Good morning, everybody. My name is Claus Ehrenbeck. I am heading the IR department of thyssenkrupp, and on behalf of my entire team, I would like to wish you a very warm welcome to our Capital Market Day today. Our Capital Market Day has the title Transforming to Sustained Value Creation.
To related to this, we sent out a press release this morning which contains the financial targets of our segments and the group. We haven't held a Capital Market Day for quite some time now, and I am pleased to say that with the Capital Market Day today, we are back in our IR routine to host Capital Market Days on an annual basis. We also want to reopen the access for investors and analysts to our segment leadership teams.
The next slide here I have to show you, it comes with kind regards from our legal department. On the following slide, we collected some housekeeping remarks. First, the Capital Markets Day today will be conveyed on a Zoom basis, and in parallel there is a replay and the recording, and the replay of the recording will be available shortly after the Capital Markets Day.
The presentations that will be showed will be uploaded one after the other in the course of the agenda today. There will be, of course, a Q&A. There will be Q&A sessions, of course, and the Q&A sessions will be audio. If you want to ask a question, please indicate it via the chat function of the Zoom platform. When you get called, please be so kind as to state your name and the company you're working for.
Please also, after you have asked your questions, please mute your computer or device in order that acoustic feedback is avoided. On the next slide, there's the agenda for today. The first presentation will start soon. It will be run by Martina Merz, our CEO, and Klaus Keysberg, the CFO, and it has the title of the Capital Market Day today. This presentation will be followed by a presentation of Materials Services, will be run by Martin Stillger, the CEO of the business. For the Q&A session, he will be joined by his CFO, Daniel Wodera. There will be a short break, and after the short break, there will be the session for Industrial Components.
This segment consists of two business units, which are, Forged Technologies and Bearings. First there will be Bearings. The presentation will be run by Winfried Schulte. The presentation for Forged Technologies by Patrick Buchmann, both CEOs. For the Q&A session they will be joined by their CFOs, Philipp Conze and Roland Klotti. After that, there will be Automotive Technology.
The presentation will be run by Karsten Kroos, and Karsten Kroos is a one-man show because he is CEO and CFO at the same time. There will be another break, and after the break there will be, Steel Europe, the presentation run by Bernhard Osburg, the CEO, and joined for Q&A by Carsten Evers. After that, there will be the final Q&A session for today, which will be, conducted by Martina Merz and Klaus Keysberg. Then there will be a wrap up from Martina before we conclude the Capital Market Day. With that, now I would like to hand over to Martina. Please, Martina, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Claus. A very warm welcome also from my side. This is my first Capital Market Day at thyssenkrupp, and it's also our first Capital Market Day with the new group of companies concept. For in this group of companies, of course, we aim to transform to a sustained value creation. And in this, for this sustained value creation, leadership is key.
I'm happy to introduce you to the gentlemen who are leading this transformation in their business units. First, of course, you know Klaus Keysberg. Then Martin Stillger, Material Services. Winfried Schulte, Bearings. Rolf Wirtz, Marine Systems. Volkmar Dinstuhl, with Multi Tracks. Patrick Buchmann, Forged Technologies. Bernhard Osburg, Steel Europe. And Karsten Kroos, Automotive Technology. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. About two years ago, we started our multi-year transformation.
The target was and is clear: bring thyssenkrupp back to a value creation path by top-line growth and cash flow-focused performance. While leading the company through significant changes during the last two years, the world has changed significantly through the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting in supply chain challenges.
Today, it is time for an update, both on the structural changes we made and on operational improvements. For the latter, it is important to get to know our businesses and their respective improvement journeys in more detail. This will be the focus of today's Capital Market Day. As Claus outlined, we will have all major businesses giving presentations today. Our transformation is guided by a simple framework: focus, improve, and scale. Let me quickly recap what this is about.
It is important to underline that the sale of our elevator technology business for a record price of over EUR 17 billion was the key enabler. It actually was the condition sine qua non, allowing us to move along this transformation curve. It was a tough call, yes, but inevitable to significantly improve thyssenkrupp's balance sheet and to give us room to maneuver. Focus is about ensuring that we concentrate on the portfolio of businesses for which we believe to be the best majority owner.
This is about structural changes, changing existing structures and creating new ones. It also sets the structures in which performance improvement can happen. With improve, we concentrate on operational improvements in the businesses to bring them on to be results in EBIT and cash, and thereby increase total return to shareholders. This is done in existing structures by the business.
The CEOs of our key businesses will walk you through their respective equity stories and improvement journeys as introduced by Claus. These journeys, as you will see, consist of many steps and elements. There is not the one big bang. Last but not least, we will scale up proven concepts and add new pockets of growth once solid performance levels have been achieved. I will now give you an overview where we stand in each of the three key phases.
Due to our broad portfolio, there is not the one spot on the curve, but we are pursuing several themes in parallel. Let's start with focus. With regard to focusing our portfolio, some major milestones have been achieved. In May 2020, we rigorously reviewed and restructured thyssenkrupp's portfolio. We followed this guiding principle. Where is thyssenkrupp the best owner from a strategic and a financial perspective?
Clear statements with regard to Steel Europe and Marine Systems have been made. Both businesses require consolidation from an industrial logic. The segment Multi Tracks, in short, MT, was formed. Those businesses where thyssenkrupp is not the best sole owner were allocated there. For our Steel business, we started a structured process for consolidation in 2020.
However, market and potential partners were not ready at that time. The decision to explore a standalone solution for Steel was made. Within the fiscal year 2021, Multi Tracks delivered as planned, closing of heavy plates, sale of carbon components, infrastructure, AST, and mining technologies. This means that more than 50% of the deals have been signed or have clearly defined exit plans. All pending closings are likely to happen within the fiscal year 2021-2022.
This equals positive expected effects on our net cash position and pensions in a high three-digit million euro range. You see, significant progress on the structural side has happened. Yet there is still more to come with regard to focus. Let me quickly walk through our portfolio. The segments Materials Services and Industrial Components are currently not focus of any major portfolio analysis.
For Automotive Technology, we are convinced that alliances and joint ventures can create material value since scale is what matters in this industry. As we said before, we are open to partnerships for our automotive businesses. For Steel Europe, the direction is clear. Our current project work focuses on enabling the standalone setup.
This allows the green transformation, provide options to consolidate, and improve own performance. Bernhard will provide the latest status later today. With regard to Marine Systems, there are three messages today.
First, risks have been reduced. Performance management has been improved and still has further upside. As recent order intake shows, customers trust us. Second, looking at it from an ESG perspective, there are challenges for ECM and DCM attractiveness, not only, but also for conglomerates hosting defense businesses. Third, we strongly believe that also for Marine Systems, an industrial consolidation could create additional value, and we are open to play an active role.
However, the process is in an early stage. In Multi Tracks, the focus is now on preparing the next package of divestments. This is mainly automation, engineering, and springs and stabilizers. In the medium term, decisions about the future of Uhde, our chemical plant technology and cement technology will have to be made. Both are large units that are currently dedicated to the turnaround and the green transformation of their business.
The structural improvement of our portfolio will stay a key priority for the year to come. Yes, thyssenkrupp will be smaller and, more important, stronger. Let's come to improve. We also progressed on the performance side and delivered as promised. We worked on our general performance framework and, for example, we established a value lever approach and substantiated our planning by measures and initiatives way more solid than before.
Thus, we were able to meet the set targets for the past fiscal year. Also, we launched the so far largest restructuring program in thyssenkrupp's history. All this has led to visible improvements on the KPI side. Klaus Keysberg will provide detail on this later on. Performance improvement is not driven by the one big ticket, but the sum of many improvement steps in high frequency.
In such an approach, Materials Services, for example, have reduced the number of logistic sites in Europe by more than 50, equaling 20% since the first quarter of 2019/2020. Simultaneously, productivity gains of 5% were achieved in 2021 versus 2019/2020. These are substantial achievements so far. Let me be very clear, this is of course not enough, and I'm not satisfied with this.
As an overall assessment, I would say that we are halfway through the improvement journey we put in place. This applies to the Multi Tracks portfolio moves and the respective impact. This applies to the time required to reach benchmark performance in all our businesses. Approximately 2/3 of the required improvements are defined. Approximately 1/3 is implemented.
The measures already defined but not yet implemented include the pending headcount reduction of approximately 5,000 full-time equivalents of the overall 12,000+ reduction we announced earlier. We are on track and progressing. Our businesses have initiated a lot of performance measures which take time to kick in. Speed, clarity, and tempo as well as consistent rigorous implementation will get us to benchmark performance level, translating into a 4%-6% EBIT margin and positive free cash flow.
I would like to emphasize once again that improve has to happen at the business level. In contrast to focus, where we work on the structures, improve works in given structures. As said, it is about many continuous and operational improvement measures. Of course, we as a group can provide a certain frame for this, for example, by setting targets, defining a steering logic, allocating funds.
In the end, the hard and diligent work must be done on site and by the businesses. This is why we will have five CEOs presenting their respective strategies and performance journeys here today. Still, improvement is not just about financial performance, it's also about sustainability. On the ESG side, we have also progressed in the past two years.
Already in 2019, thyssenkrupp set ambitious targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative the same year. In a nutshell, - 30 until [2030] with regard to Scope 1 and 2, and - 16% Scope 3 until 2030 as well. The approved target for climate neutral is 2050, which of course is under review for a change to 2045. To best achieve these targets, we have established a clear ESG governance structure. The dedicated responsibility on board level resides with myself as CEO.
At holding level, the sustainability team is closely linked to group strategy. An interdisciplinary sustainability committee ensures that the right ESG decisions for all levels are made and executed. All this is supported by ESG targets integrated in our incentive schemes and respective energy efficiency initiatives. Sustainability is not only about the environment. We have addressed and made progress along all ESG dimensions.
For example, in social, we improved on the diversity side and were also able to reduce our accident frequency rate. In governance, we are continuously fostering sustainability and compliance awareness. Last but not least, thyssenkrupp's strong performance in relevant ratings confirms that we are on the right track with regard to ESG. For example, in the CDP, we have been on the A list among the top 5% of companies for the last five years already. Let's come to scale.
As said, our key goal is to achieve benchmark performance in all businesses. Additionally, we need to and will get back to a growth path. Key is to capture opportunities that arise from global mega trends like sustainability and digitalization. You can find highly attractive pockets of growth there. With growth rates materially above the average of traditional industries.
For example, hydrogen with over 70% compared to 3% in traditional plant technology. However, growth opportunities need to find fertile soil, so to say. This is why we need to create the best possible environment and enabling infrastructure. Let me be very clear on one point, performance. Performance is an absolute must-have for scale. We are well aware that we still have a way to go. This is also why in the first instance we focus on scale within the current scope.
Adjacencies and bolder transformative moves will come at later stages. The good news is, if you look at our existing portfolio of businesses and technologies, you can already find many attractive growth opportunities. I just want to mention a few examples. You will later today get more details in the business's presentations. On the grow green side, in UCE, our technologies are capable of producing green hydrogen on a giga scale.
Our slewing bearings are key in the expansion of renewable energies. For grow digital, within Automotive Technology, for example, we have an industry benchmark in our steering plants. A digital twin is created for every physical product. The Materials Services location, Rotenburg an der Wümme, is the first fully digitized and fully networked logistics center. As I just mentioned, one such scalable business is UCE, where our green hydrogen activities are located.
UCE is a crown jewel in our portfolio and as technology leader in alkaline water electrolysis, critical for the production of green hydrogen. A proof point for technological excellence embedded in thyssenkrupp. Unlike other players, UCE is in a position to deliver its technology on an industrial scale already today based on its long-term proven capabilities in chlor-alkali technologies. UCE can cater for this enormous growth potential in a technology de-risked way.
The promising pipeline of several large-scale projects stresses the good position in the market. As you all know, thyssenkrupp has been evaluating strategic options for UCE in order to allow the company to exploit its full potential and to illuminate the value of its business. An IPO has been chosen as our preferred option. Post IPO, thyssenkrupp will continue to hold a majority in UCE.
We will tell you more about UCE soon in a separate Capital Market Day in January. Let me be crystal clear. Access to an allocation of financial capital is a, if not the most important factor to enable growth. Let me be equally clear that access to financial capital alone does not solve the equation. I'm personally convinced that thyssenkrupp has the required base for scale.
My engineering heart always accelerates when I see the engineering skills of our employees delivering products and technology that advance our customers. My focus is to additionally provide the required context so that the engineering skills can translate into benchmark performance and sustainable competitive position. Setting the context is, among others, about the clarity I offer and I demand when aligning our performance, aspiration.
It is as well the conviction that ultimately decentralizing structures, empowering the respective businesses with clear accountability for their business cases, and incentivizing them with adequate compensation schemes drives performance. That's what I call group of companies. As I said, benchmark performance and sustainable competitive market positions for each business are key.
On this basis, thyssenkrupp's structural setup needs to enable scale. Enabling scale thus also requires flexibility with regard to ownership structures. We want an entrepreneurial and agile setup to provide businesses with access to growth funds, partners, IP, et cetera, for maximum value creation.
This is exactly one key concept of the group of companies to allow for different types of ownership models, depending on what is best for the respective business. Consequently, businesses will be more self-reliant, autonomous, and accountable.
The group itself will be reduced to a lean headquarters, focusing on enabling the best possible development of each and every business, and providing a common brand, values, and steering logic. Before I come to the last slide of my presentation, let me share one thought with you. Naturally, I keep asking myself whether I'm doing what I'm doing to drive the transformation maybe too little too late.
In other words, do we have enough speed and enough strategic vision in our transformation process? I can assure you that we had and have this discussion both within the executive board and with our supervisory committees. My personal perspective is that transformation needs to be rather a continuous and aligned improvement process than a big bang or one large disruption. Actually, my leadership style is to avoid large turbulences and frictions in such processes.
We follow a string of pearls strategy rather than a big bang disruption. However, that string follows a clear strategic direction and relentless execution. Now to wrap it up, I would like to underline our commitments. I'm fully committed to the key building blocks of the group of companies, a lean holding with independent businesses and a clear industrial vision. We are relentlessly pushing forward the full transformation to the group of companies. Execution, execution.
I will make sure that we are continuously driving the started divestment processes in Multi Tracks as well as the performance and ESG measures. This will result in a break-even free cash flow in this fiscal year, and sustainably positive going forward. The resumption of reliable dividend payments is a clear target to us. We hope we were able to convey today our comprehensive transformation journey to sustained value creation. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you, Martina. As already outlined by Martina today, it's time for an update on our operational and financial improvements and our performance, and what is even more important, what next milestones we are striving for. I will back this up with figures at this point and provide an overview on the visible improvements on the financial KPI side. Let us start with where we stand today and what we expect next.
This slide summarizes the key highlights in the past fiscal year and provides, of course, some context to what Martina already referred to in her presentation. Our figures that we reported already two weeks ago reflect clearly that we are heading into the right direction through performance and restructuring plans at all of our segments, and of course, are benefiting from strong positive pandemic economic tailwinds.
Thus, we recorded a fiscal year order intake of EUR 39.6 billion, strongly pushed by the joint German-Norwegian submarine project at Marine Systems. By the way, the biggest single order of roughly EUR 5.5 billion for six submarines in the company's history.
For the group, this is a significant increase in comparison to the last fiscal year 2019/2020, but also to previous reference in fiscal year 2018/2019. In terms of sales, they are still flat compared to fiscal year 2018/2019. However, as you can see, clearly recovered compared to fiscal year 2019/2020. Simultaneously, we have been able to generate a positive adjusted EBIT of EUR 796 million.
This is including the loss of Multi Tracks of roughly EUR 298 million, and this is a clear improvement to both previous years. More specifically, we have generated over EUR 900 million more than in fiscal year 2018/2019, and I would like to emphasize this, although sales stayed flat. Compared to last year, we earned around EUR 2.6 billion more.
The positive overall development of our company is also reflected in the free cash flow before M&A, which has improved substantially compared to both previous years to EUR -1.3 billion, and ultimately stood at the better end of the guided range. Free cash flow in the previous year included a negative business cash flow of EUR -284 million from the Multi Tracks segment, significant restructuring costs, and mainly price-driven net working capital build-up of EUR 1.1 billion.
Another important factor is that high investments of over EUR 1.6 billion, so around EUR 0.77 billion above depreciation, were decided by us to support a sustainable performance improvement in the years to come. Last but not least, I'm happy to say that in the last fiscal year, we achieved all our financial targets that we had guided for.
I also want to make clear that we will relentlessly, as Martina said, continue our efforts to render tk a much better company and to drive performance regardless of the current tailwinds. We are driving the transformation of thyssenkrupp backed by a very strong balance sheet with a net cash position of EUR 3.6 billion at the end of the past fiscal year, and with a free liquidity of more than EUR 10 billion.
Now, let's look what we expect to come next. For the outlook on the fiscal year 2021/ 2022, we believe that an optimistic yet cautious view is appropriate based on our ongoing structural improvement in our businesses and also favorable economic forecasts.
For example, GDP growth in 2022 for regions of importance to us like Europe, the U.S., and China that are expected to grow by 4.4%, 4.4%, and 5.2% respectively. Based on those, we are expecting favorable trading conditions for our steel products and industrial materials, and we still see high demand for cars and trucks, and you will hear more about this later from my colleagues.
Further tailwind is provided by the trend towards energy from renewables and moving away from fossil fuels that will strengthen the growth of water electrolysis, and in the midterm, strongly support demand for wind turbines. On the latter, you will also hear more exciting facts from my colleagues later on.
From the cautious perspective, we are also considering the actual uncertainties coming from supply chain constraints, particularly, but not only, the ongoing shortage of semiconductors, the effects from the recent sharp increase in input factor costs, and last but not least, the ongoing course of the pandemic.
Taking a look at the overall auto production environment, IHS expects further growth in the global light vehicle production to 80 million units in calendar year 2022, which is a +10% year-on-year, however, still below pre-pandemic levels. In our view, the semiconductor supply situation might stabilize into 2022 and then start to get better after summer.
However, the situation has to be closely monitored. If we apply the IHS forecast to our fiscal year 2021/2022, the global light vehicle production will be broadly flat year-on-year with around 77 million units. With having said this, we think it is appropriate to formulate the forecast fiscal year 2021/2022 in ranges. Here are the numbers.
Sales growth is expected to be in the mid-single-digit percentage range year-on-year and adjusted EBIT to significantly improve to a figure between EUR 1.5 billion and EUR 1.8 billion, coming from around EUR 0.8 billion in the past fiscal year. Performance increases will be essentially driven by the significant earnings improvement at Steel Europe and a significantly reduced loss at Multi Tracks.
Looking at cash flow, besides a strong growth in earnings, we expect a significant increase in free cash flow before M&A to break even. All segments will contribute positively with the exception of Multi Tracks. However, Multi Tracks with a substantial improvement expected year-on-year.
At the same time, and that is also important to mention, cash out for restructuring will continue, and CapEx will remain high on last year's level. The latter mainly driven by the steel Strategy 20-30, leading to higher investments year-on-year and aiming at supporting the planned performance step up going forward. The improvement in free cash flow before M&A will come mainly from increasing earnings.
It goes without saying that the final number will also depend on changes in net working capital, as you know, impacted by temporarily slower customer call-offs, which we still see, higher raw material prices, and cash flows from the payment profiles at project businesses. Again, through all these efforts, we will break even in free cash flow before M&A in fiscal year 2021/2022, and we clearly look at that as an important step towards sustainable cash generation.
Our net income will exceed EUR 1 billion, coming from a EUR -19 million in the previous year, and tkVA will be significantly positive. Lastly, as Martina has already mentioned, a further important step is rewarding the trust of our shareholder. Therefore, the resumption of reliable dividend payments is a clear target for us. Moving on to the next slide, we provide a brief outlook for the Q1.
Of course, you know Q1 is not behind us, and accordingly, I cannot talk too much about the results yet. However, I can give you a first impression what we expect. We started the quarter fully in line with our expectations, and what we have seen so far has been positive on the P&L side. For sales, we expect a clear growth year-on-year, strongly driven by higher prices at materials businesses.
At Steel Europe, particularly by renewals of long-term contracts, and at Materials Services from the much higher spot market prices. This will be partially offset by slow call-offs from auto industry customers due to the ongoing semi shortage. For EBIT adjusted, we are looking at a clearly positive outlook year-on-year. Steel Europe and Materials Services to be up, mainly driven by favorable top-line dynamics, clearly supporting margins.
A further upward trend year-on-year is also visible at Marine Systems due to higher efficiency in project execution. At Multi Tracks, where ongoing structural improvements lead to continuous financial enhancements. Offsetting effects are expected for Automotive Technologies and Industrial Components.
At Automotive Technology, due to the already mentioned slow call-offs by auto producers and higher factor costs, and at Industrial Components, also due to the temporary wind market dip in China due to the subsidy-driven pull forward effects we saw in 2020. For the free cash flow before M&A, we anticipate a yet significantly negative number in Q1.
This is a result of a temporary substantial net working capital built up by high inventories due to expected higher shipments in the second fiscal year quarter and later, slow and not reliably predictable call-offs by our customers, which we still see, and also due to higher prices at the material businesses. Let us now move to where we are heading in our performance journey in the midterm.
By midterm, we mean the next three to five years, depending on the businesses and taking into account the cyclicality of the businesses. Given the continuous efforts on performance management at all segments and their ambition levels and targets, we have derived and set ambitious but yet realistic targets in the midterm for the group.
We see our adjusted EBIT to significantly improve to a range of 4%-6% and bring our free cash flow before M&A to the next step up. This means to significantly and sustainably positive levels. Furthermore, we have a clear aspiration to resume a reliable dividend payout to our shareholders. Let us now take a deeper look at each of the businesses here.
I will give you a brief overview, but of course, the segment CEOs will give you a deeper insight in the later course of the agenda. Coming to Materials Services. At Materials Services, we target a shipment volume of over 6 million tons from warehouses at the top- line. At the bottom line, an EBIT-adjusted margin in the range between 2%-3%.
Even more important, a return on capital employed above 9% with a cash conversion rate of around 0.8 over the cycle. At Industrial Components, we expect a sales growth rate of 3%-5% with an EBIT-adjusted margin of at least 10% and a cash conversion rate in the range of 0.6-0.8. For the top- line at Automotive Technologies, we see a sales growth well above the overall market. For the bottom line, we expect an EBIT-adjusted margin in the range of 7%-8% with a cash conversion rate of at least 0.5.
At Steel Europe, the top-line target is to have shipments of around 11 million tons while achieving an EBITDA adjusted per ton of around EUR 100 over the cycle with a cash conversion rate above 0.4 despite the continuous high CapEx.
Top-line target of Marine Systems is a CAGR of around 6% in sales and at the bottom line, an EBIT-adjusted margin in the range of 6%-7% with a cash conversion rate around 1.0. Coming to Multi Tracks, the key objective is further progress, of course, regarding our portfolio transformation, as well as to proceed with structural improvements. Of course, the large scaling up of the UCE hydrogen business that Martina has already referred to.
Moreover, the thyssenkrupp headquarters is endeavoring for continuous improvements, and here more specifically in the focus here are adjustment of costs aligned with the development of our portfolio. So much from my side on the midterm targets. Martina and I will now leave the stage here for the businesses, and we will be back for the Q&A after the segments have presented. Thank you very much and see you later. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Martina, Klaus. Now we have here Martin Stillger, the CEO of Materials Services, and Daniel Wodera.
Welcome to the presentation of Materials Services, the industry leader in serving materials, aiming for profitable growth and for performance. We are trading materials like steel, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, plastics and others. We have a lot of passion for our business. We, that is Daniel Wodera, who is here today with me on stage.
He's our CFO, finance expert, and he's the architect of the turnaround of the AST stainless steel mill in Italy, which we have recently sold. It is Ilse Henne. She's our Chief Transformation Officer, and I tell you, she's bringing speed into innovation and into transformation. It's Marc Schlette, our CHRO, who has a lot of experience in working with unions, and he is tackling all labor-related tasks for us worldwide. Me, myself, my passion is the customer.
I believe very much that creating a value for customers is the source of every company's success, and I have proven that in various industries. Together, we work as a team since two years, and we have an experience of 70 years in the industry. Every day since we are working together, we have one task. We want to create value to our business.
Together, we are leading Materials Services, the largest material distributor of the Western world. We have a clear number one in Europe. We have a clear good number three in North America. With our 400 branches, we are so close to the customer, we can feel the breath of our customer. We are building a bridge between a network of 4,000 suppliers on one hand and 250,000 customers on the other hand.
That's what we are doing. As I showed you on the first slide already a couple of pictures, we are distributing steel, stainless steel, aluminum, plastics, non-ferrous and so on. We also trade raw material. We offer supply chain solutions to our customers, and even furthermore, we offer digital business models. We are mission-critical for our customers. We are not a steel producer.
We provide materials in the right volume, at the right time, at the right place, in the right specification, and we make our customers happy. We are measuring our performance, and our customers are demanding this performance. For example, we are shipping 70% of our goods within 48 hours. That is really outstanding because we are not talking about a book in a parcel.
We are talking about beams, 12 m lengths, coils, 20 tons each, and we are bringing them within 48 hours to the right place. That's really outstanding. When you look at on-time in full delivery rates, we are achieving up to 100%. I recently talked to a customer in Mexico, and he is able, according to the terms, to change the delivery schedule 12 x a day.
According to his track record, we are fulfilling that one-time in full by 100% for years. That is something outstanding. Corona has shown how vulnerable the supply chains are, not ours. We have continued to deliver to our customer. We have 30 sourcing offices worldwide, and with the 30 sourcing offices, we take care of about 4,000 suppliers.
With these 4,000 suppliers, we are able to shift demand from one supplier to another one if necessary to fulfill the promise to our customers. Our resilience is very good, and our customers love the resilience of our supply chain. Our customers trust us. Look at the list. We have a number of key accounts here on the list which are really super professional companies, and they rely on our services.
Furthermore, there are a couple of more big companies, for example also in the field of electric vehicles, which we are serving. Our serving of industry segments is very diversified. We deliver into capital goods market, machine building, car producers, heavy vehicles, and so on. Our material portfolio is a multi-metal portfolio. When it comes to our global footprint, we know exactly where to punch. It's Europe and it's North America. There we are strong.
We offer different business models along the supply chain. We have been proven that in 125 years we have been always able to adapt to new circumstances, also in the recent years. If we wouldn't be able to do this, of course, we wouldn't be here today. In 2007, for example, we already started our first e-commerce business with Online Metals in North America.
It's a very profitable and successful metal shop. We are using digital tools to be more efficient in our business and to streamline our portfolio, which we are doing, and we are ready for profitable growth, organic and inorganic profitable growth. We are working on that as well. Our ability to adapt is the reason why we have always earned money.
Our business model is very attractive, and our market is indisruptable because as long as it needs somebody who needs material, there will be someone there to provide it. We have an ambition to increase our cash flow even furthermore. With a cash conversion rate of 0.8, we are turning EBIT into cash flow.
We have a rather low level of investment requirements, and 50% of this is lease, so not a long-term fixed liability. 80% of our capital employed is mostly material which we have on stock, and we are able to release this to the market on short term and to provide cash flow. Furthermore, asset-light models, which we are offering, especially on the supply chain side, are very good, where we manage the inventory of our customer, but we do not own it.
Like we have recently done in the new contract that we have signed with Rolls-Royce in the area of the aerospace industry. Look, let's look into the forecast. 2020 was a Corona year where we had a hit, but 2021 was outstanding good for us. We believe that 2021/2022 will be more normalized, where we are aiming midterm for above 6 million tons of materials that we want to ship from stock.
Volume is important, but pricing is essential. We are doing our pricing with the help of artificial intelligence. We want to have the right price for the right customers, taking into consideration what kind of material and what kind of region it is. That all helps us to become better and to achieve a return on capital employed level above 9% and a cash flow level above EUR 200 million.
How are we doing that? On a measure-based program where we are going to improve our business, and we are already working on it, and it has already delivered. We have mainly three buckets: growth, efficiency, and new businesses. While efficiency measures are getting more and more productive, the growth and new business measures are bringing more revenues to our business and improve with better margins to achieve a return on capital employed above 9%.
Let's look into the plan. With our leading position and our 250,000 customers that we are having in Europe and in North America, we have the power to do so. With growth in North America and accompanied by cost measures and improvement of performance in Europe, we are able to improve our business.
Furthermore, new solutions for customers, digital supply chain management, and of course, sustainability is bringing better margins to our business. Let's look into the details. We are the largest company in the Western world, and we have kept the lines of our customers running even in very difficult times during COVID-19.
That's why we believe that we are able, again, to outperform the market in terms of growth. More than 5% in North America, more than 3% in Europe. We have a very strong competence in aluminum and in copper, and that is the basis for developing a good business in the EV market in the future with our competence, we are somehow one of the first movers in this industry.
Furthermore, aerospace build rate are going to increase in the near future because COVID has brought them down and with aerospace and the increase of passengers, the build rates will go up again and will improve our business furthermore. We start to deliver out of the new greenfield sites.
To give you some examples here, for our growth in America, we have invested in Kenosha and in Woodstock, which you see here on the picture, and they are up and running, and they will deliver additional revenues and profits. We have allocated 80% of our growth funds to the U.S., and we want to grow there in terms of organic growth as well as inorganic growth.
You see also a picture here of our new site that we're going to build on the SDI steel mill site in Texas and serve the market from there. Why are we doing that? Because simply the margins in the North American business are better than in the European margin, and we want to get the revenues up there.
Furthermore, our situation in Europe, it is clear that we are using digitalization, automation, and standardization to improve our processes. We have started a program where we reduce 25% of our sites in Europe, and we have already completed this program by 70%, and we will deliver the rest of that as well. We simply ship more goods out of less sites with less people, and that leads to a productivity increase of 20%.
I can tell you one thing, when I stand in the middle of our new warehouse in the north of Germany, that is an unbelievable thing there. You know, traditional warehouses, we bring materials with a crane piece by piece, heavy load to a truck. That is a rather slow process. In our new warehouse, we bring it with automatic guided vehicles automatically and faster to the trucks. Welcome future, welcome efficiency.
With our strong positions that we have in North America and in Europe, we are also able to get into new markets. I talked recently to a customer who is a machine builder in a very special segment of the industry, successful company, and he explained me what is his strategy and what kind of visions he had. He said, "Well, I have two major issues.
One is reliability of my supply chain, and I need somebody to help me and to solve that. And the second one is my customers are demanding more and more CO2-reduced products, and I need somebody who can help me with this as well. We discussed about that.
Now we are in this business together, and that is only one of the examples where we step into new businesses furthermore to our traditional businesses, and we offer services and solutions, and the customers appreciate that. The two segments, growth with digital supply chains and growth with new sustainability products.
We can simply turn, you know, carbon management into a business. These are fast-growing markets, 8%-10%, and with these new businesses, we enter a new market for us of roughly EUR 60 billion. Furthermore, sustainability is important. We also have strong ESG ambitions.
For example, climate strategy. We have reduced our CO2 output by 27% over the last couple of years, and we have a clear task. We want to be climate neutral in 2030 already. When it comes to health and safety, we have brought down the accident frequency rate by 50% down to an area of two. We have a clear vision how to get to zero, and we are working on that.
Share of women in leadership position. We have doubled that since we have focused on that. We have doubled that now to 14%, and our target is to come to a fair share. It's all important for us. We are working on it, and we will achieve our targets. Let me summarize my presentation. With our leading position in this area, we are strong with our customers, and we can make the things move.
We want to serve new products to the market, supply chain solution as well as digital products with better margins. We know how to grow the business, especially in North America, and we are crystallizing our number one position in Europe with more efficient cost bases. All that will lead to return on capital employed of above 9% and a cash flow level which will be above EUR 200 billion. Thank you very much.
Martin, thank you very much for the presentation. The line is now open for the Q&A session. Please indicate that you want to ask a question, and we will call you into our session. Yeah. We have a first question here. The first question comes from Luke Nelson at JP Morgan.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes, Luke.
Yeah. We can hear you.
Hi. Thanks a lot for the presentation. I just would like to dig in a bit more just on the midterm margins. You've obviously given the segment level margin, which is useful, 2%-3%. You've obviously got raw materials trading, supply chain services, and distributions. Can you maybe just break out? You've given the sales split. Can you maybe just give us a bit more color around the sales split between those three areas of Materials Services within that midterm margin or midterm target? Also where the relative margins are for those three areas within the business unit.
This sounds like a question for you, Daniel.
Yeah. Sure. I can do. You will also find, let's say, the split of the sales within our presentation, because we have 49% here on the distribution. We have 29% in the area of supply chain, and the remaining parts then, 22%, is in the trading business. We want to grow, profitable growth, both on distribution especially and mainly a new supply chain solution, so you can expect that the supply chain part will increase slightly. We are not giving, let's say, margin indications, let's say, linked to this, but of course neutral, as we're also targeting with the new supply chain solution non-material businesses where we do not own the material anymore, the margin will be much higher in this area.
Just a follow-up then, I suppose, just within those different areas, you obviously are a key player, as you've alluded to in North America and Europe, with North America being the key area of growth. Can you maybe give us an indication, either quantitatively or qualitatively, how those different parts of Materials Services could change, so the composition of the mix within the business, how that may change on a geographical mix between trading, supply chain services and distribution?
Well, first of all, you've seen the growth rates we have in North America. We are targeting higher growth rate, 5%, versus Europe here with 3%. Of course, this will also bring our share of the North America business, which was at 27%, let's say, further up. This we will mainly see in the distribution part and in the supply chain part as we're also targeting here the service center business.
Thank you.
Thank you, Luke. We have another question. The next one in the row is Christian Georges from Société Générale. Christian? We can't hear you. Obviously he's not in the line.
Can you hear me?
Yeah. Now we are there.
Oh, good. Sorry. I was struggling with my buttons. There we go. Yeah, thank you for this morning. Look, my question is pretty much about your expansion, 'cause I think the industry is still very fragmented, both in Europe and the U.S., which are your key target markets. Does it make sense for you to become one of the leading consolidators of this fragmentation in the future? Not only in the U.S., but also in Europe.
Yeah, thank you very much for the.
Question for you. Yeah.
Thank you very much for the question. You know, when it comes to Europe, we have a clear number one. The market is, let's say, fragmented much lower in, let's say, in smaller details. We have a strong position in Europe. From our point of view, we don't want to take part in consolidation in the European market, because we want to invest in new business, not into old business.
You see here in Europe a lot of old business. No interest in that. When it goes to North America, the market is much more fragmented. Market share, even though below, let's say, under the first 10 companies, they have rather smaller market share than the first 10, for example, even the first five in Europe.
Situation is totally different in the U.S. and the geographic situation. Our footprint in the North American market gives us a lot of opportunity to grow our business there. Our customers love our services. We have a good offering over there. We are successful. That means we can grow in this market, but we can also grow via acquisitions because we believe we look at some bolt-on targets that fit to our business model that are, let's say, an extension of our geographical footprint, and we believe that we can create value with that.
Great. Thank you very much.
Yeah, the next questions come from Carsten Riek from Credit Suisse.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yeah, Carsten, we can hear you.
Perfect. Good morning, everybody. Just one question from my side. That is on the 6 million tons per year which you aim for. It is about 10% higher than the historical run rate, and you started to explain it. For me is, I want to know how exactly you wanna get there. Do we talk about higher throughput and gaining market share by expanding the internal deliveries, delivery capabilities? Or do we talk about external growth? And if we talk about external growth, where is this external growth coming from, and what kind of size are we talking about?
Martin, this one is for you.
Yeah. I understand your question when you talk about internal. I mean, I think I understand your question in a way towards Steel Europe. We are acting, first of all, mill independent from Steel Europe. Less than 10% of our sourcing is with Steel Europe. We all talk about external growth that we are doing with our customers.
You know, we are shipping today a lot of goods, but we are serving our customer with services as well, and that differentiates us from others. We have a clear strategy, materials as a service. Selling a piece of material itself is not so interesting anymore, but putting a service on top is much more interesting also margin-wise.
The demand for the services is there, and with that, and our better offering than the competition, we are also growing our business ex-stock, because customers simply demand it, and the share of wallet in the business of the customer is increasing.
It was actually not on the steel side, which I asked the question. It's just your capabilities to deliver material to customers. Because if you wanna grow to 6 or above 6 million tons, you need to either expand your capabilities internally from currently around 5.5 million tons. And do you do this by just expanding your capabilities in material services? Or do you buy other service centers, material traders, in the market in order to achieve this volume growth which you suggested?
Okay, got you better now. I mean, number one, Europe. We have taken a number of sites out, but we ship more material out of our sites from less sites and even with less people, because we have increased productivity and we are using this increase of productivity. We are simply turning faster, and we have potential to sell more, and we will use it.
In the U.S., we are building additional capacity with our growth strategy, and that is of course also a source of growth and of increased tonnages. But on the other hand, once again, the service degree is a very important issue, and also in our U.S. business, we do not own all the material. Yeah. There comes of course growth from additional sites, but has a lot to do with efficiency.
Let me put something on top of that. In our midterm planning, what you have seen on the targets of the 6 million tons, this does not include any M&A activities. This is fully our internal growth. You have seen the investment. We have invested with high profitable growth, more than $110 million in the U.S., and this will be the base also of the market. We put into there 5% growth in the U.S., 3% in Europe will get you in the midterm goal to the 6 million tons. Everything on top inorganically would come then on top.
Perfect. That makes it clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Carsten. We have two more. First, Christian Obst from Baader Bank, and then Rochus Brauneiser from Kepler Cheuvreux. Christian first.
Yes, hello.
Hello. We can hear you.
Hello, I have a question. You hear me?
We can hear you well, yeah. Thank you.
Okay, perfect. I wonder a little bit about the EBIT margin, midterm EBIT margin, which is not very ambitious, I would say. Because this was a former margin some years ago. I had that in mind, and now you have a 20% productivity increase in Europe. You will further increase productivity here, and you have a strong development towards a new mix, which means more value-added services. Why do you not have an EBIT margin target, which is well above the 2%-3%? Thank you.
Daniel, do you wanna take this question?
Yeah. Let me first of all start with the cash flow, maybe. You also see in the midterm planning that we are planning a cash flow of more than EUR 200 million each year. With a cash conversion rate of 0.8, this is, if you calculate it, an EBIT above EUR 250 million, and this brings us to a ROCE well above the capital cost.
We are giving here an EBIT range because within the EBIT, a margin of course, you will have the EBIT effect, but also you have the material effect, and that's why you see fluctuations there. If you benchmark, let's say, this range also with the past, you will see an improvement, of course, coming from the cost measures. As you also pointed out correctly, the change in the business model Where we are targeting more supply chain business will also bring us within the midterm horizon, but also after the midterm horizon to a higher EBIT margin as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We next have Rochus Brauneiser from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Hello?
Yeah, we can hear you.
Okay. Thank you very much for taking my questions. One of my questions is, a bit related to what customers asked before. Coming to the 6 million tons of volumes you wanna ship from your warehouses, you could argue based on the growth expectations you have organically for the businesses, why you're not aiming for more than the 6 million tons without M&A?
Because that was kind of a volume level you have already achieved, like two years ago. The second question is, can you talk a bit more in detail about your ambitions in the aerospace supply chain, business? I think it was one of the areas where you had very good margins in the past.
Maybe in that context, can you give us some indication how that margin performance has evolved over the last two years with the, you know, changes in the aerospace industry, and what do you expect going forward, to recapture in terms of profitability?
Okay, let me come back to the first part of the question. So once again, I mean, we have reduced our footprint, and we are more efficient than before. Though, when we grow our business and we grow above 6,000 tons ex stock, that is a growth, but with a total different footprint from what we had before. That's why the return on capital employed will be higher, with the new footprint. That is a growth in tonnage for us and a growth in return on capital employed. I'm giving the aerospace question to my colleague.
Of course, we expect a recovery in the aerospace industry because we still see the long-term trend here very positively. Of course, we have the hit with Corona, and we have, at the moment, a lot of also contracts renewals, and we are getting new contracts into this business because this is a real pure supply chain business, and we are already into the market.
We have a good contract with Boeing, for example. We won the contract on Rolls-Royce, and this we won not against our normal competitors, we won it even against external logistics provider. We believe that this will increase and of course, also our profitability here in that area in terms of margin, but also in terms of value creation.
In terms of the margin recovery, are you still in a double-digit EBIT environment? Or what can we expect in the next two to three to five years in that business?
We are not giving out, let's say, a single margin development on, let's say, specific segments or operating unit. I hope you will understand.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. I've seen that we have another one in the line. We have Jason Fairclough from Merrill Lynch . Jason, you need to send us a message via the system so that our colleagues can bring you into the session. It seems there is no further question. We can conclude this session here. Thank you very much, Martin and Daniel.
In case anyone want to follow up, they can then send an email to Investor Relations, and we will make sure that we answer questions for you in contact with our colleagues from the business. With that, we can go into a short break, and we will continue at 11:30. Thank you. Thank you both.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back to the agenda of our Capital Market Day. We now would like to continue with our segment, Industrial Components. It consists of two business units, therefore we have two management teams here on stage and we would like to start with the Bearings business. Winfried Schulte, who will give at the beginning some comments on Industrial Components before he introduces the Bearings business to you. Please, Winfried, go ahead.
Thank you very much, Claus. Good morning, everybody. My name is Winfried Schulte. I'm the CEO of the business unit Bearings, and I'm very happy to present to you today the segment Industrial Components, together with my dear colleague, Patrick Buchmann, CEO of Forged Technologies. With us today are the CFOs of the businesses, Roland Klotti for Forged Technologies and Philipp Conze for Bearings. Industrial Components consists of two great businesses, both market leaders in their segments.
Both have a long and successful company history of more than 100 years each. Both have world-famous product brands like Berco and rothe erde. Both deliver essential mission-critical parts to various industries. Both have outstanding manufacturing excellence and performance focus. On the left side of this slide, you see an ultra-large bearing of 18 m in diameter produced by Bearings, the business I am responsible for.
On the right, a forged crankshaft produced by Patrick's Forged Technologies with tight near-net shape tolerances. Let's have a look at the financials of the segment Industrial Components. As you see, we have had a difficult year in 2019/2020, mainly due to COVID. We are back with sales of EUR 2.5 billion and an EBIT adjusted margin of 12.8%. We see a strong recovery in 2021, reaching pre-crisis levels and better.
What is the outlook for the current fiscal year? We expect some reductions at bearings due to lower dynamics in the wind energy market after pull forwards effect in China. For Forged Technologies, the situation, the outlook is stable. In general, some uncertainty remains, for example, about possible supply chain disruptions, factor cost developments or further impacts of COVID.
However, we expect a strong cash contribution again this year. That's also one of our focus and commitments for the midterm. The targets are to grow sales between 3%-5% per year as a CAGR, to achieve an EBIT margin of 10% or more, and to deliver a strong cash contribution with a conversion rate in the range of 0.6-0.8. With that, I switch to Bearings now.
You see here some examples where our products go into. Very attractive and technology-driven applications with good growth perspectives. Whenever you drive by wind parks alongside construction sites with cranes and excavators or tunneling work, you can be pretty sure that our rothe erde bearings are inside. Slewing bearings are a great product. I love this industry and it drives and it motivates me.
That is why I'm in this industry and with the company for almost 30 years now, as my colleague, our COO, Wilfried Spintig, is. But this is just a short period of time compared to the company's history. Our brand, rothe erde, is world famous in this industry, and we are proud to celebrate 160 years of successful company development this year. Philipp Conze, our CFO, joined tk in 2012, and Bearings two years ago.
Together, we have more than 70 years of combined industry experience. Together with the entire leadership team and 7,000 dedicated employees, Bearings is a great and committed team to drive performance and cash. Now, what is Bearings all about? We produce slewing bearings and rings with large dimensions, up to 8 m and beyond. Mission-critical products, pivotal for trouble-free, efficient, and reliable operation of the equipment they go into.
We serve the leading OEMs in their industries. You see some famous company names here, and we could add many more. We maintain long-standing relationships with our clients, and we stand for reliability, trustworthiness, and accountability.
We are the only slewing bearing manufacturer with a truly global footprint and with a production, sales, and service network in total of 19 factories in 12 countries, leading to exceptional proximity to our customers. Our R&D facilities are in Europe and in China, with the main development center being located in Lippstadt, Germany, with more than 10,700 sq m and thus being the largest R&D facility in the slewing bearing business. Last year, our sales amounted to EUR 1.3 billion.
As you see, a bit more than 50% of that went into the wind industry, and also a bit more than half of the sales was generated in China. On the next slide, we will drill down a bit more on the Bearings financials. Here comes the sales and EBIT development, and you see what's driving it. It's a good growth story and a proof of long-term earnings and cash generation.
A solid and robust EBIT performance also in times of market volatilities. On the one hand, this is due to our diverse product and application portfolio, which supports resilience. On the other hand, it is an effect of our continuous and strong focus on improvement and performance. Altogether, this results in a strong cash conversion of 0.8 over the cycle eventually. What are the underlying factors for that successful development? What are the investment highlights?
We are the number one supplier of slewing bearings with a truly global footprint. Second, we serve attractive and diverse end markets with high technological requirements and with good structural growth mid and long term. Third, our expertise and technological competence deliver value and help our customers develop their business further.
Fourth, we are committed to performance and cash generation. We have a convincing track record over years, proving our ability to grow and to sustain profitability. I'm going to elaborate on these four topics in the next minutes a bit more. To the first pillar, our leading market position and our products.
I brought you here two examples to illustrate a bit more why our products are crucial for success. Left, you see a large excavator as used in the mining industry, for example, where performance is essential. Bucket size of 50 cu m, machine weight 1,000 tons.
24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout the year, ultimate performance requirements. This is the same for the wind turbines, which you rather can call wind power plants, talking about sizes of 10, 16 or 20 MW as being under development right now. Tower heights of 240 m, blade length 110 m. Our products are individually engineered, customized, and not off-the-shelf products.
Due to the size and weight of our products, and due to the applications they're going into, we don't provide mass articles. Batch sizes are rather small. What does it mean? It means that we provide products often used in machines and equipment that show a rather high risk profile, where trouble-free operation is essential. That allows for attractive margins accordingly.
With regard to the second pillar, the attractive markets, besides construction machinery, cranes or general machinery, this slide shows just a few more examples of high performance environments calling for utmost quality and reliability of our components. The world's largest tunneling machine, high precision radio telescopes, huge vessels for oil and gas exploration, or big offshore wind farms with dozens of large turbines, they all operate with our bearings, even under the harshest conditions.
The industrial applications you see on this page, and that were shown before, are clearly a very important pillar of our product portfolio and of our strategy. We expect good growth also for these industries, not least due to many infrastructure programs ongoing and planned worldwide. However, I'm going to elaborate a bit more on the wind energy market, representing our single largest market today.
The outlook, as you see here, for the wind energy is very positive. Wind is here to stay. Both the onshore as well as the offshore market grow mid and long- term in a good manner. Growth in both segments can be expected to be even more dynamic than shown on the left. Besides the targets given here, remember also the UN Climate Conference, for example, in Glasgow three weeks back.
The decarbonization targets of all states and nations, the commitments will need much more efforts and much more turbine installations of what we see to the left. If we want to meet the target to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or just 2 degrees, installations needed will be a multiple of what has been forecasted yet. Our role in that development is shown on the following slide.
Let's look at wind energy from a technical point of view and from a customer perspective. Which brings me to the third investment highlight, our technical expertise and competence. It is a simple, however, a very challenging formula. Turbines are getting larger, components are becoming bigger, and technologically, all in all, requirements become much more demanding. Large and technologically demanding Bearings meet our sweet spot.
We are very well-positioned to participate in this future growth. We hold a strong position in these markets, especially in the larger size turbine range and in the offshore sector. Serving the wind industry for 45 years, we have an outstanding experience when it comes to R&D in this industry, to calculation and design of these big bearings, and to manufacturing processes of these large components. More than 500,000 of our blade bearings operate reliably in wind turbines worldwide, on and offshore.
With more than 1,300 multi-MW rotor bearings, the vast majority of offshore turbines installed in both the North and the Baltic Sea are equipped with rothe erde bearings. Customers trust us. Of course, that drives our performance. In addition, we do a lot internally to improve profitability, as the next slide shows. This is our fourth pillar. We leverage our proven strengths to grow and to drive profitability.
We are the number one and the global player in the industry, and we continue to make effective use of this positioning. We allocate production to the most appropriate locations, deploying our global production network for the benefit of our stakeholders. We have the proof points for that. Here are just two examples. We have significantly developed our setup in the past, and we will continue to do so.
In 2021, the share of production in best cost countries increased to more than 60%. When we look at productivity, in the past years, we achieved a productivity increase of 5% per year. Our current investments are focused on growth areas like large wind turbine bearings and on best cost countries. We use existing sites to benefit from economies of scale.
Moreover, we invest into further performance improvements through digitalization, automation, and modernization. This, plus continuous performance measures, efficiency in administration structures and restructuring where needed contribute to very attractive result levels in earnings and cash. To complete the picture, ESG. ESG forms an integral part of our strategy at Bearings. We are committed to reduce our CO2 emissions until 2030 by 30%.
For that, we are continuously working on dedicated measures to reduce the energy consumption, which also contributes to our performance targets. Less material, less energy consumption, less cost. Our products going into the wind energy support strongly the decarbonization targets. They enable energy transition roadmaps by use of renewable energy. We strive to be a safe, attractive, and diverse workplace.
Health and safety of our employees are of utmost importance for us. Our CSR activities around the globe help to improve the situation of the underprivileged, the poor, or of those being in dire straits. We live compliance and responsibility, which are essential parts of our core values. This is reflected in all areas and in everything we do every day. This brings me to the end of my presentation for Bearings.
To sum up, we have the right products, the right people, the right competence, and a clear strategy going forward. We commit ourselves to drive growth with minimum 5% as a CAGR, to deliver benchmark profitability and a strong cash conversion of a rate of 0.6-0.8. Thank you very much for your attention. Philipp and I are happy to answer your questions, but before that, I would like to hand over to Patrick Buchmann to present Forged Technologies to you. Thank you very much. Patrick, please.
Thank you very much, Winfried. Hello, everyone, and a very warm welcome also from my side. Let me introduce my business unit, Forged Technologies, to you. We equip the machines that move the world. Our products are found where you cannot see them and maybe do not even expect them.
But if you have taken a car or a taxi this morning, a Mercedes, a BMW, a Volkswagen, or even a Toyota, the engine of that car was most likely equipped with one of our crankshafts. Then you may have noticed all the construction work going on around you for housing or infrastructure. Many of the excavators and dozers you have seen are equipped with our undercarriages. My name is Patrick Buchmann, and I'm the CEO of Forged Technologies.
With my colleagues, Roland Klotti, our CFO, who is here with us here today, and Franz Eckl, our COO, we form the management board. The three of us combine more than 70 years of relevant industry experience, and together we know how to drive performance and change. Let me give you some background on Forged Technologies. We manufacture a number of different products, forged and machined crankshafts and conrods for engines in cars and trucks.
We are currently introducing chassis components for trucks as, for example, front axles. We supply undercarriages for construction and mining equipment. Of course, you're all familiar with the thyssenkrupp brand that we use in automotive. In the undercarriage business, we sell our products by the Berco brand. It is famous in its industry with the highest reputation for engineering and quality for as much as 100 years.
If you move to the right on the slide, you see our strong customer portfolio. You see all the big names up there, the top OEMs for trucks and cars, and the leading manufacturers for construction and mining equipment. We have longstanding relationships with them. Some, as with Daimler, for more than 50 years. They trust in us and our capabilities, and that is something you cannot buy.
We have earned that only over the years. If you move on clockwise, there you can see our production network. We operate with 6,800 employees in 15 locations worldwide. Our customers appreciate the proximity to their plants. In total, we generate roughly EUR 1.2 billion in sales. Just 20% of that are related to the passenger car business that will be primarily affected by eMobility.
Midterm, 80% of our sales will experience only minor effects or will not be affected at all. You've seen what we do. Now let me show you how we translate that into financial performance. Our market leadership results in strong numbers. As you can see, we have quickly recovered from the crisis, and we have come back even stronger than before.
Despite a very challenging market environment in the last fiscal year, we managed to raise our margin above pre-crisis level. Our margins consistently range in the top of our industries, and even more important, we reliably convert EBIT into cash. With this, we are not done. On the next slide, you will see how we keep it going. Here is why we are convinced that it's worth investing in our business. First, global reach as an asset.
We serve the leading OEMs with a global footprint and a machine park that are unique in our industry. We will further leverage the synergies between our automotive and industry businesses in both, in operations and sales. We have a clear plan how to manage the transformation of the drivetrain market in automotive. We are close to our customers, and we know where they are heading. We discuss new products with them, and we adapt our product portfolio accordingly.
With our leading position in the ICE and the cash we generate there, we are well-positioned for that transformation. Finally, all that is supported by our focus on performance. We constantly work on further improving our cost base, and we run improvement through all our plants. This will enable us to keep our good margin levels throughout the transformation.
Now let me give you some more details. Size matters in our industry. With the integration of the automotive forging business and Berco, the industry business, in 2017, we have formed the largest steel forging company in the world. We operate more than 50 forging and more than 200 machining and assembly lines with high automation in our global network. It's not just about size.
Unlike our competitors, as you can see, we have both under one roof, automotive and industry products. This unique setup provides synergies in production, in purchasing, as well as in sales. On the other slide, you have seen our strong customer base. Here's how we supply them from 15 locations worldwide. We offer an unmatched customer proximity, and that is what it takes, sorry, if you want to win the big global projects.
For example, we supply each of our big customers, Daimler, Volvo or DAF/PACCAR, from plants on three continents. They expect that localization of production close to their engine plants, because localization brings tremendous advantages in means of flexibility, transportation costs, as well as regards taxes or tariffs. With our large machine park, we provide tailored solutions for specific customer requirements.
If needed, we can offer backup solutions within our network. With the highly fluctuating demand in the aftermath of the pandemic, you can imagine that this is very well received by our customers. Let's talk about synergies. With the integration of the automotive and the undercarriage business, we got rid of the silos. The introduction of automotive standards and processes has dramatically improved the performance of our undercarriage business, and we keep further improving.
In purchasing, we have consolidated the supply base for material and equipment, and now we are leveraging our higher purchasing power. That is not only important to achieve the best steel prices in the industry, but also to secure availability of material and transportation. In sales, we approach our customers together. With our integrated engineering and production capabilities, we can offer a wider range of products and we enter new product fields.
Here again, the trustful and long-standing relationships with our customers are key, as they remove the entry barriers for us. Why am I stressing that point? We all know the automotive industry will transform over the next years and decades. In the next 10 years, the shift to mobility will have a major impact on our primary target market for engine components and passenger cars.
The good news, only 20% of our sales today are related to that business. Trucks yet will not experience major effects over the next decade, and if so, rather for smaller trucks. For example, in urban distribution and on shorter distances. Our core markets, the heavy-duty trucks, will remain rather stable, at least until 2030. [Chassis], the new market we are currently entering, will develop completely independent from eMobility, and it will grow with increasing demand for transportation.
There's huge markets for undercarriage that keep growing with higher world population and with increasing urbanization. They are completely independent from eMobility and they offer ample growth opportunities for us. Let me show you on the next slides how we will manage that transformation. Let's look at Automotive first. Here we already started adapting our product portfolio and we leverage our strong position in the ICE.
In the contracting passenger car segment, we will still attack the market to take over competitor projects at in-house volumes of OEMs. For this, we'll only need very limited investment in R&D, so we can fully focus on cash generation in order to fuel growth in new products. The market for larger trucks will show ongoing demand.
We'll enlarge our customer portfolio and market share to compensate for first potential market effects. We will provide attractive solutions for upcoming e-fuel and hydrogen applications. Thus, this segment will be a rather stable part of our portfolio at least until 2030. Here again, only very limited R&D and investment will be needed so that this business will contribute significant cash as well. Then we already have new products ramping up.
We recently invested into the world's largest, most advanced and fully automated forging line for front axles. Serious production will start next year already. Long-term contracts for these new products with OEMs prove their trust in our capabilities. Further chassis components will follow, and we are already working on that. The truck chassis market is growing independently from eMobility, and the new sales we generate there will fully compensate for the contraction in the passenger car segment.
That, at the same good margin levels we all know from engine components. Then there are lots of opportunities beyond automotive as, for example, here in undercarriages. In the OE business, we will continue to grow with our strong name Berco. In that huge market, we still have a lot of opportunities, as I said, as for example by improving our footprint and by further driving localization.
Activities to increase our presence in Asia and North America are currently ongoing. In the attractive aftermarket segment, we will extend our dealer and distribution network and we will enter new regions. We just recently launched our new e-commerce platform to further increase reach with dealers and end customers. We keep introducing new tailor-made products for the specific needs of the customers.
The service line, for example, was introduced to meet broader construction market requirements, and it outperformed our expectations already in the first year. The platinum line you see has targeted our mining customers as it dramatically increases the lifetime of the undercarriage, and they are really willing to pay for that. Growth is not only limited to these industries. We're also looking into new segments like, for example, agriculture.
You see the green line there. Forging is a huge market, and we have the engineering and production capabilities to successfully compete in it. On the last slides, you have seen how we'll adapt our product portfolio, but I know you're interested in performance, and so am I. So how are we going to drive performance? Well, as we did in the past.
As you can see, in the last three years, we managed to increase our personal productivity by 11%. Energy efficiency went up by 2% in only one year, and we won't stop there. In the next years, we will improve personal productivity by another 8%, energy efficiency by another 7%, and sales per employee will go up by almost 25%. We will further drive down our G&A costs. With that, we are going to be the benchmark in our industry.
We also keep our strong focus on cash. We closely track our inventories and receivables, and by that, drive further down net working capital in our plants. Even during this transformation, we keep our performance up by clearly focusing on profit and cash. Let's talk about ESG. ESG forms an integral part of our strategy, and it goes hand in hand with our performance initiatives. Being an energy-intensive company, energy efficiency is top of mind, and you have seen that on the last slide.
We keep driving measures in our plants to further reduce consumption in our operations. On top of that, we are committed to meet the ambitious requirements of our automotive customers, as well as regulations to reduce CO2, well in line with the overall thyssenkrupp roadmap. We acknowledge our social responsibility.
As you can see, we have significantly reduced the accident frequency in our plants, and we keep that focus throughout the organization to further drive it down. We appreciate our diversity. 90% of our employees work outside Germany with different nationalities, and that is reflected in our leadership team as well.
We have increased the percentage of women working for us, not only in leadership positions, as we know that diversity is the key to future success. With all that, we are well-positioned to succeed in the market going forward. As the industry performs, we adapt our product portfolio to reduce the dependency on the ICE, while we still keep increasing sales overall and keep our focus on margins and cash. To sum up, we at Forged Technologies are committed to sustainable value creation.
As we grow sales, we will increase market shares in today's core businesses and grow with new products to decrease the dependency on the ICE. We strive for leading margins in all respective businesses, and we keep the focus throughout the transformation. The cash we generate will not only fuel growth with new products, but we will also keep a high cash conversion rate.
Being the market leader, we are best positioned to succeed, and we, the management board and our 6,800 employees, are committed to do so. Thank you very much for your attention. Now I think we are open to questions, Claus, right?
Thank you very much, Patrick. Thank you also very much, Winfried. Yeah, now we go over to Q&A, and I just would like to remind that if you want to ask a question, then please indicate it via the chat function of your Zoom software, and then you will be called into the session. We have a first question here. It's Seth Rosenfeld from Exane BNP Paribas.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, Seth, we can hear you.
Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Question on the competitive landscape in bearings, please. Obviously, very strong demand trends in the wind turbine market seem to be attracting more new competitor entrants. I know that the wording in your press release to defend strong position appears slightly less bullish than what we heard for other segments, where you tend to be trying to grow market share.
Can you provide a bit more color on how your market share is progressing with key customers over recent years and expectations going forward? That guidance for 5% growth rate, can you confirm what the assumption is for aggregate wind market growth and your assumed market share? Is there any assumed erosion of share baked into that guidance to be conservative? Thank you.
Winfried, this sounds like a question for you.
Yeah, thank you very much for that question. Competitive landscape, for sure, attractive markets as the wind industry for sure attract also players to enter this industry and also players who are with us in that industry for many years also to look deep into this area. Frankly speaking, we have, as you have seen, a very strong position in that area, and we have really a very good relationship with our customers for so many years that we really can develop together with them the next generation of turbines.
However, you focused also on the growth markets like China, and certainly you know that China is the biggest market for wind energy so far, and therefore for sure we see also their competition as we have seen in the past, by the way, with being in China for more than 20 years in the meantime.
With regard to the EBIT performance and the growth, yes, the growth ambitions are really strong for us since we want to participate strongly in the development, in particular of the offshore market, of the large wind turbine market, but also in the onshore market.
You have seen the growth pattern of these industries. Most of that, in particular in the offshore business, will come in the second half of the decade. Therefore, it will take a little bit of time, and that is also what we are preparing for with our current investments.
Thank you very much. I have a follow-up, I guess, comparing these two businesses when you think about Bearings as well as Forged Technology. Obviously very different growth outlooks in general and also very different ESG profiles. Can you just give a bit more top-down color on why the integration of these two businesses makes sense?
What sorts of synergies are achieved versus potentially improved strategic agility, and potentially better valuation if they were to be separated? I think looking long-term, obviously, since considering and we're planning an IPO of hydrogen benefiting from strong investor demand for ESG-focused businesses. Is there some potential for Bearings to be next on that list for where there's a real opportunity to monetize an ESG-focused business currently lost in the broader conglomerate?
Yeah, this sounds like a question for both the CEOs, why you feel comfortable being under one roof.
Yeah. If I may start. First, thank you again for the question. I mentioned a couple of things in common that both business areas do have. Moreover, we for sure have a strong network between us when it comes, for example, to synergies in terms of procurement, but also on the operational side, where we really have teams dedicated to look into the manufacturing processes and really to learn from each other. These are just two examples of what we are doing together.
Yes, yes. Actually not much to add to that. As Winfried said, we leverage the higher purchasing power for materials. Steel plays a very important part on our yeah, purchasing list, of course. That's an effort we exchange in operations. We have overlaps on the customer side as well, as we have seen for the construction equipment. Maybe there are more similarities and overlaps than you expect just looking from the outside.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Seth. We currently do not have another question here in the line. Maybe to fill the space a bit. Winfried, we are getting quite often questions, meaning Investor Relations is quite often getting questions on your investment strategy going forward and what opportunities you pursue going forward. Could you comment here, please, a bit?
Yeah. Currently our investments, as you have seen, are focused on organic growth, and most of that is really going into the area of large wind turbine bearings right now in Western countries. For sure, we do a lot of improvements in terms of productivity gains when it comes to modernization and things also for the, let's say, other industrial bearings, which is essential for us also as an important pillar to balance out a little bit the performance and also really gives us sometimes overlaps and also something to learn from in each business when it comes to manufacturing processes, to development of certain things. There's a lot of synergies also within the group between the industrial part of the business and the wind energy part of the business.
Okay, good. Thank you. There still are no further people in the line who want to ask questions. Right. Now we have. Good. Thank you. We have now Tom Zhang from Barclays.
Hi.
Hi.
Hopefully you can hear me. Sorry about that. Sorry about the delay.
Yeah. Tom, we can hear and see you. Yeah.
Brilliant. Please, just on the bearings business. I think on slide seven you showed historically the cash flow conversion ratio more than 0.8 over the past decade. Going forward, you're only targeting between 0.6-0.8, so quite a material step down. Just wondering if there's any particular driver for that, whether further investments are required from a CapEx side, or maybe it's the higher risk of new entrants as sort of touched upon earlier. Thanks.
This sounds like a question for the CFO. You want to take it over, Philipp?
Yeah. Thanks. A great question and happy to answer that. Yes, you saw right, a great cash contribution in the past. No, we don't see it as, let's say, a weakened cash conversion going forward. Pretty much what you touched. It's really above average investments going into our wind energy and West Coast country build up and expansion from existing footprints. That also leverages economies of scale, as Winfried pointed out. It's not a weakening of our cash conversion in that regard. It's just a different mix.
Is there any sort of timeline on those investments? Can we expect that cash conversion ratio to maybe pick up towards the second half of the decade? Or do you see that as more of a long-term level?
Well, probably two answers to that. Yes, but there's a but to it, because you saw the great outlook that Winfried pointed out, that goes beyond the Wood Mackenzie outlook. If that outlook regarding the decarbonization roadmaps in the world really pick up, and we did the math, as Winfried said, if you target 1.5 or 2 degrees, then wind energy and offshore should pick up even more than the Wood Mackenzie outlook currently reflects. Of course for us as a market leader to participate in that could call for additional CapEx, but that is for us to monitor together with our customers where the world is going. Two answers to that, to be honest.
Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. Cheers.
Cheers, Tom. The next questions come from Bastian Synagowitz from Deutsche. How about Bastian? In case Bastian should not be there anymore.
Hello, can you hear me now?
Yeah, we can hear you now. Welcome, Bastian.
Sorry. Thank you. I think I wasn't admitted to the video. Yeah, look, I've got another two questions, please. First of all, just on the Chinese market, that's obviously in Bearings your most important end market. I'm wondering, are you full owner of your assets here, or are you operating with a JV partner in that market?
Winfried, one for you?
Yeah, actually it's both. We have a joint venture, and we have also own 100% operations over there.
Okay. In terms of the overall setup, the joint venture you have, is that basically accounting for a large part of your business there, or is it just a smaller fraction of it?
It's roughly the half and, yeah, that is the answer to that question.
Half in China, not total.
Sorry. Yeah, sorry.
Just to add, half in China, not total. Yeah.
Yep, yep. Clear. No, thank you. Then, on your margin targets, you target a bit more than 10%, and you obviously just did almost 13% last year. I appreciate obviously there have been a couple of extraordinary effects in there, but still the 10% probably doesn't seem to be too ambitious.
I'm wondering, what is the real ambition you have? Do you think you can go potentially even north of 13% for some time? If growth is picking up, what does it need to get there? Or are you really just trying to more or less just defend sort of the 10% level?
Philipp?
Yes. Well, maybe to factor it's not 10%, it's at least 10%, so I think that's important. If we look at our margin performance, this goes for Industrial Components, so goes for both businesses, Roland can surely add in a second regarding forging. We're market leader, so we also as far as we know and can judge, we have a good look at the market, we deliver leading returns. That's where we're performing.
Now, you mentioned the strong margin in 2021, which was surely supported on our side, on Bearings side also with the strong development of wind energy boom in China. That's what we also saw on the chart where we see a bit temporary decline now ahead of us in upcoming fiscal year. In total, we see a very strong margin development, at least 10% for Industrial Components. Roland, do you wanna add on forging?
Yeah. Thank you, Philipp. Well, this is also true for Forged Technologies. We have established a very good margin level over the last years in all of our product segments. We are also striving for further increases for the future to sustain, at least sustain this margin level and drive our performance even higher.
Okay. Thank you. Actually you're still striving for more, but you just seems like you don't wanna commit to it.
Well, we are committing to at least 10%. We're not gonna disclose, let's say, the differentiations between forging and bearings, of course. It is a very strong performance for both businesses going forward.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. Next, we have on the line again, Christian Georges from Soc Gén.
Hello?
Hi. Yeah, Christian, welcome back.
Thank you. Thanks. It takes a while, I think, for everyone to get a connection when you open the line for us. Listen, I've got two questions. The first one is on this guidance I think you're giving for at least the first part of next year on the wind energy in China. We've seen all the problems China is having right now about energy shortages and coal availability. Do you see a risk that they may accelerate very quickly their investment in wind farms and that would be impacting you as soon as next year?
This is one for the Bearings CEO.
Yeah, thank you for that question. We wouldn't consider it a risk, frankly speaking. It is rather an opportunity from our end. As Philipp said, and it was shown in the presentation, we see currently a small decline, and we all believe in the structural growth of this market.
There are discussions ongoing that the market will pick up also more than what has been forecasted yet. We are very trustful that this will happen. You are right, as we have the discussion elsewhere with the targets and commitments given in the world, that there will be an increase in these installations and in these builds.
As I said, we are pretty well prepared to really participate in that growth. We also touched the investment point of view. We have still investments ongoing, and we consider to invest further if needed. From there would be a good opportunity for us to really grab that growth once it's coming.
Right. Because in Europe, we know there's a lot of red tape whenever they want to install or even expand, you know, wind farms, whether it's onshore or offshore. But in China, is it much easier once the decision is taken to expand an area, for it to be delivered?
I cannot 100% compare whether it's easier, but in the very end, we all know that the preparation for building a wind farm onshore or offshore, in Germany and Europe takes pretty long, with all the legislation and all the things to authorize these kind of things.
In China, this is a different way of dealing with these topics. Therefore, yes, speed might be higher, as we have seen in the past. We also believe in a strong growth here in the European and in the American market as well, with the clear targets that we have on the way.
Okay. Great. My second and last question is, you know, on the truck side, so that's for forging.
Mm-hmm.
Take your point about, you know, commercial cars exposure and eMobility. In trucks we've seen, like in Germany only, the establishment of that, electrical, you know, highway with all those trucks and those big antennas on top and so on, right? We're seeing more and more in the mining industry, even the big equipment moving to electric or even fuel cells. Are you very confident that, it's not until 2030 that you're gonna see, the, you know, engine part of those type of products, you know, reduce?
Yeah, obviously this goes to Forged Technologies. Patrick, you want to take it over?
Yes, of course. Yeah, thank you very much for that question. Well, the development we see in trucks definitely is going to take longer, sorry for that. If you look into studies like IHS, they predict until 2030 maybe a percentage of battery electric and fuel cell of 10%, maybe 15%, and that is then rather for the smaller trucks.
As you rightfully said, there are a lot of announcements that they push that forward. eMobility is going to come in the truck market as well, or maybe alternative solutions, as I said, with synthetic fuels or hydrogen, maybe in the fuel cell, maybe also in the combustion engine. We have to monitor that.
We stay really close to our customers and that's what we expect right now. If it picks up faster, we have to transform faster. The idea is really to transform the product portfolio as the market develops. We have a couple of ideas for new products, and we will get those products on the capacity we have in our locations.
But right now, we really expect the major effect to be in passenger cars until the end of the decade, and that one is going to be huge, especially in Europe. That's why we already invested into the truck chassis part as I showed with the new line, which will fully compensate for the loss in sales and which will fill up the capacity we have in our location in Europe. For truck, we are going to do the same thing, but we think it's going to take a couple of more years until we really feel the big impact.
In the meantime, your growth therefore will come from the replacement of the existing, truck fleets to more efficient trucks. That's the idea?
Yes, that's the idea. Right now, if we look short term, for the next years, that's if you discuss with our customers or look into their presentations, they expect an ongoing strong demand in 2022 and beyond. There's going to be growth.
The growth we see in the overall portfolio, as you may have seen, is strongly coming from the industry business as well. Really push sales for construction, for mining, and look into new segments like agriculture and really push forward the aftermarket business, which has not been that much in focus in the recent years. A lot of growth is coming from the industry side as well.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Christian. The next one is Carsten Riek from Credit Suisse.
Hello, it's me again. The truck question has been answered. The one question I have for Patrick is actually on Berco. Berco has shown a rather volatile earnings performance in the past, especially in the original equipment business. As such, the company considered more than once partnerships or disposals, as far as I'm aware. What has changed, and do you still consider independent options for that business? Patrick, maybe you can answer that. Thank you.
Mm-hmm. Yes, definitely. Well, I can answer what has changed over the recent years, and you can see really a dramatic change since the integration with the automotive business in 2017. Our major production location in Copparo does look completely different today. It's much leaner in processes and structures.
We have invested in new equipment, and so we really increased the profitability. You're completely right. There have been discussions about Berco in the past, we all know, but we really step by step improved productivity of that business, and we still keep it going. There are still improvements ahead.
That combined with actually entering attractive market segments I talked about the aftermarket, about new segments, that all adds up to really a good profitability so far, which will be further increased over the next years. Currently there are no plans to separate it from the other forging business.
As I showed, as I tried to show, actually there is synergy also going forward for providing new products, entering new product fields or bringing industrial components on capacity we have in automotive at the moment. We see also going forward for sales and for actually transforming our product portfolio, we see opportunities with them both being joined together.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next one is, Luke Nelson from JP Morgan.
Hi. My main question was just more about the trucks, which obviously it's just been answered around the defendability of the outlook for the market, just in the context of looks like electrification moving a bit faster in that market. Maybe whilst I have you, and to push a little bit more on the group level, sort of segmental level, targets. Is it possible to give a bit more granularity between sort of the sales growth between Forged and Bearings and maybe the different sort of levels of profitability over the midterm?
Sort of again, going back to some of the questions, it does look like there is some potential upside as well, so it'd be good to see where the sort of area of potential risk to the upside, where that could potentially come within these divisions, within the sub-subareas of the division.
Well, I think this question can be answered by the statements on the business unit levels, and then you can bring it together in your model. I would suggest that the business units comment a bit on their sales outlook. I think a lot has already been covered in the presentation. Patrick. No, sorry. Roland, do you wanna start with sales?
Well, I think for the sales outlook, as Patrick has already elaborated, and I can just add on that. We have a stable sales outlook for Forged Technologies. Truck sales are rather high, on a high level, for the next years. We will have the challenge to compete or to make sure that we transform our business in order to compensate for the loss of sales in the passenger car business.
Again, there's a huge opportunity that we have for the Berco business. Our outlook is very stable on the sales that you have seen in the presentation. We also see possibilities to further grow, depending, of course, on how the eMobility trend is going over the next ten years.
Maybe.
Philipp, do you wanna add something?
Well, on bearings, sales growth, as we put forward on the slides, it's at 5%+ sales growth that we're projecting regarding our midterm targets. Some granularity on that without exact numbers, but surely wind energy we expect a bit above our industry part. Wind energy, as you saw, makes up roughly slightly above 50% of our portfolio on sales side. Now, you also asked about EBIT margins. Sorry to give you no further granularity on that. We're not gonna disclose, let's say, any more details below the ICE layer.
Thank you. Sorry, can I maybe just follow up as well? Just obviously in wider context of cost inflation pressures that we're seeing in many areas. Can you maybe just talk to the specific risks that you're seeing again within both Forged and Bearings and how you're potentially or what you're seeing and how you're mitigating those inflationary pressures?
Yeah. Roland, do you wanna start?
Yeah, I can start for Forged. I think it's very similar to what Philipp will say on Bearings. Yeah, there's a big challenge in the market right now because we see this inflation effect. We have steel prices, steel price increases coming up. We have the energy cost. The good thing is that we are very diverse in our global footprint, so we have different situations in the different regions in the world. That helps us a little bit.
On the other side, we have long-established customer relationships, and we play this openly with the customers. We have this pressure, and we need to find a common solution for it in order to be able to still be profitable also over the next year. This is a temporary effect that we see, especially on the energy cost, but we address this openly to the customer, to the market, to find the best solution for both sides.
Yeah. As Roland said, similar for us. We also see it as a temporary effect, of course, at least at the levels that we're experiencing currently regarding especially material cost development, which is good for tk Steel business and so on the one side, of course, more hurting us. Yes, we can also pass through a good portion of that on the, let's say, sales customer side.
Not fully, but a good portion, let's put it that way. We have, let's say, additional measures that you have to move against, of course, on the productivity increase that we showed, flexibilization of staff and stuff like that, to really try to compensate that factor cost that we're seeing where we cannot pass through all of it, but a good portion.
Thanks for the color.
Yeah. Thank you, Luke. With those answers, we have reached the end of the session. We still have here people waiting in the line. We have Rochus Brauneiser, Christian Obst, then Jason Fairclough. But unfortunately, these questions cannot be answered now. Maybe we can follow up via Investor Relations to answer these questions.
I would like now to thank you for being available and would also then like to continue in the, on the agenda. Thank you very, very much, gentlemen. Yeah, please. The next agenda point is Automotive Technology. Once the stage has been cleared, I would like Karsten to join me here. Karsten, welcome on stage. CEO and CFO of Automotive Technology, and please take over, Karsten.
Thank you very much. First of all, good morning to all of you. By the way, some of you I've met before, others I meet first time today. My name, I'm Karsten Kroos, and I have the pleasure of presenting thyssenkrupp's automotive business to you. As you know, thyssenkrupp has a long history of supplying crucial components to everyone in the auto business.
Exactly because of that, I'm pretty sure, like Patrick, if you took a car or used a car this morning, you certainly already used our products today, and so did we. The team of Automotive Technology, and here it is. It's Karsten, Frank, and myself. Karsten brings in a broad experience in transformation and reorganization, very relevant, especially in times like this.
Frank's perspective from his previous assignment with Germany's biggest car maker is another very important asset on our way forward. I personally have spent anyway almost my entire life in this arena, and I have always said that the automotive industry is exciting, changing, and challenging. It always has been, and it is today.
Based on our combined experience of almost 90 years, we are committed to deliver as the auto sector evolves. For that, I have divided my presentation basically in two parts. The first part covers an introduction in our business, including an update on relevant developments. The second part is about major action fields which we consider to be most relevant for the achievement of our financial targets.
I'm now starting with a snapshot of Automotive Technology, which first of all means 20,000 people are generating sales of around EUR 4.5 billion annually with a clear ambition to grow. I'm now going clockwise. At the top left, you see our product portfolio. We steer your car. We provide suspension systems as well as dynamic components like camshafts and rotor shafts.
We make your ride safe, comfortable, and energy efficient. What we supply to the global automotive industry is really mission critical. Absolutely no me too stuff in there. In total, we manufacture more than 130 million parts per year. On the right, you see another strengths which we are very proud of. This is our global customer base. Basically, all relevant brands, including the new kids on the block, giving us great growth perspectives.
More on this in the second part of my presentation. As you can see, our production footprint, 50 factories, are in the right places, near our customers. With this setup, we are actively taking part in the global platform business of our customers. Finally, our sales are geographically well-balanced around the globe.
We are thyssenkrupp's most international segment, and we are present, and that's important in the growth regions. Overall, that means best fit in terms of growth and cost position. Let's now come back to our products for a minute. For me personally, that's a very important picture to understand our story. It carries good news for us. With more than 80% of our products, we are completely independent of the type of powertrain in the vehicle.
I've simply taken the engine out, and as you can see, it doesn't matter to us which engine the car is running on. We equip every vehicle, internal combustion engine, hybrid, or electric drive. For the remaining 20%, mainly camshafts, I have good news as well. The transformation towards eMobility is really on its way at Automotive Technology. We have developed new products that are offering additional growth opportunities. Some of them we have already launched.
Again, more on that in the second part in my presentation later. Now let's have a look on the positioning of our current portfolio. We did achieve leading market positions with our components and systems already based upon mainly technological excellence and cost efficiency. We are targeting top three positions in our respective markets globally. In most cases, we are already there.
Another relevant information which you can take from that chart is concerning the trends in the automotive industry. These are eMobility, autonomous driving, and of course, sustainability. Our products are precisely in line with these trends, supporting, again, our growth ambitions. We have been preparing for these trends for a long time. We have systematically built up our market positions. We have developed new products, all protected by our patents based on our own IP.
We have made them smarter by combining mechanics, mechatronics, and software. We have built highly efficient production facilities close to our customers, very often in best cost countries. Consequently, we have increased, and we will further increase our content per car, our sales, and our margins, making sure we do achieve benchmark financial figures as well. Here is now the picture of our recent financial figures.
2019/2020 obviously was a tough year as COVID hit, by the way, everyone in the industry. 2021 got a lot better. Our market positioning with new products, new plants, and more value paid off. We showed a strong sales growth of around 11% compared to the car market of 7% and a margin level of close to 6%.
We did achieve that, although semiconductors had an impact already, especially in quarters three and four, as most of you know. Looking now ahead to the current fiscal year, the early quarters will be affected still by semiconductor shortages. We expect this to improve in the course of 2022. This is a takeaway from a meeting which I had with some other leaders of our industry last week. Consequently, we are anticipating a flat sales development for this year.
Margins will be under pressure from higher costs in energy, transport, steel, and other materials, but we will deliver a stable level of cash returns. Midterm, we are committed to growing the top- line faster than the market with new products and new customers, and achieving a margin level of 7%-8%, plus a cash conversion rate of 0.5%. 0.5%, sorry.
Now I'm coming to the second part of my presentation. How do we get there? We have defined six fields of action that will lead us to our goals. The first three fields of action are top-line driven. The focus here is on new products, the transformation of our combustion engine business, and the monetization of our strong order book. The other three items improve our bottom line and our competitiveness.
Here we are talking about structural adjustments and the optimal market positioning, but also exploiting the opportunities of digitalization. Higher growth in the market, consistent margins, and cash generation, that is where we will go. Let us now take a closer look at these fields of action, and I think you remember the chart. We have numerous incremental and new products that are based on our existing technology and capabilities.
These products are a perfect fit for current and future customer needs, especially in eMobility. To a certain extent, we changed our strategy from following our customers to anticipate what they might need, and this seems now to pay off as well. Overall, it's opening up new market potential in the double-digit billion range, supporting again our growth ambitions. A very important enabler to that is our software hub in Budapest, Hungary, which belongs to our steering division.
As we augmented our offerings with more intelligence, we were growing our software skills. In Hungary, we now employ around 1,000 software engineers. When I started, we had less than 10. Today, this is our software hub, not only for steering systems, but also for all other products. We are no longer a sheet metal bending company, but a development partner for advanced automotive solutions.
Again, more intelligence means more value per car, more sales, and more margin. That's the logic. A very specific top-line action field is the transformation of our powertrain business. Today, we are the clear, by far, market leader for valve train components, which are really indispensable for today's emission requirements. By the way, our market share is much bigger than the one of all our competitors together.
From this position of strength, we are developing new products for the e-motor and other systems, specifically for electro-mobility. By doing this, we are creating a well-organized and smooth transition to electro-mobility. This will allow us a constant flow of revenue with good margins and cash performance. Now the strongest proof point for our growth story, and as such for our top- line, is our order book.
85% of our midterm sales are already backed with book business. This goes across all our customer groups. For me, this is the real highlight. We have managed to book business with all relevant brands across the globe. This includes our traditional customer base, as well as emerging companies from Asia and the key EV players. Tesla, for example, is today among our top 10 customers already.
In total, by the way, we won projects worth around EUR 6 billion of lifetime sales last year. 30% of that belongs to future e-cars. This also shows that thyssenkrupp is a very strong brand within the automotive community. Now let's talk a bit more about the bottom line levers. We have had a good performance last year, but of course we have to do better. Production plays a major role in that.
Sourcing, manufacturing design, assembly, inventory management, and logistics, all these things are key. As mentioned, we have 50 factories around the globe, plenty of them are pretty new. Our newest or upgraded facilities are already best practices in all these aspects of modern production and show impressively good performance. They are close to our customers too and operate already at much higher margins.
These margins are also supported by lower factor costs because we are permanently working on our structural costs. Our entire organization knows how to fight these costs every day. This is what you have to do in the auto business anyway. But there is, to make that very clear, no whole restructuring going on here. Instead, we have a continuous look at lowering or shifting personnel to where we can harvest the benefits of lower cost.
In a couple of years, we will have 50% of our personnel in best cost countries and will further drive out our G&A costs. Finally, digitalization, which is not a buzzword for us, but an essential part of our future performance. There are really for us three parts to this supporting our top and bottom line development. The first is upgrading and enhancing our world-class portfolio by mechatronics and software.
This leads us to new products in the field of advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving, especially in our steering business. The second is our digital factories. We are widening our automation efforts, improving digital monitoring and control in all our global factories. For example, we can today digitally access more than 400 production machines at our steering plants worldwide.
That gives us real-time access to all machine operating quality and logistics data via the cloud for efficiency analysis and improvement. The third is about developing new business models. For instance, we are offering fleet operators a highly precise artificial intelligence-based damage recognition system for their vehicles. We are doing this on a subscription basis, offering really attractive margin potential. I have now presented to you our six most important top and bottom line fields of action.
In addition, there is one topic that is of high importance for the entire industry and every one of us, sustainability. What is now our contribution to this? We aim to make our production completely climate neutral. All of our 50 production sites worldwide are to produce CO2-free by 2024. The second pillar of our sustainability strategy covers the global supply chains.
That means all the processes that are upstream and downstream of our production. We aim to be climate neutral in this area too by 2035. Now let me leave you with a sense of what I talk about with our 20,000 employees. We want to grow faster than the market. That means new products and smarter products. We have them. The evolution to eMobility is an opportunity for us, where we are already doing business with the leaders.
We are supplying more than 60 vehicles already. In the short term, yes, there are challenges caused by semiconductor shortages, but this will resolve, and we have handled other challenges like this before. I know and you know there is nowhere to hide in the auto business.
Efficiencies in engineering and production are daily goals. Our products, efficient sites, our strong customer base, but also our people are our assets. In the end, it's growth, margin performance, and cash that matter most. Thank you for your attention.
Yeah, Karsten, thank you very much for your presentation. We can directly jump into Q&A session because we have already indicated the interest for questions by Seth Rosenfeld from Exane BNP Paribas. Seth, come in please.
Great. Thank you very much. Two questions, please, and thank you for the presentation already. With regards to growth outlook for autos, please. I think in the past, one of the reasons for the perceived, perhaps laggard performance versus some peers was the perceived under-investment in some growth areas.
Now that thyssenkrupp at the group level has a very good balance sheet, more cash inflows from divestments expected, what scale of additional CapEx or M&A investment do you think is needed, to push this business forward?
I think strategically, you know, when you go to the board and attract and try to request additional funding, do you feel the Auto Technology is competing successfully for capital with areas like the decarbonization of Steel Europe, which are obviously very capital intensive? I'll start there, please.
Okay. Yeah, thanks for the question. Yes, of course. What we are approaching now is first to show consistent performance. Yes, we have been awarded the required capital. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been in the position we are in today, being on that technical level which we have achieved, including the competitive position which we also have achieved in the meantime.
Looking in the future, yes, of course, there will be a certain kind of competition. But what our clear approach is that we are generating the cash flow which allows us to first of all grow on our own. If we need something on top, we clearly knock on doors or we're looking for partnerships. These are usually the options you are having, and that is how we are sharing the burden.
As we are having, as I feel and hopefully I could convince you, some great growth opportunities, I'm thinking that, yes, there may be talks, but, let's see what the future brings. Now we are going for a stable performance first, and then taking the growth advantages as we see them, as we are detailing them out and discussing them with our board.
Sorry.
That's the-
Seth, you seem to be on mute.
Sorry. Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay, great. Sorry. When you talk about partnerships, how do you consider the capital intensity of that sort of growth compared to organic growth CapEx for an outright acquisition? For the partnerships that you're considering at present, is there a cash outflow or would that be something maybe more cash neutral for the group in the near term?
We would first of all go, of course, for cash neutral idea. Our logic for partnerships is, first of all, market consolidation, technical consolidation and innovation. Whatever comes, we need to elaborate, analyze and then find solutions for it.
Thank you. If I can ask one more question, please. I believe that in the past, your group has talked a lot about the benefits of an alignment of supply with Steel Europe in regards to the unique qualities of steel that you could secure, recognizing that you don't buy 100% from Steel Europe, but some benefits on the R&D front. If you look forward to a future where Steel Europe is potentially spun out from the group, how would that impact your business? Is that a concern or is it something that you believe you can continue to operate well despite?
First of all, I would like to confirm what you are saying, the great reputation of Steel Europe. That's what we all hear and all know in our industry. Secondly, as we have, maybe on the sales side, some similar customer contacts. Outside of that, we don't have real financial synergies. We are running quite independent in this area. This means I don't have any concerns with any kind of discussions which are ongoing in the direction you are approaching.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Thank you, Seth. The next one is, Bastian Synagowitz from Deutsche.
Still we can't hear you.
Sorry. Can you hear me now?
Yes. Now we hear you and we see you.
Okay, perfect. Dr. Kroos, my first question is also on capital allocation. Your business obviously has been investing quite a lot over the last years. I guess we never really have been seeing the full impact because you're still in the process of scaling up your production. I'm wondering, what is your top line capability with the current asset base? In other words, can you hit the EUR 5.5 billion levels in sales without any further material investments? That is my first question.
Yes, I can confirm that, what we have outlined in terms of our midterm plan, and you have seen the figures, the EUR 5.5 billion. This is part of our plan, and this is what we have budgeted for. Yes, that's exactly it. What you are saying is exactly true. We have built up our international footprint in the recent years. Based upon of that, we did some pre-investments, and we are now benefiting from exactly our long-term relationship to that business because it's now really paying off that we have done exactly this.
Thank you. Does that mean then that for the next years, your CapEx will come down towards depreciation or below?
I wouldn't say so exactly, because with all the growth opportunities we are having, I think we should take part in that growth story further. Again, as I said, what we are targeting first now is a cash conversion rate. You know, cash and CapEx have something to do with each other, and we are trying to balance that out for the future.
Okay, excellent. I've got one more question on just on the software part, and I've got to say I've been quite impressed by the scale which you've been building there, and the amount of I guess software engineers which you've been hiring because software obviously is becoming much more important, not just for you, but also for many of your clients.
I guess what we can see is that many of your traditional clients are probably still behind some of the newcomers in the market. Here my question is, if we comp you against your supplier peers, and some of them are obviously very large, a couple of times your top- line, then clearly you're not having that degree of scale, and software is a very scalable thing. How confident are you that you can basically keep track with those players, particularly in the software arena, when it comes to the new products?
Thanks for the question. Very good one from my perspective. What we have been doing in the past is we were growing our software demand, and by that the resources we need for that, with the projects coming up and the competencies which we felt we need to build up. As I said, we changed our strategy.
We don't follow our customers anymore. Yes, we follow them, but what we are doing now is really anticipating what they want and what they might need, and this is another reason why we build up these software competencies. In terms of scale, according to the business or size of business we are having, we feel well-equipped. I can confirm that one.
I'm not so much concerned about the very big ones, to be very honest, because in our business, creativity and speed is much more important with regard to the things you're touching right now. Because once you talk to the new ones or even those of our traditional customer base, which are now in the process of transforming into the new era of technology.
Le t me call it like this, we are talking about the new technologies, and we are competing with others, yes, but to the big ones as well as to smaller ones. I think we have found exactly the right setup in terms of the competencies we need and where we don't compete with our customers. This is, for me, very essential.
The very big ones are closer in a situation that is how I would see the world, where you're running into a risk to compete with your customers. This is what I definitely don't want. I think we have found our place, and from there, I think again, we have great growth opportunities.
Okay, excellent. Thank you. Just a very last question. Just to clarify, on page 13 in your slide deck, you're showing this chart for the EBIT transition being loss-making in 2019/2020 and then, like, going to more than double 2021 in the midterm. I suppose that's only these four plants, right? Or is this what you want to say or tell us for full business area?
This is the outlook for the full business area.
Okay. That is impressive. Probably more bullish than what your targets do imply. Okay, thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you for the questions.
The next one is Christian Georges from Société Générale again.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
Now the connection is there. Yes, we can hear you and see you.
Welcome back.
Thank you very much. Look, a quick question on the news flow last night. We saw Worthington in the U.S. acquire Tempel Steel. I don't know if you saw that, and what was going to create apparently a new powerhouse in electrical steel and electrical engine. What I'm wondering is, you were mentioning Tesla being in your top 10.
I mean, how many of competitors do you have, really? How many competitors can Tesla rely upon as far as choice for electric engine technology? Is there a general need for consolidation there? Is my first question. My second question is on electrical steel. Is there a need for an integration owning your own electrical steel supply in terms of future availability, or is that a secondary risk?
I try to give an answer by starting saying the question with regard to electrical steel. We need to save for a moment, I would say and hand that over to our colleagues who are joining on stage after the lunch break, because this is not my piece of business.
Yes, I mentioned Tesla, and we are, to make that clear, not in the electric engine business over there, but we have many other parts, mainly chassis components and chassis systems, which are going into their current and in their future cars. This is why they are on our top 10 list already today. Means to us, we have no direct link to everything which has to do with the electrical steel business you were touching with your question.
You're not gonna be part of the electrical engine in future as you go away from your...
In the electric engine, we have the rotor shafts, which is a product which is being transformed from camshafts into something which fits into electric engines. Again, there is no strategic alliance or cooperation planned or involved or even not thought about with somebody in the electrical steel arena.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Christian.
Thank you.
The next one is Tom Zhang from Barclays.
Hi, guys. Hope you can hear me.
Yeah.
Hi, Karsten. Look, a bit more of an open-ended question from my side. If I sort of look at these slides versus the slides that we had four years ago when we had, you know, your last midterm targets for component technology, you know, I appreciate there's been some portfolio change since.
But actually, from an EBIT margin and from a cash flow conversion ratio perspective, both of those targets were actually pretty much the same as we had in 2017. And from a starting point, it looks like we're pretty similar. My question is, what do you think are the main differences between now and that starting point in 2017? What gives you more confidence now that you'll be able to hit these medium-term targets versus where we were, you know, four years ago?
Thanks for that question, and I think it's an easy answer. You have seen my colleagues before from Industrial Components. That business has formerly been part until 2019 of our former business area Components Technology.
The targets I outlined in my presentation in 2017 were including these businesses as well. If you add the numbers, you'll figure out that, first of all, we achieved our targets. Secondly, the pure play automotive business, which we built in 2019, was performing in the second year due to COVID, not in the first year, according to our plans, or even overfulfilling all our plans.
I magine if the semiconductor situation wouldn't have hit us last year, what we could have achieved. I don't want to indicate right now at the moment. I think I can confirm in both areas we did achieve or overachieve our targets. And that validates the CapEx which went into these businesses in the recent years.
Okay. As part of that automotive business, some of it was stripped out, right, into Multi Tracks as well, which I guess kind of offsets.
Yeah, that's true. On the other hand, we have put the former toolmaking company into the automotive business, and this was balancing it out a little bit. Not completely, a little bit. Okay?
Okay. Fair enough.
Thank you for the question.
Cheers. Thanks.
Thanks, Tom. Bye. We now have Rochus Brauneiser from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes, hi. Thanks for taking the question. I think primarily the question I had was first the one Tom just asked you. But maybe to complete it, can you give us a sense to what extent the old target you have set for the components technology a few years ago, which if I remember correctly, was 6%-8%, how that now compares to the targets you have been given today, the 7%-8% for AT and over 10% for [ICE]. Is that kind of an equivalent adjustment of the targets, or is it more bound to automotive today?
The targets we have identified now is, I would call it an upgrade or an, a refresh of a benchmarking which we did with other peers in the industry. There is no link to the former targets which we have worked with. Anyway, we are doing that every year, even frequently in the year. We are updating ourselves, watching the performance of all the others, and are identifying, as we feel, ambitious targets for ourselves, looking at the best performers in the industry and say, "Okay, hey, that's where we need to go, because that's what we owe our shareholders." On that basis, we'll be ready to pay back what you have given us.
Okay, understood. That's clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
We now have Luke Nelson from JP Morgan.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah.
Thanks a lot for taking my questions again. Two from me. Just on the climate neutral targets that you outlined to be Scope 1 and 2 neutral by 2024, and on a Scope 3 basis mid next decade. Just near term, can you maybe just give a sense to what extent customers are willing to pay a premium for low CO2 inputs? And I suppose to what extent that is being implemented in these midterm targets? That's my first question.
Okay. Generally, of course, it's a good question. No, you know the auto industry, you need to fight for everything. Obviously they are expecting us to be climate neutral, according to everybody else in the industry, and according to what has been decided on the, in the political arena and on top, what the society wants, I have to say. This is why we are accelerating on that trip as well. Yes, we have a fair discussion with our customers about what's needed. We explain what we are doing to achieve the targets. By the way, they are setting tough targets as well to be climate neutral.
With regard to, let me say, CapEx or investments needed for that one, I think with regard to Automotive Technology, I can calm you down a bit because we have far less CO2 exposure than others in our respective businesses. For us, in the upcoming years, when we talk about our upstream and downstream activities, there is 80%-90% of our CO2 footprint, and this is what we have promised to work out until 2035. Clearly, that means we have to have discussions with our customers, but as everybody in the industry, relying on the similar procedures.
Okay, very clear. The second question is just on the, sort of on the software side, which you talked about, and following up from Bastian 's earlier question. Just in terms of the data that that generates, I mean, who owns that IP? Do you get access to that? Is that something you can monetize or does that sit with the OEMs?
I like that question very much. Thank you for that one. All we developed so far is based on our own IP. We are the owner of the IP, which we are developing with regard to software, but not only software. The majority of our IP from the past is in the hardware. There we are sitting on our, let me say, assets as well.
The interesting question for the future will be which kind of value do data really have? As I said, we are developing new business models. That was my third example when I talked about digitalization, and that should give you a glimpse that we are starting thinking about making money with data or handling data.
This is still a kind of startup idea coming out from an incubator, what we are doing there. Let's first fix all the other things to have a stable position on where we are, and then I think this segment has also opportunities exactly in that corner.
Very interesting. Thanks a lot.
You're welcome.
Thank you, Luke. Yeah. With that, we have come to the end of the session, and I would like now to share. Here we have got the agenda. There's now time for a break. We have scheduled the break for 15 minutes. Thank you very much, Karsten. We will be back here for continuation of the agenda at 1:20 P.M. Yeah.
Welcome back to the third part of our Capital Markets Day. The next presentation will be Steel Europe, and then, as the last agenda point, we will have the Q&A session with Martina Merz and Klaus Keysberg. Before that, I would like to hand over to Bernhard Osburg for the Steel presentation. Bernhard, please.
Thank you very much, and good afternoon also from my side. My name is Bernhard Osburg. I'm the CEO of thyssenkrupp Steel, and I have the pleasure now to guide you through our presentation. What you see here on the first picture is Europe's largest steel operation. Actually, you just see roughly half of it. It's 5x the size of Monaco. It's as you can pretty well see, directly connected to the Rhine River.
What is very important, within 500 km, we have 80% of our customers. It's a very good location also from a logistics point of view. We are located in Duisburg, in North Rhine-Westphalia, and that is an industry in Europe with the highest density of industry directly in Duisburg, and that is the place to be, where you need to be, when it comes to the green transformation. Obviously, it's my job and it's also my ambition to push that operation into the next level of performance.
I do not need to do that alone, and I'm together here with Carsten Evers, that's my CFO. He's for more than 30 years in the industry, very international profile. Right beside him, that is Markus Grolms, also very experienced. He's dealing with the union and with the labor side, very experienced there, and he joined my board two years ago.
On the right-hand side, Dr. Arnd Köfler, also for 28 years in industry, solely in steel industry. He's eight years now with thyssenkrupp Steel, and he joined the board beginning of 2017. Myself, I'm 22 years in industry, 17 years in the steel industry. The rest five years I've taken over positions in suppliers, automotive suppliers.
That means that I know how to buy steel and process steel, but of course, I also know how to sell steel and how to produce steel. Altogether, I think we have a very balanced skill set, and we are highly committed to deliver on our plans. What are we talking about? Actually, thyssenkrupp Steel is a huge operation.
Last fiscal year, we have produced approximately 11 million tons of crude steel. Sales were about EUR 9 billion and an average EBITDA of roughly EUR 400 million. We are operating in more than 19 locations with more than 26,000 employees. We are serving 1,200 customers, and our average relationship to each of our customer is more than 25 years.
You can see it here on the slide, in the center of the slide. We do have quite a broad variety of end customer segments, so that is quite a good risk mitigation. We have a clear focus and a clear dedication on the automotive industry with roughly half of our business, and therefore, quality as well as sophisticated products are core to the success of our business. We are around in thyssenkrupp Steel for more than 200 years. If we look back, thyssenkrupp Steel is definitely the steel company who has written a lot of the history of steel when it comes to product, when it comes to processes.
If you drink a [Cola] from a can, or maybe you sell a car which is 10-year-old and you wonder why it does not rust, or you just operate your washing machine with a lot of stainless steel inside, all those products wouldn't exist without our companies. It's all invented in Duisburg, all invented by us. With this strong heritage and this core in our DNA of R&D, of innovation and process and product, we also want to write the next history for our company, but also for Steel, and that is the green transformation. Therefore, we have a very good and proven concept, and we are currently executing to bring it on the ground. Let's have a look at the key investment highlights.
Number one, we do expect, and we do see, a new period of flat steel demand growth, and I will come to that point a little bit later in my presentation to explain you why we see it as I mention it here to you. The second point, we are a very clear number one in Germany, very important country, of course, for steel demand and steel production.
We are also a very strong number two in Europe, and fully concentrated on premium products and high sophisticated products. You can say we are also, for the European industry and European supply chain, an absolutely mission-critical company. Maybe the most important point on this slide is the number three point. Currently, we are executing a huge turnaround program. That's the biggest turnaround program for our company since more than 25 years.
I also will give you some further information down the presentation. The fourth point here, the green transformation, by far means it's a huge challenge for the industry. It's also a huge challenge for us as thyssenkrupp Steel. On the other side, it's also a big opportunity for us, and that is how we approach this challenge with the green transformation in our sector.
Why do we see that flat steel demand will be growing in the midterm perspective? You see that on the left-hand side in the upper part of this slide, we do expect quite good numbers in the current and calendar year when it comes to European growth. That's just reasonable after the Corona pandemic situation. Also for next year with between 5% and 6%.
It's good and stable numbers in Europe, with 80% of our sales in one of our core regions, for sure. Also on a global scale, with approximately 5% in this year, 2%-3% next year, these are really good and numbers which will support our strategy ahead. For us, especially in automotive, we see for the next five years a growth rate between 5% and 6%, which is very, very good because we have a high exposure to this market segment and also for the other industry sectors we see good numbers. On the other hand, the steel business is not only about markets, it's also a lot connected to politics and to regulation.
If we look on the European side, we see that Europe is supporting to create a global playing field for the steel industry that works over the last years quite well. You see that we have a lot of anti-dumping duties in place, which is just fair. You can also see that because of the enlargement of the safeguards to protect Europe from massive imports coming from all the world. The true game changer on these slides and the true game changer when it comes to different market behavior for sure is China with close to 1 billion volume of production each year.
In the current five-year plan in China, there is a massive change to the part before, because China has decided just to produce that amount of steel, which is needed to fulfill the demand of their own supply chain in China. That means, on the other hand, that less material will enter the global markets, and that means at the end also that less material will become imports into Europe, and that is why we look quite confident in the midterm scenario.
Looking at our operation and our market position, let's start with number two, market position in Europe. It's a strong number two here, and you can see in all the important segments with automotive, with energy, the packaging business or dedicated areas in the industrial business, like trucks and trailers.
We are either number one in the European market or we are number two. We have really very, very good relationships to customers. We have very stable market positions in the European market. Again, we are system critical in our operations. What you may not know, we are also the number two in China when it comes to automotive deliveries.
We operate a joint venture down there for more than 20 years with the Chinese companies. After Baowu, we are the number two, especially in high sophisticated product like exposed parts for automotive applications. In India today, we are the only one who operates grain-oriented electrical steel, which is a very good thing to do there because there's a huge growth and a huge demand for the further development of India. Of course, we want to participate there.
I do not need to explain to you the global mega trends. It's all about sustainability, it's about energy transition, and of course it's about the transition of the automotive industry. That is somehow perfectly connected to our strategic approach, looking into the future because steel is a 100% recyclable product from the first day on, 100% recyclable.
In the short term, we will see that even primary production of steel, like we do that, will be carbon neutral. Steel will be the global commodity, the biggest commodity in the world, with the possibility to get produced without any carbon footprint. That is, I think, good news, and it's integrated in our strategy and our approach for the future.
On the other hand, with the transition of the electricity and the transition of automotives, there is definitely need for steel and there is definitely need for electrical steels. As I mentioned in GO as well as in NGO products for generators and transformers, we are number two and we are number one in Europe. Therefore, it perfectly fits to our strategic growth scenario for the future. At the end, I mentioned that we have a high exposure to the automotive industry with more than 50% of our volumes.
If you transfer a car from a combustion engine to electric vehicle, it gets just heavier. A heavier car needs more steel to be as safe as today in crash performance. It also needs more steel, high sophisticated steel, to protect the battery, for example, against fire and fire protection.
That is all 100% connected to our strategy. One thing which is also true is that our last three fiscal years were not really performant and we have underperformed compared to our peer group. There are a lot of reasons for us. It's not only a single reason, but for sure the last three years with our connection and exposure to the automotive market, and that was very difficult for us.
We have analyzed our situation. We have looked where do we see weak points in our strategy? Where do we see maybe homework to be better than in our performance? We have derived a strategy. We call it the Strategy 20-30, and these are three major topics we have to fulfill. First, and the most important one is performance.
That means to look at our businesses and what is not profitable to turn it either in profit or close it or fix it. That is one point, and of course, more efficient processes, cost reduction, as well as the huge headcount reduction program. The second one is a portfolio item.
We are planning to put another reasonable share from commodity portfolio into high performance portfolio, and therefore, we need to invest EUR 800 million in our infrastructure to make it more reliable, more stable in production, as well as a more stable and performant supply chain to cut and reduce cost also in operations. The third one is the transition part. Of course, green transformation, that's a big transformation part on our agenda.
Another big topic is, of course, to work with our people, to work with our culture, to make it a more entrepreneurial area and to make it, let's say, to guide our people to a clear dedication and a very clear focus on EBIT and first of all, on cash generation.
We have started this program one and a half year ago, and by now, we could already have EUR 330 million from our program, and midterm, we want to achieve EUR 700 million. How have we done it? On the left-hand side, you see in the top area, heavy plate and electric steel, both businesses which have been in red numbers for many, many years. For heavy plates, this business has been closed September this year.
Electric steel, we were able to turn around the business, and India, France, as well as Gelsenkirchen in Germany, are now back to profit, and they are delivering quite good numbers right now. We have operational excellence. That's more or less cost-cutting in all our processes, in sales and in purchasing and in the supply chain, where we do have, of course, a huge number, which we have to tackle.
Of course, we have decided to reduce our workforce about 3,750 people and close to 2,000 we have already in our program, and that's where the money is coming from. On the investment side, we have also initiated EUR 500 million out of the EUR 800 million we want to invest over the next years.
That is on time, that is on track, and that is on budget. It is a prerequisite to later on be successful on the portfolio transformation. Now for midterm, we want to increase this number to EUR 700 million. 80% is also directly connected to concrete measures, so we are quite confident also to deliver this number. Then we will also have the portfolio effects in our agenda.
On the long term, we will concentrate further on operational excellence. That is our path. It's a very clear path to the future, to EBIT and to cash generation. Having a look at the same logic, but from a bridge point of view, you see, of course, coming from the pandemic situation, that there is a massive contribution coming from a market-driven point. That's clear.
The second and the third box, this is what I call our homework in the management team. It is performance and portfolio. By midterm, we have roughly now half of the portfolio we want to tackle, we have achieved. The other half needs to come on the midterm scenario. Also, a first contribution from portfolio will be in our pockets in the midterm scenario.
Midterm means that we want to achieve a EUR 100 per ton EBITDA, and this is not a number for a precise year. This is a steel cycle over the cycle number. That is our ambition, and we are quite confident that we can also deliver on this ambition. Number three, from the investment highlights, the turnaround and the investment program.
I told you that we are in execution to invest EUR 800 million, and we put that mainly in the site of Duisburg and to make it a more efficient production site, a more stable production site. Supply chain performance, absolutely key for our customers, but also for our cash generation. There's a lot of investment dedicated to this point.
The third point, very important one, when you are operating with an exposure of 50% to automotive, is exceeding our customers' expectation when it comes to quality, when it comes to product performance. That is the three elements within our strategy we are working very hard on to get that really on the shop floor. The green transformation, the biggest challenge we have ahead of us, but again, also the biggest opportunity we have ahead of us.
On the left-hand side, you all know that there is a lot of pressure in the market coming from Paris, coming from Fit for 55, and especially Germany has the toughest targets right now in a global scale. Why do they and why do we concentrate on steel? That's the middle part of this slide because steel today is a big part of the problem.
My company, my plant in Duisburg, is about 2.5% of the total emissions of Germany, so that is a massive part of the problem today, but that also means that we are one of the biggest single parts of the solution for tomorrow. That is what I call the opportunity to make that happen. Therefore, we have a very robust and detailed plan in place.
We are working on it for more than 3.5 years now, and we are ready to shoot. There need to be, of course, some further decisions also on the political level. We need to support to do that. We have a very clear commitment by 2030 to reduce our emissions by 30%, which means 3 million tons in green steel, and which means 6 million tons less carbon dioxide in 2030. I think that is quite a good commitment. How we are gonna do that, this is on one slide, the plan we have. We are operating four blast furnaces today in Duisburg. All the time, one of these blast furnace reaches its end of life situation.
We will not realign it, but we will substitute it to a new technology, a so-called direct reduction plant, but combined with an integrated melting unit, and that is really a big and very good innovation. Step by step, we will do that until the last blast furnace has been transferred to new technology. The numbers I have already mentioned. Let me just emphasize on two sides.
With our concept, we will have less CapEx demand, also less OpEx. That's coming from the technology point of view. We do not need to do anything from the steel plant on because our transformation will only be on the upstream side, which is very important when it comes to the CapEx allocation.
Our concept also means, as we keep the steel mills, that our customers can buy 100% of their products in green without any need for R&D or new procedures together with the customers. That is really a very, very strong asset. Once again, we are in Duisburg, we are in the Ruhr area. That is a place with the highest density of industrial production in Europe.
Therefore, it's a very, very good place because infrastructure, when it comes to energy, when it comes to grid, when it comes to pipelines for green hydrogen, that's the place where you need to be when you want to make it happen. Let's have a short look also on the ESG. I will do that bottom up.
The governance part, I think the most important part is that you understand that the ESG criteria and our targets are fully linked and strongly linked with the compensation plan of the board and of the management team. We have really the highest interest to get those numbers really performed. When it comes to social, it's a bit like R&D.
thyssenkrupp, 200 years around, social is part of our DNA, and for us it's a top priority, especially health and safety, to create an environment where our people can work safe and have a healthy time even when they work. You see that in the numbers. Our development over the last year or so here was quite successful. Looking at the environmental one, I've explained it in two slides before.
That is the core in our ESG and performance. 30% less carbon dioxide by 2030 means 6 million tons reduction. That is, of course, the biggest lever. Let's have a look also on the financial track record. On the very left side, you can see the five-year average of 2013 to 2018, and you see that we operate in average above 11 million tons. You see that our EBITDA per ton margin is in the mid EUR 70s, EUR 76 . Adjusted EBIT around EUR 450 million, and business cash flow also around EUR 430 million-EUR 450 million. Then you see 2018/2019, 2019/2020, and 2021.
Not good years for us, especially not the 2018, 2019, 2021. Of course, it was Corona pandemic situation. It was a shutdown of the automotive industry. Before, it was the Dieselgate, and we have heard today already from the semiconductor crisis. That are issues, but you can also see in 2021 our strategy gets grip and the EUR 330 million we have achieved already, you find them definitely in those numbers. But cash is an issue. Last year was an issue, and that is our key parameter for this fiscal year to bring it to a totally different performance level. Looking at the current fiscal year on business cash flow, on adjusted EBIT, as well as on EBITDA per ton, we will see a good development and significant development.
When we look to shipments and to sales, it's a bit depending also how long will the semiconductor crisis last. Nobody knows exactly, but I think with this estimation, we are quite good. Looking at the midterm targets, we want to operate above 11 million tons, and we see us also in a position to do it from a market point of view. We strive to have EUR 100 per ton EBITDA per ton.
This is again, it's a cycle number. It's not a dedicated year. It's what we want to see as a performance over a steel cycle that goes along with above EUR 700 million EBIT and an EBIT margin of 6%-7%, which is quite a good increase when we look where we come from.
We will have a cash conversion rate of a little bit bigger than 0.4, and cash flow bigger than EUR 300 million. Why is it smaller than in the past period? Because we have still investments for the Strategy 20-30 and of course, the first investment for the green transformation also are [locking] in. I will summarize my presentation with those four fields here.
The management team and the whole management board here is 100% committed to execute further the Strategy 20-30. That is, ladies and gentlemen, the foundation we need to build up again. That's where the EUR 700 million midterm contribution will come from.
Part of this money, of course, we will need to enter then in the green transformation, where we have a very robust plan, where we have good technology, and where we are located in the best area where you can be to fulfill a green transformation in such a big industrial environment. We do that, of course, to leverage and also to enhance our technological leadership. But at the end, there's only one thing which counts. It's EBIT, EBITDA, and first of all, cash. This management team, this picture, me, Carsten Evers, and my colleagues, we are 100% committed to deliver our numbers. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you very much, Bernhard. We can now go over to the Q&A session, and we have actually two people who want to ask their questions. First is Seth Rosenfeld from Exane BNP Paribas.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking our questions once again. If I could ask a couple, first on decarbonization, then secondly on auto contracts, please. On the decarbonization side, can you give us a bit of color on what you're currently thinking for government support for decarbonization, both on the CapEx and OpEx side?
Some of your European peers have begun to speak very publicly about the scale of governmental support, covering roughly 50% of CapEx, but a bit more uncertainty on the OpEx side. What are thyssenkrupp's current thoughts in that regard, especially with the German government? I will start there, please.
Question for you, Bernhard. Yeah, please.
I can answer that. You have mentioned the number of 50% on the CapEx side. That is also what we expect on the CapEx side of the investments. That is, of course, not 100% clear today, but this is the number we are operating with also in our business case. OpEx is more complex, and we have seen now also in the latest paper of the new German government, that carbon contracts for difference is something which is mentioned there. I think that is one of the strongest tool. Steel industry or energy-intensive industry will need to find a way to compensate high OpEx, especially for the transition period until we have a new pricing in the market.
Thank you. Follow up on that point with regards to pricing in the market for green steel products. I think some of your peers have also been able to pull forward their sales of certain certified green steel already to 2021, 2022. What's the opportunity for thyssenkrupp to pull forward some sales through bluemint, for example? And in your initial discussions with customers, what is their willingness to pay a significant premium price for these products while they're still in very limited supply?
Yeah. Also thank you for this question. You are right, we have launched the first products, carbon reduced products, in October this year. We have also the first and the second customer in place who are buying both, one the recycled steel, one the pure steel. There is of course a willingness to pay for it. And there is also a need to pay for it, because the cost for these products is much higher than the normal production cost of today. I would say in the midterm, everybody is aware that a carbon-free steel product needs to have an on cost and will have an on cost on its price. Where that exactly will be, I think it's too early to say that.
Thank you. If I can ask one last question, please. In the U.S., there's more of a discussion around potential sea change in automotive steel pricing. Obviously, there have been more changes on consolidation and management fronts in the U.S. compared to Europe, but there's a sense from the mills that the OEMs didn't pay properly in the past for the value-added steel that steel makers were providing.
There's an expectation the auto contracts will reset meaningfully higher into 2022. I guess the question is whether that lasts into 2023 and beyond. What's your sense over the value you're receiving from your auto OEM customers? Is it fair, or does it need to increase? If 2022 turns out to be kind of the wave of price hikes people are hoping for, is that a sticky price hike or one that would reverse going forward?
On the first question, I think overall, it's depending. Of course, it's a cyclicality business we are in, yeah? There is always looking at different years, you will find different answers. But overall, I think and the value compared to the complexity of a product with the price of a customer, that is quite fair. That is quite fair from my point of view, and therefore, I'm also confident on the green steel discussion. How do I see the pricing right now? We have seen year to year that spot prices have increased a lot. That's for sure.
We have seen at least here in Germany, but also valid for the U.S., that after the boost in October in Germany, now we are on a kind of a plateau with the prices on a quite good and quite high level. That is what I can say, because I'm currently negotiating also with customers, with big customers and therefore, please keep it like it is.
Okay, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you, Seth. Actually, the next question comes from Jason Fairclough from Bank of America. Unfortunately, Jason cannot join by audio, so he sent us a question by email, and this probably goes out to you, Carsten . The question is. I'm reading his question: Steel Europe was once one of, if not the greatest steel business in Europe. For three years, it had an EBITDA of more than EUR 2 billion. Is that possible ever again, or has the business changed too much since those days? He refers to those days 2006, 2008.
Yeah. Thanks for that question. I try to link it, and please allow me that. I try to link it to the main message we have given, Bernhard has given to you. Basically, what we have underway now is a huge performance program. With that performance program, we don't want to do anything else than close the gap to our benchmark peers in Europe.
Basically, we certainly believe that we will be back amongst the European leaders as well in terms of profit. You have seen second message midterm, and throughout the cycle, our target is EUR 100 per ton EBITDA. If you link that to your precise question, I would give the third comment that basically our operational point is now around 11 million tons. 15 years ago, it was quite different. We had much more tonnage available.
The next questions come from Luke Nelson, JP Morgan.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, clear.
Hi, thanks again for taking my questions. Three from me, if I may. First, can you talk a bit about, you've talked about automotive and a key customer, but maybe within that, your exposure to automotive high-strength steel and the real value-added steel within automotive.
And maybe your views on how that exposure will change over the next five to 10 years, particularly as we expect more EV penetration, as your peers have spoken about through the Capital Markets Day, already. Then I suppose you've talked within the Strategy 20-30 around a premium portfolio shift, which I suppose lends itself to things like automotive high-strength steel. So can you talk to any changes in your contracting mix from spot or quarterly lag to more of an annual basis?
Yeah. Okay, I will start with the first one and our product mix within automotive. Not to go into every detail, I would say that we are one of the strongest players when it comes to exposed parts and pretty high-performance mild steels.
That is a huge segment for us, and that will be also a huge segment in electric vehicles. The second biggest is for sure hot stamping, where we are the number two player also in Europe. The third one is the high-strength steels, cold formed high-strength steels, also third generation IHS, high-strength steels. How do I see the development with the switch of the technology from combustion engine to electric vehicle?
I would answer that in a way that an electric vehicle in average has 600 km-700 km more in weight due to the battery, mainly due to the battery. To keep the crash performance and get a five-star rating in the crash test, you need more high-strength steels, and you need them to make them bigger again, so thicker again in gauge. What we have achieved in lightweight design over the last 20 years, with heavier cars, you need again to increase the thickness of the steel.
That means that for high-strength steels, the growth, there is a strong growth in those cars for hot forming as well. Then there is a totally new area, of course, in electric cars that is electrical steel, which you nearly only need in a combustion engine to a very small amount. But in an electrical car, it's about 60 km-80 km. As we are the market leader there, and for us, it's quite a good message.
Thank you. Very clear. I suppose just on that, in the context of the green steel transformation that you've painted over the next couple of decades, but probably more out to 2030.
Steel. For example, we inject hydrogen in the blast furnaces. Doing that means we do not need the same amount of coal in the process, or we put a specialized scrap product. It's not pure scrap, it's really sorted scrap, also in the blast furnace. We get the same output out of the blast furnace, but the blast furnace did not need to reduce iron ore for this amount, so that is another level of carbon dioxide reduction in the given processes.
We call that our fast-track measurements, and we are planning to do that until the last blast furnace will operate in Duisburg. Those real carbon dioxide savings, we calculate to a certain amount of steel, and that is what we sell under the name of bluemint. It is certified from DNV and from the TÜV SÜD, and that is real emission reduction in our plant.
Yes. Sorry, the question was more from the steel production that will come out of...
Okay
...the sort of potential hydrogen-based steel, which I'm guessing is sort of the ultimate goal of zero CO2 steel. Does that have a different permitting timeframe or critical path to how you've typically permitted with auto OEMs?
I don't get really the core of the question. You mean if we produce now with a new technology in the direct reduction plant facility, and if there the product needs to have a new permitting with an automotive contractor, for example?
Correct.
Okay. No, no.
Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah.
The big benefit of our transformation concept is that compared to many of our competitors, yeah, we do not go the way to an electric arc furnace. We won't do that. Why? Because in an electric arc furnace, you need to design your products new. It's totally different from a steel mill like we or our competitors are running that today.
We will have a direct reduction plant, and directly below this plant you will have no liquid parts coming out of this, but direct reduced iron. I think, you know that. We will melt this up, and then we get iron ore, electrically melted iron ore, 100% the same like we get it today out of the blast furnace. With this, we are going to our steel mills again.
We do, from the steel mill on, we do not have any process changes for our customers. That is a big point for the customers because that means that 2,500 products, that is what we sell today, keeps like they are with no new approval necessary for the future.
Okay. Thanks for the clarification. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Luke. The next one in the row is, Carsten Riek from Credit Suisse.
Sorry, the system took a while. Thanks, Bernhard. Thanks, Carsten, for the presentation. Three questions from my side. The first one, as you transform the steel production to a greener footprint, could you consider also lowering the production capacity in the past and concentrate on less price-sensitive customers, especially service centers? That's the first one.
No. Right now in our strategy, at least up to 2030, we are not planning to reduce our capacity. We are planning to operate above 11 million tons. That is part of our strategy. We will have some portfolio shifts, as I mentioned, about 500,000-800,000 tons from commodity to premium portfolio. That's why we spent EUR 800 million on the assets. On the working point of the plant, we stay above 11 million.
Carsten...
Yeah. Just let me add. Clearly we have closed down heavy plate. I mean, we have done some significant portfolio changes just in the last month.
That's clear. The second one, we all have seen the EUR 100 per ton EBITDA target. What makes you actually comfortable? 'Cause that is a level which we haven't seen for years. 2022 looks, of course, more promising because of the catch-up of the automotive contracts. Is the underlying problem of overcapacity in Europe solved?
Or do you think, after this kind of nice pickup in profitability, we go back to the good old, where can we actually bring the volumes to the customers, and how can we compete best in order to get the volumes to the customers, and we actually drop again below the EUR 100 per ton?
Yeah. Carsten, thanks for the question. I would start with just having a look once again to our performance program, and then Bernhard might complete with our view on the market scenario we are in. On the performance side, really we are on the way. 330 out of 700 is done, and we are really committed to get what it takes in order to close the gap to our competition. You might know 1/3 is as well linked to restructuring, so it will bring as well our costs down. Clearly we stay in a world with cycles, and on the market perspective, Bernhard will complete.
Yeah. Maybe from my side, with growing costs for carbon dioxide in Europe and with the clear plan to proceed a Green Deal, there needs to be carbon leakage protection. That's for sure. Yes, that's for sure. I think that's also understood also in politics in Germany as well as in Europe. That is what I've mentioned in my presentation, also with the enlargement of the safeguards. You know that there is a discussion on carbon border tax adjustments and things like this. I think that we will see a more stabilized European steel market. On a global scale, yes, I think there is still overcapacity.
I see that the Chinese at least, and which is a big part of the steel part in the world, are toughly working on that item. They are cutting out right now, since the beginning of the current Five-Y ear Plan, let's say, steel capacity out of the market, especially where it's not the highest in technology, but a big contributor to carbon emissions. I think we will see a stabilized steel environment. Together with what Carsten said, we think that this ambition level is exactly the right one we have to follow.
Okay. The last one is on CapEx. You hinted that you wanna first close the gap with peers, with a CapEx assigned to the steel business. But if you wanna be ahead of competition again, that would in, I believe, in turn require more CapEx. At least that is what I would read into it. Do you have already plans in mind, how you wanna go ahead with this? Or do you wanna wait until the separation from the thyssenkrupp group before actually further plans are made?
Maybe I start on the asset side. I think with the EUR 800 million, before green transformation, I think that is a topic everybody has on his table. The EUR 800 million we are investing right now is something which is clearly dedicated to our specific situation in Duisburg.
When we have that on the shop floor, I would say the mission is more or less fulfilled. We will have brand new technology in the steel mill, we will have brand new technology on the hot rolling side, and we will have brand new technology on the coating side. Asset comparison to my peer group is then on a very, very high level.
Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Carsten, thank you. Yeah, with that, we are at the end of the Steel session for today. We still have two in the line here, Rochus Brauneiser from Kepler Cheuvreux, and Christian Obst from Baader Bank. Also here, we would suggest to follow up individually.
I would like to thank you both, yeah, for being available. We can go over now to the next session, which is actually the final Q&A session for today, including also a wrap-up. Please, Martina Merz and Klaus Keysberg here on the stage for the Q&A session before Martina wraps up. You have again the opportunity to ask questions and to please indicate via the chat function as you've done before. I think we have to wait a bit.
Could I just go over?
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes. We can hear you well.
Yes.
Great. Thank you very much. Two final questions from me today, please. First, with regards to growth investment, you've obviously given guidance on CapEx for fiscal 2022. We've heard from all of your business leaders today about the promising opportunities for further investment in their businesses over the medium and longer term.
As the group free cash turns the corner and restructuring cash outflows are nearing an inflection, how should we think about the CapEx budgets looking out, say, 2023, 2024? Should we view CapEx at this current level as roughly stable or potentially, restructuring declines, could cash outflows be diverted to ever higher CapEx and M&A, as we see better margin performance in the businesses?
Maybe I can start with answering this question. I mean, if you look at our transformation, as I said this morning, we have a strong balance sheet and a high liquidity, so we are able to invest. By the way, we are doing this, as you said. We are investing 160% of depreciation. We are still in the position, and we will also accompany these things. I have to say. We don't consider this level as an ongoing level, so it will be a bit lower in my consideration as I look at it.
Because at one point of time, you have to get a balance between cash out and growth. We are able to invest, and we will do so. At the moment, of course, we have the highest portion investment which goes to the Steel business, and this is something which is temporarily at that point of time. If you ask me what will be the investment level in the coming years, it's difficult to say. If you just look at a CapEx level, it will be
Not more than 160%, but it will be more than 120%, 130%. This is at least my guess at this point of time. An organic growth, I think, we are able to do this if there is a right opportunity. As we said this morning, maybe this is at the moment not the right time, but maybe Martina can add something to that.
Yes. Thank you, Klaus, and thanks for the question. Of course, you touch a very important point for us. What we try to get across today is that thyssenkrupp technologically customer-wise stands on a very healthy foundation. On this very healthy foundation, of course, our most important number one goal remains performance.
Assuming that we achieve at least benchmark cost levels in the next two years, we of course want to grow from that. We do not want to outgrow on a performance problem. First, competitive costs and then growing from there. Of course, in this growth, as Klaus mentioned, there is what we would say the normal organic and inorganic growth.
There is also in our industries areas which we are, where we want to participate, transformational activities. Now, thyssenkrupp on this technological base has lots of ideas for transformational growth opportunities going forward.
To capture these opportunities, it might be needed, as said, that we have to go for different ownership models. One of these examples is our approach, like we are now, which we are now executing with UCE, our hydrogen business. We really want to prepare the company for capturing transformational growth opportunities.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I think your answer probably ties into one follow-up question as well, please. I guess when you think about ESG considerations in managing the portfolio, how is your view of certain businesses shifting? In your introductory comments, for example, you touched on Marine as being increasingly challenging with regards to ESG.
Yeah.
I would imagine Steel Europe is in the same camp. How do those ESG headwinds impact your view of potential value creation from exiting the businesses? I guess the right value you'd be willing to accept to walk away from those headaches.
Actually, thanks for the question. First, we have narrowed down our portfolio the last two years on the most promising businesses. At the same time, we centered our strategy on sustainability. What I would say is if you look on thyssenkrupp going forward, with the idea as to spin off Steel, then I believe we have a future-proof portfolio.
There is a question, yes, what you mentioned, a question mark behind our Marine Systems business. Because from today's point of view with the Europe Taxonomy, we would have approximately 10%, between 5%-10% of our sales, would be a defense business. That is, as you know, that creates issues.
This is why we always mentioned already two years ago that we are open for consolidation in the European defense industry. This is why we are talking actually with partners in this industry at this moment. I cannot tell you where this will lead to, but I would say, and I can say that the rest of our portfolio is future-proof ESG-wise.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you. The next questions come from Bastian Synagowitz, Deutsche Bank.
C laus?
Yes. Good afternoon. Actually I made it. I had two questions left as well, please. My first one is a pretty high level question on decarbonization. If we think about your position, North Rhine-Westphalia, as Mr. Osburg mentioned already, you're obviously extremely well-positioned here for your customers in particular, so say big industrial hub.
Then the question is it also the best place for the access to green hydrogen? Of course, you've got access to pipeline infrastructure, et cetera. Still, I guess the entire decarbonization process then comes down to whether or not you have got access and availability of green hydrogen. What makes you confident that you really see the support also on that level?
Because obviously you've got a lot of stakeholders there involved, being the local utilities, the local government, which obviously doesn't make the situation easier. Then you're obviously relatively far away from the deep sea. I'm very curious to hear your view on that.
Thank you for the question, Bastian. Here, I think I can refer to what Bernhard has already said. Actually, thyssenkrupp with many of our operations is based in the Ruhrgebiet. The Ruhrgebiet is the industrial region with the highest density and has a very big port in Duisburg close to Rotterdam with constant travel ongoing between the two ports. We are very confident and we have already started talks about pipelines linking the Ruhrgebiet to other industrial regions and to ports.
We are very confident due to simply the industrial power of this region, that this region will get access to green hydrogen as one of the first ones in Germany and in Europe, simply due to the impact you create when you provide green hydrogen to this region.
I believe that every politician ask himself or herself at this moment in time, "Where do I create the biggest impact on the environment?" The impact providing enough green hydrogen to the Ruhrgebiet is definitely the highest in Europe. I'm relatively confident. I think all talks we are having with politicians provides evidence that we are very well located for an industry which transforms to a green industry here in the Ruhrgebiet.
We see it more as really as a structural advantage to be-
Yes.
in that position.
Yes.
Okay. Obviously, just on the point, there obviously will still be probably places which are better suited just to produce green hydrogen at very low cost to places like-
Yes.
We've seen some of your peers which actually formed some transcontinental partnerships here. Is this something which you'd be open to look into as well?
Of course, we have with our hydrogen business, we have actually connections now to everybody around the world. We are talking about water electrolyzers all around the world. As you're saying, these electrolyzers, they will not stand, let me say, here in Central Europe. They will be where wind and sun is. Then the transportation has to be organized.
We, thyssenkrupp, has also, and you know that, we have with our Uhde business, we produce ammonia and methanol also. Of course, with that, we are also being asked to support projects for preparing green hydrogen for transportation, which is then ammonia or methanol. Yes, we are having talks, of course, for linking our region and our plants to these hubs where green energy will be produced.
We are also in cooperation with energy providers to get hydrogen also here from in the area we are located here. I think you know this.
My last question is on Uhde and your electrolyzer business. My understanding is that your joint venture partner, De Nora, is also supposed to be IPOed, which is obviously a big change to Uhde's corporate governance structure, and that could change the dynamics for Uhde potentially. What is the situation here with De Nora, and have De Nora also formally agreed to be willing to sell at least part of their stake? If you could update on that'll be great. I appreciate there may be some constraint, but at least I'll give it a try.
Bastian , here, I hope you agree that we ask Volkmar Dinstuhl to join us, as he's responsible for the Multi Tracks and the UCE business and is preparing the IPO with his team. He's aware of all the details and can well explain what's going on there.
Yeah. Thank you very much for your question. Obviously, our partner, De Nora, is supporting the plans for the potential IPO. We certainly cannot comment on their individual plans, what they plan to do going into the future. Obviously, we are very much aligned with our capital markets projects.
Okay. That hasn't been news to you, obviously. That's good to hear. Okay. Perfect. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks, Bastian.
Thank you.
Thanks.
The next questions, they do come from Christian Obst at Baader Bank.
Yes, hello. I have a question concerning cash usage going forward. If my calculation is right, of course, you will end the current business year with more than EUR 4 billion of net cash. What would you like to do with these more than EUR 4 billion going forward?
I think your guidance is now for a positive free cash flow going forward, more divestments, and so on and so forth. You are piling up even more cash going forward. You don't need it for the CapEx because you are guiding for a positive free cash flow generation here. What do you have in mind with these EUR +4 billion in cash in the next coming years? Thank you.
Yeah. First of all, it's always good to have cash on the balance sheet. That's very clear. I mean, as you-
You're not paying for that.
Yeah. Clearly, I cannot give you now, let's say, a detailed plan what we have to, what we want to do with this. Of course, we have some plans. Also, I think working on the pensions is something we definitely, after we are further advanced with the portfolio measurements, very clear is that we would also do something with the pensions on the balance sheet. This is something I can give you at this point of time, but you understand that I cannot give you more about this.
Okay, just a try. The next one is on the adjusted EBIT. Why you are still guiding on an adjusted EBIT, why you're still reporting this adjusted EBIT? I think it makes sense going forward just to concentrate on these kind of reported earnings going forward, and then extract some structural changes or yeah, earnings through structural changes. Normally, it should be some kind of a normal reported EBIT going forward. Do you agree?
Well, I think you know that we changed our EBIT-adjusted definition last year, one and a half years ago.
Yeah.
This is — I think this is a big step in the direction you are commenting on. If we talk about an EBIT adjusted, the adjustments which are there are really adjustments which you can also find in the balance sheet regarding restructuring and things like this. We consider this as an operational, really operational development. That's for us; it's a fair view on this. It's also easy to look at the EBIT as reported. We take it this way around. We think this is more the description of the operational EBIT. That's the reason why we think it's fair. By the way, it changed into the direction you said.
Okay. The last one is on Multi Tracks. Why do you still have Multi Tracks in the portfolio, let's put it that way. 50% approximately are now out for sale. We have a longer-term view maybe on plant technologies. We have only two parts in there which are now a little bit closer for solutions going forward. Why do you not change from Multi Tracks to segment reporting and also including Forged Technologies and Bearings. Why not run these as two separate entities? Because as I have learned, though, the interconnection is not that much between these two. They are standalone companies as such, I would say.
I start with an answer, and then Klaus has to complement. First, looking forward, of course, at a point in time when we would have been able, hopefully, to release the steel community into its own future, then it's true what you're saying. We would have then to review our portfolio again. We might then, we call this the future tk then, we might then let me say restructure how we set up our segments. We might change that then. At this point in time, I think we are still in the midst of a comprehensive performance program.
We first want to get that performance program to a point that we can say we not only close the gap to competition, we even have plans to go ahead individually on a business-by-business approach. Going ahead means then to have the scale initiatives in a way being determined, allowing us then to find the right structure for the next level for thyssenkrupp.
You know, not just now organizing for where we are. We then organize for the next step. Such a move, such a consideration makes only sense when we know whether we can spin off the steel community, what it would mean to us, and how far we are by then with first the Multi Tracks divestments, but also with the Multi Tracks growth initiatives.
Okay, thank you for that. I would assume this would be a timeframe of two to three years, approximately.
At least.
Right?
You know, if you ask me for my personal opinion, of course, speed is of the essence in everything. If we could do that earlier, the better. But one thing is clear, we want to execute, and we go for the next level, when we see the end of the first level being achieved. Yes, it's hopefully, I would say less than three years. My personal guess, it's maybe, of course then in 2024 or latest, earlier 2023, because you know the steel spin-off, if all goes well, we propose for that next year and then list early 2023, and that would be the time where we then have to come up with the future structure for thyssenkrupp.
That makes sense. Thank you very much for these answers.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, the next one here in the line, it is Austin Earl from Marshall Wace.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, Austin, good to hear you. Good morning for you.
Very well, thanks yourself. I just want to ask about Steel Europe, and whether you feel that there's any possibility that that business might be part of consolidation of the industry within Europe?
Well, I mean, I think you know our opinion. If you look at the European steel market, this is a market where consolidation is possible. If you ask me, if you look at the next 10 years, there will be a consolidation. Therefore, the answer is it could be, but this is, as you know, not our plan because we tried one and a half years ago. Now our clear strategy is to separate the business or to check whether it's able, but then to make a separation of this business and make a pure play. This is what we are aiming for.
Maybe to add Klaus, if you allow me. I think Austin, Bernhard Osburg has presented, I think the last hour, his strategy. One thing I think everybody knows that we tried to find a partner one year ago. At that time, our own performance was, I would say, rather bad.
Now we are feeling that the steel team has a performance process in place which is showing already now first results, and we are very sure that they can deliver on their own targets. To start a next phase of consolidation discussions from the position of strength is what we want to allow them. It's then, I think, what the steel team has to consider. It's definitely beneficial for all of us if they do it from a position of strength, and we are totally convinced that they are on the very best way to that.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
That's very clear.
Thank you.
All right. We have almost run out of time, but I think one more could fit in. It will be Rochus Brauneiser from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes. Thanks for taking the question again. I have two, and maybe we can go through them one by one. The first one is on the target sets you have published this morning. I think you demonstrated and emphasized again the importance of free cash flow breakeven and the achieving of a sustainable positive cash flow going forward. Can you help us to understand why you remained more qualitative in the statements on the free cash flow for the time being? What needs to happen that the future free cash flow targets are becoming more formalized in its structure? That would be the first question.
I mean, if you look at the targets we provided so far. I mean, if you look at these targets, these are midterm targets. If you talk about midterm targets, we think three, maybe five years. Three to five years, and on an organic basis. First of all, having this in mind, this development to these targets, we clearly see as a commitment to performance. This is the one. If we are more, let's say, qualitative on the cash flow side, it's simply because we cannot be precise. We have our own ideas, but it doesn't make sense. It has something to do with the market development, with CapEx development and things like this. This is how we see and look at it.
Okay. Understood. Eventually when you look at the framework for the moment, you're saying the 4%-6% EBIT margin midterm and a positive free cash flow. Can you walk us through a kind of a bridge? The main cash needs components you're seeing for the next couple of years in terms of you know cash taxes a rough bucket for CapEx and so on.
I mean, as I said before, I think we had this question now. At the moment we are spending CapEx under 60% of depreciation. Of course, this is the main bucket. If you consider net working capital in a growing market, in a growing company, you always have something on it. Even if you let's say increase your or enhance your working capital management. This is of course something. At the moment we are paying for pensions, you know this.
This is something, let's say, in the midterm after we worked on our portfolio, we will also have a plan how to deal with this on our balance sheet. At the moment it is a cash out, but of course this cash out is going to be, let's say, lower in the future. These are, and of course the buckets you also know, is tax payments and interest payments. This is also clear.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I think with that, we've come to the end of the Q&A session. Martina, you could now take over for your final comments for today.
Thank you, Claus, and thanks a lot to all of you. Thanks to our business CEOs for taking us on their transformation journeys and for granting us interesting insights into their transformation stories and strategies. Thanks to the audience for your attention and for your spot on questions. I really appreciate the discussion and Q&A session we had. I do hope we were able to convey today our comprehensive transformation journey.
We have proven in the past two years that we have a clear plan and we are able to execute. This is possible thanks to close alignment between owners and leadership teams. We are all fully focused and pulling in the same direction. We are about halfway through our transformation to sustained value creation. We, and I personally, are fully committed to the next round to achieve benchmark performance and returns.
Returns has three dimensions. Sustainable free cash flow, value generation, and dividend payment. The foundations for this are in place now, a focused and future-proof business portfolio with a strong technology core and digital competence. This is a powerful base for profitable growth. I thank you very much for your participation and wish you all the best and a good end of the year. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
On behalf of all of us, of course. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Martina. I would like to also express a few thanks. First, of course, to the audience. Thank you very much for joining our Capital Market Day today. Also thank you for the very active participation which made the Capital Market Day more lively. An interactive style is surely more exciting than in other ways, so thank you for that.
I would also like to thank all the teams who are here internally who made it happen that we could make this Capital Market Day. The teams in the segments leadership teams, and of course also their teams and here in the corporate center.
Finally, last but not least, definitely I would like to thank my team, which did an outstanding job here in preparing the Capital Market Day and going through all these activities that we currently have which we also will have in front of us then going into the next fiscal year. Great job, guys. Great. Thank you. We look forward to staying in touch with you all out there. Bye-bye and see you next time.