Yeah, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and a very warm welcome to HENSOLDT's Capital Markets Days 2023. We are really impressed by this great turnout here at our site in Ulm, and it's fantastic to have so many joining us online as well. I'm Veronika Endres, Head of Investor Relations at HENSOLDT. Joining us today are our esteemed members of the management board: Thomas Müller, Chief Executive Officer, Christian Ladurner, Chief Financial Officer, Celia Pelaz, Chief Strategy Officer, and Lars Immisch, Chief Human Resource Officer. Thomas will open with an engaging introduction, showing why HENSOLDT is an outstanding investment opportunity now more than ever. Celia will then delve in our go-to-market strategy and our efforts to expand globally. She also will discuss how our investments in technology and our M&A strategy are boosting HENSOLDT's growth.
Christian and Lars will then introduce the third wave of our HENSOLDT Go! program and will elaborate how we develop and maintain the right skill sets within our teams. This is followed by financial insights. Christian will give a detailed overview on our short and medium-term financial outlook. Finally, Thomas will wrap up the day with a brief summary and his final thoughts. We'll have a 15 minute coffee break after Celia's presentation to refresh and network. A Q&A session is planned towards the end, with plenty opportunity for questions, both for our in-person audience and our virtual participants.
The day will then conclude with a reception and a light dinner back in our showroom, offering also the opportunity to engage personally with our management board members. One final remark: please note that this event is being recorded, and the video will be available on our website soon after. And now, let's kick things off with you, Thomas.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Veronika. Ladies and gentlemen, dear analysts and investors, a very warm welcome. Now, I really say a very warm welcome because I know that during the tour it has been a little bit cold. Warm welcome to our Capital Markets Days today. Thank you very much for joining us here in Ulm, a city that is not only famous for the highest church spire in all of Christianity, highest church spire in all of Christianity, as HENSOLDT is, like the highest spire, one of the leading companies in defense electronics in the world. And why we believe and why we are so proud and pride in this, we will take you through the next two hours.
HENSOLDT's location here in Ulm, with 2,500 employees, is the biggest of our locations, and as we said, we as a team are dedicated to making the difference for a safer tomorrow. At our last Capital Markets Days in London, we discussed the new defense environment after Russia's invasion of Ukraine extensively. Today, this war in the heart of Europe has been raging for 642 days with no end in sight, and our world is inching towards even more instability. Just to mention a few examples, we have seen a flare up of ethnic conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also between Serbia and Kosovo again. The extension of the BRICS alliance with countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina on the lines, China's ambition to become a superpower in an increasingly multipolar world.
The recent events in the Middle East, marked by Hamas' aggression against Israel, have unfortunately derailed peace prospects, highlighting an even bigger and more growing global security crisis. These interlinked conflicts, escalating both in number and complexity, create global polycrisis that will incredibly difficult to resolve. Long-term investments in defense and security are becoming a key priority for all nations, especially in the Western world, as credibly and credible deterrence is key to avoiding conflicts. As a result, ladies and gentlemen, we see steeply growing demand for sophisticated electronic defense and security solutions to counter diverse and evolving threats. We will come much more in detail, Celia, when you are presenting our portfolio into this area.
In this context, our presentation today underscores one vital truth: investing in our company, in HENSOLDT, a leader in defense electronics with a significant presence in Germany, Europe, and an expanding global footprint, represents not only a strategic decision for multi-decade, sustainable high growth, but a commitment to security in these turbulent times. Dear ladies and gentlemen, since our IPO in September 2020, we delivered on what we have promised every single year. For 13 quarters in a row, we, HENSOLDT, walked the talk, and we are fully on track to deliver a record 2023. We have excellent visibility on all our KPIs, and we have no doubt about our continued sustainable success, not today and not for the foreseeable future, for midterm and long-term period.
Since 2019, we have increased our backlog by 2.5x , creating a very solid foundation for, as I said, a multi-decade, sustainable and consistent profitable growth. The growing budgets in our markets and the need for an increase of conventional capabilities and new platforms with ever-increasing electronics content will further drive our order pipeline. During the IPO, we stated a pipeline of 10, you remember well, a EUR 10 billion for 2020 to 2023. Today, we can show a pipeline of EUR 25 billion for the next three years, which is a positive development. Looking further ahead, the picture continues to improve with an identified pipeline of around EUR 34 billion in the next five years. EUR 34 billion in the next five years.
In this time frame, the structure of our pipeline will change and become more weighted to international and European opportunities, including, ladies and gentlemen, also U.S. platforms, showing our ability to capture more and more business outside of our traditional home markets, but based on our traditional home market as reference markets. Before I continue, I have a question to you. When you think about HENSOLDT, what makes this company such a great investment? Well, we will have time for the Q&A later. Now, let's continue. The equity story of our IPO three years ago has stood the test of time, and going forward, HENSOLDT will continue to be a unique, high-growth defense and security investment. Being a pure-play defense electronics company, and this is very important also if you take into account the possible acquisition of ESG, we focus on a very attractive market segment.
Our platform-agnostic approach and the customer-centric business model are laying the foundation for a long-term, high-growth investment platform. We see an increase in defense budgets around the world, with an overproportional increase on top of this in our market segment of defense electronics. We operate in a market with a volume of almost EUR 25 billion and a growth rate of 9%. Our business in Germany has seen a tremendous push through the EUR 100 billion special fund and the recent statements of Chancellor Scholz and the new Minister of Defense, Pistorius, and they reinforce our confidence that Germany will spend on a lasting basis the 2% of GDP sustainably. This has been even confirmed during the sometimes bumpy last days.
In this long term, this will increase the German defense budget to almost EUR 80 billion, whereas we will have a EUR 30 billion part in it each year on investments, which is incredible amount of money. It is encouraging to see that only last week, Germany increased the support for Ukraine from EUR 4 billion to EUR 8 billion, only in 2024. This stays. You may have heard Boris Pistorius, the German Defense Minister, the day before yesterday, when he has been in Kiev with Ukrainians, he sold another four batteries of air defense systems, IRIS-T, for not only 2024, but also already for 2025... and, if he sells IRIS-T, then he's selling HENSOLDT radars. So good news, we keep on going, and the support of the German government is really great.
We are aware of yesterday's decision of the German Ministry of Finance to freeze parts of the federal budget, and we are assessing the potential impact on us while the situation evolves. What we know is that the EUR 100 billion special fund has been codified into a specific law in Germany and is therefore not, we repeat, not affected by the budget freeze. This gives us high confidence for our growth path, and we can perhaps later in the Q&A talk about our measures, how to take over, potentially, I have to say again, ESG. We also see increasing dynamic outside of Germany, with the contracts already flowing in through the European Sky Shield Initiative. I think 17 countries signed it. 17 countries signed the Sky Shield Initiative, if I remember correctly.
17 means for the medium area, we and Diehl are as partners in. It's super business. And you have seen what we are doing currently in order to get the serial production really faster and faster and faster. The war in Ukraine has clearly shown how important sensors for intelligence and surveillance, a digitized battlefield, and electronic warfare capabilities have become. This is our core market, and we see over proportional growth in the sensor solutions segment. I've been referring to a super cycle for our industry. You remember during the IPO, I introduced the super cycle 2.0, 2.1 or 2.2 at last year's Capital Markets Days. Our figures and outlook prove that this acceleration of growth in our market segment of defense electronics is real and creates a very strong outlook for our company, for HENSOLDT.
Our order book is still growing, laying the foundation for a multi-decade, sustainable, and consistent, profitable growth. We see that international share of our pipeline is steadily increasing, creating a very balanced regional profile, and all of this is based on our success. You remember, one of our big competitors, the Israelis, always say, "We are combat proven." Now, HENSOLDT sensors are combat proven, too, now. Unfortunately, we as citizens, have to say this, but it is a fact. Maybe even more important than securing the orders is, ladies and gentlemen, to deliver them on time and cost and quality. It doesn't make sense if we only have the orders, we have to deliver them. We have to make our customers happy. Some of you have asked us if we can handle this strong growth, and I think our revenue development gives an impressive answer.
We have put a strong focus on project execution and converted the order book into profitable revenues that have grown from EUR 1.1 billion in 2019 to around EUR 1.85 billion this year. For you, our shareholders, we keep profitability and cash generation high. I leave it to my CFO because I'm the more bullish one, and all together as a team, we are the more prudent one. We walk the talk, as we said, we don't overpromise. Celia will dive deeper into the M&A topic later. Let me just say the following: We look to grow. We want to do M&A. We must be very selective, as good targets don't grow on trees, as we all know.
We are spending a lot of time and money and energy to find the best targets that match our criteria, and we are firm believers in this process to get us to the next step up. Obviously, you're all aware of our announcement to the capital markets ten days ago. As you all know, such a transaction is only complete when the share purchase agreement is signed. We had to go public. We have been very unhappy about this, but we negotiated for three months with a lot of banks, very calmly, very quietly, and we had to go to the German parliament for support to keep them at 25.1%. And guess what happened in the very same day? We had a leak, so we had to go public as a stock-listed company.
So Share Purchase Agreement, not yet signed, but, as you know, we are exclusively negotiating and, I think, well, let's cross our fingers we are on a good way. In any case, we keep you updated. Now, but allow me one general remark. We have been looking for quite some time at further boosting our integration capabilities, which are becoming more and more important when we look at multi-domain operations, as we have stated, and you will see it, Celia, in your presentation, how important it is. We are already strong in this area, but the combination of HENSOLDT product portfolio and international access with even stronger integration capabilities could unlock something very interesting, which is almost magical. These were the core elements of our equity story at the IPO, and we will continue to focus on these strengths and to deliver on our promises.
The equity story will even be more relevant in the new defense environment of today, and the future battlefield driven by Multi-Domain Operations. The warfighter of tomorrow will greatly rely on interconnected sensors, providing him with a superior situation picture, and we are laying the technological foundation for this battlefield of the future already today. We will capture the various pockets of growth. Our portfolio will become increasingly Artificial Intelligence-enabled, and we invest heavily in the further digitization of our sensor solutions, and for sure, in multi-sensor data fusion. We as a team will give you a much more deeper insight, as you have already got today, walking around in this technology-driven growth and how we win contracts. I would now like to pass over to Celia to give you even more insights and more details how we will do this. Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas. So good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's also a great pleasure for me to be here today with you to discuss the evolving defense environment and the markets in which HENSOLDT is operating. As we heard from Thomas, unfortunately, the global security environment has not improved since we had our Capital Markets Days last year. We keep witnessing elevated geopolitical tensions globally. And as unfortunate as these developments are for us as human beings, they are leading, though, to a clear understanding of the need for defense and deterrence and to a sustainable increase in defense spending, with a particular emphasis in electronics, in that what we do. The baseline global defense spending is now expected to grow by around 4%-5% annually in the medium term.
In recent conflicts, from conventional warfare to advanced multi-domain operations, the relevance of sensors and electronics has never been greater. Consequently, the global growth expectations for these markets are approximately 9% per annum, indicating robust growth trajectory is specifically aligned with HENSOLDT's capabilities. This positions our company highly advantageously in the current defense landscape. You probably recognize this page from previous presentations, as we have highlighted this feature of our business to you already before. But I would really like to re-emphasize that HENSOLDT is positioned for long-term structural growth, and that our growth and performance are less linked to short-cycle, conflict-type market reactions, so not like ammunition, for example. Digitalization and the increasing level of multi-domain connectivity and autonomy are driving the demand for our products.
Key drivers include the shift to next-generation platforms with even higher sensor density and the rise of uncrewed systems that complement manned platforms. This results in a demand growth driven by both content per unit and overall volume. Looking at the global defense spend, we can see that electronics are growing faster than the overall defense spending, particularly in Germany, due to the special fund and commitment to NATO targets. Many of the new systems that Germany is providing, as you have seen also today, are now very dense with electronics, which is obviously very beneficial for us, HENSOLDT. Although not as fast as in Germany, growth remains strong in Europe and internationally, and obviously, these are bigger markets from which we currently have a smaller share.
So these markets are very attractive for us, and our position as a German sensor solutions champion with a strong portfolio allows us to address very attractive pockets of growth and increase our market share. This is well reflected by the pipeline that Thomas showed to you earlier, where 76% of our order potential is located outside of Germany. Our analysis of defense electronics growth by capability shows a consistent pattern of broad and robust growth across all areas. And of course, this is highly beneficial for us because we have a very comprehensive and broad portfolio across all areas, which enables us to support customers across various domains. We see that recent policy and spending shifts have solidified by the ongoing Ukraine war and the emerging conflicts in MENA and APAC.
We also see that requirements for high-capability sensors consistently increase across all major defense markets, and that the spending is focused on major procurement and upgrades of frontline capabilities. At the same time, next-generation platforms like the Leopard 2AX, the F127 frigates or FCAS become more concrete and work on electronic capabilities across air, land, sea, and space domain intensifies. In our Capital Markets Days last year, Christian already discussed the time frames it takes in our industry from a political decision to booking the order intake and consequently transforming the order into revenues. But the sense of urgency for much-needed capabilities has indeed led to the acceleration of the procurement processes. We have picked the example of NNBS here, the system for close and very close air defense in Germany, where HENSOLDT will provide sensors to protect troops, even on the move, to illustrate this acceleration.
NNBS is a very complex, multi-billion program, which will be contracted in several phases. But the decision to start the program was taken a couple of years ago, and it took roughly two years to come from the procurement decision to the first order intake, which we expect in the coming weeks. It will then take three to five years to complete the development milestone and convert that order intake into revenue, profit, and cash. And we will see then more order intake for the series deliveries in 2026 and 2028. But it is also important to mention now that in parallel to such big procurements, we have seen acceleration of the procurement process in the area of air defense.
Last June, for example, we already got the order for three TRML-4D radars in the frame of an urgent mission requirement procurement of three IRIS-T SLM systems for the German Air Force, with an option to order another three in 2025. So I think this example shows you how currently, for certain specific urgent requirements, lead times can also shrink to less than a year, which is something revolutionary for our industry and will support the sustainable growth of our company. Now let me please move from how do we assess our overall market potential to how we win in the various geographies. We have tailored strategies for our major geographies and a highly diverse toolbox for winning new business.
Whether it is in Germany, Europe, or international markets, our approach is, nimble, adaptive, and grounded in a combination of technology, local industrialization, and upstream supply chain development. The key here is to understand that the toolbox is always the same, but every country and every opportunity is different. So it's not only important to know the markets, the relevant players, and their dynamics, but also to spend the necessary time to understand what is required to win each of those opportunities. Therefore, our business development and sales teams develop specific capture plans for each opportunity. They describe the opportunity, the country, and a stakeholder environment in detail, and they lay down our winning strategy, including the concrete tools and action plan to implement it. So let's now have a look at some examples of how we win.
Let's start with a look at Germany, our most important home market, where HENSOLDT stands as a technology champion and the leading sensor technology provider. We deliver high-spec core sensor capabilities and systems across key platforms like the Eurofighter, the Leopard 2, or the U212A submarines, and we cover all domains, maintaining our leadership through continuous investment in innovation. The recognition that we enjoy as a holder of proprietary and provider of key sovereign technology in Germany brings us the advantage of a very high customer intimacy and also of customer-funded R&D. We work the toolbox leading mostly from a national key technology, customer intimacy, and industrial system and perspective. Of course, I'm simplifying, but this is a way to think about it. The German market is also our springboard to the global markets.
When German OEM sell their platforms and systems worldwide, we are usually on them. But as we are also OEM as agnostic, we can also easily adapt our portfolio to platforms outside of Germany, which we obviously do. Many of you know this slide from our quarterly earnings presentations. I'm not going to go into detail, don't worry, but I want to make a point, and, and the point is that this rich opportunity set across all domains and many platforms, it stems obviously from our position as holder of national key technology. It's our shows how deeply HENSOLDT is embedded in key German programs, and that we are the core of German defense electronics capabilities. With high visibility of opportunities and close customer proximity, the German programs are our foundation for growth and our launchpad for upcoming next-generation programs.
As a further point of proof for our leading position in Germany and our ability to leverage the Zeitenwende, we are showing four recent wins in this slide. I already talked about NNBS a couple of slides ago, and the orders that we have booked, are about to book, and will book in the future years to bring short-range air defense capability to the German forces. The Eurofighter Mark 1 rebaselining contract is an add-on to the original Mark 1 contract, as the customer requires additional features for the radar. This type of add-on contract is characteristic for the big development projects that we have won. We've seen PEGASUS today as well, and there is a high probability that over the lifetime of these projects, even more of these add-ons will materialize.
And the orders for Puma Optronics and Self-Protection are a good example of how we are in a central position for the digitalization of the German land-based operations. So the four topics alone in this slide amount to almost EUR 400 million, and in combination with the many other projects that we are chasing, will contribute to our substantial order intake by the year end. So now let's move to Europe without Germany, where partnering is key to our success. We look at partnering mostly from two different perspectives. One is what we call our Convoy partnering with German and other European OEMs, which is a big element of our success. Here, we leverage our technology base and position in platforms and collaborate also as necessary with local partners to align our capabilities with local requirements to win contracts.
The other perspective comes from our position as German Sensor Solution Champion, which obviously grants us a seat at the table in European cooperation programs, in which we then develop new products and capabilities in close cooperation with our European peers. Competition, we call that. This strategy has positioned us as a leader in the European defense sector and significantly increase our European opportunity pipeline. Of course, when we talk about Europe, we should also not forget that we have strong French and British industrial footprints, portfolio, and capabilities, which also play a strong role in our success in the European market. Here, we can see some concrete examples of the different cooperation perspectives mentioned before. The first sample shows how we cooperate with our major peers and so have a considerable share in major European cooperation programs like FCAS.
European procurement cooperation programs and the European Defense Fund provide us with increased customer-funded R&D and allow us to be part of what will be the blueprint for European core assets in a multi-domain battlefield. The second one is a good example to show how we also cooperate with the smaller and more dedicated players when it comes to specific areas of our portfolio. In this case, to deliver Soldier Optronics via OCCAR to many members of the European Union. The third one shows how we leverage and expand our convoy partnerships with European OEMs. Our strategy involves utilizing our core technologies and adapting our business model to meet diverse geographic requirements. Our focus on bilateral industrial partnerships in Europe has also significantly enhanced our competitive position globally.
So we are a key player in the European defense sector, and we will continue to be a key player going forward. Our strong record of wins in Europe includes recent orders, demonstrates the enduring demand and our ability to deliver capabilities across various domains. Let me pick up two examples here. The one, upgrade of Norwegian Ula-class submarines with our advanced periscopes and optronics mast systems are testament to our technological leadership in this area and our ability to form those winning Convoy partnerships I was talking about. And the TRML-4D radar has truly become the best seller in our portfolio, with contracts for Ukraine and the Baltic states in the European Sky Shield Initiative, both in Convoy partnership with Diehl Defence, but also in direct sales, for example, to the Ukraine. Let's come to international markets outside of Europe.
Growing our international business is a key priority for me and for the entire HENSOLDT management team. In international markets, our international industrial footprint in the U.K., in South Africa, in France, and our agility are our key strengths. We combine our technological expertise and the overall international portfolio with a flexible business model, allowing us to target a wide range of markets and opportunities. This here now is where the toolbox really comes into its own. As I was explaining earlier, we really take time to understand how to win in a particular market and then work that toolbox to the best effect. This can be with product customization, partnering, local production, supply chains, or maintenance capability.
And this leads to a wide range of international opportunities, such as the P-75I submarine modernization in India, for example, or our SETAS see-through armor system for the Korean K1 tank. The opportunity is indeed significant, and we are focused on it. And a key enabler for many international markets is local workshop and support capabilities. We are therefore very active in shaping partnerships, for example, with Huneed Technologies in Korea, to produce and support our MILDS missile warner or with General Dynamics to supply laser rangefinders for their M1 Abrams tank. We have a long list and a long track record of international partnerships that allow us to serve international markets by increasing customer intimacy and at the same time expanding our capabilities and sometimes also our portfolio.
We have an international product portfolio from our operations in France, U.K., and South Africa, with which we also serve international markets and which opens further international opportunities for us, and we'll see a nice example of this on the next slide. We find here some examples of our international successes, and the first one, which is special to me, as I mentioned before, because it exemplifies what we mean when we talk about becoming a sensor solutions provider, and also very well shows how our international footprints and capabilities play together to win.
The Indonesian Navy has two mine hunter naval vessels that required modernization, and through a great combined effort of our colleagues in France, in the U.K., and in Germany, our French-led team, it's a French contract, won a contract to provide a tailor-made sensor package and a combat management system for the Indonesian mine hunters. Also, I assume that you have seen our passive radar today during the site visit. We have been optimizing and fine-tuning the world-leading technology for quite some time, and now it's paying off. We have secure contracts, not only with the German Air Force, but also with an undisclosed customer in the MENA region, where passive radar will enhance air defense, and we see the passive radar being the next big, big thing for the European Sky Shield Initiative, too.
The other two examples show our business success in areas that sometimes fly a little bit below the radar, but they provide good business with very attractive margins. For example, every M1 Abrams tank that is currently refurbished will receive one of our enhanced laser rangefinders. Japan is the biggest single customer for our MILDS missile warner, equipping VIP and transport airplanes as well as helicopters. Having looked at our markets, I would like us now to delve into the realm of technology-driven growth. As pictures often say more than words, let's have a look at why HENSOLDT technologies are critical across battlespace domains.
To win information superiority and gain freedom of movement, armed forces need to engage in multi-domain operations. Especially, air forces are hindered by networked air defense systems, which form huge anti-access area denial zones. To gain information and be able to penetrate these zones, multiple reconnaissance systems must work together. Aircraft fly strategic SIGINT missions day and night, covering wide ranges of enemy territory. Maritime patrol aircraft and unmanned platforms contribute additional radar and optical sensor information. The airborne signals intelligence is supplemented with information provided by maritime solutions and land forces operating in the respective area. Open-source intelligence adds another piece to the puzzle. These large amounts of data are shared between platforms and a C2 center through tactical data links and SATCOM. Crypto modules protect against cyberattacks. All intelligence is merged and processed with AI techniques to provide a networked and smart situational picture.
Now, countermeasures can be launched. Multi-domain electronic attack missions can degrade the enemy's air defense capabilities so that forces can penetrate and disintegrate anti-access area denial zones. The resultant freedom of movement helps armed forces to achieve strategic objectives and force a return to competition on favorable terms. HENSOLDT, enabling multi-domain operations.
So I believe that the video that we have seen makes very clear why HENSOLDT products are so vital for the future of defense and security, and how we are really at the core of multi-domain capability. The expected growth of around 9% per annum in our markets reflects our products' core significance in defense technology. As mentioned earlier, we expect an increase in the number of platforms and further substantial increase in electronics content per platform. I would like to quote Thomas, who during our nine months earnings presentation, said, "One plus one does not equal two at HENSOLDT, but at least three and maybe more." Our close relationship with our customers drives our focus on key areas such as modularity, hardware technology, and software integration.
We are particularly advancing in automated target identification in optronics and a fully digital backend for radar systems like the TRML-4D, for example. We have also laid the foundation for a fully artificial intelligence-enabled product portfolio, which we leverage in upcoming programs. Let's look at some examples of how we develop our portfolio. Our spectrum dominance offerings, like the Pegasus system, exemplify our approach to leveraging common architecture and technology across our portfolio. These products are continually evolving to meet current and future challenges, incorporating lessons from recent conflicts for enhanced functionality. Based on the positioning that we had on the Euro Hawk many, many years ago, where we applied our competencies in payload development and deepened our know-how in airborne certification, we then focused investment on further system-level capabilities and partnerships. We successfully acquired the contract for the Pegasus long-range airborne surveillance and intelligence gathering system.
We drive this approach further on FCAS, where we lead the German Industrial Consortium to develop the sensor and effector network together with our German consortium partners and the key leading sensor solution companies in Spain and France. This will include payloads, integration work, and seamless interconnection across sensors and with effectors, as well as across platforms. These are key elements of multi-domain operations, which are being developed over the next years. In Optronics, we are responding to customer demands for digitalization in all domains, but with a special focus on next-generation land platforms. Our transition from analog to next generation, so from analog to digital systems, facilitates a platform-independent, cross-functional approach, meeting the evolving needs of the next-generation platforms and further increasing our work share.
This also puts us in a central position when it comes to getting the electronics in the tank network and the sensor data fused across our sensors and also third-party sensors, what will be a key stepping stone into capabilities required for multi-domain operations. Here we see an illustration of this transition from the traditional glass-based optical components that are used in many ground-based systems, like tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, to more modern digital products, which are key to future networking and multi-sensor data fusion. This is currently one of the most exciting fields of new technology developments, and we will focus our investments on this area to stay ahead of the curve. So please now allow me to play another video, which explains how we integrate all these sensors into vehicles and leverage the power of multi-sensor data fusion.
Indeed, innovation is part of our HENSOLDT DNA. We follow a very clear technology development roadmap and product-related business cases to invest in the right things. Core technologies, new products, enhanced capabilities, all dedicated to have a competitive portfolio that gives the right answer to our customers' requirements. Our investments are not only internally driven, we invest approximately 5% of revenue in R&D, but also supported by significant customer-funded development. The FCAS-related national research and technology contracts that we won this year are a good example of customer-funded developments, which help us to maintain our technology edge. Our investment priorities are informed by decades of experience. Key areas include sensor data fusion, artificial intelligence, multi-domain operation-enabling technologies, system-level capabilities, and next-generation hardware and software products.
In the next couple of years, we will see a higher weight of R&D investment on the digitalization of our electronics portfolio, as mentioned, and we will also see a higher weight of investment in artificial intelligence. With 30% of our technology research budget directed to artificial intelligence development, we want to be at the forefront of technological innovation in defense. We keep our investment focus in making our strategic vision a reality, HENSOLDT as the key enabler for the future of warfare. Of course, we do not only pursue portfolio capability and market reach development by organic means. M&A has always been, and will keep being, an important component of our growth strategy. Since 2017, we have shown that we are experienced and disciplined acquirer with eight completed transactions.
We will continue to pursue value-added M&A, and we will keep seeing very different routes to it. For example, when it comes to portfolio expansion, of course, we can complement our sensor portfolio, but we also look at opportunities to invest in disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, data fusion, and analytics, which, as we've seen, are important for the future of warfare. As you have all seen from the news that we published about a possible acquisition a couple of weeks ago, as Thomas already mentioned, we also look at opportunities to invest in expanding our sensor solution offering and integration capability, with the objective to increase our footprint per weapon system, but also our involvement in the overall life cycle of the system.
Such opportunities can also strengthen our market position in existing markets and platforms and open the door for us in new ones. Of course, we continue to look at the various drivers, which could lead to more consolidation of the defense electronics industry in Europe. Dear investors, dear analysts, ladies and gentlemen, I hope that my presentation today has shown to you how we walk the talk towards the strategic growth ambition which we set for ourselves last year. We keep seeing more than enough potential for us to grow organically, faster than the market, with around 10% organic growth and 5% M&A-driven growth per annum over the next years. Our position in Germany and in Europe is very strong, and we will strengthen it further, not only to ensure, but also to increase our participation to key programs.
We will continue to leverage this position, our international footprint, and our strategic partnerships to continue to increase our share in international markets. We will keep walking the talk. We will keep delivering our growth strategy profitably. That is what HENSOLDT is all about. You can all count on that. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Celia. We will turn now to our coffee break, and I would suggest that we start again at 4:20 P.M. Please help yourself in the back. Welcome back, everybody. I hope you had an enjoyable break. Let's directly turn over to Christian and Lars, who will shed light on our HENSOLDT Go! program and our strategy, how we attract and retain top talent. Christian, please.
Thank you very much, Veronika. Yeah, a very warm welcome also from my side. Dear analysts, dear investors, it's very good to have you at Ulm. Now I will demonstrate how and why HENSOLDT is ready to meet the increasing customer demands and sustain the long-term growth we have ahead of us. Let me start with the key messages that I will dive deeper in today, in the next few minutes. First, at HENSOLDT, we have a successful track record in industrializing our technology. Our highly skilled workforce and state-of-the-art production sites are laying the foundation to execute, and we further invest strategically to realize the significant growth ahead. Growth that is, at the end of the day, and this is what counts, underpinned by value extraction and margin delivery, and this is bolstered by our HENSOLDT Go! program.
HENSOLDT is building o n a very strong foundation that enables us to deliver significant growth. Let me start with our facilities first, and you have seen now our biggest one at Ulm. We have modern and we have competitive production sites in our home markets in Germany, in the U.K., in France, in South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Each site boasts a history of reliable and delivery and highly skilled workforce. Each of these sites is ready to scale up as needed by our customers. I have a very clear message for, for you, and you have seen it the last years: HENSOLDT is and will remain a CapEx-light business.
Over the past five years, we were growing significantly, yet our CapEx have remained low and stable at around 2%-2.5% of revenue, and we will continue this track in the coming years. Our highly qualified and motivated people drive our business, and we are prepared to expand our workforce, building on our successful track record of hiring over 1,700 employees since 2019, and Lars will talk about it in more depth in a couple of minutes. Now we go to HENSOLDT Go! Improvement Program, and this is what I really like because it's one of the key drivers of the HENSOLDT success. You know that we completed the first two waves.
Wave one was getting independent from Airbus, being a self-sustained company, and HENSOLDT Go! Wave 2 was focusing on optimizing our end-to-end processes and focusing on our biggest sites here in Germany, Ulm and Taufkirchen and Oberkochen. We are now launching wave three, and to expand the success we had across all regions in the world. We're focusing on three major topics. First one is engineering efficiency. It's in the middle of our program. And why? You have understood already, but you should understand that a very high percentage of our value creation is engineering. It's engineering-driven, that means we have to make this efficient, we have to take care about engineering, and then we deliver our products. The next one is industrialization of our key products. You have seen today TRML-4D, and this is what we are heavily focusing on.
The third one, of course, is supply chain robustness, where I will talk in a few minutes about. I will guide you through all these three topics: industrialization, engineering efficiency, and supply chain robustness in the upcoming minutes. Let's first go about and to talk about industrialization. What does it mean for us as HENSOLDT? When we talk about industrialization, we have a few topics in mind what we do. The first is enabling large-scale production without major changes, deliver high-quality products consistently, ensure flexible and predictable production flow, and at the end of the day, reduce unit costs. We have developed this integrated industrialization process model together with our key stakeholders and most notably with our customers to meet their increasing demand. This model now forms a solid foundation for optimizing across the whole complete value chain, including engineering, production, quality, and supplier performance.
Now let's go to engineering. I mentioned already how important this is for HENSOLDT. In response to this Zeitenwende, further international growth, and the need for flawless execution, we have launched three initiatives with the objective to further improve our engineering organization and manage our growth. The first one is externalization. In order to keep up the demand and to fulfill them, we need more than 500 additional engineers by the end of 2024. A giant number. So what do we do to achieve this? We will focus our own highly qualified engineers on high-value-add items, and we will externalize lower value add work packages to engineering service providers. We are making, again, good progress there. There are many companies who want to support us in ramping up the defense, and this is the first bucket. The second bucket is operating model.
We will drive the operational performance through continuous improvement initiatives and implement the Develop-to-Deliver process. Engineers do not only do R&D and R&T in the respective topics. They are very focused to develop that a product is, at the end of the day, delivered in time. The third thing is modularization. Modularization is a key driver for efficiency in engineering. That means when we have the synchronized data flow, and we have this multi-domain operation architecture standards across the whole HENSOLDT community, we will benefit from modularization, and at the end of the day, efficiency. The third one is supply chain robustness, and this is essential for our industrialized growth and international expansion. We are focusing on improving supplier performance, stabilizing our supply chain planning, and enhancing on-time delivery to customers. Let me give you a few more details.
We will improve our supplier performance with a full end-to-end implementation of an advanced product planning. And let me give you some examples. When you are at a single manufacturer, people tend to control the quality of products when the products enter your site, and this is not what we understand in a series production. In a series production, you go to the supplier, you control the value the supplier generates at his site in order to control the supply chain, not only in your site, but also in the sites in the tier one, tier two. This is what, for example, automotive industry is very common. And this, at the end of the day, decreases costs, increases quality, and reduces net working capital.
We will continue to further stabilize our supply chain planning and improve the availability of materials through the rollout of a risk value heat map, digital twins, stress tests, as well as the implementation of dual or second sourcing. We will also improve further the on-time delivery rate towards our customers. Let me now dive a bit deeper into how industrialization is executed at HENSOLDT already today. Having mentioned our famous, and it was mentioned now several times, TRML-4D radar, one of the most advanced ground-based air defense radars on the market, which is capable of detecting and tracking a wide range of targets, ranging from cruise missiles, drones, aircraft, and helicopters.
One year ago, I remember it quite well, we were announcing that we decided to increase the production of the TRML-4D up to nine radars this year and to 15 radars next year, due to the high demand, and Celia and Thomas were talking about the demand, which is rising and rising and rising. As a consequence, as of March 2023, one radar per month had left our production line to be tested and delivered to our customers, like the Ukraine. With this industrialization measures I've outlined earlier, the throughput part time for one radar has been reduced to four to five weeks. But this is only one half of the story. We did not only achieve to accelerate the production time, we also improved the overall layout of our production.
I hope those of you who attended today, the site visit, could get an impression of how this looks like in real life. To sum it up, at HENSOLDT, we have established now a strong basis to further optimize processes across the whole value chain and already have built up a successful track record in this respect. Already two years ago, in 2021, we decided to lease a new, yet unfinished, building in Oberkochen for our Optronics business, reflecting our strong order book and significant growth prospects. You see, in our industry, you have to decide two to three years before you see the demand in order to cope with that. This is what we did already in 2021.
This move to this new facility enables our more efficient and profitable operations, offering a synergetic building structure, a modern working environment, and modular workspace for optimal space use. Besides these benefits, the new building unites all the optronics colleagues who are currently spread over a site in Oberkochen and offers state-of-the-art facilities in each and every regard. As mentioned before, we will lease this building from our real estate company, and this has also reflected already in our guidance, save for one-off costs and CapEx below the line. So that means we have to invest a little bit next and 2025. So what does it mean? We assume a mid-double-digit million euro, non-recurring expenses over two years - from next year onwards, end of next year, beginning of 2025, with around 80% of CapEx and representing this long-term, highly attractive investment for the Optronics growth.
In a nutshell, this building will support us in two ways. The first aspect is that it will provide us the necessary, necessary capacities to achieve the volumes that we plan in our Optronics segment. Again, when you listen to the growth aspects of Rheinmetall, and when you listen to the growth aspects of KMW, this will be reflected mainly in Optronics. This is what we have to prepare for, and we will be prepared for that. Secondly, it will improve the ways of working, and we will have a positive impact on our profitability on this segment in years to come. Yeah, furthermore, last year at the Capital Markets Days, we introduced the rollout of the harmonized ERP system. It's not about only structures of ramping up production, it's also about setting the basis of having seamless data flow through the organization.
S/4HANA is for us a key growth enabler in this regard. The implementation of HENSOLDT Go! Wave 3 will lay the foundation of successfully implementing S/4, which will significantly enhance our data management, our analytical capabilities, our business insights, enabling the smooth and efficient handling of our growth across all regions. This shift will lead to an end-to-end process focus, allowing data to flow seamlessly throughout the organization, breaking down functional silos. Our phased approach for implementing S/4, and we were already commenting on it in the last quarters, in the last Capital Markets Day, will distribute costs and workload over the next five years, and where we are now currently in the process. We have completed the process design in the so-called Explore phase, and now we're developing the global template in the Realize phase, aiming for completion by mid-2024.
That means then we will have a standardized global template ready to roll out. The pilot go-live then is planned for the end of 2024, with full migrations across all entities in two waves, and this will be expected to be completed by mid of 2027. The business system and integration partner is engaged for consultancy, for the realization, and the rollout support, and I can only tell you that a few 500 meters from here, there is the building where these colleagues sit together of all functions, of all processes, in order to make this done by early next year. And this partner, who does the consultancy, is accompanied by a value as surance partner, who give us independent advice if we are on track, if everything what is promised to us is really happening.
And we've addressed the potential expert availability issues by securing over 80 full-time equivalents early and preparing HENSOLDT for this transformation. Again, 18 months in advance, and you know all how long we are now talking about this transformation. So we have been preparing this, and now we are in the middle of the process. Additionally, the program targets of this transformation are integrated into incentive plans of our executive management, ensuring a strong involvement of the whole management team and focus. And this implementation is expected to bring substantial efficiency gains and supports our strong growth outlook we share with you. And with that, I hand over to you, Lars.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, dear analysts, dear investors. You may remember last year, I've been talking about one topic we don't mention today, but another one, which was recruitment. So meaning, are we from a quantitative, and of course, in brackets, also from a qualitative perspective, able to fulfill the requirements of growth in terms of headcount? So the answer was yes, and I think Christian has shown some numbers, so we are on track to increase, I would say, our own headcount, very much focused on our core capabilities in engineering and program. First thing, I think we can tick the box. The second one, and this is the little caveat, you have also carefully listened to Christian, was saying we are not able, given the market situation, to fulfill all our wishes, unfortunately.
So that's why we are also looking at how we are going to externalize some of our, let's call it, non-core capabilities, what others can do better. I think one example which we can give is, I would say the development and the production of cables, instead of investing even more in our core capabilities, which is Sensor and Optronics. So this is what we are going to do, but even this is not enough. And this is what I'm trying to explain now in the next seconds, what are we going to do as HENSOLDT beyond, I would say, these, let's say, more quantitative-driven measures in a qualitative manner?
You will see this is not only something which is tremendously new, it is something what our people, or people everywhere, not only at HENSOLDT, expect a minimum, I would say, from an employer of choice, if I may say so. This one, what you see here is our approach to strategic workforce planning. It is absolutely necessary to look more, I would say, from two angles on our own population, irrespective of whether they are new in the company or if they have already a long lead time in the company. The first thing is, we need to understand, and this is what we have started to do 1.5 years ago, much better, what are the, from a position perspective, what are the requirements of our business?
So what are the jobs we need to have in-house, we need to offer in order to deliver to our customers as promised? So this is done, and of course, there is a main focus on engineering, there is a main focus on programs. I would say the other functions are to come, but the core business, I would say, is understood. First thing. Second thing, we have also to look individually, what are the competencies of our people today? So competencies are evolving over time. The requirements from a technical perspective to people are changing, of course.
This is what we also understand on an individual level, and we merge those topics, meaning the individual view and the position view in a development process, meaning we ensure that people are staying, I would say, ahead of the curve in terms of their competencies and basically ensuring the employability of our own workforce. This is what we need to balance much more. There are other companies, they are focusing, I would say, even stronger, and this is what we are also going to do on re and upskilling. Meaning we are going to take, I would say, workforce, which are probably not educated from an university perspective, as an engineer, taking them and skilling them up for a certain kind of task.
This is also what we are going to do, meaning we are optimizing the use of our workforce according to the needs of HENSOLDT, of course. So first thing. Second one is even not enough. Second one is clearly we are looking also on the early pipeline. So this is not so much about recruitment, this is about educating our own student and apprentices. So this is typically something for the ones who are from Germany, of course, apprenticeship is a big topic here in Germany, but it's not only a German topic, of course. We have apprenticeship scholarship programs as well in South Africa, in the U.K., and in France.
What I think is important, we have since 2017, we have, increased, I would say, the number of students and apprentices by 65%. To be continued. I think this is, this is the truth, and of course, we continue this in line with our internal capabilities, meaning we adapt also internally and combine much better, as in the past, our apprenticeship abilities and capabilities with our learning capabilities. We come to that in a second. Of course, the student programs, and I think this is very important, are linked to the needs of HENSOLDT. So meaning we are also, providing new professions. For example, we are, and this is what is written here, embedded systems aerospace engineering. So this is very much a response to our needs of Pegasus, just as an example. Voila!
So next point, learning. Learning is fundamental for all organizations. And also HENSOLDT is not only an organization providing learning solutions, it's a learning organization. So and in order to ensure this, of course, we have to offer, we have to offer, say, the classical e-learnings or MOOCs or whatever digital learning solutions you may have in mind. But of course, we are also offering the classical classroom trainings and of course, also external learnings, because we have a lot of specialized engineers. They do not learn necessarily only in classrooms, they learn in interaction with other people of the same kind, of the same quality, be them from Thales, from Boeing, from whomever. This is what we are going to ensure. And you see, we have offered more than 1,000 learning items.
So this is the name of a, let's say, of a concrete learning implemented. This is not only for, for one person, this may be for 10, for 20, for 30 persons, one learning item, in order to ensure that everybody has per year, more than one learning item. And of course, we are focusing on both on technical skills, this is very much in the core, but also on soft skills, because we need more and more people who have, I would say, the drive, the inherent drive, I would say, to bring HENSOLDT even more to the forefront of our industry.
So and this is, this one is the package we are also offering to our people, and this is what they appreciate and what they can use every day, by the way, easily via our Workday solution, which we have in place today. Voilà. So next point, and this is something which is of utmost importance, and then I think I come to an end, especially for our engineering population. Learning is not only going to a classroom or to a virtual classroom, learning is about interacting with people who are, I would say, on the same technological level or even beyond the technological level of some of our people. So first thing. Second thing, we also need interaction with others in order to bring our solutions forward.
This is what we are driving in ecosystems with, I would say, external stakeholders and partners, and you see some of them there, take Fraunhofer Institute, Technical University of Munich, University of Stellenbosch, and others, with whom we are interacting. Of course, they are also source, not only source of technical inspiration, they are also source of recruitment, so this is a nice side effect, I would say. But on top, I would say these institutions are also partners for in some of our projects, in order to bring the technology, the leading technology in our systems and solutions. So that's why this is one of the core elements which we are maintaining and growing, I would say, over the past decades. Of course, we are further intensify them.
You see, it has indeed relevance for all of our, I would say, segments, of our solutions. And, Celia, I think we can say, for Pegasus, this was of utmost importance, that we have some partners, namely also in, Fraunhofer Institute. Voilà. So this is very much in the focus, not only of HR, that's why we have put it here. So we have embedded this in HENSOLDT Go! Wave 3, in order to make it a company task and not only a functional task. Of course, it will be supported and very much managed by HR, but not only, and I think this is, my last important message of today. Christian, now talk about the financials, I guess.
Whatever we do and whatever we show is very nice, but at the end of the day, the figures are these, or are the metric which count. Let's have a view back on 9M months, nine-month results, which was totally in our expectations. The first nine months, 2023, performance order intake, we achieve, achieved the EUR 1.3 billion, perfectly aligned with our expectations, and we also have outlined in the 9M what we expect now in our heavy Q4, and Celia has also reiterated in her part what we expect now in order to come to our guidance, which I will reiterate in a few minutes.
Revenues, EUR 1.14 billion, which is remarkable from my point of view when we talk about core revenues, and you know, these pass-through revenues ramping down this year due to lower contributions from our partners in the big programs, Mk1 and Pegasus. So 15% in core revenues, strong increase, and this accompanied, of course, by a very high EBITDA margin and the reduction of the pass-through revenues. Our flagship programs, Eurofighter Mk1 and Pegasus, are progressing as expected. And with Pegasus, we've shown a very crucial moment in September with passing the respective CDRs milestones, which again, gives us a high visibility on the cash, which will come in early December. And what is very important, that we can showcase our knowledge in the complex systems in the system integration.
By end of this period, our order book reached nearly EUR 5.5 billion, covering 3x of our projected revenue, 2023, and again, ensuring a high revenue visibility. Our financial strength is further evidenced by this 20% year-on-year increase in Adjusted EBITDA on EUR 151 million, with a robust 15% margin before pass-through revenues for nine months. In addition, of course, net leverage could be further reduced in comparison to the last year, 9M, by around 2 x. In summary, we are more than confident to meet our full year guidance for 2023 and demonstrating our company's robust growth and financial strength.
Discussing now on 2023 full year guidance and midterm outlook, we are fully on track to achieve our targets, and it's unchanged and reconfirmed because what we see, what we observe, is currently absolutely in line with our expectations, with our business plans, and this is why we can reconfirm short to medium guidance. And just to reiterate, we expect for this year, the book-to-bill, 1.1-1.2. The last weeks in December will be very intensive for us, but we have a good visibility on orders. And also in terms of revenues, the EUR 1.85 billion we see driven, as mentioned before, by this growth in core revenues and enhancing then the quality of revenues in our business.
We are targeting the ex-adjusted EBITDA margin of around 19% before passthrough, and 70% cash conversion for pre-tax unlevered free cash flow. This will, again, as in the last years, contribute to reducing our net leverage to 1 or lower, alongside the dividend payout ratio, kept, as 30%-40% of adjusted net income. Looking at the midterm, also here, our view on the business is still the same. We have until now that orders will grow significantly higher and outpacing the revenue growth in the next years. This should lead then to an average annual organic revenue growth of 10% per year. We anticipate maintaining the adjusted EBITDA margin above 19% before passthrough, with reported margins again improving as the passthrough share decreases.
Our working capital approach, which is disciplined and which will stay disciplined, aims for 70%-80% average cash flow conversion, enabling us to further go for this 30%-40% of adjusted net income, given as a dividend to our shareholders, upholding the conservative financial profile. Further details we will give you when we disclose our preliminary financials at the end of February 2024, about 2024 as such, and the upcoming years. We also plan to simplify our cash flow definition by early next year, and I know what you're talking about or even laughing about. We will do that. What is key for us, the visibility on our business, yeah? What we see, as revenues already in our books.
In the following slide, I will examine a little bit more on the structure of our revenues and what also was discussed partly last in the capital markets, and give you a few more insights of that. When we now look at our order book, 9M 2023, and you know that there are significant orders ahead of us, we are again in a situation where, again, 2024 revenues are 85% already existing order backlog, which includes the confirmed order backlogs and the short cycle and aftermarket business. So it's pretty in line also with last year, and this gives us a high visibility, and this also implies that we only need a small numbers of orders to achieve, again, 2024 revenue guidance.
For 2025, around 65% of revenues is pre-secured, assuming a 10% sales increase without accounting any new orders. For 2026, we've already covered approximately 50% of our revenues based on our projected growth. This demonstrates again our excellent revenue visibility, strongly supporting the reliability of our business and of our guidance and the orders we've already secured. So Celia was talking in her part about internationalization of the business and how the pipeline evolves. This slide again illustrates now the future development of our revenue split. In 2022, for sure, Germany was our largest market, accounting for nearly 60% of total sales, boosted by our major big programs such as Eurofighter Mk1 and the Pegasus Project.
In short term, of course, this dominance will continue, partly due to Germany's EUR 100 billion special fund and commitment to allocate 2% of GDP to defense. However, looking ahead, we anticipate a growing share of international sales, leading to a more balanced revenue distribution in the long term. This alliance is perfectly aligned with our strategic goal, which Celia has previously highlighted, to expand and strengthen our international presence. Now, let's also briefly discuss our margins and our cash generation. You see here from 2020 to 2022, 2023, the evolvement which we have seen and which we will see in the midterm. As the CFO of HENSOLDT, I'm very proud that we've maintained our adjusted EBITDA margin before pass-through at 19% or even higher, while also generating high levels of cash, especially in a period of significant growth.
This achievement involves, at the end of the day, two key strategies. The first one is, of course, continued investments in our business, ramping up operations, innovating our products and solutions to meet market demands and maintain customer trust. And second, as part of our HENSOLDT Go ! Wave 3, we've identified the levers to sustain our benchmark level margins. For instance, the industrial production processes for TRML-4D radars achieving economies of scale. And we will see a similar impact in our Optronics segment in the future. Despite already being cost-conscious, we will remain disciplined further in this regard. Our ongoing commitment to cost efficiency across the organization aims to meet margin and cash flow targets and maximize shareholder value. Now, moving on to capital allocation. Our priorities also here remain unchanged since our last Capital Markets Days.
Firstly, our main focus is to fuel our upcoming growth, primarily through investments in our workforce, in our technology, in our IT systems, and to a lesser extent, factory upgrades, as these are major constraints for capacity, capacity expansion. Secondly, we aim to share the growth with our shareholders through dividends, maintaining a payout ratio of 30%-40% of adjusted net income for 2023 and the medium term. Lastly, we'll continue engaging in M&A as previously detailed, while adhering to our conservative financial debt profile and our medium-term dividend payout guidance. In closing, let's highlight our financial strengths. First, our robust order book provides exceptional visibility for our short-term guidance. Secondly, we are very well-positioned in a transforming defense environment, poised for long-term, sustainable growth.
Third, our capacity for profitable growth is bolstered by a strong emphasis on cash generation, supporting both rewarding dividends and value-creating M&A. With that, with the figures and the hard facts, back to you, Thomas f or wrap-up.
Yeah. Yeah. Dear investors, ladies and gentlemen, the analysts, it's no secret that this is most probably my last Capital Markets Days for HENSOLDT, as you all know. While it's still a bit early to say farewell, let me reflect for a moment on the past years. What has been not so well-recognized business in Airbus, is now a strongly growing company listed in the MDAX. A company that has more than doubled its size since the carve-out of Airbus. A company that became lean, efficient, high-performing under KKR's ownership, a company that has reliability and steadily delivered on its promises. Many have asked me about the secret of our success. Guess what? There's no secret. You have met the secret during this site today. It was the secret that presented our amazing growth story so convincingly to you today. The secret of HENSOLDT is our people.
The secret is our unique and unwavering team spirit. We are passionate about what we are doing. We know that we carry a big responsibility when we design and produce our high-end sensors, and that we need to succeed in dangerous missions, protecting all of us. We are fully aware of our responsibility towards capital market, to you, our shareholders. We stand here today at the top of a rather steep mountain that we climbed up together as a team in almost a decade, and what I see, I have to be very frank on this, fills me with a sense of achievement and pride. Building ships, tanks, or airplanes might get you into the news more easily. Being a pure-play defense electronics solutions provider is the inherently more attractive business.
HENSOLDT is firmly embedded in a strong, growing market segment, and we are even outgrowing the market. Our product portfolio is state-of-the-art and will become increasingly, and this is, I really repeat it, will be increasingly artificial intelligence-enabled in the future. Our two business segments complement and support each other very well. In Sensors, we see these longer cycles that require almost inhuman patience, and I can really, really confirm, inhuman patience, especially for me. When the orders are in, and we are somehow feeding the business to a very high extent, it is a business for decades. Optronics has faster cycles, and we are somewhat, I would not say victims, but kind of this, of our own success, with a huge order book that will now convert into profitable business.
The delivery of this and many other programs will then be overseen by my successor, Oliver Dörre. I think he will join us tonight, and he is also joining us then from January onwards. We have three months for a smooth takeover of the reins, which he then fully takes over first of April, 2024. With huge order backlog and excellent visibility, and ladies and gentlemen, an excellent team. What I'm most proud about is that we managed, in the last years, to transfer the responsibility from the old management team you knew, to the new management team you have seen today. I'm so happy that we could convince Oliver Dörre to join us as my successor, and he's already talking to the management board on how we best go into the future.
Sure, what remains for me to say, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, dear investors, dear analysts, thank you very much for your trust in the HENSOLDT management team. Thank you for your commitment to our company and thank you for your support over the last years. It fills me with enormous gratitude and pride when I say that for HENSOLDT, you know it, but now comes, the best is still to come. Thank you. Thank you very much. I head out up to-
Thank you very much, Thomas. We are happy to take your questions now, so feel free to raise your hand, whether you are in here or joining us virtually. And the first question comes from Ross. Please, Ross.
Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for today. It's Ross Law from Morgan Stanley. First question on M&A. Obviously, you flagged the need to raise equity, but it seems like ESG is a company that you could acquire just using debt. So if you could maybe give a little bit of explanation of why you've chosen to raise equity as well. Is that a hint to further deals on the horizon? Second question is just on the opportunities pipeline. Last year you had between 2023 and 2027, a pipeline of over EUR 30 billion. Today in the slides, it's around EUR 30 billion. Just checking whether there's anything to read into that. And last question on slide 57, the more balanced split of revenues that you're projecting. Can you define future? Is it three years, five years? Thank you. Do you want me to repeat?
So, there were three questions, right? The first was on M&A.
Yes, M&A, why you're raising equity and not just doing ESG-
I go for this one.
... through debt.
You go for M&A. The second one was just-
On the India pipeline, I can.
Let's go. Pipeline, and the third was on revenue split.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay.
Definition of future.
So why we went for the decision to go for a capital increase? We have two anchor shareholders, as you know, 50%, and they are strongly supporting us in the capital increase. If we take an M&A target, which is a German one, I much better get money from the German government. This has been, to be very blunt and open, the key reason why we said, "Yes, capital increase would be fine." For sure, we got a lot of feedback from your side that the overall amount of free float, even if the percentage is not increasing, but the overall amount of free float will increase, which is also a good sign for the market. This has been the reason why we went for the capital increase in order to partially finance the target.
Which also, and this is very important for me as CEO, even if the team in the future will go in the same direction, it keeps our powder dry, as we say in Germany, to go ahead if there's another opportunity which goes or which supports our trajectory, as Celia said, internationally. So this has been the reason why we have chosen capital increase.
On the tempo of pipeline, if I got you correctly, you said that last year we set the five-year pipeline, 2023-2027 was over EUR 30, and now in the document it says around EUR 30? Don't read anything into it. Important is that then, you know, the next five years now, 2024-2028 is EUR 34. So that's the pipeline growth. Yeah.
Yeah, regarding the revenue split, Ross, please specify your question around that. What is exactly your question on the revenue split?
So you provide here on slide 57, an outlook with a more balanced split of revenues into international, but you just define it as future. So what is future? Is it three years, five years?
Understood.
Next three years.
Yeah, to be very clear, look, we have now 2023, which has a similar view on the split. We now go midterm. I think you should think about 2026, 2027 onwards, where we will see this picture. And this is also due to the fact that currently, of course, the German demand overwhelms everything. But nevertheless, you should not forget, on an absolute basis, also the other regions grow. They do not grow in percentage-wise due to the fact I was mentioning, but this is how you should look at a future year in this regard.
There was another question coming from Sash.
Thank you. Sash Tusa from Agency Partners. I'm just following up on that question about international growth, and this is almost purely an accounting question. But how would you account for deliveries to Ukraine which are paid for by the German government? Does that come within that currently 60% Germany, or would you separate that out as an international sale because that's the end customer?
Sash, very clearly, very clear answer, it's international business.
Sure.
Because without having convinced the Ukrainians that our sensor is the best mid-range sensor in the world, they would have never gone for it. And they even ordered the sensor for other applications and integrated it with other missiles, which I don't want to talk too much about because we have a very good relationship with Diehl. And though this, therefore, we said, is international business.
But maybe I complement the answer. I would say generally, we look at end user when it comes to how we define that distribution, but it does have sometimes a weight in Germany. Programs like FCAS, they are counted in Germany. You cannot say it's only Germany, but okay. So sometimes there is a bit more weight in Germany that's actually European. That is indeed the case.
Okay. Thank you. And then one other question. You've clearly got the milestone of the CDR for Pegasus this year, which you hope or you forecast again to give a very good slug of cash in December. Are there similar or milestones over the next couple of years, either for Pegasus or for the Mark 1 radar, that we should be considering? Or are they much smoother in terms of how the program goes, or those two programs go?
Well, if you look at Pegasus, I think that you will have, again, when it comes to delivery, another bigger bunch of revenues. And in the MK 1, I think that will be more-
More balanced.
More balanced.
Um, yeah.
Charles had questions as well.
Hi, thank you. First of all, on ESG, is that EBITDA margin accretive, dilutive, about the same?
So Charles, first of all, we are in the middle of DD negotiations on, so please forgive me that I cannot give you any details now about that. Maybe the one or two other hints, of course, our margin is benchmark. The margin of this company is good, very good. And of course, value accretiveness is one of the key aspects when you look at M&A. We have communicated that, and we will also have this in mind when acquiring this company. How this looks then in total, from the valuation, from a potential price, for value accretive perspective, in many regards, we will give you any details, every detail when the deal is signed.
Okay, let me have another go. Value accretive, that means what? WACC exceeds WACC in year?
There are, there are many aspects. Of course, return on capital employed, whilst, while WACC has to be positive, yeah? It's also, regarding EBIT, EBITDA, yeah, while knowing that in a certain period of time, they have to catch up. It's not a secret that you have to then, realize some synergies, yeah, in order to come with that. That's for sure. But all the details, if I've now mentioned a few of them, will be shared with you in case there is a signed SPA. Yeah.
The problem is for them that I'm not allowed to talk more about it. But I'm really happy that we are in such exclusive negotiations currently. It will be a step up approach for HENSOLDT.
I'll get you a beer later. Next question, just on that international-
We still can talk.
You've got 12% growth from memory in the market in Germany. You've got lower growth in the rest of the world. You've got potentially ESG increasing your German exposure. I can't quite, I don't quite understand how you managed to get less German when your German growth should be higher and you're buying in Germany.
Because we do get also higher in Germany, but with that, we can address European requirements, and we did discuss now European Sky Shield and a lot what is going on around, you know, the Eastern Europe. And we still have a lot of potential to go out of Germany and Europe. And when we look at international, I mean, the growth of international markets is not so high, but we have a very small share.
And we have very, very good opportunities if you look now at on the Indo-Pacific, Asia Pacific, Taiwan, South Korea. We have the first contracts, as I mentioned before, also in Indonesia. The view of Germany towards export approvals for Taiwan has changed, and we are expecting the first export approval now in the next weeks for two radars, where the customer has already sent a request for proposal for another six. So we see that really there is also a lot of demand internationally that is going to allow us to grow in Germany and also to grow internationally.
How do I keep my 10%-- my, your sales down to 10%?
How do?
How do I keep your sales down to only 10% a year?
Charles,
That makes-
It's my-
Yes.
... it's my area. To be very clear, and this is very important for me, the guidance we always give you is our best view in the business. When it changes, I'm happy to give you some upside, some downside, how it comes. But this is what we currently say to you is the best estimation we have for our own business. And maybe, and Thomas was referring to it in the first minutes, look at the last five years. Between the guidance we gave annually, annually, annually, and the delivery was very close. So, and this gives me a, should also give you a, a good estimation that our guidance is, seems to be conservative, seems to be cautious, but from my point of view, it seems to be very realistic. In case we see some further dynamics, we will give an update on that.
Yeah.
This is how I currently look at that.
Final question, if I may. The efficiency gains, the outsourcing, the et cetera, is that, sort of, so to speak, included within that 10% guidance, or do we expect margin enhancement on top of that?
Look, there are three, four angles how you should look at our business. So we are really—we have small lots. So even if you talk about series at TRML-4D, we talk about 15. Yeah. We see economies of scale in this program. You see it quarter by quarter in a Sensors segment, that the margin goes up, up, up, and this is due to this effect. At the other hand, we have other businesses, such as Optronics, yeah, where we currently have to invest. But the success of HENSOLDT from a financial profile, when you look at the last years and also in the years to come, is that we are able to balance out investments in the one segment by the other. And again, I want to highlight that because it's very important. We currently talk about TRML-4D as a big success.
Between 2018 and 2020, we were investing heavily into this technology, and the profits and the cash flow came from the Optronics segment. This is also how we look in the future. We will need at the odd one or the other area, business unit, more investments in order to cope, and we use the money we earn now than in the next years in the one or the other program for making use. But in total, I see when I look at margins, when I look at our execution, when I look at our efficiency we gain in programs, we can maintain this margin we've shown you.
We stay being benchmark.
Thank you.
There's a question coming from Christophe.
Yes. Good evening. Two questions, actually. The first one on the midterm margin, above 19%. You're gonna be at 19% this year, next year, probably a bit above. But we have Optronics, which is still kind of weak or recovering. So midterm, 2026 and excluding any acquisitions, what would be the kind of top margin? I mean, what could we be thinking about 21% margin? Is it, what is the ideal scenario, I would say, for you, when stars are all aligned? And the other question is on, you mentioning going international several times. Usually, it also means, prepayment.
Can you update us on, well, German prepayment, but also international prepayments, because it usually entails some prepayments, and how it could change the organization going forward, or actually the working cap requirement?
Christophe, very personally, I say, I also take it as a big success. Together with the colleagues in the German BDSV association, we started this discussion with the German MoD, one and a half years ago. And the first answers we got has been, I would not cite the people, because they said: "Are you crazy about getting advance payments?" And now, after thinking about what is necessary in order to get the industry in total at speed again, something works.
Let me now follow on what happens really day by day, that in our offers, we now request for them. Legally, it's there. We have an absolute clear advice also from the National Procurement Agency that it's possible.
Yeah.
And now it has to be implemented in this agency as such, every single member of this agency, but also in our workforce, because the whole industry was used now 25 years of having this not in place, yeah? And this is what we now doing all the offers, and I'm quite sure that you will see some amounts next year or beginning of next year. And this is how we talk now about prepayments. Regarding margins, what is my ideal scenario? If I have a wish, I could give you any margin. But look, what is my view on margin? On the one hand, of course, we have to keep our margin at this high level and to maintain the cash conversion. But what is in my...
My wish is to have a sustainable, growing business, and that means from time to time, invest into the right topics, keeping the business modern, state-of-the-art. We have to do much in R&D and R&T for coping up with developments such as artificial intelligence, other ways, and this is important for me. I'm not satisfied at all if we do 20%-25% margins, but we are not prepared for the long-term future of the company. I'm still a young guy. I have a future ahead of me, hopefully. And this is how I think about margin cash flow, but total development of the company.
Thank you, Sash Tusa again. I've just got a couple of questions on, actually, it was Christian and Lars's talks. One was just to understand, you said that you've recruited 1,700 new employees since, since 2019, I think it was. Is that the net number? I just wondered what the turnover was, how many of those you had been able to retain?
It's indeed a net number, so it will cost more. So we can say per annum, take 2023, the gross hirings are between 800 and 1,000.
Okay.
Only for this year.
Great. Thank you. And then the comments that you were making about industrialization and the benefits of that. Clearly, that very much comes through in terms of the production work you do, but you have a huge amount of engineering R&D work at the moment. So roughly, what is your split currently of serial production versus engineering, so that we can see which bits benefit from industrialization improvements compared to which bits benefit from process improvements?
All in all, when you look at our value chain and you split between engineering and production, it's around 40%-50% engineering and 50% production. It's a high value of engineering, and this also fits to what Celia has outlined, sensors, sensor data fusion, being at the edge of technology. This requires engineering, and this is how you should think about around 50/50, 50% of the total value creation of this company.
I think to add to that, I think the industrialization process that we are going will also bring efficiency in engineering. I think without just previously presented with our HENSOLDT Go! Wave 3 , because you know, when you are not so used to build one after the other, then we have a situation in which, you know, each radar that needs to be built, you have many engineers going to the radar and trying to, you know, "Oh, we missed it. We..." And we are trying to really get much more efficient into that, so that engineering, in a good case, shouldn't even touch the production floor.
Yeah.
Any further questions? Also not from the online audience. Well, then, a big thank you to everybody. If no further questions, we really would like to thank you for being our guests today here in Ulm at our site in person, but also, virtually from all over the world. Now we would be happy if you join us for some refreshments and finger food in our showroom. Have a wonderful evening, safe travels back home, and see you next year.