Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome to RENK's Capital Markets Day 2025 here in Augsburg. It is great to see around 70 people here joining us in person today. Thank you all for traveling here to be with us for this special event. A very warm welcome to everyone who is joining us via our webcast today. It is great to have you all here. My name is Melina Weiß, and I am delighted to be guiding you through today's event. With me here are, of course, today our CEO, Dr. Alexander Sagel, our CFO, Anja Mänz-Siebje, and our COO, Dr. Emmerich Schiller. Before we start, I kindly ask everyone here in the room to take a look and note the nearest emergency exits around you. We have two over here. Thank you, everyone.
Whether you have known RENK for a long time or you are with us here for the very first time today, we are confident that this event will provide you with a deeper insight into our business and the investment proposition it represents. Let me now outline our agenda for the day. Our CEO, Dr. Alexander Sagel, will start by presenting our strategy for the group, our priorities, and our objectives. He will then be followed by our COO, Dr. Emmerich Schiller, who will provide a greater insight into the dynamics of RENK's operational excellence and how we deliver on our strategy and our products as efficiently and effectively as possible. After a 15-minute coffee break, Anja Mänz-Siebje will then conclude the management presentations with a detailed look at our financial performance. Following this, we will open the floor for a Q&A session.
This session is scheduled for 30 minutes, but I should stress that there will be plenty of time to ask additional questions throughout the day. To provide additional insight into our relationships with partners and as well into the future of land defense, we are very pleased to welcome two more guests today on our stage: Esa Rautalinko, CEO of Patria Group, and Michael Masur, our CEO of the VMS segment. He will join later, of course. Yeah. Okay. After these two additional presentations, the webcast will end at 12:15 P.M. After a joint lunch at this location, we invite all of our in-person guests for a site visit at our nearby headquarters. There you have the opportunity to gain further insights into our operations, meet some of the teams, and experience our products, technologies, and latest innovations firsthand.
Dear guests, please join me in welcoming our CEO, Dr. Alexander Sagel, to open today's event.
See, it works, you know? Human-machine interface. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, a very warm good morning. It's a great pleasure to see you here. I mean, I think the majority of you, we had the pleasure to have a nice dinner last night. I think it was also interesting for you, hopefully, to listen carefully to the words of General Mais about the Bundeswehr and the current scenario here on the European theater. Melina, thank you very much for the nice introduction. Again, I would highlight the agenda today. The agenda, as you have seen this in the order of appearance, is designed around our business model, where I'm more talking about strategy and the growth drivers, and organic and organic growth drivers.
We then, of course, need to talk about how to return the capital if we talk about efficiency, margin expansion, if we talk about efficiency on the capital spending, and of course, on cash generation. I have the part, I talk a little bit about strategy, I talk about market, market drivers, I will cover also technology, and then handing over to my dear colleagues Emmerich and Anja in order to go for the return part of the story. Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me, before we go into our more detailed presentation, to make a quick recap where we are currently. Who is RENK today? I'm sure you are a very educated audience, but I think it's important to recognize RENK is the leading company in the world for mission-critical drive systems if you talk about land application and navy applications.
We have a very broad, diversified customer base. You can also follow this on the chart. We have, and I think this is a kind of very important, unique point of RENK. We have a strong aftermarket business currently in the range of 40%, which is a quite sustainable business. I think it's open and fair to say, a high margin of business. What we also are, and this you see in the revenue split, with three quarters of our revenues for defense, we are a defense company, full stop. Our slogan, "We Power Freedom," are not only some written and mixed words.
This is a dedication and a motivation and a moral implication for not only for the management team or the entire RENK people here in the room, for the entire 4,200 Renkies, how we call our employees, to serve our customer, to serve our Bundeswehr, and to serve and to make sure that we can support deterrence and a peaceful living together in the future. What is important, you will hear today about growth and using market opportunities. If you look on the financial figures, and I'm sure you know them quite well, we are doing this growth process from a position of financial strength. It's important because we need to invest, we need to grow, we need to take care about supply chain, we need to take care about M&A, and for this, we need to have a solid financial basis.
I think this will be also covered later by Anja. Starting from there, like always, I think 14 months since the last Capital Market Day, so please allow me a quick review about what happened during the last 14 months. I will do it fast, not to bore you, because again, I think you are quite in the topic. Starting first, expanding our footprint, internationalization. I think you heard about our acquisition in April, Cincinnati Gearing Systems in the U.S., one of the two main gear suppliers to the U.S. Navy for us, a very strategic acquisition in order to open and to expand into the growing U.S. Navy market. Emmerich will touch it later on. I think the post-merger integration is on a good way, and also the first customer projects coming in, so it's quite positive. Also, we had the inauguration of our new plant in India.
India for us is a long-term strategic defense market. I will touch it later on. There are various programs if you talk about tanks, new generation of tanks, IFVs, etc., etc. There is also business for the civil part of our group, the industrial transmissions, and we will cover both in our Indian plant. I like this picture because you see all the RENK guys of today. We are dressed in blue. It is our color, ladies and gentlemen. What you see here, not only 40, 50 gentlemen, diversity is a little bit of a problem here. This is the team of our final assembly you will see today, and you might have heard about our modular production line. This is the team who has accomplished this change. You see in the background our modular production for the final assembly.
You will see it also today in life and in color. I think this was a very important milestone for RENK on our growth path in order to prepare for capacity for the future business to come, especially here in Europe. Last word on RAM . I think you are all familiar about what happened last year at RENK America. We had quite some problems on the supply chain. We fixed it. The next step was, of course, to stabilize RAM, RENK America. Also here, I don't want to spoil it, Emmerich. I think we are on a good way. The production is running, and we clearly see improvement, and it's stabilized, to sum it up at this moment. Top line. Today, we will talk a lot about top line, so I don't want to spend too much time here.
If you look back during the last 12 months, if you take the order intake cumulated between Q4 2024 up to Q3 2025, we talk about more than EUR 1.8 billion of order intake, which is quite a strong signal for a small company like RENK. You see some of the really bigger projects during the last 12 months. We have our Bradley, we have K2 in Poland. We got, as you know, also two additional orders this year, where we recently... The Leopard family, where was the launch yesterday at KNDS? Overall, very positive, solid track on the top line, and this will continue. Technology, even if we are not IT or software, whatever, we consider us as a technology company. Technology is key to maintain our market position. For us, to be the technological North Star in our market segment is absolutely, absolutely relevant.
I will talk later about our next-gen mobility roadmap. Just as a spoiler of my own presentation, we launched this year, and we are very proud, two new transmission types, one for the upper end of the weight class, next generation of main battle tank transmission, and also one on the lower end side, which from our point of view is the entrance into further digitalization and even unmanned platforms. We as RENK, we are a strong company, but we are also still a small company. If you talk about getting access to technical capabilities, having partners for localization in markets in order to grab opportunities or to develop together with partners key platforms, we are looking on building up a network of strategic partnerships. You can see this network here, what we built up during the last 12-14 months.
I mean, if we talk about getting access to needed technological capabilities, we form partnerships with QinetiQ, NXP, the latest one was with ARX Robotics. If it's more about localization in order to support customers in their business, in their projects, if you talk about Italy, for example, I will touch it also later, we are teaming up with companies like Leonardo or Iveco. If you talk about new platforms, innovative concepts, driving the next generation, we are talking with partners like Patria. Esa, also from my side, a very warm welcome. Good to have you here. It's a pleasure. We are building up our network of strategic partnerships. As of today, if you talk, for example, about technological capabilities, we do not see the need to involve capital in order to strengthen this cooperation. I will talk about M&A later on.
Last but not least, here we are more formal. This was at the day when we had our promotion to the German MDAX mid-cap stock market. This team, what you see here, is in charge since March this year. Emmerich, COO, Anja, CFO. Maybe from an outside-in perspective, the timing of the changes on the C-level could have been perceived as a little bit challenging. I can tell you it was a long-term, really successful succession planning. I can tell you also, together with our 4,200 employees, this team is absolutely motivated and committed to drive this company in the next phase of growth. This was looking back. Where we are today? Where we are today? I mean, you see it. I do not want to talk about the nine-month report. This is the job of Anja. In a nutshell, very good, solid on track.
Independent, if you talk about order intake, backlog, if you talk about adjusted EBIT, if you talk about revenues, very solid double-digit growth rates. That is all from my side so far. We walk the talk. Looking quickly on the capital market, and I am sure you have followed yesterday's discussions, let me have a quick comment on the share price, and let me have a quick comment on our shareholder structure. The share price, I mean, like all industry and peer groups in the market, of course, have seen an incredible positive market sentiment, starting with the Munich Security Conference. No one, and I will touch a point later, no one could expect it 12 months ago, this development, these new dynamics on the European market. Currently, the share price is somehow stabilizing.
Really, actually, it's maybe somehow doing a little bit of deep dive, but I mean, this is a common sentiment. Immediately, if someone is talking about potential meetings between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, if you talk about any kind of peace talks, the share price is dropping. Two comments on this. First, good entry point, very good entry point. The second comment is, at least for RENK, but I would also perceive for all other defense peers, the business opportunities really are starting if there is, hopefully, for the people in Ukraine, a peace agreement, because then the business really starts rearming, restocking. I'm always saying the capital market, you are determining the share price. All what we can do is to perform, to walk the talk, and trying to be as transparent as possible in the communication.
On our shareholding structure, easy to see, you know this, major changes. Triton is out. Now we have a free float in the range of 84%. KNDS, our strategic partner, is in with 16%, but I think this was also a trigger for the positive market sentiment. Also, what is the status quo is that we defined for the first time very clearly our segment strategies. As you know, we have two sectors. We have a defense sector, and we have the civil business, civil means industrial business, where we are selling, developing, and producing bearings, couplings, and transmissions. We have two different approaches to these segments. If you talk about the defense segment, it's absolutely clear. It's full focus on profitable growth, or as I'm always saying, full throttle. Here are the market opportunities. Here is the so-called defense supercycle, long-term opportunities.
Despite discussions I just touched before, defense is clearly in the focus of capital allocation. If it comes to R&D projects, if it comes to CapEx, there is a strong push towards defense. If you talk about M&A, clearly only for the defense part of the business. On the other side, the civil business, we are very happy if the civil business is growing and we are trying to support the growth, but it must be a profitable growth. Number one focus on the civil business is manage for value, being very selective on the type of projects we are acquiring in regards to return, being much more focused on costs, on production costs, on product costs, being focused on reducing overcapacity. You might have recognized during our nine months and six months report that our industrial segment is facing quite some headwind from this all GDP-related market environment.
We have overcapacities, which is a fortune on one side because we can use this overcapacity to load it with needed defense production. It is clearly two different approaches. As a result, and driven by the market environment, we do see that from today, rule of thumb, three quarters of our revenues, the share of the defense business, most likely towards the end of 2030, will increase to a level 85% or 90%, while the share of the civil business will be somewhere 10, 12 in this range. We are developing even more towards being a defense company. Please allow me, before I go now step by step in the market, to have a little review of what happened since the last capital market day.
Again, here, I do not need to make you more to bother you with statements because you all know the geopolitical tensions from China, from the Middle East, here in Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. They have not changed. They have absolutely not changed. What has changed is, and this is what you can see on the right side in this timeline, is that since the capital market date, there was this trigger event of the Munich Security Conferences, and this was the beginning of the rearm of Europe initiative. Chancellor Merz, whatever it takes, you heard it yesterday from General Mais, in principle, an unlimited check, at least for Germany.
Europe is following, according to the NATO summit, and the conclusions on this, the 3.5% plus 1.5%, you have seen that Europe, the European Union, launched a safe initiative, a long-term credit facility in order to support countries who are maybe not that strong and maybe a little bit weaker on the debt side of the financing. Last but not least, also what we see, and you could also recognize it now, step by step, the programs are coming and getting approved in the so-called 25 million parliamentaric approval process, and the projects are coming now. It took a while, but they are coming now, and this is positive. The market, again, I don't want to focus too much on the numbers, but the key statement is, if you look on the key markets for RENK, Europe and North America, both markets are growing.
Of course, there's a different dynamic in growth between North America and Europe for the reasons I just explained before. You see that Europe had in the year 2024, round about EUR 430 billion of defense budget. Depending on the financial capabilities of each member state, this will increase. From our perspective, it will increase in 2030 to a level in the range of EUR 800 billion. A big driver for this is Germany. If the budgets are increasing, and this is what you see in the middle, also the procurement budget is increasing. We see going to 30-40% of the overall budget. This means the relevant domains for RENK, land, and sea, they are also getting more money. I think you had enough market feedback and statement during the last couple of weeks and months.
What is important is the right side of this chart because this shows the industrial logic how, in case of Germany, from order intake programs coming to the primes, how this translates after a certain period of time into revenues, first into order intake for RENK as a tier one supplier, and later on into revenues, OE revenues, and later on into sustainable aftermarket business. In our assumptions, you notice we always shared this during our reports. We do assume and we see it now. Our primes, our customers are starting to get contracts from the German customer with a certain delay of three, four, five months. We as a tier one are getting also the contracts from our primes. Of course, everyone needs to build up capacity. For example, our primes, they need to ramp up capacity.
We assumed in our scenario it takes around two years. This means before 2028, forthfollowing, there will be no additional impact on our revenue lines from this 3.5% Germany or 3.5% NATO. This is important. In the time in between, and I will touch this point later on, if you talk about different growth dynamics, we will grow according to our total order backlog, fixed contracts, according to our operational execution, and according to the delivery schedules of our customers. After a lead time, if you take a land transmission, if this land transmission is sold to our customers after a certain lead time, this new transmission is generating an attractive downstream business in form of spare transmissions, spare parts, MRO service, etc., etc. Now we go a little bit again into more details. What is driving our top line, our visibility towards 2030 and beyond?
We have, as you can see it here, four buckets. I'm always saying four buckets. It's maybe not professional, but I like this expression. The first three buckets, A, B, and C, are organic buckets. D, I will touch later, is an inorganic bucket. Starting with the first and most obvious, our total order backlog, A. As you know, as of today, nine-month report, it's in the range of EUR 6.4 billion. These are contracts we have or where we have an extremely high visibility that these contracts are coming. It's all about Emmerich's just out. I'm always saying it's all about, please do not tell him this. It's all about operational execution, nothing else. This is challenging enough, but I think we are on a very good track on the RENK side. Pocket B or basket B is our normal project pipeline.
As you know, we have introduced this last year in the capital market. We had this kind of bubble chart. In the bubble chart, we try to indicate what the growth potential is depending on the maturity level of a specific program for the regions Germany, Europe, Germany, Europe, and Middle East, and North America, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. This time, we made a little change. We separated Germany out of this project pipeline, and our view on Germany is under C. Let's stay first for the time under B, our normal project pipeline. These are known projects. It's a bottom-up approach. They have a different maturity level. These are new business for the time being, and this is only focused on land, of course, and on sea, because what I'm talking now about in general is only defense-related.
What we estimated over the regions, Europe, Middle East, North America, and Asia-Pacific, what we see until 2032 timeframe, and this 32 is coming from the logic how we evaluated it last year because we had a look until 2031, is somewhere in the range between EUR 11 billion-EUR 12 billion for new business. Do we get everything, all of this business? No. There's, of course, competition. We have regions where we have 100% probability. If you take our overall market position, our market feedback, the performance of our organization, the delivery performance, and the product performance, I think there's a high P win probability to get a major share of this EUR 11 billion-EUR 12 billion out of this basket. C is Germany. I think this is I will highlight all of these A, B, C, D later on.
You see that we are still continue to work in ranges because, and you heard it last night from General Mais, not all the volumes from Germany as part of the 3.5% are really final, final, finally defined. We are working with ranges. We are working with a lower range and with an upper range. Our estimates regarding 2030 targets is somewhere in between than what we see today. For the land and for the sea domain, it's an average between EUR 1.4 billion up to EUR 2.2 billion of revenues up to 2035. What is important for B and C, our project pipeline and Germany, we usually always talk about new business. As I just indicated before, driven by the type of product we have, aftermarket is a very important business.
We try to estimate how much out of this new potential business from B and C could be translated into revenues up to a certain timeline. We see it here up to 2035. Aftermarket business is quite complex. It depends on the number of training cycles, services coming today, coming in the future. It depends on spare part stocking or inventory strategies of our end users. For example, the German Bundeswehr, also here, please remember the statement from General Mais. We try to estimate that between today and 2035, how many new transmissions we are selling and we could sell in the market as a potential, and after a certain lead time, how this could come back aftermarket. From my own perception, I would rather consider this as on the conservative side, the three up to four billion of revenues coming out of the aftermarket business.
To be honest, we prefer to be a little bit more conservative. We are working hard in order to evaluate further how this business, especially if we look beyond 2035, is coming back into our pocket. I will touch this point later on. A, B, and C are the sources of organic growth. D is inorganic growth, M&A. As you know, RENK has quite a good track record for doing M&A. For example, our entire footprint in North America was done and created by M&A, and we have a good track record for post-merger integration. Of course, we will also, and I touch it later on in the M&A section, look further to continue this story. We have clear targets in regards to market verticals or to technology.
I will touch it later, but it's fair to assume that we could add between nothing if we are not successful or it doesn't work, or theoretically, if we look on our targets and the timeline the next five years, up to EUR 1 billion as an estimate of inorganic growth. Important to mention for our midterm target, which is coming soon, we only consider organic growth. Every M&A is coming on top. Again, A, B, C, D is the source no, A, B, C is the source for our top line growth and leading to our midterm target. 2024, as you know, it was EUR 1.1 billion as on the revenue side. 2025, we will be above the EUR 1.3 billion, fulfilling our guidance by A, B, C, and the combination into aftermarket business. We foresee a range as our new midterm target between EUR 2.8 billion and EUR 3.2 billion of revenues.
If you ask me, do I feel well with this? Do I feel nervous? I feel very solid about this range. It is important to give a little bit more color of this, also to explain why we see this range. First of all, there are three major criteria which are impacting our ramp-up. Number one, it is 100% in RENK's responsibility. Do we have enough cash in order to finance our growth? On average, we are spending in the range of up to 3% of CapEx. Do we have a production strategy which is in place in order to execute this expected growth? If we talk about this, yes, tick in the box. Second point, only in the responsibility of RENK, do we have our suppliers under control and are our suppliers growing with our demand?
We have various activities running from lead time reduction, selective insourcing, cost, whatever, new frame contracts. We had quite some lessons learned from last year's experience at RENK America. Overall, saying tick in the box, does it mean that we will not have red flags on a weekly, on a monthly basis for certain components? We will have this, and we are having this today, but this is normal operational management. This is how to need to manage growth. Also, one last final comment, we do not have yet strong dependencies on any semiconductors, PCBs, or whatever. We are a mechanical-driven company, which also helps, including a deep vertical integration of 70%. Overall, tick in the box. What we need to do, we will do. The second point is, or the third point is, of course, like we need to ramp up capacity.
Our partners, our primes, need to ramp up capacity. There is an absorption rate. We cannot produce all what we could produce. Our customers need to have a certain capacity and, of course, a delivery schedule. If you have seen during the last weeks, I am sure on our customers in Germany, for example, there are many, many activities. They are fully focused on ramping up the capacity, and we are very, very positive here. The range is also determined simply because if you take Germany, we are working with ranges. The range is also determined by the fact that for some of the projects out of our project pipeline, there is a lower level of maturity, meaning maybe the final volumes are not defined. Maybe the final SOP or T0 for contract is yet not defined.
This is the reason why we are working with ranges, the EUR 2.8 billion-EUR 3.2 billion. As I said, do I have sleepless nights? Absolutely not. We do feel solid about this. It is important to comment. First, there are key enablers. You see it below. It is technology. We need to maintain our position and having the right and needed technologies in place. The second one is operation. It is just about operations. Just about operations. This is my good position, by the way. It is also important to underline the dynamics of growth from a crew perspective. I think this is important what we try to highlight here on this chart. Again, take on top the process, the industrial process of getting contracts from our primes to convert it into revenues.
Before 2028, if the contracts to our primes are flowing in now and we get the contracts during 2026, maybe in 2027, there is a lead time. From our today's point of view, before 2028, there will be no significant impact on the revenue line, simply driven by the industrial logic. Before we do our growth from our total order backlog of EUR 6.4 billion, and we do it by converting it, by improving excellent operations and according to customer deliveries. Of course, after 2028, when the contracts are coming in, the revenues are coming on the top line of us, of course, you have a different acceleration. The key question is, what will happen beyond 2030, beyond 2035? We are working on this in order to get more visibility, but I will show it at the end of this presentation.
You should not be concerned that after 2030, in 2031, suddenly RENK is not growing anymore. There will be continuous growth. There will be continuous growth on the OE business, maybe not after 2035 or whatever timeline in a double-digit mode, in a single-digit mode. After 2035, the impact of the aftermarket business should really kick in. Now I will spend a little bit of time to run through the A, B, C, and D buckets. Some of this I already discussed, so I will make it faster. I start with the total order backlog. This is nothing else than what we have presented on our nine-month report two weeks ago. You see EUR 6.4 billion independent if we compare us on the fixed order backlog or on the soft order backlog compared to fiscal year, financial year 2024. We see everywhere improvements.
You see some of the projects, some of the customers we can name, other customers we cannot name. You are quite familiar with our Thor contracts in the U.S. for the HMPT transmissions. We have an international customer, a good international customer who is buying engines and transmissions, two, three orders this year. Very positive. We had various of naval programs. Interesting, if you talk about the eastern part of Europe, I mean, you heard about the book business of the Ajax for the Baltics. K2 is quite a success story. We got a contract last year before Christmas, a big one. We got in the meantime during Q3 another contract. We got in the first week of October another contract. K2 is really performing. I do not want to spend too much time on this here because now it gets complicated because we talk about our pipeline.
We talk about the bucket B. I will really try to do my very best to make it as smooth as possible. I'm very happy to answer all questions in the break wherever because overall, and this is maybe starting with this, the logic for our bucket list is we take known projects, known projects who are in the markets. Maybe they are not finalized in regards to the timing. They are not finalized in regards to the volumes. We have, as you see it here for our bucket B, three regions: Europe and Middle East. We have not the Americas, which is 100% North America and 98% U.S. We have Asia-Pacific. Overall, what we have currently in this project pipeline as a visibility is between EUR 11 billion and EUR 12 billion.
If you check our last year's presentation of the pipeline, there was first Germany included, but it had no impact because last year in September, we had booked everything for Germany. The potential what we had here in this bubble chart for Germany, you could not see it because we saw no potential. No one could expect what happened with the Munich Security Conference. The second important point in our last year's chart, we had included the soft order backlog. This time, we took out Germany and we took out the soft order backlog. Soft order backlog was under the total order backlog. What you see here are really the market potentials we are seeing in the next six to seven years.
We could go through all this, but I think one observation is the biggest bubbles and therefore the biggest market potential is, of course, in Europe. You have as a main driver IFV programs, APC programs from various regions. We have Patria sitting here. They have a very innovative APC concept. You also see Asia, and this is interesting because Asia in this kind of middle category is pretty much driven by India. India, new light battle tanks, main battle tanks, Arjun, where we are currently supplier. If you talk about new IFV programs, and if you talk about new frigate, corvette, and destroyer programs. On the right side, you see some of the very prominent programs. Again, K2, we do expect more batches to come. We see various IFV programs, for example, in Italy, in the Ukrainian coming, hopefully, when there's soon a peace agreement.
We see various frigates in Europe also, about Asia-Pacific I just talked before, for example, the light battle tank. Also interesting, and I guess this would be a source for questions, the Abrams tank. What we took out of this bubble chart, and we had it last year in, was the transmission business, the potential transmission business for the M1E3, the next gen. You all know that SAPA, a Spanish company, got the go for the development and qualification program. We took it for the time being out. On the other side, if you read carefully, we are still in the race on the M1E3 with our drive systems. I would consider this as a very high probability for RENK to be in this Abrams program, at least in the qualification phase. You need to pass the qualification phase successfully.
Otherwise, you do not have a chance for the series ramp up. I would consider us as being well positioned here. This is B. If you talk more about B, talk about Europe, in overall, we see a potential of almost EUR 6 billion. In Europe, it is of course key to get as much as possible market share from the IFVs, from the MBTs, from the Navy programs. For customers, for some customers, we also need to think about localization. Localization of the production, at least partial localization of the production. We have two cases. You see on the right side, Italy, you are all aware about it. We founded RENK Italia last year on the premises of Leonardo, and we formed a partnership with Leonardo and Iveco to prepare for the future IMBT, the Italian main battle tank program and the IFV program.
If RENK would be successful, together with the partners, we would do a localization in Italy in order to build up local supply chain, to enforce local workforces, and to be close to our customers. It's the same if you look about Eastern Europe. As you all know, on the eastern side in Ukraine, in Poland, in the Baltics, we see a significant demand for aftermarket overhaul business. What is a natural step is that we will build up an MRO center in Eastern Europe. If you look carefully on the chart, you could get the idea where this will be. I promised to our communication chief that we will not talk about Poland. Please expect in the next weeks an announcement in this regard to building up an MRO hub in Eastern Europe to serve the local market, but also the adjacent Baltics and Ukraine.
Quickly, still staying on our pipeline, U.S., we see a different dynamic of growth. The dynamics of growth in U.S. is different, lower than in U.S. for all the reasons we discussed before. If you follow up the RENK strategy, you could pretty see pre-IPO by acquisition, we build up the footprint. 2024, we had to do quite some work in order to fix the operations, to fix the supply chain. We were successful. 2025, we start to expand. I mean, if you talk about a land domain, RENK, to produce according to customer requirements and delivery schedules, but also expanding by the acquisition of Cincinnati Gearing Systems to have a local footprint at least of 85% of value chain, a localized value chain, which is needed in order to be considered in upcoming larger Navy contracts like the DDG and the FGG program.
If you look in the future, I think now in the meantime, RENK has seven sites in the U.S. We are serving the domain land. We are serving the domain sea. We still have some smaller industrial business. What we feel is we need to build up an organization, lean and clean, to better orchestrate all of our U.S. organizations and activities towards our end customer, towards the government, towards our customers. 2026 will be most likely seeing the foundation of a kind of RENK Inc. organization. Of course, looking always and seeking for attractive M&A opportunities. To make a little spoiler, U.S. was and is and will be always in the focus of M&A for us. Maybe not on the land domain because we have a good footprint, but maybe going into Navy domain. Expand 2030.
If we are successful doing this, we should have access to the larger Navy programs, which are kicking in on the revenue side starting 2030. Of course, to further continue on the land side, especially looking on repowering of platforms. Coming to sea, again, I think you had some profound detailed ideas and thoughts from yesterday's speech of General Mais. You know this chart from our six-month report. The principal saying is Germany has two phases from today up to 2035. In the first phase up to 2029, 2030 is to get at least ready for fight. The second phase is then to scale up in quantity and innovations. We discussed the logic, the contracts starting now to come in towards our primes. They are moving through the 25 million parliamentary process.
We are expecting to get the first contracts out of this 3.5% increase in orders in 2026, in the first half of 2026, the first one, but this will come in gradually. Overall, then starting 2028 to see it materializing on the top line in form of revenues and of course going further. You see the numbers I talked before on the land side. We have a potential between EUR 1.3 billion and EUR 2.1 billion. I think what is important without going into too many details, you see our assumptions here in regards to volumes. We're still working with ranges because it depends really what the German customer will do until 2030, up to 2035 and beyond. I think one point which is yet not clear is how many main battle tanks or how many Leopard 2 families will really materialize.
As you see it here, if you talk about Leopard 2, which includes main battle tanks, but also the family platforms, Pritsch layer, recovery engineering vehicles could be between 500-1,100. We are working hard to understand this better. We have more transparency and visibility, for example, on the Puma, where we see us on the higher end coming in of the numbers here. Overall, it is a quite interesting, attractive revenue potential. I talked a lot about aftermarket. I talked about the source of aftermarket. We have, as I just said before, spare transmission, spare parts doing overhaul. If you talk about Navy, we have field service on board. As I also said before, it is not that easy to make really a precise estimate how much of aftermarket is kicking in. You have a certain lead time until the first transmissions are coming back.
This depends on the user frequency, on the training frequency, for example. It depends if you talk about spare parts on the stocking inventory strategy of our customers, but as a rule of thumb. This is really very rough. One new transmission you are selling on the land system side, you will get back three to four times over lifetime in value over the life of a platform. The platform life is in the range between 20 to 30 years. This is attractive because, for example, this does not consider an enhanced increased training frequency exercise. If you take the Bundeswehr, for example, the transmissions are coming back after 800 or 1,000 hours. If you take the transmissions coming back from customers who are in a hot conflict, they're coming back after 40 to 50 hours.
Just to give you an idea about how training and use and concept of operations are impacting this. Overall, a very, very attractive business today on a 40%, roundabout 40% share. If you look on a timeline beyond 2030, 2035, when most likely somehow new business is normalizing, still growing, to get me absolutely clear, but maybe not on a double digit, then the aftermarket is steadily growing and might lead to the fact that we will overall increase our share of aftermarket from today 40%, maybe in the range of above 40%. M&A, I touched this before. You see this range from EUR 0-1 billion. We have a clear set of criteria, of course, return of investment of the capital. It must contribute to our profitable growth strategy and the relevant segment, Navy and land segment. We have, as I'm just saying, roundabout three handful of companies.
We are observing some of these companies. We are just following, tracking them with some of these companies. We are maybe in first discussions, a warm-up, and maybe with one or two of these companies, we are short before, let's see, maybe going into a structured process. All this is as of today. We have three allocation criteria for potential targets. First, do we close a market gap? We talk about market consolidation. As I just said before, U.S. was and will be always in the focus. If you talk market consolidation, we might look also to Europe, not on the land side, neither in U.S. or in Europe, but maybe looking on the consolidation on the naval side in Europe.
From the verticals, from the product, of course, we are searching if there's an attractive way maybe to go half a step upward in the value chain. From technology, as I said before, in principle, we are also looking for M&A targets, but so far we are moving forward with our network partner strategy. Technology, we introduced last year, we have four key technological segments. One is the core technology, our today's products to optimize in regards to performance, weight, power density, and even costs, of course, cost down activities. We have the new tech, electrification and hybridization. We talk about in a third one, digitalization, including technologies for unmanned vehicles, where we do believe the so-called UGVs are getting more and more relevance because you heard it yesterday, soldiers are a very rare good.
In the future, we see beyond 2030 a very well-balanced mix between conventional platforms, manned and also unmanned platforms, by the way, not only on the ground, but also in the air and in the sea. Last but not least, system engineering. Some of our customers are requiring that we do more than just transmissions or more than just engines. They want that we integrate engine, transmission, and maybe even the drive system. I think here we have, you will see it later, quite a unique competence, just if you look on our test rigs. Overall, to sum it up, in our next-gen mobility roadmap, we have two phases. The first phase is until the end of this decade to upgrade our main products on the Navy side and on the land side in regards to the traditional performance parameters, but also in regards to hybridization, electrification, digitalization.
Beyond 2030, seeking for new product opportunities based on our core mobility systems, on our transmission, on our damping systems. Just very quick, if you talk about the two transmissions I mentioned before, we are very proud. We have launched our next-gen main battle tank transmission during a media campaign during last summer. Our 406 transmissions for weights up to 60-75 tons. It will definitely set a new benchmark in power rating, in weight, and weight reduction. It will set also a benchmark in modularity because as of today, each new tank, if you develop a new tank platform, as of today, requires a new tank transmission. This transmission has a modular approach, saying for new platforms, but even for repowering of platforms, you can use one transmission type, which could be an interesting aspect if you talk about logistics in the future.
If you have in a NATO environment, two, three, four, as you notice, different platforms and you talk about spare part management in the theater. If you have one subsystem who is modular and one size fits all, we believe it's very attractive. On the other end of the weight class, our 076, it's our, I'm always saying our small beauty. It has a different power rating, of course, like an MBT transmission, but it also has only this size. You will see today, 760 kg. For us, very important and also proud to have this developed, in this case together with Patria, for tracked vehicles between 10-20 tons. You will hear later more about these kinds of tracked vehicles.
This is interesting because with this small transmission, fully digitalized and driven by wire, we are opening the access to remote control driving and even semi-autonomous or autonomous driving of tracked platforms. This is the idea what we have to understand if we should go and if we can go from our core product offering mobility with our today's systems by digitalization into mobility systems for UGVs in the future, in this weight class, tracked UGVs, and maybe even to make a little step further to go from only mobility supplier to go with key partners and provide maybe full UGVs who could then be used in a variety of use cases from transporting ammunition or including effectors. The key for all of this is a digitalization of the transmission and is especially the drive-by-wire system.
RENK will have the first worldwide certified, according to the ASIL norms, Germany, fully qualified drive-by-wire system. What does it mean if you talk about UGV components and maybe even going into UGV role together with partners? We have a presentation today. Michael Masur, the CEO of VMS, will talk more about this. Of course, I need to show it also here, also kind of spoiler. We have prepared a little video just as a teaser, and please expect more in Paris in June next year on this. Just look on our teaser as forgetting a kind of flavor. I don't know if you have seen this. There were some droplets from the rain on the chassis. This was just a teaser. It's a kind of outlook where RENK is maybe trying to go. In a nutshell, our technology strategy, it's very simple.
We are coming from the core for the land and for the sea with our transmissions, our engines, our drive systems, our e-generators, PTOs, etc., etc., advanced silence drive, compact propulsion technologies for naval application. As a step I just highlighted, digitalization will not only take part in our today's product portfolio, transmissions and damping systems. For example, what we are offering as a proposal to the M1E3 on the drive system is a fully digital drive system. I'm always saying a smart drive system. Our CTO is always angry, but anyway. As a further step with this to go into future mobility to deliver systems and components who are intelligent into so-called unmanned ground vehicles, we are on the ground and we are on the sea. We are not in the air, not in the space. We are very, very focused in our business.
Maybe later on, looking on what I just indicated with this little movie, maybe stepping together with partners, prime partners into the role of UGV providers. Having said this, I'm almost done and I'm perfect in time. I just see this here. Let me give you two comments more. First of all, what is beyond 2030? I mean, the first statement, and again, we are trying to quantify this more in real figures, is the OE business of the conventional platforms will not stop beyond 2030. I mean, I talked before about our pipeline. You see the name of the programs, for example, the big bunch of the German programs are expected to come in the second phase.
If you talk about all the Navy programs in the U.S., if you talk about India, yeah, India always takes time, but again, we as RENK are prepared from our footprint as of today. This business is continuing. It might be not always on a double digit. It might normalize to a normal growth rate. The second point is the aftermarket business. Each new transmission, if you talk about land transmission, we are selling during the next years, is generating a sustainable aftermarket business, adding on our huge installed base, always another layer, another layer of long-term sustainable, profitable business. Third, we will, of course, try to add additional layers from new products and new market segments where we are not in today with our existing core technologies.
What is also important is we have today technologies, if you talk about energy change, regenerative energies, etc., which are unique in the market. If you talk about the entire value chain of hydrogen, we believe with our industrial part of couplings and transmissions, this could kick in, could be relevant far beyond 2030, somewhere in the middle of next decade. Sooner or later, human mankind has to react on the climate change. Today, there is a strong focus on defense. This strong focus, super cycle defense, will maintain the next 10-15 years, 20 years. Of course, we try to seek opportunities with our technology, our competences. If there are markets, we also would grow these markets. This is a perspective, a qualitative perspective on 2030. Organization is, of course, key.
As I just said before, we are a defense company with an increasing share of defense business going in the range in the next years, almost close to 90%. This also implies changes in the organization. If you see today on the left side, we have three segments. VMS is the largest segment, M&I, and we have slide bearings. VMS is more or less 100% defense. M&I, really as a rule of thumb, 50/50, 50% is defense business, 50% is industrial business, and slide bearings, of course, almost 90% slide bearing business, triggered by the organic growth, which is predominantly taking place on the domain land in the VMS segment. Triggered by potential acquisitions, we will refocus the organization, refocus on really pure defense land, pure defense naval.
If we are successful, what I just said before, looking towards 2030, maybe to have our own separate business unit for new tech, for example, UGV mobility. Last but not least, we will consolidate the existing civil part of our group into one organization in order really to maximize the synergies from the customer point of view, which is, as of today, not given simply. Having said this and referring to my statement in the beginning, this is my last slide now, but I think it's important because this is not only the bridge from strategy, growth, and growth levers, it's the bridge towards my dear colleagues, and it shows the business model, which is also not rocket science, but crystal clear. Growth and growth levers, I tried to explain organic, full focus on organic growth, but of course, if the opportunities are there, also inorganic growth.
It is all about the return on capital. It is about how to improve the margin, volume effects, efficiency, working on the COC side, on supply side, working on the product mix. By nature, the product mix is changing. The capital productivity, I mean, how to use our capital. I just said we are in a pleased starting situation to capture this growth because we are starting from a well-invested industrial base due to the history. We will grow in the future on the CapEx in the range till the 3%. We will have two years, 2026 and 2027, where we will be slightly above this, but on the average, we are staying and we consider us to be very efficient on the CapEx spending. We are using existing plants. We do not need to build up new plants. All this is about capital.
At the very end, it's about the cash conversion, about the cash conversion rate. We will talk later, but this is our business model. Again, this is really my last word. I have one minute. We have a very focused business and product portfolio. This is the reason why all what we do here and what we tell here is not fancy. We do not need to follow specific trends. We need to execute. We need to execute on the operations. We need to execute on the financial efficiency, on the capital efficiency. I think this is the mission what we as a team have. For this reason, thank you very much. I would like to hand over now to Emmerich.
Alexander, thank you. Also a warm welcome from my side. Good morning to everybody.
I think, or I'm sure you have seen what Alexander presented, and we are going to at least double the revenue within the next five years. We had a discussion yesterday, Esa, and I like his picture. Doubling the revenue is counting beans, but it needs somebody and it needs a team to produce these beans before they can count them. As Alexander just said, and this is how he welcomes me in the morning, it's just about operations. This is what I'm going to tell you within the next couple of minutes. I was called from Susanne two years before if I would be interested to join RENK, and I think she has an idea in mind because she foresees that we need to prepare for that tremendous growth in the future.
One of the ideas, and we shared this thought yesterday on the table, is to bring in experience from automotive. Therefore, let me briefly introduce myself. I was working for almost 30 years in automotive, in mass production, but also in very small series production. I was COO in AMG and CEO with a G-Class, which is a low volume. Many of the things we are discussing today are similar to that, what I did in these positions. Therefore, I started the discussion with Susanne, and honestly, she convinced me and said from today, if at least your heart beats a little bit for operations, this is one of the most exciting jobs you can have in the industry at the moment. It is just about operations.
We had the same discussion yesterday on the table, and maybe this is a little bit bold, but I'm absolutely convinced that this is the truth. Failure or success in or for any company in the defense business for the next years is answered in operations. If operations is able to scale up, if operations is able to fulfill the demand, and if operations is able to transform to at least an industrial level, this is not there at the moment. Our idea is that we bring in automotive standards to our company and to adapt them to the company because it's not same-same. You cannot put them to the company one by one. You have to find the right level, and you have to find the right way to do it.
If you compare automotive, for example, with the defense industry, there is a gap of at least 15-20 years in between. The more we close the gap, the more we get the benefits from that. The contribution for operations is pretty clear. We are supporting the growth, or we are securing the growth. You can summarize it in three words. The first is secure output. The second is enhanced resilience. The third is increased efficiency. It is all about these three words: output, resilience, and efficiency. You have seen the numbers on our nine-month report, but it was on your slides as well. Two figures, +19% in revenue and +25% in EBIT. This, from my perspective, and this is very Sweden, I think we made somehow our homework, and we delivered on our promises.
You have to take into account, and you know that we almost made the same numbers last year. Talking about two years, we increased the output by around 50% in two years. The challenge is to keep that momentum. What is even more challenging, and I will go deeper in this in the following, is how we prepare for growth that is even steeper. Therefore, today, I would very much like to concentrate on VTA. VTA is our transmission production here in Augsburg, and we will visit this on our plant today. Why VTA? I think it's pretty obvious that VTA is our main driver for revenue and for EBIT, so it's worth to spend the time there. We will extremely grow, and therefore, we have the ideal conditions to apply standards from automotive to this approach. Sorry, just a second.
Therefore, we see VTA as a role model for us or a blueprint that could be rolled out to all the company. We are doing a stepwise approach. We are transferring ideas and methods from the automotive industry to our setup. We prove the feasibility and prove the benefits. If we can make a tick mark there, we define it as a standard and then roll it out into the company. You have to keep that in mind when you see the numbers and the figures I'm going to present. They are related to VTA, most of them. I think what is important is you see the potential of these numbers if we roll out these approaches and this way of doing it to all the company within the next years.
What we have achieved in the last 12 to 18 months, I think it has a measurable impact on our company and our situation. I just gave you the two financial figures, 19% and 25%. I also have some production numbers there. By applying the new assembly concept here in Augsburg, we started with this concept in August. It is almost three months operative. Within these three months, we again increased the output in the existing system by 13%. As Alexander already said, RAM is back on track more or less. The colleagues there are producing three transmissions a day. On the procurement side, we tremendously reduced the lead time for our supplier parts by more than 50%. In addition to that, we stabilized our supply chain by more localizing our supply chain in Germany for VTA.
We have almost 100% of all the supplier parts around the church, as I used to say. As I already mentioned, we are focusing on two dimensions. The first dimension, it's obvious, we need to scale up for serious production. The second is even more important. We need to scale up for serious supply. The main levers are we are trying or not trying. We are expanding our capacity by adding additional machinery and equipment, yes. What is even more important and what gains us more capacity at the moment is we are increasing efficiency tremendously. The more the efficiency increases, the more capacity is there. What we do in addition is we fully utilize the potential of our production network. We are using capacity in our network. We are going to more localize our footprint.
We need to do this because we want to have the opportunity to fulfill local content requirements. I would like to dig a little bit deeper in what we call plan strategies or operation strategies. On the supply chain side, we really managed to enhance the resilience with different measures we took there. We are deeper, deeper in supplier management. Finally, we are talking about system suppliers. What this means, I will explain a little bit later. We talked a lot about the new assembly concept here in VTA. The participants who joined us in person, they will see it in the afternoon. I'm a little bit proud about it, but this is not the reason why we are showing it. The reason why we are presenting it is we see it.
You can really see with this what we are doing and how we are thinking with this perspective. You see the before and after picture. I think it's totally different. It's a very traditional workshop on the right side, very manual. If you're looking for processes there, honestly, you will not find many of them. On the right side, it's different. This is what you see. What is important is you need to understand what it is behind. It's because it's not just what you see on the slide. It's even more what you don't see. Because changing to such a way of working is a fundamental rethinking production. It's a fundamental rethinking of supply chain. I had the opportunity to install a very similar system in one of my former positions at AMG.
This was selected for the first prize in the Factory of the Year award from A.T. Kearney. Even in an automotive environment, it was somehow, I would say, outstanding. This slide again should demonstrate that we deliver on what we promise. Those of you who have been there last year might remember that I have shown some sketches of where we want to go. This was the second picture here, the 3D visualization. On the very left, you can see my hand scribbled. I discussed the idea with the team. We had the construction phase. This was similar to changing the tire driving on the German Autobahn by 180. I avoided going to the shop floor for two weeks because it was really a mess.
I do not know how the people managed it because we had to do this in full utilization. As I said, from August and July on, we are operative, and I think we can make a tick mark of what we have achieved so far. On the next slide or on the next slide, I will show you a short, I would say, amuse-bouche of what you are going to see this afternoon for those who join us on the factory tour. For those who are online with us, hopefully, it convinces you to join us in person next year. This is the film. In AMG, it was one man, one engine. This is one man, one transmission. I see some of you smiling, and I think you can imagine what it makes with a person.
Before, he was working in a line, and he just assembled a part of this transmission. Now it's his transmission, and it makes a difference. I think you can really feel it. It was his idea in the movie to stand like this because it was his transmission. It's not just a change in how we work. It's not just a change how we apply the things. It's a change of how we work together as an operations team. The results are quite positive. As I said before, it's not just what you see. It's even more what you don't see. I would like to give you an example on this slide. On the picture, you see a logistic worker picking the parts. This is what we call a lineback principle.
Lineback principle, again, is a method which is well known from automotive, where we concentrate on the value adding at the workplace, the value adding from the assembly worker. We are trying to avoid everything which is not value adding at this station because an assembly worker is highly educated. It's difficult to find, and therefore, we want to let him do his work to assemble the transmission and not running around and looking for parts. This colleague there is picking the parts, is pre-picking the parts, and then the assembly worker, as you will see this afternoon, gets this in the right order, in the right quantity at his workplace. We optimize the material flow, and we even integrate the supply chain. We are going upstream and optimizing everything according to that principle. The efficiency is much higher. We increase the quality with this.
Just to give you an example or to underscore that, we have had the highest, all-time highest first run rate in October in the system. I think this shows how it works. The first run rate is almost as high as it was in 2023 on average of the whole year. We reduce costs, for sure, and we reduce the lead time tremendously. The shift from a very manual system to a small series system, I see it as a game changer. You see some of the advantages on this slide. We have 100% flexibility. In the old system, where we have had dedicated lines, it was difficult to react when the mix of the transmissions has changed. Now we are 100% type flexible.
We can produce or assemble any transmission on any workplace, or we can react on changes in the volume because with a line, you have to go in a second shift with the entire line. With a single workplace, you can go to the next shift with just one station. This is much more efficient than with the old system. For sure, we reduce the space in the factory because we have less logistic effort there. We are estimating it by 50% and therefore avoiding additional investment in buildings, for example. Qualification time for the people is by far less. I was surprised. I was calculating 20-30%, but my foreman, who is working with the people there, he said it's 60%. So 60% less training and qualification time. What is also already stated is it's a 30% additional increase in efficiency.
What I said in the beginning, it's a tick mark. It proves to be the right situation. Therefore, we go the next step. We define this as a standard because it's not just made for Augsburg. It's made for the entire RENK group. Therefore, again, we are looking on what the automotive industry is doing. Many of you know the Toyota production system, which is the most famous one. I had the opportunity to work on the first production system from Mercedes in the 1990s. It makes me a little bit old, but maybe it's a little bit of experience behind it. Our RENK production system will be designed in a very similar way. The production system is a kind of a cooking book or storybook of how we plan, how we design, and how we operate accordingly in all our factories.
It defines our production philosophy, and it defines our methods. One of the key methods or core messages there is continuous improvement. There, again, standardization is key. If you have a standard process, you can work on the standard process, and you can improve it and then define it as a new process or as a new standard. Finally, we need this production, or we need and use this production system for qualification of our employees, but also for our management people, for our team leads to work accordingly to standard, which is a game changer. The idea is that in the future, we will work accordingly to a standard in every single plant. For sure, there are some differences in land transmissions and gearboxes, but I do not see any reason. I think you will fully agree.
There is no reason why we should work differently on a plank transmission in plant A and plant B. If there is one best way to do it, we should apply this best way in every plant. To give you another example of this idea of modularization is, and Alexander, I think you have referred on this several times, talking to the analysts and talking to the people, we defined a module for the final assembly of the not just final assembly, of the assembly of the transmissions. This module is defined for 100-150 transmissions a year. It is pre-designed. Therefore, it is a kind of a bill of material. We know exactly the needed machinery. We know the defined test rigs. We know what infrastructure we need. We know the assembly equipment, the tools for machining, et cetera.
We know the supplier parts, et cetera, et cetera. It's like a bill of material, as I said. Therefore, we have a fully cost transparency of what we need there. Another advantage is we do not need to plan every time from scratch because we have this standard. We know the needed personnel and their qualification, et cetera, et cetera. The idea is it's similar to a Lego brick so that you can apply this Lego brick whenever you need to increase capacity in an existing plant, or you can bring this Lego brick to a new plant or a facility where you want to ramp up it. Again, the advantage of this standardization is it makes us flexible in our production network.
When you're working accordingly to the same standard in plant A and plant B, it's pretty easy to shift the transmission from plant A to plant B whenever you need more capacity or if you want to speed up or whatever. We have had a discussion with the teams from slide bearings yesterday, and they come up with a similar idea. We are applying this approach of standardization, of modularization across the company. This helps us to get the full advantage from our footprint, from our global production network. You see here just one example of how we work together on the German production network. We are currently assembling and producing a transmission, the 295. We are final assembling part of the volume in France as well as sub-assemblies. We are producing components in our plant in Rheine.
Rheine is more and more transforming into a VTA or VMS or land transmission plant. We are producing components. Wherever we have any spare capacity, we are using it before we are going to invest into new machinery. This is just, again, the starting point. Step by step and using standards, we are able to increase the benefits from this production system. We have not just done our homework at Augsburg and VTA. As Alexander already said, the colleagues in the U.S. also made their homework. They transferred parts of the standards we designed in VTA to their production system. They added additional capacity, again, according to the standards. What was the most driver is they managed to stabilize their supply chain. Therefore, it's a small number, but it's a good number.
They are back on track, and they are producing three and going to four transmission every single working day. All these approaches will help us to go to the next step. The next step is we are going to go global, and we are going to go local. Why do we need to do this? We had the discussion yesterday on the table. Many of the governments see the defense industry as a kind of a possibility to get work into the country. Therefore, the local content requirements, I'm sure, will increase. I experienced the same in the automotive industry, and we need to be prepared for that. Therefore, we have this standardization, the modular approach. We are preparing at the moment with three sites. The first one is India. We officially launched that at the beginning of the year. We are already producing industrial stuff there.
This is not the main reason. The main reason for this site is that we are prepared to produce local whenever a tank program is coming up in India. The same in Poland. It will start as an MRO hub for Eastern Europe. Again, it is an entry ticket if there is a request for local production for a potential new K2 program. Finally, Italy. As Alexander just said, we are sitting on the premises of Leonardo. Therefore, I think it is a strong commitment in the upcoming European main battle tank program. If you would reinvent the wheel on every single site, again and again and again, it would be impossible to do all this within the next five years. Therefore, I think standardization, transferring the right approaches from automotive, is exactly what we need to do.
What is fitting ideally in this picture is the acquisition of our newest system plant, the plant in Cincinnati, former Cincinnati Gearing Systems. You see the Milford plant there. It's really a good, it's a great plant, and it's a great team there. Alexander and myself had the opportunity to welcome the team on day one, which was in April. From that on, we are integrating the colleagues there. We are adapting them to our processes. We are integrating them in our production system. We are trying to harmonize all the processes. Step by step, I think we make really good progress there. We help the people to integrate there. CGS is, again, an entry ticket because CGS has a long time, it has decades of experience in gear manufacturing, and it has a strong relationship to the U.S. Navy.
You see one of the products there, it's not the hovercraft, but the transmission for that hovercraft, what the colleagues are producing. I think it's our crystal or starting point for really increasing our business, our naval business in the U.S. with a strong footprint in the U.S. Let me briefly address on our supplier side, what did we achieve there. On the supplier side, I would make it easy. I just want to have the port. It's all about resilience. We need to build up a supply chain that needs to be resilient against any disruption. We need to really think about where do we need a double source or not just a single source, how we work together with the suppliers.
We need to run something which is supplier management because, as Alexander already said, I'm in this business now for 30 years, and I have never had one week without any disruption. I should have learned something different. This is why everybody wants to become a CEO, not a COO. You have to work differently with the suppliers. When I'm looking back, what we did so far, and I was surprised when I came in to RENK, is every time we placed an order, we made a request in the market, and we placed an order. It was pretty clear who got the order, but we made a request and placed the order. Looking again on automotive, this is not common sense in automotive. In automotive, you're making frame contracts.
What gives the opportunity to the suppliers to prepare because they know the volume upfront, at least in benches or ranges, and so they can rely on it. It gives us the opportunity not just to order something. It gives us the opportunity to just make a call of, which is much more easy. It runs through the process, and nobody has to take care about it. Finally, and we discussed this with Benjamin, with Kevin yesterday on the table as well, system suppliers. What is a system supplier? A system supplier is somebody who is supplying a component or sub-component. For example, we have a very deep vertical integration at the moment, even in final. Therefore, we have a high complexity because imagine a port or a component which is sub-assembled out of 50 parts.
If you make it in-house, you have to order these 50 parts. You have to take them into the plant. You have to transport them. You have to store them. You have to assemble it. When you order sub-assembly, it's just one part number. This is common practice in automotive to reduce complexity. We are thinking about this way, step by step in the future as well, really to handle the growth which is in front of us. Therefore, we had what we called Supplier Day with the core suppliers from VTA in August. Now it is in June this year. We invited around 70 suppliers, mostly the long lead item suppliers, to have a discussion with us. The discussion for sure was an economical discussion. It was about contracts.
The main question in the setup was, how can we manage to reduce the lead time down to maximum 120 days, one quarter? You have to have in mind that we have had lead times in the past which were even longer than two years. Two years means whenever you want to react, your breaking distance is two years, which is quite long. If you want to avoid anything in this time, you need to increase your stock of material, your stored material. Therefore, it is extremely important that we reduce this. The idea honestly came up during the discussion, and I said 120 days. Today, I would have said 80 days because I think then it would be even lower. This will be the next time. You see the outcome.
The outcome is we reduced the average lead time by 100% within this set of suppliers. I think it's a good way of achieving it. My general idea of working together with suppliers is more partnering. There is a big openness at the moment. There are many suppliers who are losing automotive business at the moment, so they are really interested in working together with us, working together with a successful defense company. This is so far our operational homework that we made. Looking on the figures, I think it was quite okay. This is something I would like to go a little bit deeper in because I think it's even more important for the future.
When you look on the numbers, when you look on the numbers Alexander just presented and Anja is going more in detail, we will double the output of the company within the next five years, doubling the output within the next five years. Everybody who has some experience with operations should be pretty, pretty clear that this is not just something that happens somehow. It is a step into the next level. It is not a linear scaling anymore. We have to completely rethink the way how we work, how we operate, because if we add the same process the same way we do it today, we will not survive. The complexity and everything will kill us. Before that background, parallel to all these operational things we are doing at the moment, we are heavily working on an operations strategy.
With this operations strategy, we want to foresee what is needed for the next five to ten years that we need to decide now, that we need to install to be prepared when the volume is coming because it's not just about counting the beans. It's about producing the beans. Therefore, we started a very structured process, what we call an operations strategy or business plans. The starting point for sure is the forecasted demands. We make a capacity planning. Capacity planning includes already an ambition, increasing efficiency. There is something in between. We make very, very detailed SWOT analysis in every single plant. We run something what we call a health check. A health check is for machinery, for example. How old is the machinery? What would be the impact if it is a breakdown, etc., etc.?
We come to ambitions, and we come to measures, and we come to projects which are described and defined in a so-called business plan, which is then the foundation for the plant manager, for the responsible operations manager and operations team to make it for the next five years. We track the milestones. We have defined targets and goals there. Some of you might know the method, which is OKRs. This is how we now are preparing for the next future. With these business plans, we know exactly the need for capacity. We know exactly the need for additional investment. We know the need for additional personnel when we need to start for hiring them and qualifying them. This is, I think, the most important thing what we need today. Really being prepared for the volume that will be there in the next years.
Just to give you one example, and Alexander just mentioned it, in VTA, this year, we will produce north of 700 transmissions. The forecasted number is almost two times higher. We are close to 2,000 transmissions. At the moment, it is close to 1,800. We will see what it will be at the beginning. When I came into the company, I started a program in VTA, which was VTA 800. Honestly, the team was a little bit smiling because they thought I am crazy. Next year, we will produce this number almost, so within two years. In final assembly, we are still working in one shift due to our efficiency measures. This was possible. When I came in, we had the idea to go into a second shift already 2024, so last year. We can avoid the second shift even next year.
Earliest in 2027, we will have to do that due to our efficiency increase and due to our new final assembly concept there. In machining and in test bench, this is pretty clear. We are trying to fully utilize this cost-intensive equipment. We are already in three shifts. With a detailed business plan, we know upfront when we need to implement the next step from the module I just presented to you. With this in mind, for example, we know where we need to invest, in which plant we need to invest. The advantage of having all these business plans for all the facilities is we can coordinate the spending, we can coordinate the capacity, and therefore, we can keep the CapEx level quite low.
There is still the commitment from the board that we will stay within the 3% line, till the 3% line within average until 2030. We will have a slight increase in 2026 and 2027 to prepare for the extreme volume growth, which we are expecting from Germany. It is almost done. On average, we will stick to the 3%. This is my last slide. It should give a small summary and an outlook of what we are going to do. I think the numbers prove that we have done our homework in the last two years, 2024 and 2026. It was more fixing the basics. We scaled up to series productions in Augsburg. We scaled up to series supply. This will now be approached stepwise into the company whenever it is fitting there.
With the volume, which we are expecting, as I already said, we now need to go to the next level. We need to optimize and further professionalize our processes. We have to qualify our people. We need to go more local, blah, blah, blah. I think we know what we need to do there. Our ambition, and a very personal ambition because I'm very competitive, is that we want to be the benchmark in the defense industry latest at the end of this decade, meaning that we are highly flexible, that we always deliver on demand, that we're growing in margin by far over proportional to the revenue, etc., etc. Hopefully, I gave you a feeling of what we have achieved so far. This is history. It's water under a bridge.
What is even more important is, hopefully, you got the first flavor, and you will see it in the afternoon on the factory tour, that we have a picture of where we want to go, where we want to be. What is even more important, we have a plan how to go there. Is it finished yet? No, it's not finished. Will it be easy? No, it will be hard work. I'm absolutely convinced it will also be hard fun. Yeah, and I'm really excited to do it with my team. Thanks a lot, and I'm excited for your questions.
Thank you, Emmerich and Alexander, for two comprehensive presentations. Now, dear ladies and gentlemen, it is time for our 15-minute coffee break. Please enjoy some refreshments, and a gong will signal when the break has ended. Thank you, everyone, for returning to your seats.
For our next presentation, please join me in welcoming our CFO, Anja Mänz-Siebje, to the stage.
Hello. Also, a very warm welcome from my side. I can only add to my two colleagues who already stated that already. We are very happy to have you all here, and we really appreciate you spending your time with us today. Thank you for that. Just picking up the picture Emmerich introduced in the last session, I would like to invite you to do some bean counting with me. Let's talk about financials. This is a very important picture for us at RENK. This is the RENK machine. This is how we actually power our profitability and our growth. These are our five gear cogs. What you can see is we have two growth levers.
These have been explained very, very well by Alexander this morning in his strategy section. It's organic and M&A. We have three gear cogs. They are powering return on capital. Emmerich started already explaining us how operation is driving the margin expansion. I will add to that and will definitely talk about capital productivity and cash conversion. Let's start with a small recap of our financial figures. We are RENK. As you can see, we have been in the last years through two ownership structures. The very first phase was PE- owned. Since February 2024, we have actually started our life as a listed company. If we look on the left-hand side, we can see that revenue in 2021 was at EUR 689 million. We ended last year with a revenue of EUR 1.1 billion.
I confirm our year-end guidance for 2025, revenue being above EUR 1.3 billion. If we then turn to our adjusted EBIT, it is a very similar picture. We started out in 2021 with EUR 91 million adjusted EBIT. We ended last year with EUR 189 million, which represented our upper end of the guidance we have given for that year. I confirm today our range of EUR 210 million-EUR 235 million for the year-end 2025. If we look at the CAGRs, we can see that the CAGR of revenue is about 17%. The CAGR of our adjusted EBIT is 16.6%. What you can actually see is that our adjusted EBIT CAGR outperformed our revenue CAGR. This is really growth, what we do and what we like. On the right-hand side, what we see is our LTM September 2025, some highlights. We have a book-to-build ratio of 1.4 times.
We have a ROSI of 22%. Our free cash flow grew by EUR 94 million, and our cash conversion stood at about 81%. This whole thing shows that our past really is a true growth story. Bear with me a little more moment and spend a slight look on our nine-month numbers 2025, which we have presented to you already in our last week's earnings call. If you look on the left-page side, we see that our revenue grew by 19%, and our adjusted EBIT grew by 25% compared with the prior year-end. This also shows that our adjusted EBIT growth outgrew again our revenue growth. Looking at order intake, that grew by 45%. Our total order backlog stood at EUR 6.4 billion by the end of September 2025 and grew by 34%.
This shows when we consider what Emmerich told us in his presentation, that we doubled our output, that we are doubling the output, increasing our revenue, and still adding to our total order backlog. We really have a great total order backlog. On the right-hand side of this page, what you actually see is how did the most part of this growth. You can see that Vehicle Mobility Solutions, our biggest segment, and which is mostly defense-driven, really contributed the most. It grew by revenue by 25% at a margin of 18.1%. We are at EUR 105 million adjusted EBIT by the end of nine months. Also, our M&I segment, which is also with a very big portion defense-driven, also contributed a lot. We have a revenue growth here of 16%, and we have a margin of 11.6% compared to prior year 10%.
Here, you need to keep in mind, please, that EUR 1.5 million of this margin really was a one-time effort because we were able to convince insurance to pay us for warranty. That was also a success. This also explains why we have such a great margin in our M&I business, which is truly impacted by the industry developments. Slide bearings, as always, is very stable on a very high level and solidly contributes to our overall group success. If you look at that, our growth momentum is here, and it will continue. This is what we would like to share with you on the next slide. This is the EBIT walk. Alexander explained the revenue walk really well. When you look at this, you can see immediately that the EBIT walk really follows the revenue walk. Let's start on the left-hand side.
We confirm our adjusted EBIT range for this year, 2025, between EUR 210 million and EUR 235 million. We have four building blocks, two of them covering growth and two of them covering operational improvement. We end up in 2030 by above 20% of adjusted EBIT margin. Let's talk about the building blocks. We have four of them. The very first one is capturing sales potential. This is explained very well by Alexander this morning. It's really converting our big order backlog into revenues. It's as easy as it is. Emmerich is going to produce the beans. It's just about operations, exactly. This is the very first building block. The next building block, obviously, is aftermarket. By growing our installed base, we will definitely, by itself, get more maintenance, more spare parts, and so on and so on. Then we have another bits and pieces here.
We have read in the newspapers, everyone did that, that all these tanks and so on is going to be practiced many more times. It's going to be used many more times. Also there, additional aftermarket will kick in. These two building blocks cover the growth story. Let's have a look at the other building blocks: scale and capacity and efficiency and optimized supply chain. They make up for operational improvements. Building block three, it's scale capacity and efficiency. This is all what Emmerich was talking about this morning. It's about getting the scales done, also being more efficient and rolling out our new production system worldwide and actually using our plants where we have less industry and put more defense in there. This is building block three. Building block four, it's all about optimizing supply chain. That was also explained by Emmerich this morning.
It's about leveraging our increasing base and having more negotiation power and also optimizing our supply chain colleagues. This is how we come there. Let's have a look at the timing on how this will happen. When you look at this page, it's the same concept as for the before page. It's really the EBIT walk follows the revenue walk, which was explained by Alexander this morning. We start on the left-hand side. We reconfirm the guidance of adjusted EBIT, the range of EUR 210 million-EUR 235 million. Then we have building block two, three, and four kicking in. That brings us to 2027. Here, we confirm the guidance for 2027 of above EUR 300 million adjusted EBIT, which we have confirmed to you in last year's capital market day. After 2027, starting 2028, an acceleration really kicks in, which is back and loaded.
Here, the building block one, two, and three really kick in. They bring us ultimately to 2030 with an adjusted EBIT margin bigger than 20%. To recap that page, it's really revenue shows the same pattern as the adjusted EBIT. It will kick in and accelerate starting 2028, and it will be back and loaded. By year-end 2030, we stand with an adjusted EBIT margin above 20%. Let's talk about the two numbers we have introduced to you in the last capital market day. It's cash conversion rate and ROSI. On the left-hand side, you see our cash conversion rate with LTM September 2025. We stand at 81%. Compared to year-end 2024, we were at 48.4%. Now you can say, okay, where's the dip coming from? The dip is coming from our working capital because we are a growing company.
Therefore, this is what we've always been telling. We are in the process to optimize it, however, we will definitely make sure that our inventory stands at a level which allows us to fully capture the growth and deliver on time as based on customer needs. This is cash conversion. However, we still stand for our ambition over time that our cash conversion is around 80%. We confirm that what we have mentioned to you last year on the capital market day. In last year's capital market day, we also implemented ROSI. We defined it, we discussed it. And since this year, it's also included in the long-term incentive scheme of top management. LTM number September 2025, it's 22.1. Compared to year-end 2024, it was at 19.7, so it increased. Why did it increase? You have heard that.
Emmerich really explained that very well in his section. It's really all about utilizing our invested capital base, optimize it, and really well integrate our well-invested platform. Our midterm ambition, we confirm, we also confirmed that last year on our capital market day will be above 20% over the years. Let's talk about networking capital. We have been touching that chapter with all of you many, many times. We are a growing defense business, and we all see that we do have cash sitting locked in our inventory, and we would want to unlock that. We are working on that. However, we still want to capture all the growth, and we still need to have the inventory in order to deliver on time and capture all the growth. This is kind of a little bit of a conflicting topic, but we will still manage that.
What we can manage is here actually in the middle of the page. Everybody knows the building blocks of working capital. What we really are working on is what we heard, what Emmerich told us. We're working on optimizing our supply chain, on reducing the lead time of the crucial parts on all our parts. We are also working on excellent project management and therefore reducing the cash coming in cash time, so reduce the cash cycle. However, there are also topics which we cannot control, and that's prepayments. The part of the prepayments what we can control, that is what we're doing. We go into the negotiations with our customer, and we really ask for prepayments, and we are negotiating hard. However, it depends on when the contract is actually signed and when the prepayment actually hits our bank account.
It depends on when is my cutoff date for the quarterly reporting, what we're doing to you. Sometimes it's just too bad, yeah. We are having a deadline, so it's end of June, and the money is in 4th of July. That's when we actually, you know, that's a cutoff issue. We cannot change that. Therefore, we tend to look at networking capital rather on an overtime basis, so maybe one or two years to kind of leverage out these once-in-a-while cutoff topics what we have. However, considering everything what we have said here, we still think that over time our networking capital is at around 20%. This is our ambition. We also talked last year about capital contribution, and we're really confirming our capital contribution priorities from last year.
Firstly, we definitely invest in growth because in essence, what you have seen and what you've seen this morning, we are a growth company. We will invest definitely in CapEx. Emmerich alluded that, and an average from 2024 to 2030, we will spend around 3% of revenue into our CapEx. We will have two peaks in 2026 and 2027, but we will stay in 2026 below 5% and in 2027 below 4%. In an average, we stay with our 3%. Alexander this morning explained to us the M&A defense part. Yes, if there is a possibility, if it makes sense, if it's value accretive, if it fits into our portfolio, and we have learned it's either a technical topic, it's a regional topic, but it's definitely defense, yeah, we will do that.
M&A is never really predictable, but it will be one part of our investment in growth. Secondly, our capital allocation framework is balance sheet strength. That is important for us because we want to come to an investment grade rating, meaning that our leverage ratio stays below 1.5x . We stick to that. We also said that in our last week's capital market day. Lastly, but not leastly, we want to pay an attractive dividend to our shareholders. Therefore, we confirm our dividend policy, which we have been living for the last two years already. That means we are staying between 40%-50% of our adjusted net income of a dividend. We believe that all these three parts come to a shareholder value creation of a ROSI target above 20%.
This is our financial foundation of growth, and we actually have two big levers, and then we have one chapter which is underpinning that whole thing. Cash focus, what we've learned here, it's important for us to unlock the cash as much as possible while we're optimizing working capital. Also, our capital allocation here, we want to align our capital allocation with our investor expectation as well as with accelerating market growth. This all is underpinned by our environmental targets. We have governmental, social, and governance targets. You can see them. Since last year, we are fully compliant with our ESG reporting. It's regulated, and we are CSRD compliant. I would like to highlight here one topic. This year, we are implementing relative total shareholder return as one key metric, which will also be ultimately next year part of the top management long-term incentive plan.
With that, that was the last component which was missing in that long-term incentive scheme of top management. We are aligning top management decision even further to shareholder value creation. If you remember, in last year's capital market day, we did the same thing with ROSI. We implemented the key metric, and then we ultimately put that into the long-term incentive scheme of top management. We are doing it today with the relative total shareholder return in the same manner. This is the summary of our updated financial framework. We reconfirm our short-term guidance for 2025 with revenue being above EUR 1.3 billion, with adjusted EBIT in the range of EUR 210 million-EUR 235 million. We are also reconfirming the metrics we told you during last year's capital market day. In 2028, revenue being above EUR 2 billion and adjusted EBIT margin being in 2027 above EUR 300 million.
Our new midterm guidance for 2030 revenue stands at a bandwidth of EUR 2.8 billion-EUR 3.2 billion. Please make sure there is no M&A included at the moment. Our adjusted EBIT margin is above 20%. These are our guidance figures, and obviously, they're supported by additional financial metrics. You know them very well because we also mentioned them last year. The CapEx in percentage of revenue stays between the years 2024 to 2030 as an average of 3%. The ROSI midterm is above 20%. The cash conversion rate over time is around 80%. Networking capital as percentage of revenue stays over time or comes over time to 20%. The leverage ratio is over time below 1.5%, meaning investment grade rating. With this, we are best equipped for our next growth period, which will start next year.
We are in a position to drive RENK to the next years. With that, I would like to hand over to Melina, and I thank you for your time and attention.
Yeah, for that update and for linking our strategic ambitions to the financials. Dear guests, it is now time for our Q&A session, and therefore I kindly ask Alexander and Emmerich back on stage with us. [Foreign language] . [Foreign language]. Dear guests, before we start, let me just quickly introduce the Q&A. We look very much forward to answering your questions during the next 30 minutes. If we are unable to cover everything during that time, there will still be plenty of time later during the site visit and also during the lunch here to ask further questions to our executive board.
Please note that we can only take questions from the people here in the room today. Of course, any additional questions or follow-up questions can be sent to our investors@renk.com email address afterwards. As we have participants joining via the webcast, it would be great if you could state your name and organization before starting your question. Once you have a question, we have colleagues over here that will hand over a microphone to you.
Very charming.
With that, let's just jump into the first question. I see one right over here in the front. Max.
Thank you, [Saba, just] Goldman Sachs. If I could just ask a couple, if that's okay. On the operations side, it was quite notable there was one supplier still at over 180 days, and I guess you're only as quick as your slowest supplier.
Is there any visibility you could give around that?
In the past, we did not really have all the transparencies. As I said in my speech, we made a request and then placed an order, and then this was the average of the return. With this special supplier, the target was to be below the 120, and I want to be very open and very transparent that I should have, I could have left it out, but that is not what I am doing. I was aware that there might come up a question. The question is, how do you deal with this? If we know that there is a longer lead time with this specific supplier, we have to react on it. Maybe the stock is a little bit higher, or we have to go into another round in negotiation with this supplier.
I'm not nervous about that. The average counts. Now we know where we have a problem. I am satisfied with this 80 days in average. No, I even want to reduce it, but this is the first level we have reached, and we are renegotiating. I think the more we work together with the suppliers, they know that we are reliable, and then we even can reduce the lead times.
May I just add a little comment just to what Emmerich is explaining? Today we have lead times, some of these that are over 700 days. If you look on the projects coming up front on the industrial logic, if we would wait until we have the contracts, despite the fact that this procurement team is working hard to reduce the lead time, we could not start production before 2029.
What we are doing for selective components where we see we still have this long lead time, we are buying more than what we maybe need for the next two years to come. By purpose, we are increasing our stock. I'm always saying we are all incentivized as the management also in our STI on the inventory level. Sometimes you have to take entrepreneurial decisions because what we will not do is give up profitable growth, profitable millions because we had not put a little bit on stock aside of these critical components.
Great, great. Thank you. That's really helpful. If I can just have one more. The targets you gave, I presume there's no Ukraine aftermarket baked into those. In the current context, it would just be quite helpful to get visibility on how you're thinking about that.
I think it's important to mention to everyone, and this I think it's an important question. If you see the sentiment on the Ukrainian war, if there's, as I said before, one discussion about Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are talking, whoop, all the share prices going down. So far, we did not really participate from an economic point of view from the Ukrainian war. Sometimes we got some call-offs from our U.S. customer in order to send some spare transmissions to Ukraine. The first time we really realized and got contracted happened in the Q3. Where we got for the first time a contract with the Ukrainian MoD for servicing and for shipping spare parts and spare transmission to Ukraine.
If you look on Ukraine, hopefully there will be a peace agreement, to be honest, because if you look on the people there, it's just devastating. From a business point of view, Ukraine will have a significant demand in rearming, restocking, which includes not only new business, but it also does include, of course, follow-on aftermarket business. What we are intending to launch in Poland, obviously, even if it's not published yet, if we talk about MRO, this would be the next step subsequently if there's peace to go even for MRO into Ukraine. Today, we have some projects where we are sending people from the workers here in order to make service in Ukraine. This is just really on very small project specific. Does this help to your answer to your question?
Very helpful. Thank you.
We have another question over there in the second row.
Thank you, Sven Sauer , Kepler Cheuvreux. I have two questions. The first one is on the pipeline on slide 21. I'm not sure if you want to show it, but I'm just wondering where the XM30 is in that picture in the pipeline.
Dear Sven Sauer, a very good question. If you recall last year's pipeline, we had big bubbles in the U.S. because we considered the full M1E3 potential transmission and drive system, and we had the XM30 in transmissions and drive system. We have it included. I cannot show you, but you have it in front of you in the U.S. bubbles. We only included the drive systems for the XM30 because we are set for both potential primes to deliver this. We have included the M1E3 drive systems, but we excluded the transmission business so far.
I mean, we also need to be fair, and this is also valid for us for the drive systems. If you look on the M1E3, the nomination currently is for the EMD phase, for the development phase. And everyone subsystem, and of course, the prime needs to go through this phase. We also need to go through this phase on the drive system side and making sure we are passing this qualification positively. Only if you pass it positively, then you have a chance for serious supply. Let's wait and see.
Okay. The second question is on, sorry, is on the margin expansion over the coming years. I'm not sure how to frame this question, but if we look at the 2028 guidance, I mean, this implies a margin roughly 18.5%, somewhere in that range, plus minus, yeah.
This is the time when you will be getting lots of OE orders and aftermarket share in 2028 and 2029. I mean, I think at least will go down because the aftermarket will only come a few years after. Against this backdrop, I'm wondering how from 2028, roughly 18.5% margin, you're going to increase it to above 20% in only two years with such high influx of OE orders that have a materially lower margin than the aftermarket?
It is a very good question, and I must take care because one of my potential customers is sitting here, but this is full trust, by the way. I mean, just very roughly talking about the margin expectation. If you look on 2028, we see us clearly above the 19%, clearly above the 19%, somewhere in the range between 19-20%.
Secondly, the new business is indeed starting to kick in on the revenue line on 2028 and forthfollowing. Naturally, the share of the aftermarket business might drop, I don't know, a certain percentage, but even if you see today, if you take the Q3 and if you take the 9M, our aftermarket share is somewhere under 35%. Even today, we have a fluctuation between 35%-42%, and it depends simply also on the call-off frequency of our customers. The third comment is, of course, if you talk about margin profitability on the aftermarket business, I think it's fair to compare to jet engine providers, for example. This does not mean that our new business is not supporting our margin walk towards 19%-20%, somewhere in this range for 2028 and beyond.
Finally, if you listen carefully to the presentation of Emmerich, for us, more of the same, more of the same transmission is the enabler not only to leverage more efficiency, more volume effect, and even RENK started since last year, maybe a little bit too late to work on supplier base, on [COX] optimization, should cost analysis. More of the same is supporting not only price reductions based on the volumes, but also further allowing us optimization of the bottom line. This is the reason why we see this increase and why we're giving this range for 2030 above 20%. By the way, last question or last answer, I need to say it. Our product mix will change. Today, we have three quarters of our business is defense. In the future, I mean, as a thumb indication, it might be at 85% or 90%.
The civil business is maybe not really that strong on the margin side for good reasons. Also from this macroscopic impact, you will see a driver of our business model if you talk about margin optimization.
There was another question in the same room.
Yes. Good morning, [Claudia Marie] from Jefferies. I have two, please. The first one is on the margin guide. If you could split it out by divisions, that would be very helpful. The second one is on the M&A. Is it fair to assume that given you have a focus on U.S. Navy, maybe, could it be dilutive to the margin if we include the up to EUR 1 billion target into the guide?
We split up. I pass the margin to, like always, to the CFO. I talk about M&A.
I think it's important we are not doing, we will not do acquisitions where after a short time we will have an improvement of our overall business margin and quality. As you see, if you talk about Navy and if you talk about land system side, you know the margins on the land system side. VMS had at the end of 2024, round about 20.5%-20.6%. This margin will increase. Whatever acquisition we would do on the land side, this must be value accretive. As I said it, we are not focusing so much on the land side because we are pretty consolidated and feeling very well here. On the Navy side, it must support our margin improvement of our Navy business. As you could imagine, a potential acquisition might have an impact on the net leverage.
For us, it's clear if there's an increase of the net leverage to bring it down by synergies in a quite short time frame. This was an answer, I hope, on the M&A side.
I take over the margin side. We steer our company in accordance with segments, you're right there. We are fully aware that we want to give you the most transparency what we have. Therefore, we do our guidance on a group level. However, if you think about what we have all been telling you this morning and in the bean counting session, you need to think bean counting, yeah. We think, yeah, we are transforming more and more to a defense side. If you look at our segments, there is one which is largely defense driven. We also report in our quarterly sessions on a sector side.
You can see which is the main driver of that margin. That is clearly defense. It is revenue growth and it is profitability. That is clearly defense driven.
Again, as an indication, VMS last year at 20.5%. VMS is in the center of gravity for all volume leverage, efficiency gains, [COX] optimization. I think you can expect that the VMS margin will not stand on 20.5%. Absolutely. It is a main driver.
Marie-Thérèse has another question.
Thank you. Marie-Thérèse Grübner, Cantor Fitzgerald. I have three questions. The first one pertains to orders and Israel. The expert band has been lifted. How long would it take for you to be able to deliver again? Would it come this year? The second question on the order side is the Italian main battle tank topic and the infantry fighting vehicles that go with it.
Can you give us at least a range of what it could represent in terms of million euros? This is the first set of order-related questions.
Marie-Thérèse, bonjour.
Bonjour.
Bonjour, madame. First, about Israel. I mean, we were extremely positively surprised when we learned the news that the German government, I mean, the German chancellor, Chancellor Merz, lifted the export embargo. However, driven by the processes, now it takes a while until this, from this principle goal, it will be transferred and processed in the entire administration. We do not expect to have any impact. We cannot deliver in the year 2025. We do expect that during Q1, finally, we have it on the paper, the export permission. We continue to produce, by the way, also in the networking capital, what Anja discussed.
We have it currently fully included to transmission, and we are waiting for the final approval. This is also important, how this delivery and approval will take place. Will it be one approval for the planned figures in 2026, for all the planned volumes in 2026, or do we get it slice by slice? This is something what we do not know yet, and it could impact 2026. If, for example, we're getting slices in the range of 20, then we need to wait for the next approval. This is not clear yet, but overall, it's a positive sign. For the IMBT and the AICS, the MBT programs in Italy and the IFV programs in Italy, I mean, you can make the math. You are all extremely educated.
If you talk about a lifetime volume of 1,000 IFVs, for example, lifetime volume for 1,000 IFVs, if you multiply that with the average transmission price you all have in your books, you see it's a quite important business, and that's the same for the main battle tank. Clearly, in Italy, the volume driver coming from the IFVs.
Okay. Thanks. I'll do the math. The second question pertains to short-term guidance. The bottom end would imply a contraction versus last year at adjusted EBIT margin level. What is the scenario behind this? What is the story behind this scenario? Why would you guide something like this in light of everything we heard?
You guide what, the 2030 target?
No, no, I'm talking about 2025. 2025, the bottom end of the adjusted EBIT guidance would imply on EUR 1.3 billion of revs a contraction year on year. Right.
I mean, we are not doing a contraction. I mean, just, and I'm sure you know this, this year, RENK and many other companies faced first tariffs. We always communicated a single-digit million. We faced exchange rate. We have a high exposure in the U.S. We faced a significant headwind from our industrial in the high double-digit revenue side, maybe not impacting so much on the profitability side. Last but not least, we cannot deliver what we had planned in the Q4 for the Israeli. This is the reason why we did not, we all accommodate all this. We are still confirming the guidance, and you can be sure we will have a good position in this guidance.
Okay. The last question has to do with 2030. What about the slide bearings business? It's part of this still.
I mean, we did not discuss it today so much, obviously, because the focus was on defense. Is there any portfolio kind of thinking around this?
I think the message I am sure you have received is that as a part of a future reorganization, to have focus on crystal clear defense domains and the second step to bundle the existing industrial part of the business in order to make it more attractive and to gain more of our sector strategies executed. As of today, I mean, as you know, slide bearings is a beautiful business, steadily growing cash generation. Now there are some current problems, maybe temporary from the headwind, but for the time being, it is always on the, I mean, there is no news. What is important, we are doing, of course, like what we are doing with all the three segments, annually strategy reviews.
We look exactly on the product portfolio, on the market situation, on our impact on the business. The next round is somewhere at the end of January where we have our internal target setting. So far, no news, but let's see.
Yeah, there was one question over there and then the second.
Quentin [Rochas], BNP Paribas, thank you for taking my question. The first would be on revenue. Considering you feel very strongly about the increased 2030 revenue target range, EUR 2.8 billion-EUR 3.2 billion, but you have not changed the revenue target for 2028 of above EUR 2 billion. First of all, could you maybe quantify what that above EUR 2 billion would mean? How should we think about the cadence of that growth from 2026, 2027 to 2028? Are you still aiming for double-digit top-line growth every year?
Yeah. I mean, should I, should you?
Okay, so I start maybe and you would then are more precise than I am maybe. We have these two kinds of dynamics. After 2028, all the potential order intakes and contracts are converting into revenue. We will have a different double-digit growth than what we always have communicated, by the way. Also since last capital market day, we are growing between 2024 and 2028 double-digit, but maybe not on that double-digit growth what we will see 2028 and forth followings. To comment on your question about our EUR 2 billion, we are very confident it will be above EUR 2 billion. Will it be a EUR 2.1 billion, EUR 2.3 billion, EUR 2.4 billion? Let's see, but it will be above EUR 2 billion. Please keep in mind, nothing has changed compared to our last capital market days in regards to the execution of this first phase.
What came on top is really starting after, I mean, on the revenue line, starting after 2028, all this increase in the defense spending. Also if you look on our margin side, I mean, you can be always very critical, but honestly, from a 16.5% or 16.6% what we have shown before last year, financial year end 2024, we are walking in the year 2027 where we had our milestone now above 300. As I just said, to a margin most likely in the range of 18%. If we go to 2028, we will be in the range between 19%-20%. Are we at 19.2% or at 19.8% or even maybe at 20%? We will see. The overall market development, the market development, our business development, I think we should be optimistic and solid and proud about this.
I can only add to it because you need to think about the acceleration. Yeah, that's what we've been telling in the EBIT and the revenue walk. It's really until 2028, then the acceleration kicks in. What we mean with that is there is the real impact of the scale effects are coming. This is what really boosts us up.
Yeah, hi, David Perry from JP Morgan. I guess the thing I took from your presentation, Alexander, was so much of the business is still international in the next few years. It's a bit different to maybe the other two German CMDs of the last week. Just on the target of over 1,800 transmissions in 2030, just how many of those are international versus German? You said last year 27% of the sales were Germany. Will that be higher, lower, the same in 2030?
I guess one follow-up, given how much is international, can you give any more color on some of the sizes of the international programs, like which are more important, less important in ranking?
I think if we talk maybe first about the composition of our sales, I mean, going from north of EUR 700 million to EUR 1,800 million, so almost tripling, I think it's fair to say that the majority of this business is related to Germany and Europe if you talk about this. The international programs, and David, if I talk about international programs, I talk about exporting out of Europe, you know, you can limit actually as of today on maybe two main customers. One is going towards Middle East. We just discussed the challenge what we had about the export. The second one is going to Korea and from Korea going back in the K2 to Poland.
The majority of our growth in the future and going to 2030 will take place on the European business, European platforms, which includes everything, including Ukraine and going along the north flank or the east flank of the eastern border, if you want to call it. This was the first question. What was the second question, David? You had so many.
Like when we get to 2030, is it still 27% sales from Germany at constant print? Because it does not look like Germany is actually going to outgrow the other bit for you.
I think it is a very good question because what you see today, we have a nicely diversified customer base. As of 2024, if you look on RENK Group level, and this is what we have shown here, we have quarter, quarter, quarter, very roughly speaking, Europe, Asia-Pacific, North America, and the Middle East.
This will most likely German share will increase, but it's very important to understand we have today, if we talk about the entire RENK Group, maybe 20%-25% of business in Germany. Of course, this will increase, but we always will have international business, always will have international business. Again, the main growth dynamics are clearly in Europe. If you talk about 2030 and beyond, also in Asia-Pacific, for example, India, in the U.S., the growth dynamics are more or less well below the strong growth in Europe here. It will grow, but on a different speed.
Okay.
There's one more question over there, or two, actually.
Hi. Good morning, George McWhirter from Berenberg. Maybe on the circular reserve, can you just run us through what you're assuming in terms of circular reserve share in Germany and the rest of Europe?
Inside what?
The circular reserve share in Germany and the rest of Europe in 2030 and the margin trend to 2030. I was expecting a slightly higher contribution from the aftermarket. Is that because it's coming through after 2030? Thank you.
Let's wait and see what the real contribution by the aftermarket will be. I mean, it's clear that the aftermarket will kick in with a certain delay. If you talk about the circular reserve, specifically about Germany, I think it's important to make two differences. First, we have a circular reserve on platform level. We talk in Germany about the so-called [Foreign language]. If the German customer, for example, is ordering 100 tanks because he needs 100 tanks to fill gaps in his current brigade structure, he will order 140 tanks because he needs to have a reserve in case there is really a conflict.
It might happen in a conflict that a tank gets defect, so you need to have a new one. This circular reserve on platforms is, of course, supportive for our business development. We have it also in our scenarios, what we just discussed in the platform numbers included in the min and in the max. On top of this, there is like today a circular reserve of critical subsystems, engines, but for example, also transmissions. If you talk about a transmission and you see today's level of circular reserve, it depends on which platform you are looking, but it's somewhere between 10%-20%. If you compare this to countries and customers who are or who were in an active conflict, like Israel, for example, they have a circular reserve up to 50%. I think the German government and the Bundeswehr understood this.
Also on the circular reserve side for transmissions, they are going towards this 40%. Do we have, George, we had this discussion very open. Do we have fully included this 40% on the circular reserve on spare transmissions in our adjustments, maybe not to the last volume? You need to understand we are not starting from 0 to 40. We are starting from a level of 10-20 to 40. Did this answer your question?
Okay. Due to our limited time, I would suggest that only the two in the third row can ask one question each before we have to conclude the Q&A session.
Yeah, I'll go to BHF. Just one on the beyond 2028 trend, because we heard yesterday in the evening that Germany should not reach the 3.5% threshold by 2029, but more 3%.
Is it changing something for the beyond 2028 trend?
I mean, for Germany, to be honest, if we are on 3.05% or 3.5%, what it means is a massive increase in the budget from EUR 80 billion in 2024 towards EUR 140 billion-EUR 150 billion in the next five years to come. The budget increase is significant. Also, what we should understand, if you look on these two phases, phase one in Germany and phase two, if you talk about, especially about the large platforms, Leopard family, including main battle tanks, but especially the family vehicles, the majority of this we considered always to be in the second half in phase two. It's not related to phase one. We are looking phase II starts with 2031 going to 2035. For us, we do not see an impact.
What Germany is doing is a significant effort to increase the deterrence capabilities and is massively investing.
Okay. Yeah, Christophe Menard at Deutsche Bank, a quick one on MRO aftermarket. Thanks for highlighting the 40% +. If we go beyond 2030, could we see 50%? Could we see 50 %+?
Bonjour. As I just said, to model really the year-by-year impact on the aftermarket business depends on many factors. I think what I would say that today we are maybe a little bit on the conservative side because in our assumptions in these rough estimates, we are considering the status as it is. The typical longer period for overhaul, not having a real spare parts strategy on our end customer side.
What we do expect is that this will change because to have a decent stock of inventory is necessary even for the existing platforms to provide mission readiness, not even talking about the new platforms. Coming back to your question, as I said, personally speaking, beyond 2030, somewhere the normalization of the growth on the OE business will take place simply. It will grow, but it might be not growing a double digit on a 20% what we have seen before maybe, or even more. It will maybe single digit, and this is the time over the lead time over the years when the importance of the aftermarket business on the overall revenue generation for RENK is increasing. If it's to 45%, 50%, or I don't know, we will see, but it will increase. Do not ask me at which year it will increase. It will increase beyond 2030.
Can I ask another one on new GVs? Recently, you were talking about partnership, if I'm not wrong, with, I mean, maybe ARX Robotics. That was not mentioned in the presentation. Are you going alone or is it, no, I missed it.
I had ARX mentioned in our network of strategic partners. Of course, RENK does not have all the needed, especially software know-how as of today in order to make this happen. We are looking on partnerships. We are looking on ARX Robotics to support this way, of course. We are looking on key customers in order to support here with the platforms. It is a combined approach.
Now we have one more final question before we end our session.
Hi, Joe Orchard from Rothschild & Co Redburn. Thank you for squeezing me in.
With the 1,800 transmissions per year from VTA, do you see any risk of oversupply or overcapacity in the market?
I would like to answer the question from the overcapacity. As I said, I'm coming from automotive and normally you put your operational point at 80% of your expected volume. You are not planning for the 1,800. You are planning on a regular basis on 80% or 85% or something like that. You cover the rest by overtime, by working together with some suppliers, blah, blah, blah. Therefore, even if we would have a drop there, there would not be the problem that we have invested too much in overcapacity. As Alexander already said, we are not thinking about a drop in the future. Maybe the increase will be lower. It will be not double digit anymore then. We do not know yet.
Before the background or the question about overcapacity, I'm not afraid about it because we have this in mind. This is why I pointed so strong on these strategies. If you don't have a strategy, it might happen what you say. If you have a strategy, you have to define where's your operating point. Our operating point is on 80%-85% on normal business, which means normal shift model. We can breathe or go in higher volume when we use overtime or things like that.
Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, for your questions and active participation in our Q&A session. If we weren't able to address your question, I can point it out again that you can always reach out to our investors at renk.com email address. Our colleagues will be happy to deliver the answers there.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you.
Oh, and of course, there will also be more opportunities during the day. We have the site visit, we have the lunch, and the Executive Board will be happy to talk to you during that time.
What is next?
You can go back to your seats. I will take over for a second. Yeah, with the presentations from the Management Board now concluded, we will now move on to the next part of our program. We are delighted to have two more speakers on today's agenda. Firstly, Esa Rautalinko, CEO of Patria. We already introduced him in the morning. He will provide background into his company and the close collaboration and partnership it has had with RENK on recent projects. And Michael Masur, who also arrived, I'm not sure where he is at. Yeah, he's over there.
He will then conclude our morning program with an outlook on RENK's vision of future land defense. Now, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Esa Rautalinko to our stage. Thank you very much for traveling here all the way from Finland.
Oh, yeah. Exactly. Greetings from Finland. First of all, thank you, Alexander and the RENK team for giving me this opportunity. By the way, we are all Renkies, as we heard. Renki is a Finnish word. It means employee. There we go. Yeah. [Foreign language]. That is what Renki means. The aim of my presentation is that as Patria, we are not a listed company. Giving some insight into who we are, where we are coming from, what we are aiming for, what is our belief, basically, even though we did not coordinate it.
What General Mais was telling yesterday about the future of land warfare during dinner, it seems that we are like-minded about that one. What's our take on that one? A couple of examples, what we have done and also what we are doing currently in Germany, and then highlighting our new concept vehicle and soon to be ready to be produced, Patria Tracks, where RENK is our essential partner. By the way, Alexander, you said that as I'm over here, I should shut my ears about your margins. Don't worry. Only three things we are interested in: right pricing, the best possible performance, and timely deliveries. Other than that, we want to have healthy and successful partners. That's where we are. Some background, I won't go into detail. You read faster than I talk.
That's roughly what we are, over 100 years old company. Actually, it started with German cooperation with the production of Hansa aircraft in Finland. We do have these German ties from 1921. Ever since, that was last year. Now we are looking at our rolling 12 months. We are on the speed of going above EUR 1 billion this year. That's our traction at the moment. If you are looking at our Q3 this year, 24% growth in net sales, EBIT growth, 60%. Basically, that's where we are. Quite a lot of customer countries. Maybe to know, our ownership structure is not a typical one. It's 50.1% the state of Finland. 49.9% is owned by Kongsberg, Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace. The reason for why there is this state majority is pretty simple.
The Finnish concept goes in the lines that we are the maintenance, we are the overhaul, we are the modernization arm of the Finnish Defense Forces. We are providing the military the usability of any platform, whether it would be fighter jets, main battle tanks, warships, what have you. They are the end users. It also means that during a time of peace, crisis, even full war, we are there. Basically, half jokingly, half true, the only thing I would change if there would be a war would be my clothing. There we go. We are an integral part of the Finnish Defense Forces. Maybe just a notion, another not listed company is Nammo, which is a leading ammunitions manufacturer in Europe and in the U.S. That is 50/50 owned by the State of Norway and Patria. There is that connection as well.
That's where we are located geographically, where we have operations, legal entities, and so forth. Farthest away, Japan, where we had a major deal a couple of years ago, the first ever that Japan is ordering major equipment from outside the domestic market. You are looking at Finland before anybody starts to have an idea that does it make any sense to have so many locations in Finland. The vast majority of those are military bases. Wherever the military goes, there we go. We are still currently, we are in Lebanon. We have been in Iraq. We have been in Afghanistan. Wherever the Finnish Defense Forces are deployed, we are following. That's how we work. Just background on numbers. It's not our capital markets today, so I'm not going to go into this one. Maybe a couple of points.
a strong role in all of the numbers. The point also made previously, the thing today is working capital. What the whole industry is working today, I'm pretty sure about that one, are prepayments. The times still are in the way, or it used to be in the olden days. It was the companies who were financing governments. That needs to change, and it has started to, it has started to change. Today we are over 4,000 people, and as mentioned on the track to go above EUR 1 billion in net sales this year with a nice profitability. If we just split Patria, roughly half of our business is maintenance, repair, overhaul, that strategic partnership with the Finnish Defense Forces. That is a pretty stable volume. Slightly growing, but pretty well predictable.
If we take the OEM part over there, if we take that out, the other half of the business, that's the one that's now speedily growing, and there the growth rate today is almost 50% on an annual level. That also, in my mind, gives some confidence that yes, in these new capabilities, the growth is there. That's basically what we do. Three trunks in the tree what we are doing. What we call sustainment solutions, it's basically all about maintenance, repair, overhaul, mid-life upgrades, extensions, and so forth. There's protective mobility, which is all about our vehicles. For instance, autonomous mobility, with which we have worked with a long, long time. In one of the videos, you'll see a short glimpse of that, how we are already operating on those remotely. Then defense and weapon systems and various technologies over there.
Motor systems, for instance, our targeted motor system is something that Germany is now going to procure. At least that's our belief on the top of our 6x6 vehicles. That is going to be one variant. Many, many very closely guarded secrets from the times when Finland was militarily non-aligned. Yes, we were NATO partners, but we were not part of the alliance. Signal detection, passive radars, and so forth, which were never sold outside of Finland. Now we have started deliveries with a number of NATO countries. That is where we are. That is what we are doing. Everybody knows what strategic partnership is meant to mean. In Finland, it goes very, very deep. It means that certain rules and regulations do exist, agreements about war economy, who is going to do what. We are practicing, we are constantly practicing with the military and other authorities.
It is very, very deep. Just a description over here. If anybody wants these materials, more than happy to disclose all the material through Melina, if you so wish. That is the way how Finland works in a society which is all about trust. By the way, just a piece of information, population 5.6 million. 1.45 million people in Finland today have a trained wartime position. 1.45 million. We do a lot of system integration, so we do have very, very deep capabilities in Finland. We are rebuilding and fixing fighter jet engines. We have modernized our F-18s twice, many times before the OEM even has those capabilities anywhere, and warships and so forth. Those are the skills, and that means that actually, as somebody said, in military terms, amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.
It is about geographical positions and what capabilities one needs to have in Europe or on one's own soil and turf. What we also do is technology transfer and local manufacturing. That is one of the keys of our success, I would say. We have done it a lot. Some examples of countries, what we have done. The reason for this one, and I think it rings certain bells with the RENK presentations as well. We want to avoid CapEx wherever possible. We want to bring local jobs. We want to utilize those capabilities to give also the political acceptance. We want to provide with security of supply. In the end also, if anything happens to any of the production facilities producing our products, the potential ramp-up and step in with any of the other partners is by far more speedy. That is all about resilience.
How to have the biggest possible capacity to produce without paying for that one. That's the trick over here. We are also working with what Emmerich was telling about automotive. We are doing that one as well. We just recently publicized the letter of intent with Valmet Automotive, which actually is a contract manufacturer of automobiles in Finland, and exactly for the same reasons as described previously. These are the reasons why we are doing so, basically explained it, but the only downside of technology transfer is that yes, you will have low net sales. Surprisingly enough, you will have higher profit margins and you will have the same absolute profitability. Modern warfare and armored vehicles, so what's happening over here.
The main belief over here is that yes, there's this well spoken of no man's land today, Ukraine, guided by drones and so forth, 5-10 km in breadth, whatever it might be. Does it mean that the so-called conventional army equipment are no longer needed? Far from that. If you want to conquer or if you want to take back something that belongs to you territorially, you need to have that superiority. Also bearing in mind that for each main battle tank, there will be a certain number of IFVs. For each IFV, there will be a certain number of an increasing number of armored personnel carriers. Behind them, there's an even bigger amount of logistical equipment. Basically, it's a triangle.
Whenever somebody is talking about adding main battle tanks, it will essentially mean that there will be the supporting equipment in by far larger quantities. Yes, the so-called conventional warfare equipment, it's not dead. It needs to be protected. The most valuable assets are our soldiers. Secondly, our mechanical assets. Those will be protected. By the way, just as a notion, which is not discussed so much about today, is what's the condition, the operational condition of equipment, legacy equipment that any of the countries possess today? What's their usability? Where are they located? What's the deployment time? Are we talking about months, weeks, or hours? In Finland, we are talking about a couple of hours. There you go. The point over there is also about modernization and utilizing the assets.
I think that's a huge aftermarket possibility for any in this industry, for sure. What do we basically, what do we offer? The key points over here in this presentation is about armored vehicles, and we have done that for over 40 years. Also, we know that, for instance, our 8x8 vehicles today, which are not used by the Bundeswehr, Germany is using boxers. For instance, our 8x8 is by far the most sold in the whole world and most of the user countries. We've been there for a long, long time. A couple of interesting points over here. Everything in Finland needs to be standard. There's a standard that it has to be inside of the vehicle. It can be used in extreme temperatures. Our vehicles need to work from - 45, - 50 to + 45, + 50 degrees .
A range of 100 degrees. That is what we do. Therefore, also one of our slogans is that extreme conditions embedded. That is not an optional extra. It is built in. The other one is that what actually is our value proposition? We want to give by far the best price-performance ratio in the market. When we are going to the technologies next, that is what we are doing. First of all, over the vehicles, you might have heard about the so-called Common Armored Vehicle System Program, a 6x6 program that is up and running. Over there, the point is that it started with an endeavor of a couple of countries, basically Finland and Latvia, also Estonia at that time. We wanted to create new capabilities for troop transporting, and that was a couple of years before the invasion of Ukraine because the need was clearly there.
Participating countries today are seven. The U.K. and Norway joined in September this year. Germany actually joined already over a couple of years ago. Germany is pretty long down the road now, and now we are waiting for the first serial orders from Germany. Since the program started only a few years back, today, basically 1,000 vehicles, 250 delivered. What it means today is that when we are talking about armored personnel carriers, Patria is by far the biggest manufacturer in the whole of Europe. There is no question about that. Our production numbers, what we have now ramped up, are today 20x as high as they were only two, three years ago. Next year and the following years, we will be 40x as big in production capabilities. That is without any significant investments.
It's about partners, processes, and pretty inspirational what you, Emmerich, thought, because that's exactly what we are thinking about as well. Germany, that's what's the hot topic at the moment. We have partnered with KNDS and FFG in that program. There will be local manufacturing in Germany. What we normally do is that we do a certain pre-series, not prototypes, but ready vehicles for a certain number. The partner comes in. We are training the people, the personnel, and so forth. There will be a technology transfer into Germany in this case, as we have done in many, many countries before. The next one is a video clip about two minutes.
Common Armored Vehicle System Program, enhancing defense resilience and cooperation through joint development of Patria 6x6 vehicles. The CAVS program began in 2019 as a multinational cooperation initiative.
The selection was made of the Patria 6x6 vehicle as the platform for the program. The CAVS program has since expanded to include several other countries. As of now, the participating countries are Finland, Latvia, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark. The program remains open for new countries to join, provided they have similar equipment requirements and receive approval from the existing participants. The primary purpose of the CAVS program is to develop a 6x6 armored vehicle system that meets the common requirements of the member countries. This collaborative effort aims to enhance mutual defense resilience, bring cost benefits through joint procurement, and strengthen European defense and NATO cooperation. The program also focuses on utilizing local industry capabilities of the member nations, thereby reinforcing the security of supply for the entire collaboration system.
Shared systems across nations allow for logistical cooperation during joint missions, including spare part exchanges in the field, and are built for the reality of the battlefield.
That is the 6x6, and hopefully you'll see that in Germany pretty soon. Just one slide about this one, the 8x8 vehicle. That is our success story that started already over 20 years ago, so over 2,000 sold globally to various countries. Today we are delivering over to Slovakia and Japan. There is a video clip of this one. That is from our so-called Arctic event. There are also colleagues from RENK, who were joining last March in Finland. Unfortunately, it was only about - 5 or -6 degrees . Today it is over -20 degrees . You will see also other equipment over there. Have a view at this one.
That, by the way, you saw the so-called turreted mortar system on the top of the vehicles. That is the one that now hopefully is going to be installed into the vehicles delivered to Germany as one variant. There is a point where we do have a deep cooperation with RENK. First of all, I want to thank publicly now the RENK management and all the Renkies about the extreme speed of execution. We only started cooperation about two years ago, feeling around and so forth, and now we are very, very far down the road in the process. This vehicle you will see shortly would not be possible. The performance would not be possible without the innovative transmission system of RENK. There is no question about that. What this is, this is a modular vehicle as is the 6x6, as the 8x8.
It can be used for various purposes. Do not pay too much attention to the weapon system on the top. That is just one example of what can be fitted. This can be used for medical evacuation, for command and control, for motor systems, whatever. It can have heavier or lighter armor and so forth. The point over here is that it needs to be cost-effective. It needs to have extraordinary performance, something that actually has never been available anywhere in the world. If the 6x6 is a very, very advanced evolution of technologies, this will be, and this is, a revolution. The point over here is that for the hardest imaginable conditions, first of all, over there, it is driving. There is at least 1 m of snow under the vehicle, and it is not even sinking. It is extremely fast.
Can't give you the exact details, but the point over there is that for missions where you have to deploy troops, let's say from somewhere to somewhere, hundreds of kilometers, this vehicle will keep up with the fastest wheeled vehicles, something the world has never seen before. That's one of the points. It's thought it needs to be interoperable, but also what we need to discuss about and understand is a term called interchangeable. It means that the more and more countries are jointly procuring, all the advantages of logistical chains, warehousing, stockpiles, and so forth, they become true. We are going to deliver the first examples to the Finnish Defense Forces next year. We will have serial production capabilities in 2027. Already today, there are 11 countries who are in this European Defense Fund funded program. It's about future land warfare capabilities.
One of the apparitions of that one is this new track vehicle. France is involved around a 4x4 lighter patrol vehicle, and then also Greece concerning certain main battle tank capabilities. It has been heavily funded. Finland is the lead nation, and Patria is the coordinator of the industrial partners. There is a lot of legacy fleets in Europe today, like the M113 from the U.S. We have to remember it is originally designed late 1950s, early 1960s. That is where the legacy comes from. Or the MTLB, which is the old Soviet equipment, also decades old. Now the point is that the development curves of those vehicles, they do not exist. Something new is required, something that actually has been designed in the 2020s. It will be a huge leap in the capabilities, for sure. That is what we are doing.
There's a lot of articulated track vehicles as well. Those that basically have two cabins and so forth, not naming any of those manufacturers here. Those will have their place in the future. This is anyway, this is superior in performance and price-wise very competitive. This is what we are working together with RENK has said. Our cooperation over here is as deep as it can be. That's what we are doing. Seeing is believing. I'll show you a video clip. My wife, who's a very typical Finn, and she tends to be cool, calm, and collected. The reactions I normally have from her is, "Well, nice. Okay." She saw this video, she said, "No way in hell that's possible." That's the strongest reaction I've heard from you in 30 years. Let's see what's your reaction. [Foreign language]
[Forign language] . That was the last. Just saying that what's the potential of that vehicle. We also work with scales. 10,000- 20,000 vehicles. That's the potential of this one. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Esa, for providing an engaging overview of Patria Group and also for introducing us to Finnish defense technology. Our next speaker is already here. The stage is yours. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. My name is Michael Masur. I'm heading the segment for all the land applications. It's my pleasure today to give you a very short comprehensive introduction, especially in our business based on what Esa just presented. To start with that, where's the... Here it is. Esa, thank you very much. You and your team, we found a trusted partner.
That is what I would like to start with in the first slides to tell you a little bit about what we did within two years with a development concept where a spoken word is a contract with this company and where we executed in a very agile collaborative mode a very complex part of this impressive vehicle. With this trusted partnership, it was very quickly and flexible also to get fundings because somebody has to pay the party. We had an experience which we never seen before since many, many decades of having the chance and the pleasure to work together with Patria. We had a jointly staffed team and only 24 months, as I said, after we agreed with a handshake to do it, we placed this transmission from a blank sheet of paper in hardware on a test bench.
Only two months later, we have been able to show it in front of only 300 international customers, potential customers, military experts, companies in the beautiful area of Rovaniemi in Finland. Can you imagine how that is? Something which was ready two months ago is now in a vehicle in the northern hemisphere. Yeah, and has to work. That is exactly what we are doing. Our equipment, our staff is essential for our people in the war theater. What we do matters. We need to be very careful to provide highest performance and, of course, biggest, strongest reliability. We are the same company doing this the whole day. What is now going on? What did we provide? Esa impressively shown the vehicle. It shoots and it drives. People are inside. We do the propulsion. We do the steering. We do the braking.
If the vehicle is not driving anymore, it's lost. It's just lost. It can't escape anymore. It's not maneuverable anymore. People will die. We are now here having a transmission in this vehicle, which is lightweight, which is amphibious, and which provides an easy operation for the people inside. The more easier the vehicle is to drive, the more you are relaxed and the more you can put your focus on other things. That is exactly what will be the motivation for the next step, the semi-automotive driving of such a heavy track vehicle. If you imagine sitting in a RENK transmission, you can accelerate the vehicle, you can break it down, and you can steer it. When we are able to do that in an autonomous way, we can control the whole vehicle while driving. That needs a digital environment.
It needs a digital drivetrain where there is no steering wheel anymore and where then the system itself can be operated without the interaction of a driver. That can be meant autonomous vehicles or functions like in your car. Depending on which generation of autonomous driving you are, you can at least relax a couple of seconds because the car is doing your steering. In these operations, the distances we have to gain is several thousand kilometers and the lack of personnel, of course, we are all very well aware of. That is the next stage, the final stage. The vehicle should be unmanned and autonomous to provide capacity, to provide functionality without soldiers on board of that. I will show you later on a little bit more what type of functions I'm talking about. There's a huge potential of unmanned ground vehicles.
It's just, and I would be happy if somebody could give me more detailed information on that. It's not a fixed market yet. It's constituting. Something is going on because we have the challenge. We need more weapon systems in the theater. There is a relevance on the ground. There is a need. There is a need for long-term operations. You can see it, unfortunately, also in Ukraine. They have really a challenge of having personnel. We believe that there is a high future potential of several billions of euros in this market. We will get a major share of that because we are doing this development and we are taking care that it will be done fast and high in functional quality and value for our customers. What is the platform looking like? We are typically in a more heavier weight scenario.
We are not doing the small things. We are doing the big stuff. Big stuff means that we are looking into a vehicle weight of a total of roughly 20 tons, where the ratio for the payload is about 50%, which means we can put about 10 tons of payload on this vehicle. That can be mission modules for transport, for sensors. It can even be effectors or enablers, which means ammunition, fuel, or maybe even vehicles to carry back wounded soldiers. That is only possible with this fully digitalized platform, which I explained. You need a system which can be operated autonomous, and it needs to be also intelligent. There needs to be some intelligent digital driver in that, and we are doing that. We are not doing that, by the way, only for this application for the heavy UGV.
We are doing that also for the next generation of all our transmissions. This is a general technology approach to have these additional functions in the systems, making driving a tracked military vehicle more comfortable, more secure, more autonomous. I invite you, Alexander probably has invited you to join us in the upcoming USA Tour in Paris, where we will present the first hardware of this vehicle. We have done quite some work, and we, of course, are looking very much forward to be as successful as with the last product release in the [audio distortion ] mid of this year, June 26. Thank you very much for your attention and enjoy the day. It's a great company.
Thank you, Michael, for the fresh perspectives and an outline of RENK's role in future land defense.
Now I would like Alexander and Esa to join us again here on stage because Alexander has a small presentation to make.
I have a small presentation to make? Yeah. Present. Present? Present.
Yeah.
Where is it?
I ask the native speakers.
Yeah, Esa, thank you very much. As I am always saying, it is a friendship. Thank you very much for this. Like always, we are exchanging coins. As last night for General Mais, we have big coins. This is typical in the military. You are exchanging coins. Thank you very much for this very great partnership, for the support, and for the future ideas we have together.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Okay. Okay. Dear guests, now we come to the end of the morning session. We are, I think, five minutes behind schedule, but I hope you forgive us about that.
Before the live stream draws to a close, I would like to hand over to Alexander again to bid farewell to our webcast participants.
Yeah, I hope you could enjoy it. I hope you got all the needed information. Like always, we are trying to be as transparent, as clear as possible. Michael just mentioned it's a great company. We are strongly standing behind the statement. We do fully believe in the future and the growth of RENK. We are happy to do this together. Thank you very much for your participation also in the live stream. I invite everyone now to reallocate, [Foreign language] in German, into our plant and then to see it live, the products and the production. Thank you very much for your patience.
Just one more note, as usual, a record of our CMD, including the presentations of the management as well as the Q&A session, will be available shortly after the event on our investor relations website. With that, we conclude the webcast now. Thank you all for joining us today and goodbye until next time.