by week, year by year, we are there on site and work together with Shell. No day without us on that site since then. In 2012, we've added another services, painting. Now in 2020, we've added engineering. In 2021, we've added mechanical, piping, rope access and inspections. If you go to that big chemical plants, you will not find any peer from us that can cover all of the services that we are doing. That puts us in a very good position. In the remaining three minutes, I want to give you one example of that. That is inspection at the loading dock with rope access. What is a loading dock?
In the end, it's an area that is, let's say 30 meters high, 10 meters -20 meters broad and 100 meters long. You see a picture of that there. It's full of pipes. It's pipes everywhere. These pipes are insulated. Every five years or 10 years, you need to check the quality of the insulation of the pipe. Where they are not good enough, you have to replace them. What is the conventional way of doing this? In the past, Shell goes to a scaffolding company, scaffolding company comes, builds up the scaffold. Shell goes to the inspection company. The people from the inspection company, they go up the scaffold, they visualize and to take a look at the quality of the insulation. They write the reports. They're going down again.
Shell goes to the next company, which is usually a mechanical and insulation company. The mechanical guys and the insulation guys from the third company, they're going up, they're exchanging the insulation. They're going down again. Shell goes back to company number one, to the scaffolding company, and the scaffolding company goes there and takes away the scaffold. Now, what we have to develop together with Shell on that side is doing all of that through rope access. The gentlemen who are doing the upsilling and uplining here all the time. We have bundled all in this into one. Our rope access people, they went there, they did the inspection, and they also did the exchange of the insulation.
We did not have to build the scaffold. That means that the total costs of that were 60% lower than during the conventional approach. In addition, that also meant that Shell has only one point of contact, only one contract, not three or four. We reduce complexity for Shell as well. We're taking on higher responsibility in executing the work that moves us up the value chain. Finally, the whole program in the past always lasted six months. We were able to execute it in two months, four months less time, yeah. What's the result of that? Good reference case for us. Now as we're talking, we do the next 200 meters at Moerdijk with exactly the same approach. I think that's it.
That's the time.
That's all. This, hopefully, you know, shows you why, you know, we are in a good market, why we can grow above market average because of our strong position that we already have, yeah. How we will further bring our EBITDA margin to 7%-8% midterm, and that there is also good examples that we utilize already, and that there's a good plan behind it. Thank you.
Good.
Thank you.
That was the watch.
Yeah. We need to train.
Part.
I'll take a fill up.
Questions. Okay. Yeah. You have the possibility to pose direct questions after the segments or in the wrap-up session in the end.
Okay, good.
Let's move on.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks.
The next one is Christian, our Norwegian colleague, responsible for the Middle East and North America, what we call E&M International.
Thank you, Thomas. Christian Rugland. I'm positioned to International. I'm also part of the Group Executive Management team. I'm going to talk about the International segment, which is North America and the Middle East. Both regions have a huge market potential within oil and gas, petrochemical, energy, and also public infrastructure. Within those areas, we have a highly achievable growth plan with significant upside potential. We expect the addressable market growth is around 3%, which is higher than Europe. That is because of strong fundamentals and high GDP within the countries we operate due to their oil revenues. The self-propelled growth will be driven by increased customer demand. It will be transition of services into existing and adjacent markets, as well as bundling and integration of services.
Why only 3%? We in the International Segment is still in a transition phase where restructuring is going. We have, as you can see, over the last few years been burdened by losses within certain part of the segment in the construction industry. We are in the completion stage of the construction projects. We hope that 2023, we should be done with them. Thereafter, we do not have any more construction projects of that nature in our order book. The probability target of 5%-6% is realistic. Efficiency program will reduce overhead cost and upskill our people.
The improvement on operations excellence are due to excellent and efficient execution of work, as well as low cost operations enabled by digitalization. Most important is the positioning and having profitable growth. Not always easy, we've done it before. If you look back to 2022 for the Middle East region alone, the region managed to increase its sales by 35% while also improving on margins and profit. How did we do that? That was by accessing the right clients on the right markets on the right terms. Market conditions and drivers in the international segments also differ slightly from Europe. Inflation come in a wider expectancy range and will be dominating over the years to come. That's a fair bit of over-regulation, where countries protect themselves.
The strict nationalization and localization programs, which are aimed at stimulating domestic growth, add cost to international companies. In particular, the Middle East region is home for some of the most long-running political conflicts globally and some of them still exist. Volatility, well, we see that business conditions continuously change, thereby increasing the risk for unexpected performance by companies. With climate change also comes vast opportunities within energy transition. For to achieve the net zero 2050 target. More than EUR 1 trillion of investments are required between now and 2030 when for the target to become climate neutral. Several programs have been initiated, both in the United States and in the lead GCC countries.
Within this market, Bilfinger is uniquely positioned to take advantage of projects and programs within energy transition and sustainability. I'll tell you a bit about what we do between North America and the Middle East. Overall in North America, Bilfinger a company has been more than 100 years and about 50 years in the Middle East. We serve about 200 customers in 10 countries and have more than 6,000 employees. Within consultancy, we help clients with feasibility studies, plant efficiency, HSEQ and sustainability improvement. There's a search on sustainability. One interesting example of some work we do together with the government in Abu Dhabi to develop a sustainability hub to educate and inspire its population to go green.
We're a recognized provider of specialized engineering from concept, detail engineering and design, management consultancy and project handover. Most customers are within oil and gas, working for the national oil companies. However, we do also a fair bit of work for within public infrastructure, where we do management consultancy and engineering on roads, bridges, ports and airports, as well as for foreign direct investors. We've been involved in Coca-Cola, DHL, Unilever's plants across the Middle East. New build and modifications. You know, that's where the construction projects are. You will see those coming down on the next years. The 40% share should reduce significantly. We will continue to do some within modifications on existing plants where we're currently on and where there is a maintenance program attached to it.
That is part of our strategy to de-risk the region. Maintenance and turnaround. We have a leading position on maintenance and turnaround, both in North America and in the Middle East. We deliver a whole range of services on from typically that could be, it could be electrical, mechanical inspection. It could be instrumentation and control, rotating equipment, welding, fitting, all those services that are needed to ensure a high plant efficiency on the places we are. We believe also within maintenance and turnarounds, there's a high potential for growth in the coming years. This value chain is offers some quite compelling opportunities to cross-sell between consultancy, engineering, projects and maintenance and turnaround.
Let's look at how this is going to look like in the planning period. We will do more consultancy, and in particular within sustainability, where we target solar. We help customers with defining their ESG strategies. But also projects like decarbonization, to help customers to deliver on their 2030 targets. On engineering, we will continue to strengthen our core markets while also ensuring a diversified footprint in adjacent markets. The demand for capacity upgrade within oil and gas, petrochemical, and energy continue, and there will be also be a higher increase on energy transition opportunities. New builds. I said that we will bid selectively on fewer opportunities, but with a higher margin and a higher return.
They will be in relation to some of the other integrated contracts which we work on. On maintenance and turnaround, we will leverage on our number one position in existing and core markets. We see that the transition of maintenance services into other markets has quite low barriers. For instance, on a plant where we do maintenance, for instance, the electrical or mechanical rotating equipment, the pumps on that plant is the same on an oil plant as a refinery, as a petrochemical plant. For us, that transition is enabled by having the right skills in the planning phase with estimation and proposal. We need experienced project managers.
When deploying the labor-That is, experienced technician, which we have wide access to, will do the same maintenance work on the different type of plants. How are we going to do this? On our strategic levers, so with the characteristics of the international segment is that we will continue strengthening offshore technology centers and shared service center, thereby securing rapid scale-up with a higher quality at lower cost. People. We have so many good people in this organization, and many of them are also in demand by other companies.
Our retention strategy is built on employee engagement, on development, on recognition, on having flexible solutions around workplace and schedules, as well as having a clear plan for inclusion, diversity and social responsibility. Social responsibility is so important and people in our organization expect that senior leaders like me and them, and us behind here, all represent the company as good ambassadors, taking the initiative on social responsibility on an ESG. Another key one is technical skills and multi-skilling. For instance, an electrician who also train to do instrumentation and control will earn more, and he will, and it will also ensure higher workforce flexibility for us, and programs for that are ongoing. Standardization and bundling.
We're a solutions partner with one of the biggest consumer goods companies in the U.S. and through lean and continuous improvement, we save them for millions every year. For also, on bundling, engineering is required also within maintenance in order to ensure efficiencies on the plant and to unlock value. I mentioned about de-risking. We have, we do less of the construction projects, and there are multiple reasons for why they went wrong, and I'm not going into that here. The key thing is that as part of our restructuring, we are now discontinuing those large projects, and we will not have any more in the portfolio. Market expansion.
I mentioned about moving into other segments in the same countries, and typically, within energy, as being number one in countries like Saudi and in Kuwait, we can use and apply the same principles to do maintenance also within petrochemical and within oil and gas where we do no work now. But these countries and North America have a huge upside potential within maintenance. On geographical expansion, we will selectively review moving into new countries when synergies are clear and we can leverage on the capacity that we got in the other countries. Typically, we look at Canada and in the Middle East.
We've been to Oman before, and those who have followed us for some time also know that we exited Oman in 2020 on engineering services. There's a huge potential for some of our key accounts in the group to go back with them in Oman. Oman is the neighbor country, and it's in the back garden of where we already are. Excuse me. Sustainability partner. I'll show you an example right away about how we work on sustainability. About 40% of energy-related emissions are due to combustion of fossil fuel for electricity generation. This is an ongoing project in Kuwait on a power plant which is 40 years old and where maintenance was way overdue.
We have, we've been, being number one there, and we've done many of these chimney upgrades. The customer involved us there to work on the whole process from water intake into the boilers and all the umbilicals and the pipes, so on, to the chimney and for the emission. By doing that service on all the umbilicals and pipelines and also replacing the inner pipes of the chimney, and you see there are the elbows there with the four inner steel pipes. The chimney is 200 meter tall. Also installing an emission control system for the operator to take action when that sort of goes out of the normal.
We help them reduce 76% NOx and SOx emission. The project is ongoing. It will complete in March, so far it's been conducted on budget, on time and without any incidents or accidents. The second and last example I'm going to show is with U.S. biggest manufacturer of consumer goods. This is a contract where we deliver a whole range of services from all blue-collar trades and also to management consultancy. The part this relates is with the management consultancy. It started off as a constructability program where we reviewed engineerings and drawings which were made by themselves.
We found so many inefficiencies in the processes and the production lines, eliminated waste and sharpen it up that we were taken in as a strategic partner with the customer, and now working integrated with them on all engineering and all scheduling and all budgeting. There is a strong effort on working on also the behavior and the culture of continuous improvement. As part of that, we also set up this amplified value program, which is to which there is also an element of digitalization. On every site, there's a screen looking like this. In the mornings when the crew and the team gathers, they'll normally do that in front of that screen.
They will have their morning coffee and sort of have the sort of the planning talks in front of that, where they also will have access to all best practice across all sides of that customer. Over about 1,100 customer-approved initiatives, we had some more, but they approved 1,100. We helped them save $60 million US dollar last year. $60 million. That's quite good. We will strive to achieve that position as their solution partner also with other companies. To sum up, we're still not fully restructured. You need to give us a little bit more time, and we will complete the construction projects in the U.S. However, it's not a fundamental problem of construction projects.
We have some very tangible low number of projects which we'll complete this year. Any questions? We can take them after if you want, though.
Yeah. One question.
Yeah
Gregor Kuglitsch, please.
Thanks. Can you just remind us how much is actually today in the U.S. and how much is in the Middle East, sort of revenue-wise and roughly kind of what the-?
So, so-
... profitability gap is? I'm using the Middle East actually doing quite well.
Yeah.
I'm guessing therefore the US is definitely lost.
We don't normally reveal that. However, the number of employees in both regions are about the same.
Mm-hmm.
All the sort of remuneration models and so differ between the two. We've got about 3,000 people in each region.
Mm-hmm.
And sorry, the second part?
Yeah. What I can say is actually that Christian Rugland is the former regional president of Middle East. He did actually start already with the transformation, what we will do quite enforced with the new strategy. U.S. is definitely lagging behind. That's the reason that U.S. is from financially in a worse shape than we have Middle East, which improved actually quite a lot.
Yeah, yeah. I'm proud to say that we were accretive to the Group.
Yes. Exactly. Yeah.
Okay. maybe following up from that, is it sort of, I don't wanna call it kitchen sinking, have you sort of provided for all the losses already in the?
Yes, of course.
... legacy accounts? It's sort of sorted out.
Yes.
Now you've got an element, I guess, of zero margin revenue for this year.
To work that through-
... and then-
Yeah
... new year. Yeah.
Agreed. When you look into the growth rates, what we have, and compare that actually with the North American and Middle East growth rates, we are more conservative than they are. At the same time, the self-propelled growth, what we announced with the potential really what we have is more conservative than it could be. The reason for that is that we take, at the same time, all the old project things out and will not replace them, the large construction projects and so on. What you see in these growth rates is actually the delta out of a good market growth for the products where we earn in Europe quite a lot of money with, and taking out these old larger construction projects, which are in profitability, risk, and so on, way out of that where it should be.
Thank you.
That's the reason why, your job is real transformation.
Understood. Thank you.
Mr. Lohmann.
Yeah, just quickly follow up. When you mentioned that you want to discontinue the large projects, how do you define them? Is it with regard to sales volume, 10 complexity? You just mentioned that you're on the way. Is there still some risk, including the existing projects that you still have?
A large project would be a sort of EUR three-digit million sort of new build construction project. It could be that. It could be also in a segment where we may have limited
Experience from before. However, most important is, you know, there's many things we can list off that we will not do, but we will do modification related to some of our international and strategic clients where there is also a defined maintenance program attached to it. Thorsten Hoppe will, in a minute, talk about efficient project management, and we'll obviously ensure that any new projects, small or big, will be have the same governance and the same structure around it. All right.
Good.
Okay.
Thanks a lot, Christian. Now we come to the segment Technology. Thorsten is the President of that gang doing the projects and actually quite good in all the hydrogen and other things, what we do there. Please, Thorsten.
Thank you, Thomas. First of all, welcome from the Technologies team. My name is Thorsten Hoppe, Executive President, Technologies. Three years with the company, member of the GEM. I'd like to re-anchor my presentation about three subjects. First of all, it's our financial aspiration. Second, it is our transformation process. Certainly, I'd like to give you a couple of examples of the projects we are looking forward and how we want to really concentrate on. Let me start first of all, with the growth targets. As Thomas rightfully said, we are not doing projects just for the purpose of projects. This needs to have a sense in the Bilfinger supply chain.
That is, for us, extremely important that our projects must end in a maintenance contract or that through maintenance work with our existing clients, we get then a new project. Very important for us. We are in two verticals. We are in pharma, biopharma. We are also in the energy business. In this, we are in specific customer groups, so it's nuclear, it's energy transition, it's pharma, biopharma. Therefore, we see a market growth of around 3%. If we look then at the additional opportunities we see currently in these markets, it is another 3% self-propelled. The 6% is a very controlled growth. We don't just want to grow uncontrolled. Secondly, if we look on the right side, the adjusted EBITDA, what you can see, we stabilized the group in recent years.
Are we in the belief that the 3% are sufficient? No, absolutely not. We have to do some further homework, and this brings us then conservatively to an EBIT margin of 6%-7%. How are we going to do that? First of all, the efficiency program is one element which is of importance for us. We, in the project business, we want in a very controlled and defined way bid for projects. Secondly, we want to execute them in a very defined and standardized and controlled way. The rest we can get out of the Bilfinger Group in terms of shared service. The administration can go into shared service, and it can also be done by our colleagues in the regions.
Therefore, for us, it's really a concentration on bidding and executing. Second thing is project excellence. We worked very hard on from the Bilfinger perspective on the Bilfinger Project Concept. The Bilfinger Project Concept gives us definitely in the area of operational excellence an upside. Standardization of engineering work, very important for us. We want really not to invent, reinvent the wheel with every engineering work we are doing. It's standardized. You have seen up on the gallery some examples. We really standardize and modularize continuous manufacturing, for example. That gives us another 2%, 1%-2%. Positioning. We concentrate. We want to do repetitive projects in what we are doing. Therefore, positioning for us is very important as well.
Conservatively, we think it is around 6%-7% EBITDA margin. Let me go then into our market. Who of you would have thought that he thinks about energy costs when working in an office or when having employees in the fabrication? Who of you would have thought that he's ordering an electric car and it's not arriving, and after one year, the contract gets canceled because the car probably doesn't arrive in the next year either? Who of you has a ill child and doesn't get the drugs your child urgently needs? These are all urgent questions and they describe the environment we are in. It's about de-globalization, it's about energy costs, it's about climate change.
You see here a couple of key statements from our clients. We are in, as I mentioned, pharma, biopharma, and here it's a blood plasma client enhancing human life. RWE, it's a very long client of us. We worked, we have really a very long history with them in conventional energy, in nuclear energy. Now they are going into hydrogen, so into green technologies. That's another client of us, long-lasting. Lithium batteries, another client or EDF. There was this question earlier today, how is Hinkley Point doing? Hinkley Point, Well, we have even more, but let's say three very big ones. EDF is with Hinkley Point aiming really or trying to get forward to net zero.
This is one of the projects in the British expansion program. It's 3,400 MW roughly. In the UK over the next couple of years, 24 GW of nuclear power and then net zero type power will be built either in the big plants like Hinkley Point. There's the next generation, which then is, and I think it's all public knowledge, Sizewell. There are further projects, and they're all coming up, and it's not only in the UK. In France, six have been decided to be built. It's not only these six because we all know they need something to export, so there will be further plants, and we need to import that. That's further.
All of that requires also that there is a waste treatment, that there's a waste handling. Either it's directly per site or it's at centers, at nuclear waste centers. We are in it. We have more than 50 years of experience in nuclear, in the nuclear industry. What I probably should also mention that for the Hinkley Point project, we are meanwhile a tier one supplier, which gives us always the entrance into the next one. I think it's really conservative, and we try to be very careful in terms of growth. With 3% market growth, 3% self-propelled, 6% to be really conservative. Okay. Let's talk about technologies today. First of all, very important, I spoke about transition.
You see we are stabilized, quite important for us. Now on the upper, you see the value chain. In terms of value chain, we are currently in automation or digitalization, next step of it. We are from engineering new build to maintenance. What that means originally we are very dominant obviously on the piping installation, but it needs work before and after. We are the ones who are doing the projects. We are 90% of our business or 95 even of our business is project business. In terms of verticals, as I mentioned, from existing contracts, you see us very much in pharma and in energy. There's also some, there are some other places, like chemical and oil and gas.
Revenues, what you see on this slide here, we tried not to grow, and that's also what you heard earlier. When we go from 35% to 20%, we want to do that in a very controlled way. It's important. It's really we wanna do it in a very controlled way. There are so many projects in the market, but we try to do it very controlled, and that's what then goes also when we look further into the future. We will not just triple or whatever the number of projects we currently could get. That is not our ambition. Where do we want to be in the future? Here you see the value chain again, and that is very important. We want to just concentrate on engineering and on project execution, so the new build.
When it comes to the maintenance, my colleagues, Jürgen or Christian, they have the really the experience. They know exactly what they are doing. They are recognized for what they are doing. They take then over. We will exit that part. We will really focus on the project. What is also important in terms of projects and the project definition, we all know it's a very difficult one to get. We do not just throw in a fixed price to do a certain type of projects. No, no. That's not the way how we are working. We work through the various phases of engineering. Through these phases of engineering, we can understand the risks, we can understand the pricing.
At 1 point, when we went really down to a detailed engineering, then we say we execute the project. That is good for us. That is also good for the client because if we would do it right at the beginning, we would have to say otherwise, the price is rocket high. Through that process, we also get into a risk corridor and into a contingency corridor, which is really realistic. We understand the project before we really price it in. We want to be the project company in Bilfinger, doing 100% of the projects in the future, focusing really on nuclear, new energy or energy transition, and then on pharma and biopharma. Our clients. That's also very important. Our clients, we wanna do repetitive projects.
We want to have the proximity to the clients, strategic clients, and they will guide us through the next investment. We have a couple of very successful cases or clients in recent years where we really go almost in a standardized way from one project to the next one. In one case, even that we are building now the fourth time the same project of its kind. That must be our ambition. We don't want to reinvent it every time something new. That's not what we are going for. All right. Let's talk about the main levers because we still know we have homework to do. You see here a very busy slide, or the next two slides are very busy.
I have one colleague who is always saying, "If everything is important, nothing is important." For us, of main importance is really de-risking standardization. As I explained, and also Matti very well explained earlier in his presentation today, that is for us key. That starts with the Bilfinger Project Concept, that goes on with repetitive projects and also the way how we review that with KPIs and how we follow a project. The second thing I'd like to mention on this slide is the competency or the competence development. We need young engineers. We need people executing the work on site. We have our own training center for welders.
For Hinkley Point, for example, 8% of the people who are coming to us get finally the certificate from us for welding. We need hundreds of welders. For example, for Hinkley Point, you understand we have a huge, let's say, training center where we develop our people. That is on the execution side. When it comes to white-collar people, for them, it's really important what are they doing? On what type of projects are they? We believe on one hand that with the energy transition projects we are in and continuing and even focusing more, that is something where people can work on having an impact on the footprint.
On the other hand, on the other side, when it comes to pharma, biopharma, it really has an impact on the well-being of people. What we did in recent years, we did some networking exercise. We really looked how can we upgrade our talent management? How can we take a young engineer with us, developing for him forward, either in the project side or also in the when it comes to engineering from young engineer to senior engineer? These are programs we are taking a lot of care.
Also in terms of leadership, or in general talent development, we have a clear talent development pipeline and plan how we bring people not only just in a vertical way, but that they understand Bilfinger and that they then can add really value to the organization. Quite important for us. In terms of digitalization and innovation, we have one business, a larger business, hundreds of young engineers. They are doing automation. For us, it's quite important that in everything we are doing, we add the automation component. As you saw upstairs in continuous manufacturing, more than 170 connection points in automation to introduce continuous flow.
We try to bring this very close to whatever we are doing, whether it's in a hydrogen project, whether it's a pharma project, whether it's in a nuclear project. Really important for us to bring further intelligence into what we are doing. In terms of market expansion, first of all, obviously, I think in the meantime, I explained it. We look really to follow our clients where they are going with repetitive projects. I have a couple of nice examples there. Recently went, for example, to the U.S. On the other hand, it's repetitive process. It's a repetitive project. It is also that we want to be and we develop even further as a solution partner. We bundle.
We also bundle whatever we have in Bilfinger. It is not that we then as an, let's say segment are going out with a certain type of approach to the market. We can add scaffolding. We can add isolation piping, sometimes also mechanical work in the regions wherever we are operating in. We try to add this. We obviously want to grow in the energy transition or what Thomas described earlier as green energy. That is for us where we want to be in the future. Sustainability, having a CO₂ impact quite important for us. That drives really the type of projects we are doing. It's either hydrogen, it's carbon capture, it's biofuel.
This is really the space we are in and nothing else. We are not trying anything else. Nuclear I described already, also important for us. Will be important for us, will be an anchor for us. I'd like to give you now a couple of examples, and I could speak now about hepatitis project production, where we deliver process skids. I could speak about insulin, where we deliver skids, or also, the everything in blood plasma. I think what is important for us here today to see with our standardized skid production in pharma, biopharma, what else can we do?
We are in a extremely specialized food, very close to pharma, biopharma, and we are working nonstop with expert groups to see what can we do with this experience we have in engineering, and we have also in skid manufacturing. Here's one example, and it's really an e-example which has a solid CO2 impact. This is vegan cheese. Or cheese for vegans. What we are really doing here, or we developed with expert groups a process very similar to what you saw up in the with the reactor and the continuous manufacturing. We are now in the process of final design, going into a first pilot plant, ramping it up to a demo plant and then finally the full plant.
What this example describes so well is, first of all, standardization makes it possible to reduce time and costs and risks when going into something. Secondly, it's also that this vegan production or vegan cheese production really delivers a bottom line impact on CO2. In this case, Thomas really sometimes is laughing about it, 600 cows for one reactor, okay? It replaces 600 cows for one reactor. Think about it, when we are really going with that into the 10th or 20th or 50th type of reactor, we want to do repetitive work. It's also an example for repetitive work we are doing. Second, biofuel.
lient from the various engineering phases into a first little plant and then now here's a bigger demo plant. It's in Norway. Norway, whoever was there in recent time, this is really the country with many electrical cars. What is the challenge in Norway? The trucks are still going with diesel. What is another challenge is that wood volume is constantly increasing because previous applications for wood, they don't work any longer. Over years, in a partnership, what we developed is out of cellulose to produce diesel. This plant we just finished, it's running, it's working, also in bigger scale. It's really producing biodiesel.
Now it's getting really interesting because now it's going into full plants, which will be immediately at various sites in Scandinavia. Strong impact, the way how we designed it and how we fabricated it. We have one fabrication site, a larger fabrication site where we really look for continuous manufacturing and how we can reduce lead time and how we can make it more efficient. That is on one side, the impact. On the other hand, obviously, what you can imagine, biodiesel, huge impact on diesel engines. Third example, showing you what we are able as the Bilfinger team to deliver. This is with our long-term client, RWE, the H2 production in Eemshaven. We won this project.
We have certain expertise, solid expertise in gas treatment and, obviously, with our balance of plant capabilities as a system integrator, we won with the technology provider that plant. It would not work out if we then try to every time develop the full technology. We don't want to take this type of risks. That's not our business. Here, as a system integrator with our expertise in this market, we won the first project. The, after quite a good series of engineering work. What we will do here over the next period of time is to be very careful, in choosing our technology providers. There will be some for the smaller scale modules and some for the larger scale modules.
With them together, we are working on this huge need for H2, which then goes either in hydrogen pipelines or what will be used then even for steel production in the future. We are in it. Therefore, let me conclude and recap. I think we are in the right markets, and we are very selective markets. We know the homework we have to continue to do. We are only doing projects if they make sense in terms of the value chain. Then the fourth element is that it's all about our EBITDA margin, and conservatively, we are certain we can get to the 6%-7% area soon. Thank you. With that, I'd like to give back to Bettina.
Yeah. Are there any questions in the room on technologies?
Stay in the camera.
Next to my boss.
Mr. Eilif.
Thank you for taking my question. First of all, thank you very much for the very interesting presentation throughout the day. I have a question probably more out of curiosity. When I heard about technologies, I was thinking about, let's say, the kind of new buzzwords like artificial intelligence or machine learning, big data. Do you think that those kind of new technologies could be implemented to further help, let's say, boosting efficiency or probably to open up new revenue pots?
It was actually part of the presentation. You saw the line in the offering digitalization, predictive maintenance, artificial intelligence, the connection of hundreds and thousands sites where we operate and operated, and the knowledge out of it to learn out of it through algorithm is part of it. It is actually up to the level, as Jürgen said in E&M Europe, to use robots in the whole system to improve and to make actually the whole service more safe and to improve the efficiency of service. The future picture what we have is that when we are on the site, we can tell a client long time before something happens, what will happen. That is possible in some industries already, and it will be possible in the industrial service, too.
We have.
It's not only on technology. It's actually all over.
We have a question from outside the room from the stream. Frank Bellendorf asks, "Are the growth targets you have defined nominal or real? If nominal, what is your assumption on inflation rates?" I think this is more general.
The growth rates are beside the inflation. The inflation is, we expect, will actually based on the outlook, what we get from the World Bank and other institution, getting actually more flat. What you have in the growth rates, it's the real growth rates what we have.
One moment.
Any other question? Gregor Kuglitsch.
Question with the change, I mean, this segment, but actually also the one before. I mean, I guess by sort of elimination, you're basically saying you're no longer gonna be in petrochemicals and oil and gas in your segment. I don't know if that's the right conclusion. I think in the previous segment, just looking back, other 60 currently, I don't know what that is, and it's basically going to zero. I was wondering, that was an international.
Yeah. That was an international-
What are you actually exiting? I mean, are.
Large construction projects.
Okay, Any particular industries those were in, or were they just for...?
That was all over.
Right.
No matter which client with large construction projects, as the colleague said, three-digit ones and EUR million, not that what we will do in the future.
In your segment, we're exiting oil and gas and petrochem, is that right?
Yeah. Also let's be very clear, if there is an energy transition-related project like an H2 application, we obviously would do that.
Yeah, of course.
You can have, of course, oil and gas companies doing H2 biofuels and so on. Then, of course, it's in. We don't classify that as oil and gas because at the end of the day, it is actually not oil and gas.
Understood. Thank you.
Customers support us very much to clarify it like that they appear as they are then, more green in it, too.
Thank you.
There's another question from the stream. John Campbell, Bank of America. "Please, could you provide an update on the proportion of framework contracts that contain labor cost passthroughs? Does it remain the majority?
Okay. We will not go into that detail. Second, if labor leasing, where we have no impact on efficiency and sustainability, will exit the company, to make that fairly clear. That's part, you remember, of the D class, what we said. This is not what we will go on with. If we have people working for a client, we will improve efficiency. We have competent people. We are not, let's say, lease out our people for anything. Will not happen. We don't disclose the percentage of that business. Besides, in the whole group of that part, what we see as an exit is around 5% of the top line.
An additional aspect which was mentioned is, are the cost, the inflation passthroughs, the escalation clauses in the framework contracts.
Of course. Of course. That is what we always. I think we see that in the figures, too. Okay.
Okay. I think.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks. Thank you. Thorsten.
Are we ahead of time?
A little bit, yes.
We are efficient.
Depending on you now.
Yeah, exactly.
Can it start all over again?
Now it's about what we call the wrap up. Yeah, no surprise with which kind of slides we are coming here. What we told you today, what we introduced today to the public is on one side, a clear path to improve our operational excellence with quite a lot of profit gain in it. On the other side, a new part in our history, in our company DNA, to position us completely into efficiency and sustainability improvement for the client. Which we hope you understand, it's a huge market with a huge demand, what we have in front of us. To play in that market, it is important to be the solution partner of choice for your clients.
If you are only in one country, the one who helps the client, and not in the others where the client is established, then someone else can get in between and kick you out of that one country where you are in connection with the client. We have clear financial targets, 4%-5% growth. We promise and we deliver 5% + in 2024. The 6%-7% EBITDA in the years to come after, the 2025 to 2027. Of course, in the cash conversion. More than 70% in 2024 and more than 80% the time onwards. We explained where the market is coming from, how we see the market, how we define the market, and what our addressable market growth is, and especially our self-propelled growth, which is a gift for the company.
To offer that what we do already successful and profitable in all the countries where we are already today, is a self-propelled business growth where we have more or less no risk in it because we know how to do it, we know the clients, we know the countries, we have the local people. That's a big added value. And on top of it, we have the opportunity to make so-called scale deals, bolt-on acquisitions to strengthen the core of our company, and not going into unknown endeavors.
The business model, what we run here, is clearly that we earn money by enabling our clients to earn more. To improve their profitability through efficiency and sustainability improvement, is that where we will earn our money on. The number one means if the customer needs efficiency improvement, if the customer needs sustainability improvement, it's about Bilfinger. That's the number one position.
It's not about the size, it's not about in how many countries we are or anything else. It's really about the reputation, the competence. What we then have in the industries wherever we act, that we are the number one in helping them to improve efficiency and sustainability. We outlined, actually quite detailed, which kind of strategic levers we use for it. As I said this morning, it is important that we communicate very transparent, ongoing to you, and that you can judge us on the KPI, on the timeline, on the strategic levers. It will help us that we are easier to read in our performance, and it will help us internally to get the accountability up in the whole group and getting that back, what is very important for any business, to have a lot of self-confidence when you go out to the market.
If we look in what we are today, we cover from consultancy to maintenance and turnaround quite a lot, supported heavily by digital. We are in three main areas, with the Middle East, North America and Europe. We are with 35% projects. You see on the right bottom side of that slide, how we are covering the different verticals, the different industries where we're in. The tomorrow of Bilfinger looks like that we are in the areas where we are today, but we are 80% recurring, low risk, high profit, recurring service and frame contracts. We change our industry mix quite significantly into energy more. We keep chemicals and petrol chem on more or less the same level. We decrease oil and gas. We decrease significantly others, and we increase pharma and biopharma.
In the offering, the engineering, the new build modification, and especially the maintenance and turnaround, is a big part of that, where we will be market leading throughout the areas where we operate. Out of that, Matti will go on the financial setups and capital allocations.
Yes. Revenue growth, EBITDA progression and cash generation will drive our ability to continuously grow our net profits and hence continuously grow the dividend. We continue to work hard to get to investment-grade rating. We will fund our organic growth. As Thomas said, there is M&A. If it fits, bolt on, adds to our capacities and competencies. As we said earlier, finally, share buyback as an option also to drive total shareholder return. That's the plan that we have.
Very well explained to you. Thank you very much for spending your time with us, for being here with us, here or on the stream. That is what we're striving for. Number one, for our customers in enhancing their efficiency and their sustainability. Bilfinger, leading in industrial services. Thank you very much. Over to Bettina.
Yeah. The last opportunity for today. Definitely not the very last opportunity. We hope that this conversation, that this discussion will be today, have a new starting point going into the next weeks, months and years. Still, again, if there's something left for today, we would still try to answer your questions here or in the stream. Well, I think
Actually, On a more personal note, when you stand here on the stage, you can imagine it's quite warm. Climate change, huh? Of course, if you don't get questions, you think always, "Was it well explained?" and so on. We are very, very open for feedback. That's clear. Communication is not always to give us only the nice words, constructive feedback would be highly appreciated. I guess, no further question.
No. Not, not for today, I would say.
Okay. Matti, I think we are done.
Thanks a lot to the colleagues. Thanks a lot to the whole team who did a fantastic job since actually the middle of last year, especially the Team Twelve. The whole organization, where I hope quite a lot are watching us, great job. Top people, top company, top future. Thanks a lot.