Welcome to Cargotec's Capital Market Days 2024. My name is Aki Vesikallio. I'm from Investor Relations. I'm delighted to see so many of you attending the event in person. I also want to warmly welcome everybody who is following this session online. A lot has happened in Cargotec since our previous CMD in 2022, and this time we will actually host two events. Today, the focus will be on Hiab, and tomorrow on Kalmar. Both are planned to be standalone businesses in the future. Before we start the event, I would like to walk you through a couple of practicalities. Safety is our top priority. In the case of an emergency, you can find the closest exits there and there behind the curtain. Please also pay attention to the disclaimers in the presentation, as we will be making forward-looking statements. Then to the agenda.
We will start a brief introduction with Cargotec's CEO, Casimir Lindholm. We will then give the stage to the President of Hiab, Scott Phillips. Scott will present to you how Hiab is lifting the productivity for essential industries. After that, there will be a deep, three deep dive sessions, a summary, and a joint Hiab Q&A session. The online audience can post questions already during the presentations, and for the physical audience, we have microphones here. There will be also a short, separate Q&A after Casimir's presentation. But now, it's time to give the stage to Casimir. With that, over to you.
Thank you, Aki. Thanks for the introduction, and also very welcome from my behalf to the audience here in Helsinki, and those who are joining us virtually. So I will shortly present where we are regarding the partial demerger, what we have done since the announcement, twenty-seventh of April, last year. I joined as CEO first of April last year, and then three weeks, four weeks later, we announced the partial demerger. And since then, of course, a lot has happened, and I will shortly go through what we have been focusing on and what kind of results it has given. So all in all, in 2023, we were focusing on business performance.
Of course, that is the key and the foundation for any company, and really happy to see in 2023, both Hiab, Kalmar, and MacGregor were all performing on a good level. So that was, of course, key for the whole change to give the confidence into the market that all three businesses can perform at the same time. Another focus area was, of course, the turnaround of MacGregor. And MacGregor has now performed four quarters in a row on a good level, and we can clearly see that the main businesses, merchant and service, is already now on a roughly 10% OP level.
We have been focusing a lot in turning around the offshore, and also there we have seen progress, and I will come back to that a bit later on. Then, we started internally the project early May last year, preparing the separation of Kalmar and Hiab, and then, of course, focusing first on Kalmar. Roughly 200 people have been working since then, every day, in securing the transformation of Cargotec and gradually moving towards the partial demerger of Kalmar that is now planned for the first of July. The main focus areas in the separation has been IM stream, roughly 100 people working there, and of course, the listing readiness for Kalmar has also consumed its part of our attention.
So now we have come quite a long way, and we are some weeks ahead of the Kalmar listing and separation. We focused also on delivering the strong order backlog that we had from 2021 and 2022, and we have been successful doing so, both in Hiab and Kalmar. We have also continued to invest in the future, for example, in the electrified versions of our products in Kalmar or in many new entries to the market with new solutions in Hiab. At the same time, we have bringing down the cost structure. We announced as part of Q3 last year, we're gonna take down the cost structure by roughly EUR 50 million, plus another EUR 10 million in MacGregor.
As part of Q1, we announced that we are increasing the bar, and we're actually delivering 60 + 10 in MacGregor. So that has been also part of the transition. That includes, of course, bringing down Cargotec from a conglomerate structure into a holding company mode. We have also been successfully in delivering increasing order backlog in MacGregor, then mainly in the merchant and service segments. The market is supporting MacGregor for the time being, and that's of course helped also in the turnaround as such t he most challenging area has been MacGregor Offshore restructuring. So we have restructured that business to a minimum. We have today in offshore below EUR 90 million left of order backlog.
That is less than 10% of the order backlog, all in all in MacGregor. And out of that, EUR 50 million is healthy business. We have some tens of millions still in old projects that are of the character of pilot projects. Then again, like mentioned here in the early stages, we have been focusing very hard on preparing the partial demerger, and I think we have been successful internally here. And of course, at the end, we can see the results when Kalmar goes on its own. All in all, all these efforts done internally resulted in 2023 in a record comparable operating profit and cash flow for Cargotec, a very strong signal to the market. Of course, the turnaround of MacGregor is we have clear evidence of that, and we have a positive outlook for MacGregor.
And again, last but not least, the whole demerger project internally has been delivering. This can also be seen in the external world, and the share price is up 80% since first of April last year. So we have gradually now for five quarters in a row performed on a good and healthy level, and I think that has given the market confidence that also Cargotec can be a double-digit OP company, even if in a slower market. So that's a very good and clear message to the market. On top of that, the board has proposed a record-high dividend to the AGM. We have the AGM on Thursday of EUR 2.15 a share.
The announcement back in April 2023, that we're gonna investigate and initiate the process to potentially separate its core, Kalmar and Hiab. Now we are quite far into that process, and the way we had planned it now is that Kalmar goes on its own on first of July, and we are actually, and have today announced that we're gonna start the sales process of MacGregor. At the same time, Cargotec is now in a holding company mode, and then during the latter part of 2024 and early 2025, we'll bring down Cargotec to an absolute minimum. At the end of the day, we have a Cargotec closing of the books in February 2025. Then if everything goes according to plan, we have a final AGM for Cargotec in March 2025.
The announcement of the name change that came last night is of course then planned in a stage where all these three things have happened, and then Hiab takes Cargotec's place as stock listed company in Helsinki. So all this needs to materialize before that happens. So what was the rationale when the board decided to go on this path? I think there are a lot of logical, also next steps to be taken by Kalmar and Hiab going forward. We clearly saw that there was a shareholder potential that wasn't shown in the conglomerate, and I think we have shown that the decision to separate the companies has been the right one. Of course, there's already now an increased attractiveness towards Kalmar and Hiab when they go standalone companies.
Both, if you are looking for talent and recruitment processes today, we can clearly see that Hiab and Kalmar is attracting talent in another way, compared to when they were separate divisions under the Cargotec umbrella. It also allows for faster growth. The companies will, in the future, not compete about the same resources being financial resources or attention from board management and so forth. And at the same time, I think there's clear potential in Kalmar and Hiab going forward to simplify processes, systems, and to specialize everything around one business and become more faster, more agile in the future. At the end of the day, it also simplifies a lot the governance that we have today in Cargotec.
As you have seen, Kalmar, as a standalone company, will have a nomination board, a normal board of directors, and so forth. So that is a simplified governance structure, and of course, a board that focuses fully on one business. And similarly then for Hiab in the future. At the end of the day, as announced, more than a year ago, we'll have two separate stock listed companies in Helsinki, in Kalmar and Hiab, and today we announced that we're gonna start the sales process of MacGregor and finding a solution for MacGregor. So no changes here. So in 2024, what are we now focusing on? Well, continue the strong business performance that we have shown over the last five quarters. That is, of course, key.
It is, of course, a bit softer market that compared to 2021 and 2022, that is, that is clear, but we have actions to balance that out, and we have shown that also in the first quarter. Of course, completion of separation of Kalmar 1st of July, and that's an item on the agenda on the AGM on Thursday. But internally, of course, we are preparing the last things to have the separation in place 1st of July. And then in the second half of 2024, as said before, focusing on finding a solution for MacGregor. These are the top priorities for 2024. And the efforts and the results in 2023, and then if in the first quarter 2024, has given Cargotec a very strong financial position.
Cash of EUR 458 million, we have a very low net debt, a gearing of 3%. So both companies, when they go on their own, will have a very, very strong balance sheet. So that is, of course, clearly also a very strong, strong message to the market. You will today then hear a lot more about Hiab and tomorrow a lot more about Kalmar. And of course, opening it up like this, the way we do today and tomorrow gives totally different transparency to investors, owners, analysts, when we go into the deep dives into the divisions within Hiab and Kalmar.
That is also one of the strong points on the agenda here, that increasing the transparency of what is the business that these companies are in, what is the market position, what are the activities for the next strategy period, and how is Hiab and Kalmar going to deliver on the targets that we have announced, well, last night for Hiab and last week for Kalmar? And then last but not least, we announced last night that keeping in mind that we have finding a solution for MacGregor here, we need to bring Cargotec down from a holding company model, even to a minimum. And then at the end, Hiab would take Cargotec's role as a stock listed company in Helsinki.
All these things in place, happening according to plan, then I'm really happy to present that if and when that happens, Scott Phillips, today President of Hiab, and has been running Hiab in a very successful way over the last years, will continue in that role and is the CEO-to-be of Hiab. And similarly, Mikko Puolakka, CFO Cargotec today, really happy to see that Mikko will continue in his role.
Actually, legally, it's the same company that continues, so Mikko is just continuing his current role, but the brand and the company changes to Hiab from Cargotec. And of course, that's also a really strong message to the market, that we have very experienced CFO in place in Mikko Puolakka for Hiab going forward. And also, of course, internally strong message that we have leadership in place for Hiab. That was a short introduction, and then we open up for any questions that you might have.
Thank you, Casimir. Let's open up for a short, brief 5-minute Q&A focusing on, on Casimir's presentation. As a reminder, we will then have a joint Hiab Q&A after Hiab presentations. We will hand over the microphone for those who are ready for the questions. There we have Erkki. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Erkki from Inderes. Just regarding MacGregor, could you give us any kind of, or shed some light on where we stand in the process? Do you already have a kind of a shortlist of potential buyers, and what are the next steps?
Well, we announced today that we're starting the sales process, and we have communicated earlier that during this second quarter we'll start. We have now 4 quarters in a row with stable and good results, so of course, there has been interest in the market when the market has seen that there's a turnaround happening. Last year, merchant and service together were 10% OP level, and still losses in offshore, taking out roughly half of the profits. We ended up on a +EUR 30 million OP level.
Then the first quarter, again, strong message, 11% OP in service and merchant, which is the core business. Then we're gradually delivering on the old order backlog in offshore in these pilot projects that have been loss-making. So, yes, there is a long list in place, and we start the marketing and the activities next year, next week. And, the second half of 2024 is what we're targeting for having a solution in place for MacGregor.
The schedule looks a little bit tight, so you don't deem that there could be any differences in terms of valuing MacGregor between the seller and buyer?
I think a year ago we had a different gap compared to where we are today. I mean, analyst view on the value of MacGregor more than a year ago was anything between EUR 0 and EUR 200. Now I think it's up somewhere between EUR 300 and EUR 500, looking at the analyst point of view, and some even higher. So let's see what the real market value is, but the target still have a signing in place during 2024.
Okay, thank you.
Take the next, next question, please.
Yeah, this is Tom Skogman from Carnegie. I just wonder about these internal costs in Cargotec, and, you know, also with this in relation to the new margin targets. When you talk about, you know, higher margin targets, I assume that will include their own kind of internal cost pool, so we don't avoid mistakes in understanding the targets.
Yeah, last week, I mean, the Kalmar long-term targets are 15% OP, and that includes the standalone costs. For Hiab announced last night, the 18 is still, as a division, those targets, the 18. So, then when Hiab goes on its own, that's of course, the next time when it makes sense to update those targets, if relevant.
The numbers we should expect, you know, for 2025 and 2026 in these overhead costs for Kalmar and Hiab?
Well, we have said that anything between 1% and 2% overhead, as standalone companies, and that's pretty typical, for any stock-listed company. Most of the companies are hovering between 1% and 2% on standalone cost, as stock-listed companies. So again, and in Kalmar, that is included in the 15% target.
Thank you. We have time for one final question. Seems quiet, so I thank Casimir for his presentation and for the questions.
Thank you.
Now it's time to switch focus on Hiab. Hiab has been one of the fastest growing Nordic industrials in the past decade. Today, we have a great opportunity to learn more about this business. I would like next to welcome on the stage, President of Hiab, Scott Phillips.
Thank you, Aki, and welcome everyone, both here in Helsinki and those of you that are joining via the global webcast. I'm Scott Phillips, Hiab President, and I'm delighted today to put the spotlight on Hiab. I'm delighted to be able to share with you the essence of our business, and it starts with we have an 80-year heritage as of this year. That's based on always being a first mover innovator in the industry, building a reputation for our products and our customer service that's second to none, but it's a lot more than that. We serve markets with attractive structural characteristics, essential industries, and applications with no great level of cyclicality. We target niche markets, yet at scale, anywhere from EUR 500 million to EUR 5 billion in addressable market. Yet they require a high level of technology, as well as life cycle support.
What's unique about us is our positions in the market with our direct proximity to customers, and that enables us to have deep understanding of their application and operations and their key challenges. It's our ability to translate those into innovations that we tend to bring to the market first, and that's at the heart of our reputation. All of which is enabled by our true differentiator, and that's our people. With their passion for each other and for the customers, really to make it happen. That explains this unique attachment between our customers and our products. I wanna open with a few highlights of the key messages that I aim for you all to take away today. Our results are good. We've been growing our profitability, but we can be so much better, and the potential is very exciting.
We're positioned to grow faster than the market, as you'll hear, and highlighted in our six investment highlights. Based on at least three factors, we know how to grow in global market segments, and we'll highlight some of those for you today. We know we can expand our leading position in North America, and we also know that we can accelerate our services growth through our installed base. Moreover, you will also hear today how we plan to drive productivity gains every year through our operating model and through our business excellence or operational excellence. It all adds up to an attractive financial profile and the potential to outperform. That's the essence of Hiab, and that's what we wanna get across to you all today. Today is a lot more than that. It's also about seeing more of our senior team.
So for me, I've been president of Hiab for the last 5.5 years, and as I think about it, what I really love about this position that I've held in the business is, first and foremost, I'm really proud of the team that I lead. They are talented, passionate leaders that manage the balance between making fact-based decisions, but leading from the heart. That truly inspires people and our customers. I'm proud of the step change that we've made in bringing new innovations to the market, all the while being remarkably resilient in delivering good results, especially during these times of hyper uncertainty, with our focus on operational excellence. And finally, I remain energized and motivated by the fact that we can be so much better.
So speaking of the team that you're gonna hear from today, first, you'll hear from Barry McGrane, who came to us as a result of an acquisition of the Moffett business as an engineering manager. Post-acquisition, he played a key role in exponentially growing the world's leading truck mount and forklift offering. And after he did all that, we decided to send Barry to the US to lead our North American Commercial Support Center or Customer Support Center, where he led a remarkable turnaround of the business and helped us to deliver the scope that we enjoy today, but also create a step change, improvement, and safety. And most recently, he's done a brilliant job in leading the light-medium loader crane business to be one of our real star performers in the portfolio. And after Barry, you'll hear from Michael Berns.
Now, Michal has been a real transformative leader of services business as well as other businesses in companies like Atlas Copco, Sandvik, and then fortunately, for the last 4 years here in Hiab. And he's one of the real thought leaders in any industry with regard to aftermarket services, so really pleased that you'll hear from him as well. And then MagDalena Wojtowicz, she'll wrap up our investment highlights, and she has been one of the most impactful leaders in Cargotec her entire career. She helped us to transform how we manage supply chain, sourcing, services in Kalmar. And fortunately, for the past couple of years, she has brilliantly led a turnaround in our tail lift business, which she'll tell you more about in detail in her section. And each of them will give you more details about their background.
So now, please allow me to more thoroughly introduce you to Hiab. Now, as you can tell, I'm really proud to lead this great organization and our team, proud to represent our total stakeholder group, and in guiding you through the first section to help everyone understand why we think we're a great investment choice now, with significant upside potential. So first, let's give you a snapshot of our business by showing you a video that will help explain how Hiab helps to keep everyday life moving to build a better tomorrow.
Every day, every hour, every minute, we lift and deliver goods essential to daily life for billions of people. To the untrained eye, it may appear to move effortlessly, almost like being guided by an invisible hand. We are that invisible hand, relentlessly progressing, pioneering, and optimizing flows in every part of society, easier, safer, and more sustainable. Step by step, lift by lift, delivery by delivery, we touch all of the daily essentials playing our part in the very essence of development and growth. Safely saving minutes for our customers in billions of lifts and deliveries every day in every corner of the world, without missing a beat.
Automating and connecting, maintaining and servicing, continuously improving our customers' productivity. With 80 years of pioneering, we have a long history of firsts, innovations transforming the load handling industry, keeping our customers and partners at the forefront. In essence, we enable industry's core operations, making us collectively more resilient and stronger. We keep pushing the boundaries for the benefit of society, customers, and us, today and tomorrow, creating a better world, a world where every lift matters and every delivery counts. We are Hiab.
Hopefully, that shed a little bit of light in the role we play and, and why we refer to our industries as essential. So moving into, guiding you through, where are we today? So Hiab ended last year in a strong financial position, ahead of all 10-year averages, with the exception of cash conversion. We had a record year of revenues, as Casimir alluded to earlier, resulting in a 14.1% return, and those good earnings resulted in a return on capital employed over 30%, so well within our target range. It's important to note that our sales mix was 53% Europe, 39% North America or the Americas. North America was up, South America down slightly, 8% Asia Pacific. Services accounted for 25% of the sales as a result of the nice execution in converting the equipment backlog.
So we start 2024 with strong foundation of performance, supported by top positions in all our market segments. So let's take a closer look at those market segments. During COVID, we learned just how essential our customers' businesses are to everyday life for all of us. As you got a short glimpse of in the video, and each of these 10 segments that are on the slide in front of you play a critical role in how we live our everyday life. And in fact, if you look around you, no matter if you're joining online or here in Helsinki, nearly everything you can see, feel, and touch was delivered by a Hiab solution or some other method.
Some key points I'd like for you to take away relative to our segment exposure are the following: The diversity in our segment exposures that we serve enables us to be resilient through the economic cycles. Secondly, each segment or load handling application does have its own unique challenges and key problem statements. Opportunity to be a differentiator. Three, at the same time, however, they all have a common element of challenges around safety, efficiency improvements and lifecycle services that are necessary, and why? That's to ensure uptime. And then that finally represents further opportunities for us to grow into new segments, leveraging our capabilities, which I'll come back to in the summary section. So the need of our customers to find solutions that saves them time safely while receiving service support that secures uptime of the equipment, that's the common thread that binds us to our customers.
So let's take a closer look at our customer segments that we serve or the customers we serve. Now, as I mentioned earlier, we do have this special connection to our customers. It's a consequence of our people and the passion that they show and demonstrate for the business and for our customers' businesses, which we seek to amplify through our direct sales, as well as through our global network of dealers and distributors. As you look through the two graphs, about two-thirds of our sales, if you add up the construction, infrastructure, other logistics, that makes up two-thirds of our sales. Adding rental, waste and recycling, and resources takes us to about 80% of our sales. As we communicated in the 2022 Capital Markets Day, roughly half of the construction exposure is a consequence of repair and renovation on the installed base.
We quite like this exposure. It is important, as you can see, the diversity in our customer base, that we have the correct service offering for all customer types. As we have the low concentration of sales with our top customers and thousands of customers that follow that we serve. Michael will come back and elaborate on how we're set up from the service side to support that diverse customer base. In order to continue to grow and improve upon our customer satisfaction, which has gone up by 75% in the last five years, we know we must continue to be innovative in developing the offering of the future and stay true to our heritage of being a first-mover innovator. Let's take a more detailed look into the offering that we proudly provide to the various industries and customers that we serve.
Broadly, we offer three categories of solutions, all of which are part of an integrated truck, chassis, and cabin arrangement. That's important to note when thinking about our supply chain, and these are highlighted in red, the Hiab solutions. So the first category, our lifting solutions, covers the full spectrum of our loader crane offering, serving various industries. Our delivery solutions make up the second category. That covers our truck mounted forklifts, our demountables, as well as our tail lift brands. And then, of course, finally, our services offering, including our digital solutions, which we'll elaborate more details later, is under the HiPerform brand. So speaking of brands, we have a few that have carved out a permanent place in the history of on-road load handling. So let's take a closer look into that.
Now, one of the most remarkable aspects of our company, and that's truly unique from a personal perspective, is the fact that we have, in our heritage, been built to perform through a number of industry first, which have defined the equipment utilized for that industry. So what do I mean by that? So, often, when customers order a loader crane or a truck-mounted forklift, or a Loglift loader crane, they will often refer to ordering a Hiab, a Moffett, or a Loglift, agnostic of the brand that they are intending to purchase. That's a compelling advantage, which has enabled us to carve out a unique place in leading the industry as a first mover innovator.
Proudly, we have continued to stay true to our propensity to innovate first into our Eco portfolio, as we are clearly at the forefront of helping our customers manage the energy transition. Hiab has established a number of firsts in the industry with regards to our Eco portfolio. We are the first with a fully battery electric truck-mounted forklift offering. We're years ahead. We are the first with electric power takeoff for loader cranes. We're on our third generation. We're the first in the industry with solar charging with tail lifts, and the first to have a fully carbon-free method of training and certifying operators with our HiSkill virtual reality training and operating solutions. So yeah, we're, we're proud of the impact our solutions have had in reducing the overall carbon footprint.
In terms of numbers, last year, 30% of our sales were from this eco-portfolio, which resulted in a 15% reduction in the CO2 footprint or intensity year-over-year. So taking a deeper look into the operations that provide these solutions, we believe the way that we have designed our global network and footprint provides a competitive advantage for Hiab and secures a sustainable advantage for our customers and our shareholders. And this is why: Our global network of direct and indirect sales and services, it enables two important factors for that our customers experience. One, it enables global leverage of knowledge and capability, whilst at the same time, it also enables local service excellence. That's critical.
Secondarily, our asset-light footprint, co-located in many of the countries in which we sell in across all three major regions, enables us to be flexible and resilient in both our cost as well as our capacity, which played to our advantage over the past three years. Together, these attributes secures our ability to invest in continuous improvement in all cycles. Now, on the graph, the slide on the graph, the countries highlighted in red denote our own operations. Those in peach, at least that's the color I'm calling it, denote our partners' footprint, and then those that are in gray represents opportunities for us in the future to consider to cover those territories as well. So we are both geared to grow profitably with our asset-light global network, and at the same time, we have prudent downside risk due to the asset-light approach we have taken to design this network.
So let's take a bit closer look at how we've performed over the past decade, as we did come from a period that many of you remember of underperformance following the global financial crisis up until 2012, 2013. As Casimir stated, we are proud now that we have one of the strongest profiles of growth and earnings amongst all Nordic industrial companies over the past 9 years. Our 10-year CAGR has been more than 7%, which has allowed us to nearly double the revenues. Now, with the structural changes that we made to address the underperformance between 2013 and 2016, combined with the focus on building up operational excellence capability in the last 5 years, we've been able to maintain solid double-digit operating profit, even during these tough COVID years.
So this track record of consistency, it does give us confidence that we can continue to deliver incremental improvements on this profile over the next 5 years. We have to make some changes, which we will share with you later today in our investment highlights from Barry, Mikko, and Magdalena. So allow me to set this up for you first by turning your attention to the markets and the business factors that have enabled this past performance and sets us up quite nicely for our future performance. There we go. So we have attractive end markets with solid underlying drivers, combined with Hiab's winning formula, and it will enable us to help our customers to both grow and win in the future, and that will enable Hiab to grow profitably.
Now, when looking at the markets, our macroeconomic factors that drive our markets, our growth and output and consumer behavior, those are really the two key factors linked very much to GDP. Then looking more broadly, climate change and this necessary energy transformation will also drive incremental demand. Then looking deeper into the businesses, there are critical microeconomic factors that makes innovation and differentiation a must or an opportunity, and they are safety, the need for increased productivity in terms of reduced time to deliver at a lower cost point. Our customers, both in Europe and North America, and Barry will elaborate on this point a bit more, have the challenge of too few qualified operators. That's a golden opportunity for us to help them solve that, and there's, of course, the need and challenge to reduce the overall CO2 footprint.
So while it is important to note the market drivers, that isn't the whole story, and so I wanna draw your attention then to the far, I think, left-hand side of the slide, or right-hand side of the slide for all of you viewing. We believe our ability to translate insights into solutions as part of our winning formula provides a strong case for why we believe we can continue to grow faster than the market. Let's take a deeper look into that statement. Now, often, when asked what makes Hiab successful or what do you need to do to be successful, I often respond by saying it's largely a consequence of the partnership and the relationships between our people and our customers that has, over time, led to what we call our winning formula for lifting the safety and productivity of our customers.
Now, the first variable is basic but critical, and it starts with the necessity to have deep understanding of the key problems and challenges faced by our customers, as well as the operators of the equipment. As I mentioned before, there are common factors, both around safe operations and productivity, but also just how to solve this challenge of moving complex, heavy loads, often under difficult load conditions, and at a lower cost to enable our customers to grow and be successful, as well as enabling the operators to do it successfully, easily and safely. But then you also must have the ability to translate these insights into equipment solutions that deliver superior physics-based outcomes, and this is the essence of what our equipment does in order to move heavy, asymmetrical loads, often over variable, rough terrain.
In order to do so, our engineering, our engineered designs, they lead to faster, easier movements under high load conditions, and this is the magic in our control system that you will hear from our customers later today. It leads to more tons moved over less time, which lowers cost, which leads to better productivity and efficiency. Then you also have to be able to provide excellent service for the equipment to maintain our customers' satisfaction, as well as their competitiveness. Why that is, as I said earlier, it's because our customers require maximum uptime. Every second, every load move counts, and they're willing to invest in better equipment utilization through data-driven insights. But they also need a supplier that can grow their service network commensurate with their own ambitions to grow the top line through organic growth, as well as geographic expansion.
So these capability variables aren't the whole story. They are, in our case, exponentially impacted by two key factors that are unique to us at this point in time. Always, one, our people and the passion for which they have, that you'll hear about from our leaders and through our customers, as well as the data-driven insights from our connected fleet that Barry and Michael will expand upon later. And this winning formula, it really is inherent to the DNA of Hiab, and it's what sets us apart, and it is what will enable us to help our customers to win the future. So let me wrap up this introduction section, by telling you or expanding more broadly on what this will mean in terms of business outcomes.
So we have a real chance in this strategy period to go from a good-performing company to a great-performing business, as we can improve upon how we run the business. In the next section of investment highlights, we will tell you how we intend to continue to outperform the market. We target to continue on a 7% growth over the cycle, improving on our relative profitability from last year, from 14.1% to 18%, while maintaining a greater than 25% return on capital employed. We are passionate about remaining a Science Based Targets initiative company with regards to sustainability. We believe this profile puts Hiab in a category of being an excellent-performing company amongst all industrials. That's what we target. Thank you all for your attention, and now we turn our attention to the future, and I'll turn it back over to you, Aki.
Thank you, Scott. Scott will come back later to the stage and summarize our future growth strategy. But now, as Scott said, it's time for the deep dive that focus on our investment highlights. Our next speaker, Barry McCraine, will guide you through our growth strategy in selected key segments in North America, and how we will continue to innovate to shape the essential industries we serve. Barry, please go ahead.
Thank you, Aki. Hello, everyone, and a very warm welcome from my side also, and I'm delighted to be with you all here this afternoon. My name is Barry McGrane, and for the past 3.5 years now, I have headed up our Loader Crane Light and Medium division, and I also lead our innovation excellence and technology platform programs for Hiab. I have been with the company now for over 20 years, with a range of experience, starting off with our truck-mounted forklift business, initially holding various roles in engineering and R&D. And then I moved across to the commercial side of the business, where I had responsibility for global sales and product management. In this role, I was part of the leadership team, where we doubled the size of the business in a 4-year period.
After that then, I went to the U.S. for three years, where I had responsibility for sales and frontline service operations, and during that era, we successfully grew the business and increased our EBIT by over 50%. So quite often people ask me: "So what is it that keeps you at Hiab all of these years?" But for me, it's been part of the best and most innovative products in this industry, but also the opportunity to work alongside some really great people who make all of this happen for Hiab. So I'm really proud to be part of this organization. Today, I'm here to talk to you about how we are the leader in the markets where we choose to operate.
That we have a clear strategy now to continue to grow over 7% over the cycle, and we will do this by focusing on key segments globally. We'll also be expanding our leading position in North America, and I'll also talk to you around how we will double our R&D investments to continue to shape this industry. But before I go into that, I want to start off with some background and explanation on the size of the market and how we are positioned today. The equipment market that we choose to play in is approximately EUR 4.5 billion, and this same market has grown by approximately EUR 1 billion in the past five years.
As Scott mentioned earlier, we specifically select niche markets to operate in, which are chosen based on what we feel provide prime opportunities for us to leverage our customer requirements for safety, productivity, sustainability, along with the high need for life cycle services. This means we are selective about what markets we enter, and that they provide the profitable growth that we seek for. In those same markets, we have a strong position, where we are either number one or number two. It's important to note, to be successful in this particular space, the customer requirements that I just mentioned require advanced solutions, combined with a broad portfolio of products, both of which we have today. What you can see here is a very attractive market with a high barrier for entry. Hiab has provided itself with a great platform to grow even further.
If you look at the previous number of years and how our customers see us, we are seen as the brand leader. We are also seen as the innovation leader. We have a high net promoter score with our customers, and we have a very strong global service footprint. In the past 10 years, we have delivered over 350,000 pieces of equipment, and as the replacement cycle is somewhere between 8 and 10 years, the majority of that will become prime for replacement in the coming years. So we have all of the key ingredients to continue to grow in line with the market. Therefore, we have established this very strong platform to grow from.
Then, when you look at our next strategy phase, we will place additional investments to grow at a minimum of 7% over the cycle, with 3 key growth levers. So as I mentioned, we will be focusing on specific segments globally, expanding in the North American market, accelerating our growth services, which Mikko will talk to you in a little while. But we have also one key enabler which supports all three of these, and that is innovation and sustainability, and I will talk you through what our plans are with regard to increasing our R&D investments. So now we have a clear plan on how we will focus on selected segments globally. Overall, we will be targeting a wide range of segments, but we have selected 4, where we have put specific investments in place to increase our penetration into each one.
The four that we have selected are waste and recycling, defense logistics, retail and last mile, and construction. The rationale for selecting these particular four segments is that they all offer significant growth potential. Most of them, especially waste and recycling and retail and last mile, are fast-growing, with CAGRs well above 7% and we have proven success in each of these segments. All four have industry challenges that will drive the demand, and some of these are the global transition towards urbanization, where the drive to dense locations lends itself very well to our types of solutions. Operator shortage, and where we know of a shortage of at least 1 million truck drivers between the North American and the European markets. So our customers are in turn coming to us looking for help for training, onboarding, and ease-of-use solutions. Productivity requirements are becoming more important.
The cost of fleets are increasing, and again, our customers are coming to us for help. Safety awareness was once typically only highlighted by our fleet customers, but now it's across our entire customer base. Sustainability challenges. We now know of at least 100 cities are moving to zero-emission zones by the end of next year. And e-commerce. E-commerce continues to grow at a fast pace. Today, we currently have a deep understanding of of those challenges, and how they, in turn, impact our customers, and what we need to do to help solve for those challenges. So there are two key enablers to drive this initiative. The first one will be on new product development. We will be focusing on segment-specific innovations. For example, we will launch a whole new range of recycling cranes in the next 12-18 months.
With our new control systems, it provides a platform to continue to further develop features, focusing on safety and productivity, and we will also continue expanding on our Eco portfolio. The second one, then, is on value selling. Here, about two years ago, we started to build our commercial excellence capabilities, and Magda will talk more to this one later on. But within that, we established our value selling program, and this is extremely important for us now, especially in this next phase. Value selling is a different way of selling and engaging with our customers. It's about helping our customers to better understand what is the right product in order for them to realize the outcomes that they are seeking for. And then it also, in turn, informs us how to better link the pricing to the value for our customers.
But we will do this with using specific techniques and tools, and I have one very good example for you. We have developed value calculators for both of our electrified truck-mounted forklifts and our electrified loader crane ranges, where here we developed an online portal that the customer themselves can use. In there, they can, for example, enter in what their fuel costs per liter are, their electricity costs per kilowatt, the number of lifts they do per day, the number of deliveries they do per day, and then also the truck make and model, and so on. There, they can calculate the exact running cost comparison between the conventional solution and the electrified solution. They can see what the exact payback period looks like, and importantly, that it's all based on our own data. They can also see what the CO2 reduction will look like.
So here we are turning features to benefits, and benefits to the exact euro savings for our customers. So we've got the right products, we've got the right know-how, and we've got the tools to succeed in these four segments. So our second growth lever is expanding our position in the North American region, and this is a market I personally know very well from my time based in the U.S. Today, this is currently EUR 650 million of sales for us, and we are very excited about the additional potential in this region. This is also a market that has seen strong development in recent years and is both robust and attractive.
So whilst the adoption of our type of advanced load-handling products is already at a good level, we would say, in North America, it is still perhaps a step behind the penetration that we have typically seen in our European markets. But the North American market is evolving, and so too are the industry challenges that our customers face. Their requirements for increased productivity, improved safety, and solving for those operator shortages is increasing now all the time. So we have a number of initiatives now that we will focus on to expand our position here. The segments drive that I mentioned a moment ago will also apply for North America, but particularly on the defense logistics, the retail and last mile, and also construction. But beyond that, we've three additional enablers to drive our growth plans. The first one will be involving leveraging our commercial excellence capabilities.
We have identified a significant opportunity to increase our share of wallet with our, with our key accounts. In a minute, I will show you a really great example of one of our U.S. customers and how we built a partnership based on being a full end-to-end solution provider for all of their needs with a full portfolio of products, total care services, and digitalized solutions. So our plan now is to leverage this across both current and new customers to increase market share. Traditional lifting methods, such as stiff boom cranes and mobile cranes, are still prominent in North America, where they are often recognized as being lower cost and easier to operate.
We will target this segment to convert that customer base towards the knuckle boom crane solution, where versatility, productivity, and ease of use are, in fact, a better solution, and we have the data to prove that. Secondly is getting closer to our customers, where here we've identified a number of white spots in both our distribution and service coverage, but especially on the West Coast of the U.S. We have a twofold approach to improving this. We will be expanding our direct sales and service network, and secondly, we will be recruiting and developing a full new dealer and partner network, and this will vastly improve our proximity to our customer base. Number three, then, is leveraging on our local footprint. So here in recent years, we have increased our local manufacturing footprint, with the acquisition of Galfab has been one example.
But more recently than, with the setting up of the manufacturing of our truck-mounted forklift products in Ohio. This means we have local production of nearly our entire portfolio for the North American market. This, in turn, allows us to have and provide faster reaction times for our customers and best-in-class delivery times. We are also uniquely positioned by having local R&D centers serving the local market, which is particularly important for the U.S. customer base. So as you can see here, we've got clear and comprehensive plans in place to significantly expand our position in this region. I mentioned a minute ago that we will be expanding our presence in, into key accounts. But I'd like to show you now a little bit more about a U.S. customer called ABC Supply.
ABC Supply are the world's largest supplier of roofing and drywall products and are one of our largest key account customers. This, for me, is one of the most impressive companies that I have come across in my career. You will hear from a gentleman called Mike Boggs, where he has got the overall responsibility of their entire fleet. For me, ABC Supply is the true essence of a partnership between two businesses that we strive to build every day. But let's hear what they have to say.
We have over 1,000 locations across the U.S. and Canada. We are unique in that we are a service delivery solution provider and not just a building material supplier. It is our world-class delivery service that sets us apart and has allowed us to grow to where we are today. With that level of expectation from our own customers, it is critical that we use premium load handling equipment as part of our over 18,000 pieces of equipment. We have been a partner with Hiab for decades. Hiab is a very unique vendor for us since they not only engineer and make the products, they also assemble our units with the chassis to our unique specifications.
Hiab has a truly impressive engineering group that has made many improvements specific to our operating initiatives. For a company like ABC, we rely on close collaboration with key suppliers and partners who also strive to develop and innovate. Hiab innovates based on a genuine understanding of what is important to us. At ABC Supply, we carefully select who we do business with, and Hiab meets all of our expectations and beyond.
Yeah. The video that you have just seen from ABC Supply is just one example. We now plan to extend this right across our customer base. This last section from me is to highlight a significant enabler, which is heavily linked to all three of our growth levers. In the next 4-5 years, we will double our R&D investment, and we will do this by redirecting costs from admin and or other overheads towards both sales and marketing, but also towards R&D, by improving and applying lean principles across our global processes and operations. Today, Hiab is well recognized as an innovation first mover in this industry, and a key part of that success has been our outside-in approach on how we engage with our customers, keeping them at the center of the innovation process.
In the past few years, we've accelerated our product development initiatives, and if you look back at the previous 24 months, we have launched over 170 new models, and this year we'll launch 70 more. But we need to go a step further now in order to capture the large opportunity that our future growth levers present to us linking back to our customer challenges of the productivity, the safety, operator shortage, and sustainability, we will also now change how we invest within the different elements in R&D. Therefore, we will significantly increase our spending in three particular areas. Firstly, will be in our control systems, and with our new SPACEevo platform, we will develop more advanced features aimed towards improving safety. We will also continue to develop semi-automated motion of the equipment with machine learning, which further improves productivity and ease of use.
Secondly, is on digitalization. So we were the first to market with, for example, our high-skill VR technology, and you'll hear more from Mikko later on about this one, and how we significantly reduced the cost of operator training for our customer, and we will do more in this area. And finally, sustainability. The shift here is clear, and it is accelerating. Customer challenges, for example, where 100 European cities will be zero-emission zones by the end of next year. Customers have also set themselves CO2 reduction targets, and they in turn, turn to us to help them achieve that. We are also working alongside our truck OEM partners, and they are targeting a minimum of 35% of their trucks to be battery electrical vehicles by 2030.
We have, by far, the most advanced sustainability solutions portfolio in this industry, and now we can go even further. Let's take a look now at some of our current solutions and what our customers have to say. You will hear from three of our customers, and each of them have got a different challenge. You will hear firstly from Pets at Home in the U.K., who moved their logistics to nighttime deliveries for their 450 stores in order to improve transport efficiency. This, in turn, enabled them to reduce their truck fleet by almost 40%. But that brought a new challenge with nighttime deliveries, and that was noise pollution with local residents. But here, with our electrified truck-mounted forklift, we solved that issue for them.
You will also hear from Omrin, who are in the underground waste collection industry, and here our control systems with automated motion was key to increasing efficiency and also improving ease of use for their operators. And then lastly, you will hear from Vlot, who needed electrified solutions to win tenders in the zero-emission zones in the Netherlands. No one in this industry can offer these solutions, only Hiab. But let's have a listen to what these customers have to say.
I don't think that you guys fully appreciate the fact that you are. You're kind of leaders in the field. You're way, way ahead. The logistics market is in transition to zero-emission. Our client base expects us to serve zero-emission transport.
Yeah, we've had a couple of stores where neighbors have complained about the noise pollution, so it definitely makes a difference having the electric ones.
It's very quiet, yeah. Because everything is electric, it reacts faster.
This is very fast, good handle. It generates more business for us. You have to have these machines to compete in tenders.
One of the main reasons that we cooperate with Hiab in the way that we do, is that you've got an ear which is sensitive to the issues that we bring up with you. That is worth an awful lot of money to us.
Yeah. So as you can see, with these innovative solutions that we have today, we were really able to be a game changer for these, for these customers. So to summarize on my section, we are the leader in the markets where we choose to operate. We now have a clear strategy to continue to grow at 7% over the cycle, and we will do that by enhancing our focus in key accounts through new product development and value selling.
We will be expanding our position in North America through commercial excellence, improving our proximity to our customers, and also leveraging our local manufacturing. And then, the key enabler that I just discussed was doubling our R&D investments to continue to shape this industry. So that's all from my side. I hope you found it informative, and with that, I thank you for your attention, and I'll hand it back to Aki.
Thank you, Barry. Now it's time to turn our focus to services. Our next speaker is quite familiar face to many of you who have been following our past events in 2022 and 2021. Next up, we have the Senior Vice President of Services in Hiab, Michel Bruyninckx . Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, Aki. Welcome, and I'm delighted to meet you. My name is Michel Bruyninckx, and I'm the Senior Vice President, Services. I'm responsible for managing our important aftermarket business and leading its digital transformation. Today, I will present you how we drive scalable service growth and enhance customer engagement. A quick overview of my background. I've held some key roles in large industrial companies, both from a capital equipment point of view, as well as aftermarket. Those latest experiences were connected to the creation of decentralized operating models and the acceleration of service-oriented businesses. I've had the distinct privilege to lead some of the transformation programs that have resulted in lasting successes. These initiatives, they have scaled businesses, enhanced customer experiences, fostered data-driven decision-making, and generated profitable, sustainable business.
Now, I joined Hiab 4 years ago, and I love this business because of its brand leadership, the loyalty of the customers, the passionate people, and the remarkable business potential. Today, I want to discuss several key points. Firstly, it's the robustness of our aftermarket. Secondly, our installed base, which is not only resilient and sizable, but also continues to grow. Thirdly, the strong leverage of the underlying operating profit. The fourth point is a very solid cash flow. Today, I will outline a plan to improve our customer experience and to increase our services aftermarket revenue to EUR 700 million in the following five years. Let's begin with our revenue profile and the growth drivers.
So over the past decade, we have significantly grown our business from EUR 231 million to EUR 452 million, and our goal is to reach EUR 700 million within the next 5 years. Hiab has been strategically harnessing its sizable installed base to drive growth and to create added value in the capital market. And what you can see in the left-hand side, there have been 3 defined initiatives over this period. So the first initiative was the Cargotec services focus, which led to the service foundation across the whole organization. And that was followed by the implementation of the decentralized operating model, which led to the implementation of the services organizations and leadership across all the different markets. Now, why is this important? It led immediately to increased transparency, more accountability, and it led to faster decision making closer to the customers.
Now, what is also remarkable is, during the COVID-19 period, we sustained recurring services revenue as we swiftly organized ourselves to keep our customers in those essential industries in operation. We demonstrated the resilience and fast recovery during that period, with revenue growth rates with a CAGR of 12%. Now, we are in the period of the digitalization, and this is part of our 2028 strategy. We are investing several million EUR to enable more scale, to continue our growth path, and to further uplift our customer experience, and I will cover this specifically later in this presentation. Now, you can see in the right-hand side, three clear growth levers. So the first one is the large installed base, which offers us a great potential for growth, but also customer retention.
The second is the customer-centric innovation, with the clear objective to create customer value for our customers. And thirdly, key in our value proposition is our services network. Now, we keep on strengthening our presence close to customers to ensure we can deliver our higher promise. So you can clearly observe here a positive momentum, driven by structural improvements, and our aftermarket is appealing and expanding. I want to talk to you in the next few slides about these clear growth levers. So Hiab is in a prime position to leverage the expanding opportunities presented by the growing installed base. And as you can see on the left, our customers have bought more than 350,000 products over the last 10 years from the various Hiab brands.
Now, what is interesting, is that the product mix has favorably shifted to units that require more lifecycle services, and that's a direct consequence of our focus on value selling and our focus towards specific segments and applications. That has led to the fact that we now see more high service potential equipment, and that high service potential equipment offers up to 25 times more lifecycle services compared to a low potential equipment. As you can see, the mix from 2020 to 2023 has shifted to a more favorable aftermarket growth potential. While investing in those capabilities, we have grown our parts capture rate from 43%-47%. Now, we have demonstrated our commercial enhancements by increasing our service contracts from 8,200 to 16,500 active ProCare contracts, and our customers are very positive about that.
We invested in the connectivity platform and the infrastructure to connect Hiab equipment, which supports us to develop remote and diagnostic services, and we increased the number of connected units up to 39,000. So our breakthrough objectives for 2028 are to further increase our capture rate above 53%, to market 50,000 service contracts, and to connect more than 90,000 units. So you've seen clear improvements in the parts capture rate, the ProCare contracts, and the connected units, which makes us very well-positioned for the future growth. And because of our established decentralized operating model, our enhanced commercial, operational, and data capabilities, we can confidently and clearly focus on the install base as a promising source of expansion. And here is a compelling illustration of the untapped potential that resides within the install base.
So Hiab contracts, well known as ProCare, are essential for enhancing the customer satisfaction and can potentially double the parts revenue. So you see here one of our key customers, Knettenbrech in Germany, and they have successfully experienced fast growth, and they are very active in the waste and recycling business. And while they increased their fleet significantly, they continue to serve a very satisfied customer base. Now, initially, they self-maintained the fleet. Now, we demonstrated after a collaborative pilot, that we could have a positive impact on their cost of ownership, as well as their uptime. And this made them to decide to change their maintenance strategy and contracted the maintenance of the fleet towards Hiab.
Now, you will see on the right-hand side that typically, you will see some fleet owners, they decide on ad hoc maintenance or they outsource services, and this typically leads to a lower parts capture rate for Hiab. Now, Hiab customers with a contract, they typically benefit from a lower cost of ownership, higher uptime, and the benefit for Hiab is, of course, that we can participate in the full parts potential. Now, what you can see here is that if we sell service contracts to our partners, they typically sell the service, the parts, and the connectivity. If we sell it directly, then Hiab will also recognize the labor revenue. So you can see this as a very relevant business opportunity to drive the service commercialization. This will allow us to deliver substantial customer value while also providing a chance to double the parts revenue.
We are confident to exploit the commercial opportunities because we already made significant investments, and the customers, they like it. We offer a comprehensive portfolio designed to engage and support our customers, addressing their needs and simplifying the management of their business and this supports us to grow the capture rate and the service contract coverage. This slide here illustrates this approach. We have involved key customers in the development process, and innovation in our services is an important driver for profitable, sustainable growth. If you look at our offerings, such as ProCare, HiSkill, HiConnect, they provide comprehensive solutions that will lower the life cycle cost, but also maximize the uptime for our customers.
Now, what is remarkable is that if you take a look at our parts availability, we offer the highest availability of 98% for the stock assortment, and this means that all customer segments benefit from this. Next to that, we have an industry-leading platform that makes it easy to do business with us, for our partners, 24/7. A very solid foundation for our aftermarket business. Now, this year, we launched Red Parts, and Red Parts offer a cost-effective solution for units with a limited remaining lifespan. And next to that, we developed high-performance smart solutions, which is basically a data-driven portfolio, and this is very valid for customers with more demanding expectations in functions of uptime and cost of ownership. And this high-performance portfolio goes from scheduled, essential business, to inspection plans, to full responsibility contracts.
What some of you have experienced while you entered is that we also launched our famous HiSkill. Our HiSkill is a virtual training solution, which has been warmly welcomed by our customers. And why? This solution offers to reduce the training costs up to 50% and helps them to resolve one of their biggest challenges they have. It facilitates to onboard and train skilled operators for their business. And latest product introduction is Uptime, which is a remote monitoring and diagnostic solution for the connected fleet, which will be sold in combination with a contract. So what does it mean? So this means that we have a relevant and attractive portfolio to support and simplify the business for all our customers, allowing us to both scale and grow. And I believe we can do even better, leading the customer experience.
So, digitalization and business intelligence, they are no longer future concepts, they are imperative today. Investments in these areas have provided extensive visibility into our install base, and this digital transformation presents significant growth opportunities, and we are at the forefront of the industry. Allow me to elaborate. So what you can see typically on the left-hand side is that the traditional interaction represents customers and OEMs, where you will see that the OEMs typically have limited visibility into the fleets, and the interactions are often very reactive and often initiated by the fleet owner. Fleet owners, typically, they seek help in case of unexpected downtime, or must often plan the service interventions themselves, which leads to more downtime, but also loss of revenue for their business.
On the right-hand side, you see our Hiab digital ecosystem. Our digitalization program enhances both the customer experience, while it provides us with direct access to those business opportunities. Our intelligence platform supports fleet management by planning interventions, remotely monitoring connected fleet, and allows us to advance towards predictive maintenance. We foresee to manage all kinds of interventions: planned, scheduled, unscheduled, preventive, and even predictive, to get those well-managed and planned across the whole service network.
Recently, we launched the MyHiab app to make it easier for our operators to connect with our service network and our service network with them. This indicates we are pioneering the shift from conventional interactions to more interaction and forward-thinking, enhancing customer satisfaction, while harnessing the full potential of our existing customer base. Let's listen in to our customers to discover what truly matters to them. The vehicles are our revenue stream, so if the vehicle's off the road, then we don't have a revenue stream.
Uptime is absolutely critical for us. We want the right people touching equipment, who are well-trained, who can support it.
I love the service that Hiab provide to me. If I do run into a problem, obviously, he handles it very quickly for me.
We are currently a very fast-growing company. That is why we decided not to carry out maintenance and repairs ourselves, but through the company Hiab. With the measures of the full service contracts with Hiab, we were able to reduce our operating costs, increase uptime, and increase efficiency.
Hiab has time and time again shown that they are the clear leader in what they do, and are continuously upgrading their products. The collaboration between ABC and Hiab during the development and rollout of HiSkill was second to none. The HiSkill VR kits allows us to significantly reduce the amount of hands-on time needed to make sure our operators are well-trained and ready for the real-life application. I'm really proud of the impact we can have on the daily operations of our customers. Another crucial aspect of our customer commitment and value proposition is our extensive service network, featuring more than 3,000 qualified service locations.
We are close to our customers, which is a significant strength of Hiab within the industry, and we continue to invest in strengthening our presence near customers, both through our value partner channels, as well through direct service. For example, we have recently invested in a new facility in France, and we are investing in a new location in the United Kingdom. As Barry referenced, we are expanding our service network in the USA, which will increase our already more than 800 service locations, and this will also strengthen our presence in the West region.
We continuously assess our connected fleet, and we benchmark that carefully versus the location of the operations of our customers. We further enhance our service quality by training programs and enhancing our customer support. Going forward, we plan to invest even more in technology for the partner network to support them with the data insights and tools so they can grow their business as well. Our footprint covers the globe with thousands of service locations, and our direct and partner network ensures that we are close to our customers, providing both reach and flexibility. Continuous investments in the service execution and partner network will further fortify our ability to attend to the business opportunities, enhance customer satisfaction, and secure repeat business.
Let's take a look at the financial profile of the aftermarket business. The financial profile reflects the effectiveness of a customer-focused strategy. In the last 10 years, revenues have grown at a CAGR of 7% to EUR 452 million, and in the recent years, the CAGR was 12%. Simultaneously, the aftermarket has an attractive operating profit, contributing significantly to the overall profits. Additionally, it is a very solid cash generator, achieving approximately 100% cash conversion. Further, we have an operating profit leverage exceeding 30%, so our future prospects are attractive. Another reason that we are confident about our future is the improvement of our Net Promoter Score from 20 to 35.
In summary, we have an attractive and resilient aftermarket business, and this is a result of strategic investments and innovation, and we are well-positioned to further develop the business with clear growth levers: our unique access to the valuable and extensive install base, our innovative approach to deliver the customer value, and our exceptional service network. We will continue to invest in scalable solutions and enhance customer experiences. We have demonstrated that the aftermarket business has a robust financial profile. Looking ahead, we aim to grow the service sales to EUR 700 million in the next five years. The focus on customer value and customer experience will continue. Thank you, and I'll hand over now to Aki.
Thank you, Michal. We will now take a 15-minute break and come back, so you can enjoy the light refreshments we have over there, or then familiarize with, with the HiSkill and HiConnect that we have in the lobby. So we'll be back in 4:23 P.M. So 15-minute break. Thank you. Welcome back, everyone. We have now heard three excellent Hiab presentations, and we have two more to come. In the next presentation, Magdalena Woytowicz will tell you more about how Hiab is planning to unlock productivity gains through business excellence. Welcome to the stage, Magda.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Magdalena Woytowicz, and I have been with the Cargotec for the last 15 years, with experience of multiple successful business transformations, including a major turnaround in Kalmar Automation Solution services. Now at Hiab, I have two key responsibilities. First, I'm Senior Vice President for the tail lift division, holding accountability for tail lift profit and loss. I have been in this role for the last two years, and what I'm extremely passionate about is my division's business area, and especially a significant profitability transformation that we have achieved in the last two years. My second responsibility is hosting a sourcing function across all of Hiab, and in essence, it means ensuring direct material cost competitiveness for the company.
What I want to cover today is how we use business excellence to unlock significant productivity gains, how we do it consistently, year on year in, year out, targeting 1.5% per year. That's helpful for our margins, means we can invest, as well as we can manage the inflation pressures, and how we have a proven track record on delivering on this target. I want to show you some great examples of what we have achieved, and that is what we are going to replicate across the entire business. Let me first explain our model to you. It's proven, it drives consistent and meaningful results. Hiab operating model is based on the centralization principles, which essentially means that the decisions are made as close to the customers as possible, and where each and every division holds profit and loss accountability.
At the same time, business excellences strives for the best methods, data-driven decisions, and process standardization. From one side, we have a full transparency across each and every divisional performance, and on the other side, we are equipped with three business excellences: sourcing, commercial, and manufacturing. Let me explain each of the key components. Let's start with firstly, commercial excellence, which aims to maximize customer benefits by understanding the customer pain points and translating those requirements to product configuration. Secondly, sourcing excellence aims to deliver on consistent cost improvements through commercial negotiations and design-to-cost initiatives. And lastly, manufacturing excellence aims to standardize and improve the way we manufacture our products to be delivered faster, more flexibly, and more efficiently. As you can see, we have two proof cases.
The first one is the tail lifts, and the second one is the truck-mounted forklifts, where we have made a major improvements in the business by using specific methods. So this framework serves the entire business, and it's proven and very effective. I'll show you now how each and every of those key elements drives value and delivers annual productivity gains. So the first one is commercial excellence. Our systematic investments in commercial excellence has been a key driver to significant revenue growth, and Hiab has made a decision to invest in the commercial excellence by building competencies, tools, and processes. We establish a foundation with a systematic use of data analytics and best-in-class sales competencies. Our journey began with shifting the skill base of our sales force and aiming to sell smarter by addressing specific customer needs.
We have trained 70% of our sales team and embraced the winning culture. Our people now have a regular meeting cadences, where they can share specific sales cases and best practices. Such a deep understanding of market conditions and customer pain points has been instrumental, not just for our sales team, but for the entire company to offer solutions better suited for the customer needs, and truly focusing on improving customer experience and delivering the value gains they are looking for. A great example is my own division, where we have achieved a substantial sales growth between 2022 and 2023. Here, the sales team helped one of the major accounts in the United States to convert a huge backlog to revenue by providing operational flexibility and short product lead times.
That effort, together with multiple product trainings, product improvements, active listening, and simple humbleness, meant that we became our customer supplier of choice, which then resulted us being awarded Best Performing Supplier of the Year. I'm giving you all this background for two key reasons. This approach has led to significant revenue growth in the tail lift business, and just as importantly to me, is loyalty we have built with the customer that goes beyond the price. Now, let's move to the second field of excellence, which is sourcing. I've been leading various sourcing organizations for more than 15 years, and for me, personally, it's not only being a subject matter expert, it means being truly excited about the impact that sourcing can make to the business. It is a critical area because it manages 70% of our cost of goods sold.
Our key priority has been to uplift the sourcing capabilities from just basic capacity assurance into positioning our supplier network to be a true growth enabler. Our transformation journey started in a post-pandemic market, when back in 2022, most companies' focus was to bring back the stability to the business and to the supply chain, plus mitigate inflation challenges. Moving forward towards higher stability, our goal has been to manage the performance of our suppliers by establishing supplier balance scorecard and diligently following quality, delivery, and cost performance. That helped us to obtain necessary predictability in the supply chain and delivery times to ensure product, and ensure product quality. Our cost situation was still a challenge, and seeing the impact of a cost evolution to our gross margins
We have started multiple design to cost programs, and furthermore, we opened commercial negotiations to ensure our products remain competitive to the market. As I said, our direct material cost contributes to 70% of the cost of goods sold. Our ambition is to secure our gross margin by executing on the product cost reductions, including product rationalization and design to cost. Going forward, we are looking into a full supply chain integration by providing to our suppliers a visibility of demand shifts, so they are able to adjust their planning and manage the expectations more dynamically. While sourcing remains an essential part of a supply chain, the other part is manufacturing. Our footprint is located in 13 sites, and those sites represent various levels of maturity in manufacturing and process excellence.
Back in 2019, we made a number of investments in our operations, and those investments served the business when markets started to open, and that created a lot of increased demand. Even though our business opened first and order intake rose significantly, we met the demand better than anyone else in the industry. We are operating in a dynamic market, where our customers, in order to be successful, need reliability, flexibility, and competitive lead times. We have decided to take steps to significantly improve our customer experience. We are aiming to be faster, to respond to the customers with the delivery fulfillment, regardless of their expectations are changing.
Secondly, we have been building the necessary flexibility in our factories to accommodate additional demand and using our manufacturing locations for multiple product assemblies in order to increase the proximity of our operations to the markets. Lastly, we aim to maintain competitive cost of productions by increasing our assembly efficiencies through multiple Lean Six Sigma initiatives. Those additional productivity gains will then serve business reinvestments, and in the future, the new strength of predictability and flexibility will become an competitive, essential competitive advantage. I want to now show you, two examples where improvements in the production helped us to grow our sales significantly, and we made a clear difference to our customers. First, in tail lifts, we increased the productivity and efficiency of our manufacturing processes.
We reduced the production lead times of our products, and that helped our customers win more business, which then led to increase our market shares. Let me tell you how we did this. Back in 2022, when I took over running this business, we identified a few key priorities. We needed to raise our financial performance to deliver much improved profitability and growth. We also needed to raise the internal teamwork to deliver best for the customer. So we initiated the turnaround, which involved, firstly, commercial activities with the proactive sales and thorough understanding of customer needs in terms of product mix and offering variations. Secondly, product efficiencies with a design to cost that involved a major SKU rationalization.
And lastly, we managed to shift our organizational accountability by using common Hiab Employee First principles: empowerment, easiness, and excellence. And all that resulted in increased accountability and execution. It required patience and determination for over 12-18 months, but we transformed the business and its performance. Our financial performance has made a major leap and continues to be very solid. We grew our sales by over 40% and improved our gross margin by 980 basis points. These accomplishments, we are very proud of. Now, I would like to show you a short video with the feedback from some of our customers.
The market is demanding efficiency. It's all about speed of delivery and the frequency of package delivery for each one of these drivers that are out there. We're only as good as our suppliers are. With the folks at Waltco, I can't say enough for the relationships that we have with our local support that comes from the Waltco guy. It's a company that I view as a true partner and a very good company to work with Waltco's support staff is always behind us, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is a people business. You do business with people that you trust, people that you like, that you can depend on.
Yeah, this partnership, excellent way to keep a customer going.
Our customers appreciate and value us. Another good example for successful business transformation is truck-mounted forklifts. Here, the game changer that we successfully achieved was solving our supply chain challenges. When we started the journey, our order intake was almost double than the sales value, and the division was able to convert only 58% of the order pool to sales. Our urgent priority was to reduce the lead times and increase excuse me, and increase the conversion of our orders to sales. We made a plan, and we successfully executed. Our priorities were to significantly improve the capacity utilization of our factories. Secondly, to resolve supply chain constraints by managing the performance of our suppliers. Lastly, by mapping the value streams in our operations, we made the changes into the layouts, which resulted the reduction in cycle times and optimized assembly flows.
Put simply, we have achieved pivotal results. We grew our sales by over 70%, we slashed the cycle time from 60 to 15 weeks, and we achieved the major productivity improvements. So let me recap what I have been presenting to you today. We use business excellence to unlock significant productivity gains. We do it consistently, year-over-year, targeting 1.5% of the revenue per year. Those productivity gains can be then used for investments, profitability improvement, or managing the inflation pressures. We have a scalable business model built on accountability and transparency. We have proven our ability to translate the business excellence initiatives into a clear financial benefit. I have shown you two examples in detail, in the case of tail lifts and truck-mounted forklifts, and our aim is to repeat all of these success stories. Thank you, and I'll hand it back to Aki.
Thank you, Magda. Hiab has best-in-class financial profile, with further value creation potential. And Scott will be soon back on the stage to tell you more about it. So welcome back, Scott Phillips.
Thank you, Aki, and thank you to the team for terrific presentations. And I trust that you find that we make some compelling arguments, as soon as I advance the slide forward for you, that we make compelling arguments for why we believe we can continue to deliver industry-leading results. So I aim to accomplish a couple of things in this summary section. Hopefully, we'll go no more than 10, 15 minutes. So I'll try and summarize the key messages that we really want you to walk away with today, and then secondarily, highlighting why we also believe that we have opportunities to grow inorganically through M&A. As after all, we enter this strategy period in our strongest position yet, both financially as well as operationally. So briefly recapping on how our results have compared last year to our 10-year historical averages.
2023 was a good year in historical context, but by no means a peak. Yes, sales were at a record level, so above 10-year average. Profit and return on capital also above our 10-year average, but cash flow was below, as we were still working our way through the equipment backlog, so our working capital remains higher than our target. But we remain on the journey to get better each day and have a solid foundation of good performance to build upon. But let's review in more details the target profile that we aim to deliver in the next 5 years. There we go. So you've heard from the team why we believe we can continue to grow revenues, as well as improve on our profitability.
As a result, we aim to keep in line with our 10-year average of more than 7% growth over the cycle. We target an operating, comparable operating profit as a business area within Cargotec of 18%, maintain greater than 25% return on capital employed, and as I stated earlier, passionately committed to remaining a Science Based Targets initiative company. As you can see from this profile, we do believe there's significant upside potential in Hiab, and we'll look more closely into those details. But first, let's start with the revenue bridge. Now, you've heard from both Barry and Mikhail how we intend to grow through segments globally, through expanding our positions in North America, and growing globally through our installed base.
Now, while we expect to grow in all our segments, we highlighted in particular four for you today, and we made investments last year in order to understand more deeply how we can grow into the most attractive segments, and those represent four of those. Now, while we have a significant leading position currently in North America, as Barry has highlighted for you earlier, we believe we can grow through selling more of our portfolio effectively and expanding our network coverage. And then third, as Mikhail pointed out and has guided you through, we believe our services business can grow faster through servicing our installed base, through investments in innovation, and increasing our network coverage. And you've also heard from Magdalena how we have room for improvement to unlock better potential for returns, which can unlock potential to increase our investments to enable Hiab to grow.
So let's take a closer look at that. Now, over the past 5 years, I'm proud of the sustainability we have built and our ability to deliver, but there are clear areas for us to improve. Some specific areas to note, we can improve on our gross margins, as we've been higher in that regard in our past. We have an opportunity to pull at least 3 levers in order to get there that Magdalena just took you through. We know that we have opportunities to design more standardization into our portfolio. We know through portfolio management, we have an opportunity to focus on the vital few offering that delivers truly compelling and competitive advantage for our customers. And through better collaboration with our suppliers, we know we can create sustainably better product cost. And we've demonstrated that in parts of our business.
We aim to scale that more broadly across the business area. We also aim to reduce the need to invest in the level of resources that we have, as we do have a number of inefficient BA-level processes that support our businesses through utilizing Lean to design those processes, eliminating the waste, as well as utilizing Six Sigma to continuously improve. And we'll come back and talk about that in more details in future touch points. That all will enable us to create a shift in our cost base so that we can invest more in sales, marketing, and R&D, which will catalyze growth.
Now, important to note, over the last 2, 3 years, we have managed well within our target profile of total fixed costs relative to revenues, but we know we have a chance by improving in how we run the business, making improvements in our global processes, that we can afford to keep the same level whilst investing in opportunities to create growth in the future, as well as investing in opportunities to improve the customer experience. So looking more details into our margin bridge. Through scaling that operational excellence capability, through unlocking the growth potential that has been outlined today, we aim to deliver 18% operating profit, and it's pretty straightforward, coming from 3 sources. There's 1 being operating leverage or volume. There's 2, as Magdalena just took you through, through utilizing operational excellence more broadly across a business or business excellence.
Of course, three, in terms of mix, most notably the sales level of services business relative to the overall revenue profile. It's important to note that we do intend to create and hold ourselves accountable to deliver 1.5% productivity gains per year. That will enable us to, yes, helps our margins, but also means we can invest as well as manage inflationary pressures. Speaking of investments, we have a very non-negotiable principle, and that is that we aim to be a good business that generates incremental cash flows, so therefore, we can afford to invest in growth. Let's take a look at that in more detail. Through scaling operational excellence, the operating leverage that should be created through our growth plays, this will allow us to invest in both organic as well as inorganic growth.
Our priorities are fairly straightforward. Our number one focus is organic growth of our services business. Secondarily, our investments in innovation that will unlock potential to grow through our segments. Then third, our focus is then also to put ourselves in position to grow inorganically through M&A. So I'll take you through that in a bit more detail. But first, to set the scene, the entire Hiab portfolio has been built through a series of bolt-on acquisitions. We aim to continue to grow our platform with bolt-on acquisitions primarily with a focus on expanding our offering, as well as expanding geographically.
So if you look in our past history, we have grown first with acquisition in 2017 of our Argos business in Latin America, and this is a crane business that has allowed us to expand our position in Brazil, but then also more broadly, we've catalyzed growth in adjacent countries, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. Over the course of the last seven years, we've, together with a great team that we have in place, managed to turn this business into a real source of profitable growth, with opportunities to grow further. In 2018, Effer was acquired, expanding our offering into our super heavy range of loader cranes and really having the best 85 ton meter and above offering globally. In 2021, we expanded our position in U.S. waste and recycling through the acquisition of Galfab.
Gives us a great opportunity to expand into an attractive segment, as we discussed earlier. In 2022, we brought Olsbergs into the portfolio as a technology investment, which has enabled us to fast-track the further uptake of Olsbergs' technology and our control systems more broadly across our portfolio, and we're seeing the benefits of that each and every day. Looking forward, we have a clear view of how we can expand through M&A. We have a proven track record of effective post-acquisition integration capabilities. We know our core capabilities and winning formula can also apply in closely related adjacencies and new geographies. In evaluating our opportunities, we'll stick with three key principles. We will continue to seek for niche markets where we can create leading positions and truly make a difference in the important outcomes for the customer base served.
We'll seek out segments that do require a high-touch life cycle services support, as what we call productivity partners. We will seek high-quality assets that will be accretive to earnings in a reasonable period of time. I'm excited about the possibilities for M&A, given our strong track record and balance sheet, as well as the high-quality team that we have in place to lead Hiab into the future. Let's take a closer look at the leadership team that will be in place to complete the, the remainder of the journey of the demerger process and lead Hiab into the future. We have a diverse and international team with a good combination of stock-listed company experience and a proven ability and leadership to lead business transformation, and you've heard a little bit about that today.
We're a team of eight different nationalities, located in eight different countries. In addition to the four colleagues that have joined me today, you can see the wider team on the slide in front of you, and it is my hope that in the coming months, you'll be able to meet the full team. Let's wrap up with a few key takeaways. We believe Hiab represents a great investment opportunity now, but an even better one in the future. Supported by our key investment highlights, we have strong market positions that do enable us to shape the future of the industry together with our customers. We have focused and clear plans on how we can grow in segments, in key geography, North America, and through our services business.
We have proven our ability to turn around Hiab more than 10 years ago, and then most recently, a few of our divisions, into stable, double-digit profit generators, and we believe we can scale that more broadly. So through our operational excellence capability, we're confident that we can improve more broadly our global processes, so that we can be a more scalable, efficient business, one that's easier to do business with, both for our internal employees as well as our customers. And we have a solid plan to generate incremental cash flows that will be used for catalyzing growth, both organically as well as inorganically through M&A.
So I hope that we've better enabled you to understand why I'm so thrilled to be part of Hiab, and all of our team is. With the unique passion of our people and customers, combined with how we have chosen to run the business, Hiab represents such a good company with great upside potential, as we have clear opportunities to improve on the strong positions that we have today. I thank everyone, thank everyone for the presentations, and I turn it over to you, Aki.
Thank you, Scott. We will be soon ready for our Q&A session. I will then invite all the Hiab speakers back to the stage, accompanied by Mikko Puolakka, who is the CFO of Cargotec, and as you have heard, the future CFO of Hiab. As a reminder, the virtual audience can pose the questions via the chat function. We will next get our stage organized for the Q&A, and while we are waiting for that, we will once again take a look at the Hiab video with the brand-new Hiab song. Let's take a look at the video.
From the day we are born, we need a helping hand. Someone to lift us up, to let us be all we can. Someone to keep us safer, stronger, working smarter, reaching longer. Someone to help us carry, carry the load. Moving further, faster, reaching higher. It's not heavy if we do it together. Higher, higher, higher, higher, higher. A chain of hands that keep on going forever. Keep loading, keep lifting it up. Keep moving, keep moving it up. Keep bringing it, keep lifting it up. Keep moving higher, higher, higher, higher.
Every day we're connecting the world as we go. Building a better tomorrow, 'cause that's what we know. We feel the passion, feel the power. Lift and deliver every working hour. Helping people get through everyday life. Keep loading, keep lifting it up. Keep moving, keep moving it up. Keep bringing it, keep lifting it up. Keep moving higher, higher, higher, higher. Keep loading, keep lifting it up. Keep moving, keep moving it up. Keep bringing it, keep lifting it up. Keep moving higher, higher, higher, higher.
Thank you. Now, we have a great opportunity to state questions for all of the Hiab, Hiab presenters. But let's start with the first question from the virtual audience. There was a map presented, on, on the geographical split of the business, and also the revenue split, and the significance of Asia is quite small. So what are your plans regarding Asia?
Yeah. How about I start with that, at least? Yeah, it, it's an important geography for us and, and has always been an important geography in our history. We, I have continuously seek for opportunities to further penetrate other regions within the Asia-Pacific market. We feel good about our strong positions that we have in markets such as Korea, Japan. Especially strong in Japan in our forestry business. We're proud of our positions in Australia, Southeast Asia, and, and we remain a competitive player in targeted segments, even within China, with the help of contract manufacturing partners that we have there for one of our divisions. But there's no question that that represents a further opportunity for us to grow our business in the future, and one of the many reasons I'm really excited for for the future this business has.
Thank you, Scott. And then we have another question from the online audience, and that is related to the segments you have selected. Could you still elaborate a little bit more why you have selected those four, and especially construction, as that has been one of the segments that has been suffering in-
Yeah
in past quarters?
Yeah, certainly. You know, we spent quite a lot of time, you know, to carefully select these four. You know, the rationale, again, as I mentioned earlier on, was that, you know, each of these four have got significant growth potential in them. And as I mentioned, at least two of them are growing at a very fast rate. To answer the question on construction, what we feel here is that the profit pool coming from construction at an absolute level is significant. It's a big portion of what we do. And what's quite attractive for construction for us is that you have to remember that 50% of construction comes from new build, but also 50% comes from refurbishment as well, and home improvement. That's why we feel that construction is a very important part of our future from especially in the next phase.
Thank you. Then we have another question from the online, and it is related more on the current market environment at the pricing level. So are you planning to reduce the current prices on the products and the current pricing, as we have stated in the past, though in 2021 and 2022, there has been quite significant pricing increases in Hiab?
Yeah. Yeah, how about I try to take a stab at that first, and you all chip in if I either stumble or there is another relevant point to make? So, hey, with regards to pricing, it's important to understand that we do compete on a market-based price. And so therefore, as the markets dictate, pricing can go up and it can go down, and that'll continue into the future.
And so we always on a constant basis are experimenting where that right price point is, as a catalyst to keep the targeted business that we wanna go after, and we aim to. And so we do that each and every day. I guess one could say also that those excellent initiatives, which Magda presented, concerning, for example, the sourcing excellence, are extremely important because as prices might go up or down, it's always important for us to manage the cross margin so that we can keep a healthy profitability line.
Yeah.
And Mikko, may I add a couple of comments to that. Our strategy going forward is based on the value selling, which means that we are able to translate the customer requirements into the product configuration, and that will drive the certain and clear benefits for our customers. So that is the shift of the logic, rather than the price focus going into the value selling abilities.
Thank you. Let's now take some questions from the live audience. Let's take first Antti Kananen from SEB.
Thank you, and thank you for the presentations. It's Antti from SEB. First question would be on your financial targets and the return on capital, especially. I mean, given where you are today and your margin ambitions, I would perhaps had expected a bit higher ROIC targets. So and Scott, you mentioned investment, so could you elaborate? Is there a need to tie up more capital into the business in order to achieve those 18% EBIT margin, or are you more looking at margin expansion, which you are then investing into growth?
Yeah. Yeah, I can start with that, and definitely more of the latter. So looking for margin expansion that we can invest in growth. But at the same time, we recognize that over the cycle, we may have a different mix of capital that we have tied up, but on balance, we're pretty comfortable with that level of target or above.
I would add there that, of course, like Scott elaborated, there might be some bolt-on M&As, so at least initially, those bolt-on M&As might have some tied-up capital impact before they are completely up and running and fully integrated into the business.
But the growth ambitions in North America or the demerger don't kind of equate into any higher CapEx needs in the short term?
Not in what you have seen in the past in Hiab. So it's a very similar kind of structure.
Then the second question, and this might be a bit too early, given that you are not a Hiab company yet, but shareholder returns, and, I mean, you will have a really strong balance sheet, and when and if you sell MacGregor, you will have an extremely strong balance sheet. So do you really have the. Compared to your shareholders, do you have enough of a universe to invest that cash in? I mean, does the business really need such a strong balance sheet to be run, even if the bolt-on acquisition opportunities are there?
Well, look, there's, there's no, no question that, that we'll have a great opportunity to invest in growth in the business, given our balance sheet and given our track record. So as we tried to lay out, that's clearly our intentions to be able to do so, and we absolutely see, more than enough opportunities. Like, in any case, and one of the things that we've had to build up, which we've worked diligently on over the last three years, our deal sourcing capability. We've invested in the ability to scan, multiple other market segments. So we have a pretty good view, both in what's related in bolt-on versus unrelated, and so we've looked at literally thousands of opportunities.
Maybe a follow-up to Mikko on the same theme. As a CFO, what type of a balance sheet you would be, comfortable to run Hiab with?
Yeah, we have, currently as a Cargotec, we have the gearing target to be below 50%, and, most probably also going forward, that would be the guiding, one of the guiding principles. So let's see then, after the M&A, M&A activities, that what kind of, let's say, excess cash positions the company might have, then, the board of directors would need to have a look on, extra dividends or if, if we don't, find, enough bolt-on M&As.
But, I mean, the cash flow profile of Hiab should be pretty attractive even, I mean, to fund those bolt-on acquisitions that you need. Am I, am I correct in that?
Yeah. It depends on, on the size of the bolt-on acquisitions we have done. I think in Effer's case, we were talking about, 100 million plus, plus type of t hat's a bolt-on acquisition. So there are, like Scott said, there are quite many opportunities available. Sometimes these just might take longer time due to the ownership, structure, typically being privately held, family companies, so getting, getting those warmed up, might take longer time. But yes, definitely there are opportunities.
Thank you.
Yeah, and coming back to your timing question, obviously, in the future, whenever the series of events that Casimir laid out at the beginning of the day occur, then we'll come back with a bit more clarity on that target profile.
Thank you. We have a related question from the online audience. So I guess we addressed already the first part, but the second part, this is to Mikko. Do you see the bond market as an attractive source of financing in case you would need extra financing in the future? Currently, Cargotec has two bonds outstanding, which mature 2025 and 2026.
Yeah. Yeah, Cargotec has currently two bonds, EUR 250 million in total, and bond market has been traditionally one source of financing for Cargotec. Also I believe that in Hiab's constellation going forward, that continues to be one of the funding alternatives.
Thank you, Mikko. Now let's take the next question from Johan Eliasson. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thank you. This is Johan Eliasson, Kepler Cheuvreux. I was just wondering, considering we were discussing M&A, the 7% growth target you have, is that sort of organic or including some bolt-ons, or?
Yeah, that.
Yeah
that includes, also bolt-ons.
Okay.
Not only organic.
Yeah. And then I was wondering a bit the strategy going forward in terms of, of manufacturing. I mean, the Olsberg acquisition was a little bit of, of adding integrated components into your manufacturing, and Magdalena was mentioning, and outsourcing was one way to, to improve the margins. So are there any significant changes here in, in your setup going forward, the way you see it?
Well, first and foremost, our clear strategy going forward will continue to be an asset-light setup with regards to our footprint, so that won't change. However, where we do see opportunities to strategically more vertically integrated through similar exercises, then we'll consider that. And at the same time, it's important that we really stay vigilant on looking at opportunities where we do have operations internally, where we don't provide differentiation there, or that's not a source of differentiation in our product, where we can seek for better partners externally to provide that work that has more scale. And so we go through that exercise all the time, and that's part of our supply chain strategy moving forward.
Yeah.
I could add some additional comments to that. With the certain size that we are operating in today and the asset-light model that we have, our focus has been on the flexibility in terms of managing additional demand, and basically utilizing the existing footprint of our operations to make a gain, to make the best of flexibility, fast delivery, and efficiency.
And then finally, on these growth areas, you highlighted the four areas, the North American expansion, and the third one. Is there any of these that are more reliant on M&A than the other, would you say?
No. No, we feel that we've got everything we need, apart from investment in the value selling and the R&D. So all of the elements that I'd mentioned during my presentation, that's where our investments would go to. We don't right now see any M&A needed to drive both of those.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Johan. Let's take next question from Panu Laitinen.
Thank you. It's Panu Laitinen from Danske Bank. I have two questions. Going back to the M&A topic, so what about timing of potential deals? I understand that you haven't really been able to do anything with the demerger process, but when it's done, so is it July that you are looking for it, or are you waiting for the macroeconomic situation to be solved?
Yeah, I think first thing to remember is, depending upon the size of the deal, will largely dictate the timing, and so this, on the smaller size of the deals, there's opportunities most probably to do something prior to the completion of the demerger. But then over a certain deal size, no doubt that that would need to be postponed until after we complete the entire process.
Okay, thanks. And then on the services potential, you showed the slide about the change in the installed base, where the kind of high service potential base has grown. So can you talk a bit more about what has happened in practice and which products have the higher service potential?
I think, maybe I can elaborate on that. What is easiest to picture is that there has been a clear shift, like I explained earlier, in terms of the focusing towards specific segments and applications. It's easy to imagine, for example, if you picture some of our units, you have, for example, lifting units, like, cranes. And those cranes used in, high-duty applications like waste and recycling, will automatically lead to much more wear and tear and much more life cycle services. And, to give a reference point, some of our applications, they will lift maybe 15 times a day, where some of our applications will lift 150, 200 times, and even more.
How we try to quantify those opportunities is really tied back to which is the kind of product, the application, and its usage. The beauty, of course, is that we connect much more assets. Where we initially started from potential calculation based on some assumptions, that we can really look now at the asset level to see how it is really being used, hence also how we can better prioritize our commercial, like, actions accordingly.
So it's about end markets, basically, and
End markets and products.
Exactly, yeah, 'cause it's even multidimensional compared to a product line. You'll have some product lines that it's the same product, but in one application, lower duty cycle, and another application, higher duty cycle. And that's also driven the mix, which is an intentional focus on our part.
so I assume in the four segments you have good-
Yeah
aftermarket. Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Panu. Before we take Erkki, your question, we have one follow-up from the virtual audience regarding the bonds. And the question is that, "Are we seeking for an external rating in the near future for our bonds?
At the moment, that's not in sight. Our volume so far have been perhaps a bit too small for the rating. But let's see in the future, not in the near term at the moment. These two bonds, what we have at the moment, they are still, like you said, due in two years' time, so.
Thank you, Mikko. Then let's take, Erkki, your question.
Thanks. It's Erkki Vesala from Inderes. Couple of questions from me. This one goes to Magda. Is your supply chain currently in good shape in terms of quality, reliability, lead times, pricing, et cetera? 'Cause this used to be a challenge, for instance, in Stargard, in some years back.
Yeah, you are. Thank you for the question. It's, of course, very valid in terms of still remembering the post-pandemic situation, and most of the companies were struggling with, with the supply chain challenges, again, and disturbances in the overall production flow. We have been doing a multiple activities, and then as well as, as investments to ensure that, again, suppliers being important part of, part of the entire ecosystem
they are, you know, getting enough information in terms of the shifts or the changes in terms of the demand, and then they get also a possibility to stay flexible towards our demand. And of course, the, the shift we have made in terms of the volumes requires our suppliers to adapt accordingly, and, we are, I would say, like, it's still a journey. It's always a journey. It's always a continuous improvement story. We need to get ourselves ready for the next cycles to come as well.
Okay, thanks.
I can elaborate on that just a bit, 'cause I, I'm mindful of some of my, some of my colleagues in Stargard might be listening. I, I do have to give credit. When I said earlier, when I, I was trying to bearish Barry a little bit and talk about the remarkable turnaround in the light and medium loader crane business, Stargard was an absolute challenge. And I think the first time we met, that's what I was talking about. I was more or less telling you all, "Hey, we, we blew it in our supply chain. We couldn't scale up fast enough."
A lot of orders in loader cranes in the prior two years couldn't deliver in Q4 2018. We needed to fix this, and I can proudly report today that Stargard's one of our real star performers on every dimension, on throughput, efficiency, cost of goods produced. Can we be better on quality, though? Yes, and that's across the board. We did a great job turning on a lot of new suppliers in order to give ourselves better upside flexibility for the Stargard capacity. We've had some growing pains, that I'd be remiss not to mention for the customers that were good enough to share their real thoughts with all of you. That's an area of improvement. Lead time-wise, however, we're in great shape.
Okay, thanks. And then secondly, more specifically, how does this 1.5% annual productivity gain translate into EBIT margin improvement?
Either Magda or Mikko.
Will you start?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like I said, we are targeting 1.5% productivity gain every year. Like, Scott said, a part of that might be invested in R&D. Part of that might be invested in compensate some inflationary pressures. But, on a gross basis, without these investments to other, other areas, if we would not make those, then that would be on the bottom line, bottom line impact.
Fully at 1.5%
Yes
improvement in EBIT margin?
Yes.
Okay, sounds good. Thanks.
Thank you.
Yeah, let me redirect that because that's not what I said. What I said was that yes, it'll improve margins, and of course, it depends.
Yeah.
In years where we have high demand, you see a big change in the demand curve, more of that should flow.
Mm.
There are some years we're gonna need that in order to offset inflationary pressures and other pressures to the top line, and we intend to have room to do that. We also intend to not lose focus on being able to take some of the advantage, so obviously we're trying to create as much impact there as we can in order to better invest in sales, marketing, and R&D. Because we've too often had to really scrape by and do the bare minimum to deliver the 170 new products and the 70+ coming out this year, but we could do more, and so we don't want to forgo those opportunities in the future. It depends on how the demand curve goes, as you know. As you know.
Disclaimer.
Yeah.
Thank you. Let's take next question from Tom Skogman, please.
Yes, this is Tom from Carnegie. You have not really mentioned market shares in the different products. It would be good to get an update on the different products, and also perhaps more granularity, I mean, where you see kind of pockets where you know you have a great product, but you don't have the distribution or so.
Yeah. Yeah, look, that's always a bit of a sore topic with me, because I'm always focused on where we could be better. If you think back to the last, let's say the post-COVID demand mobilization, we've largely improved in this area across the board, and that was due to our ability this time, unlike prior demand spikes, to deliver. And would've even been better, but of course, we all had the challenge then with the truck chassis availability, and they had an even bigger demand spike to deal with than what we did. But having said that, we have clear opportunities for improvement. We have loads of opportunity to get to a really good level in our heavy crane segment, which is tied to the construction.
So we know we can do that, and we don't have to depend on market tailwinds to help us there. It's just really self-help, if you will. We still have opportunities in retail last mile as well. Whilst we've done excellent in certain areas and applications, there's room for improvement, again, agnostic of market tailwinds there. Where we've been strong in the past, in whether it's our delivery solutions in truck mount, or forklift, or demountables, or especially in light, medium loader cranes, we've been able to hold our positions and improve those. There are a few geographies that are of concern, but even in those markets, our shares have still held quite steadily.
But if you talk, for instance, about the last mile, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Delivery, I don't really have a clue, you know, what is your market share in Central Europe compared to Northern, Southern Europe? What is it, you know, on the U.S. East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, et cetera? I mean, is the difference really material, or is it evened out over the years? Because it used to be the situation that Palfinger was strong in Central Europe, and Hiab was strong in Northern Europe, as an example, and the U.K. But-
Yeah
So this big picture.
Yeah. I'd say in terms of geographies, where we've expanded our positions is where we were strong, so Southwest Europe, North Central Europe, certainly. Where we've also made improvements, and now you go back 5-10 years, U.K., Ireland was a big growth story for us in the past 5-10 years. Germany was a great example, and frankly speaking, as we highlighted today, even in North America, once Barry took over that customer support center, then we were able to perform at the level that we should be. And then you go into each of the segments, then it gets awfully complex and into the details. But at a big picture level, where we've been strong, we've gotten stronger.
There are still opportunities, to your point, Tom, where we can get better in Central Europe and, of course, in other adjacent countries there. And then we had the question earlier on Asia Pacific, where we know we have opportunities to grow.
By the key product categories, what, what is your kind of global market share? Should we talk about the Western world, you know, because-
Yeah
Asia is so small. Well, what is it then, and what is it then together with-
Yeah
with Palfinger is also quite important to understand, I guess.
Sure. Well, as I'm sure you know, we can't, couldn't talk about market share, but what we can say is, as we've shown in each of the segments that we do compete in, whether it's the market segment or the product line, we're either one or two. And not always is it number one or two, us and Palfinger, there are other competitors that, are especially important to note in products where we compete more, let's say, regionally, and, our tail lift brands are a great example of that. Those brands are regional brands, where we have a couple focused in Europe, in Del and Zepro, and then we have Waltco, that's more broadly focused in the Americas.
All right, then I wonder about the head office, because Cargotec has been this kind of, you know, small head office and people all over the world, and somehow it has worked, but there's always been a lot of EU items, and I guess, you know. But how will Hiab be? I mean, you have, you present your management team, you know, living in many different countries. But I guess, I mean, it's also good to have a home for a company where, you know, people meet and, you know, and new ideas are born, et cetera. How will this be managed?
Yeah.
What are the key R&D facilities also as a kind of a part of this too, you know?
Yeah. Let me take the last question first, 'cause the first question, I'm gonna tell you, we'll come back to you at a later date to more, let's say, clarify, in terms of the future Hiab to be and headquarters and those questions. But what I can address right away is then with regards to the R&D centers. So most of our manufacturing facilities have a combination of R&D, the manufacturing, as well as sourcing in the same location. And given our asset light structure, we'd like to keep it that way. And so those white dots that you saw on one of the pages that I presented in the intro section, most of those represent also our R&D centers. So the critical mass follows the footprint of each of the divisions and the product lines.
Maybe if I can maybe add to that as well. If you look at our decentralized operating model, so each division has its own responsibility for R&D, because that's the division that knows the products and knows the customer base better than anybody. So it's important that we have R&Ds located closer to that customer base, if you know what I mean, be it manufacturing or the customer base themselves, and that's where we're most effective.
Yeah. Perhaps still to the headquarters question, so of course, Hiab will be a listed company here in Helsinki, so there is a certain, certain base here in Finland. But, as you can see also from our annual report, basically, only a very small part of Hiab's revenue come from Finland, so extremely international business. And, basically, the management is where the business is needed, and also, our past practice in Cargotec has been that we are meeting at the business locations to have a better understanding of what's happening in the frontline. Very much in the spirit of the decentralized model, close to the customer.
Okay, thank you. We have time for a couple of more questions until we conclude the Q&A session. I'll take one related one from the virtual audience, and this is also a little bit forward-looking question so will the future Hiab have this kind of a divisional setup, or will it have segments as, as Cargotec today? If you can elaborate anything around that.
Yeah, for sure. Our aim at this point is to continue with our decentralized operating model. So divisions are always going to be the most critical unit within the business, and that'll represent the highest operating level within each of those businesses. And the way we've designed the divisions is aligned to our end-user customer market segments as well, so the one follows the other quite well.
Thank you, Scott.
Yeah, perhaps if I can add there. So basically, IFRS regulations require that Hiab, in the future, when Hiab is a standalone company, reports the segments as the board of directors and the CEO is following the business performance. So, the expectation when Hiab is standalone, that there is more than one segment, that's the expectation. And, that still requires that MacGregor exit has taken place, and Hiab is the only business within Cargotec. And then we change the segment reporting.
Okay. Thank you. Now it's time for a final question, if we have from the audience. Still the last one for Tom.
Yeah, I just wonder on taxes, if you would sell MacGregor at, you know, a loss of hundreds of millions EUR compared to what you have spent building up MacGregor, how would that be seen in future tax rates?
Of course, the MacGregor tax losses have been generated in MacGregor legal entities, so in the first place, the MacGregor buyer would get those benefits from the past losses. What comes to the EV of MacGregor, let's come back to this topic when we have completed MacGregor exit.
The plan now is just to find a buyer? There is no dual track for a separate listing of MacGregor as an alternative backup plan if you're not happy with the price, because otherwise this can turn into a long-term story, obviously.
Yeah. Like, Casimir already mentioned in his section, there is sufficient interest on MacGregor, MacGregor, so we are very much looking the divestment path.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for the great questions and for the answers. Now it's time to conclude the Q&A session, and I will hand over back to Scott for any closing remarks for the CMD today.
Thank you, Aki. Yeah, I realize I'm the only thing between all of you and a break and then a meal. So listen, a sincere thank you to all of you that have joined here live in Helsinki, as well as all of you that have joined on the global webcast. Sincere thanks to all the presenters and great presentations and the preparation. It truly was inspiring for me to be a part of. So I hope for all of you, what we've shared with you today gives you better insights into our business. I think it hopefully highlights well what Casimir said in his opening remarks about the overall demerger process, that we're excited to be able to give you better and better insights into the businesses, as we hadn't been able to do so in the past.
So as we move forward, I look forward to doing this again and together being able to learn more and more why we think that Hiab represents a really good opportunity today, and a better one in the future. It's a big sincere thank you to everybody, and I wish you a safe day.