Good morning and welcome. I'm Donal Murphy, Chief Executive of DCC. I'm joined on the call this morning by a number of my colleagues. Here with me in DCC House is Kevin Lucey, our CFO. From the U.K., Tim Griffin, Managing Director of our technology division. From a very early morning in Philadelphia, Clive Fitzharris , Managing Director of our international technology businesses. Thank you for joining us this morning on this very exciting day for DCC, as we announce the significant expansion of DCC Technology in North America through the acquisition of Almo Corporation. This is DCC's largest acquisition to date. We also want to take the opportunity this morning to update you on our group strategy and our capital allocation framework, which we believe will create significant shareholder value over the short, medium, and long term. Thankfully, I don't have to read the disclaimer.
I'll give you an update on the group strategy and our value creation model. I'll take you through our growth to date in North America to demonstrate our strategy in action. Tim will update you on the DCC Technology strategy and our growth in North America. Clive will take you through the highlights of the Almo acquisition and why we see it as a really exciting opportunity and a very important step in the further development of our business in North America. Kevin will then give you an update on our capital allocation framework and our priorities for capital deployment and our growth agenda. I'll wrap up and open up for Q&A. DCC is a purpose-led organization, and we are focused on the value we create for all our stakeholders.
Our purpose, enabling people and businesses to grow and progress, really came to life throughout the pandemic as DCC delivered the essential products and services that people and businesses required, while also delivering a strong financial performance. We achieved this by building impactful connections. As a distributor, we are at the heart of the supply chain, connecting the producers of products with consumers. We are a trusted provider, building long-term and deeply embedded partnerships with our customers and our suppliers. We focus on creating sustainable growth and superior value over the long term. We achieve this through a consistent strategic objective to build a growing, sustainable and cash generative business, which consistently provides returns on capital employed significantly ahead of our cost of capital. Throughout our presentation today, you will see the key elements of this strategy in action.
We take a long-term, sustainable view of value creation, which ensures our commercial strategies prioritize growth and create value-adding strategic positions in our chosen markets. You will see later how Almo fits this objective. Our focus on capital allocation ensures our ability to reinvest into growth trends. Kevin will show you later how our capital allocation priorities are aligned with the growth trajectories of our sectors. Finally, sustainability is core to everything we do across the group, and we are making really great progress on our sustainability agenda, including our journey to net zero. More on this from me in a few moments. We have a proven business model that has consistently delivered high growth and high returns over our 27 years as a public company.
We achieve this by driving the organic performance of our businesses, investing and reinvesting capital, and leveraging the benefits and resilience of our diverse sectors. We have a proven process for the financial and commercial management of our businesses, driving organic growth and consistent cash conversion. Our group center empowers our businesses while providing expertise and shared value in specialized areas. We add value through economies of scale, synergies, and deep industry experience. We build long-term and deeply embedded relationships with our customers and suppliers. We invest capital in our businesses and deploy capital on large and small scale acquisitions, where the returns on capital employed are consistently ahead of our cost of capital. We reinvest cash flows to enable our businesses to grow and scale, creating real value for shareholders.
We will further demonstrate today that we are an advantaged acquirer for businesses in our sectors due to our long-term outlook, a differentiation from private equity and scale benefits of a strategic acquirer. Our diversification by sector and geography gives us optionality to pursue the assets with the highest returns while also providing great resilience. Our devolved model ensures proximity to customers, local responsibility and focus, which creates real agility and drives a high performance culture. Our diversified model provides significant expansion opportunities and creates real resilience. We have clear winning strategies for each of our sectors. In Energy, our strategy is to lead the energy transition, bringing decarbonization closer for our customers through domestic and commercial energy solutions and multi-fuel mobility networks.
We are making really good progress and regularly update the market on the innovative products and solutions we are providing to our customers to reduce their carbon footprint. We will host an investor event in calendar Q2 next on our energy strategy. Our healthcare strategy is to build a substantial international healthcare group focused on the provision of high quality contract manufacturing and related services to health and beauty brand owners, and on the supply of medical products to healthcare providers. Conor Costigan gave a good update on our healthcare strategy at our healthcare investor event last September, a recording of which is available on our website. Our technology strategy is growing a leading international specialist distribution group in technology and lifestyle products. Tim will outline more on this shortly. Regardless of the sector, all our businesses have consistent characteristics.
They are customer-focused sales, marketing, distribution, or light manufacturing businesses. Asset light with relatively low capital intensity, generate recurring revenues with high cash conversion in developed markets with similar risk profiles and importantly, with consolidation opportunities. This chart summarizes the points I've discussed already and emphasizes why we believe that DCC's diversified business model really delivered and will continue to do so over the long term. It provides resilience through the cycles, exposure to multiple growth trends, optionality in capital allocation, facilitates geographic expansion, creates many career opportunities for our people, our greatest asset, and it provides the ability to leverage operational and divisional best practice, adding real value to our businesses. This is enabled at the group level by a clear strategic direction and capital allocation framework, a culture of driving performance and growth backed by financial strength and discipline.
As I mentioned a few moments ago, sustainability aligned with our purpose is core to everything we do across the group, and we are committed to driving excellence in sustainability. During the year, we launched our first standalone sustainability report. In November 2020 at our energy event, we set out our approach to driving excellence in sustainability and related reporting. In this context, we are delighted to have recently retained our AAA rating from MSCI and improved our CDP rating to B, up two classes, which is a significant achievement for our team. We are also making great progress on our journey to net zero. Now, let me use our expansion into North America as a case study to demonstrate DCC's strategy in action.
Less than four years ago, DCC decided to expand into North America, and today, after the acquisition of Almo, we now have circa 30% of our group capital employed in North America, businesses in all our sectors and approximately 3,000 colleagues growing and developing our business in North America. Most importantly, we are only starting, as we have small shares in large fragmented sectors. With the growth platforms we've created, we now are an advantage acquirer in North America. Having identified the nutritional contract manufacturing market as a very attractive fragmented market where we could leverage the knowledge and experience of our European businesses, we set about building relationships with businesses in the sector. Our first acquisition in North America was in February 2018, when we acquired Elite One Source, a nutritional contract manufacturer based in Montana.
We further expanded our business in this sector through the acquisitions of Ion Labs in November 2019 and Amerilab in March 2020. Organic growth in our nutritional business in North America is strong, and we've created a platform for further capital deployment in this attractive high growth sector. In April 2018, we acquired Retail West, our entry into the energy sector in North America. Retail West, now DCC Propane, had operations in 10 states, mainly in the Midwest. Since the acquisition, we've grown strongly deploying circa GBP 500 million in total to create a business operating across 22 states, supplying propane and related products and services to approximately 300,000 customers. Similarly, in technology, we've created a substantial platform for growth, which Tim will take you through shortly.
What pleases me most about our progress in North America is the organic growth we've achieved by leveraging the DCC business model we discussed earlier. As I mentioned earlier, geographic diversity has created great resilience in our business and created platforms for further growth. Over the past decade, we've evolved the group from being principally a business operating in the U.K. and Ireland to a group operating in 21 countries on three continents. Today, the U.K. and Ireland accounts for circa 32% of our capital employed. Continental Europe has 34%. North America is the home for 31% with the balance in Asia. We have also sharpened our strategic focus over the past decade, exiting sectors and businesses that did not fit our strategic framework or where we did not see sustainable growth in the medium to longer term. We exited our food and beverage division in 2015.
We exited our environmental service division in 2017. We also divested a number of businesses in our core sectors of energy, healthcare, and technology, where the growth rate or the returns profile did not meet our objectives. We will always focus on optimizing our portfolio in line with long-term trends and our long-term strategic objectives. Our expansion in North America has created substantial value. We have deployed circa $1 billion pre-Almo in North America, and as you can see on the chart, significantly improved the return on capital employed from the entry-level returns. We've achieved this by applying the DCC business model we discussed earlier, driving organic growth and operational efficiencies through capital discipline and CapEx investment and by extracting cost synergies. We've already created businesses of substantial scale in North America in each of our sectors. I won't call out the stats, you can read them for yourselves.
The more important point is that we have created platforms for further growth, as all our sectors are large, fragmented markets where we still have relatively small market shares. In energy, there is considerable roll-up potential given the highly fragmented nature of the propane market. We will also invest in our energy transition strategy, bringing low carbon and renewable multi-energy products and services to our customers. In health and beauty, we are investing CapEx to further develop our capability, capacity, and form factors while seeking further consolidation opportunities. Now I'll hand you over to Tim, who will update you on our technology strategy and our growth in North America. Tim.
Thank you, Donal. Like elsewhere in the DCC group, in DCC Technology, we are focused on the value we create for all our stakeholders. We talk all the time in DCC about partnerships. In DCC Technology, we bring this to life by building really impactful connections between our vendors and our customers. For our 2,500+ vendor suppliers, we provide reach and market access. We support them through our sales, marketing, and distribution channel, enabling them to maximize demand for their products. We are the route to market for our vendors across 19 countries. For our more than 50,000 customers, we provide vast breadth of solution and product choice, offering supply chain simplicity, and the ability to leverage our technical and logistics capabilities. We've embedded long-term relationships with our vendors and our customers.
They trust us because they know the value we add as their vital partner in the growing distribution channel. The fantastic thing about this industry is that it is always changing and growing. Distribution is providing more and more of the services that vendors and customers require to be agile in a dynamic market. The trends towards e-commerce, working from home, smart home, I could go on, of course, are all being enabled by DCC Technology and the services we provide. We are constantly innovating to add value to our customers and vendors. Although the technology industry is always evolving, our position between our vendors and customers remains familiar. Our specialist focus really delivers that extra expertise and technical capabilities which bring real value to our vendors and helps us make the market for their product.
Our knowledge, expertise, and technical support are increasingly invaluable for our customers, where products are changing constantly. We make the complex simple. For example, the Pro AV architecture for a major event center or the installation of Pro AV equipment or premium appliances in a large new construction project. We work hand in hand with the integrator to design the best solution for the end user. We also support new technology coming to market with our own brand or white label products, which are complementary to our vendors' offerings, and helps build out their offering in terms of accessories or other essential peripherals, and which helps their overall go-to-market strategy. We also provide these own brand or white label solutions to customers who need full range across all price points. The evolution of sales channels is resulting in an omni-channel world.
In this environment, as well as providing solutions to retailers and e-tailers, we're also enabling technology brands to sell directly to their end users. We do this by providing bespoke digital solutions and web offerings. This enables them to reach more of the market than they could on their own, simply by leveraging our infrastructure. Our whole value proposition is predicated on great teams, and every day, our people makes life simpler for vendors, resellers, and retailers. Finally, our approach to sustainability, we are continuing to develop our capability in delivering a second life for technology, developing the residual market for technology, and enabling subscription models to evolve. In parallel, we have reduced the carbon footprint of our own operations by installing our own renewable energy solutions on our sites.
We are incredibly proud of our heritage of building businesses, both through operational and sales excellence, delivering growth either organically or by acquisition. The context to this latest acquisition is our expansion into North America and our continued investment in professional audio visual distribution. This slide tracks our journey over the last three years or so, starting with our beachhead Pro AV acquisition of Stampede. Quickly followed by the addition of Jam, which gave us not only a Pro Audio extension, but also consumer platforms in electronics and musical instruments. Since acquiring both these larger businesses, we have, in typical DCC fashion, completed a number of value-adding bolt-ons. The Music People extended our capability in Pro Audio, and then more recently, we were able to leverage our position in Pro AV to expand into the broadcast adjacency with JB&A being added to the family.
Our business has performed very well in the last couple of years. Throughout the COVID pandemic, the business has demonstrated real resilience and continued to grow in North America. The strong performance and increased scale over time has given us a strong position in Pro AV and Pro Audio and a developing position across the consumer channel more generally. It's great that we have found another complementary acquisition in Almo, which will further strengthen our business in North America. Post this acquisition, we'll have a multi-billion revenue entity in North America with over 1,400 colleagues operating from 19 locations. North America will also have well over half of the invested capital of the technology division. We're excited by the prospects of the business, and I look forward to more growth and development in North America in the future.
I'm delighted to hand over to Clive, who leads our international business in DCC Technology, to explain more about this transaction and Almo.
Thank you, Tim, and hello to you all. I'll give you more color on the transaction and what makes Almo such an exciting, high-quality business for us in North America. We've been building our relationship with the Chaiken family for three years since we entered North America in 2018. Building this relationship and mutual trust has allowed us the opportunity to do an off-market transaction. The majority of transactions which DCC do are bilateral and off-market. This reflects the effort we put into building relationships with other players in our sector and demonstrates an important differentiator within our M&A capability. Almo is a large-scale value-added distributor with nationwide coverage across the U.S. It operates across three major sectors with distinct vendors, customers, and sales forces supported by common infrastructure and back office.
In the Pro AV sector, Almo is very similar in scale, products, margins, and market approach to our existing Pro AV business, but with complementary geographic strength in terms of sales activity. In appliances, Almo is the largest distributor of mainstream appliances to small and medium-sized specialist retailers throughout the U.S. They have long-standing vendor relationships, some stretching to over 40 years, and it is the only nationwide player. Almo is also the leading distributor of premium appliances for luxury residential installations, which are used in both indoor and outdoor settings. In the premium appliance space, Almo typically has long-standing exclusive vendor relationships and serves specialist retailer and construction channels for these high-end products. Finally, Almo has a dedicated capability focused on e-commerce fulfillment for a range of third-party and own branded products in home comfort, principally air treatment appliances and a range of lifestyle products.
These products are typically large and hard to handle items which fits with Almo's warehouse capability with rapid shipping nationwide. The customer base includes leading U.S. retailers and e-tailers. Almo fits with our ambitions geographically. It fits with our existing specialist focus in Pro AV and own brand products. It fits with our strategy in continuing to acquire platform assets for further growth and development, this time with a North American platform in consumer appliances and lifestyle products. Warren Chaiken will continue to lead an experienced and proven management team, which individually have decades of experience and relationships with vendors and customers. It is an excellent management team with a long track record of driving organic and acquisitive growth. Their sales capability, the large product format warehouse footprint, and the access to retailer, e-tailer, construction, and installer channels across various business units gives resilience and numerous avenues for growth.
In addition, each of Almo's markets have attractive growth outlooks. Combining Almo's Pro AV offering with our existing Pro AV business creates the clear number one Pro AV specialist distribution business in North America with significant market share. A doubling of our Pro AV presence gives us leading sales expertise and coverage nationwide and a more complete warehouse footprint and vendor set. By combining the best of both businesses, we will enhance our market reach and breadth for the benefit of vendors. It broadens our technical capability, product range, and availability for our customer base of installers. We see revenue and cost synergies when the businesses are integrated. The Pro AV market is rebounding well and is expected to fully recover during the next year. Industry forecasts are for mid-single digit market growth per annum in the medium term. Pro AV is a key element of the acquisition.
However, we are also acquiring a market-leading platform in consumer and lifestyle products. As Tim mentioned, Jam has performed very well since acquisition. It has specialist consumer positions in electronics and musical instruments alongside its leading Pro Audio business. Similar to Jam, Almo has specialist positions in consumer and lifestyle products alongside its significant Pro AV business. As mentioned already, Almo is the largest independent distributor of appliances in North America. Almo's addressable market here is expected to continue to grow at similar rates to Pro AV at mid-single digits per annum. Almo's really interesting e-commerce capability has high growth. It also provides an opportunity to further scale existing and new product categories with similar characteristics and margin profiles. The strong growth and operating margins within each business unit are in line with our businesses in DCC Technology, which have deep specialisms, scale, and exclusive and own brand aspects.
Almo's management are focused on its core strengths with simplicity in operations and shared back-end functions. They translate their business unit margins into strong overall profitability for the company. Almo is also a strong fit with DCC's culture of sustainability. They already have an ambition to be carbon neutral by 2024. Indeed, approximately a third of their warehouses are powered by rooftop solar installations. Almo is a terrific business in its own right. Plus, we have a value creation plan through revenue and cost synergies, and we'll be seeking to leverage the platform with further acquisitions. A highly successful business and management team. With the DCC approach and capital, we are confident that we'll deliver strong growth. Now over to Kevin.
Thanks, Clive, and good morning, everyone. Over the next few minutes, I'll take you through some of the financial metrics of the transaction, as well as giving a brief overview of our capital allocation priorities in DCC. Firstly, to Almo. As Clive mentioned, Almo is a scale business and last year generated underlying revenue and EBITDA of $1.3 billion and $75 million, respectively. At current exchange rates, that is EBITDA of approximately GBP 57 million. The operating margin profile of the business reflects the value-added service the business provides and the specialist focus around ProAV and consumer appliances and electronics. The acquisition will be materially margin enhancing for DCC Technology. The initial enterprise value was $610 million, and the vast majority of the consideration was settled in cash at completion.
The acquisition will be significantly earnings enhancing, and we expect it will add approximately 10% to adjusted EPS in its first full year. As always in DCC, we are focused on returns. Clearly, this is a scale transaction and will deliver returns well above DCC's cost of capital from completion. We expect it will deliver a return on capital employed of 15% within three years. Of course, the returns are attractive, but we also believe that the enlarged business will be a real platform for us to deploy further capital at good returns in due course. Now, switch gears a little and talk a bit more about our capital allocation priorities in DCC. To get going, this is our overall framework for capital deployment in DCC.
DCC is growing organically by an average 4% over the last 5 years, and our teams have innovative business development plans that we support in development CapEx. We allocate capital to M&A, where we see the opportunity to bring good businesses into the group and improve them further or improve our group capability by bringing them in. We focus on delivering sustainable returns and capital well in excess of our cost of capital. We've deployed well over GBP 900 million in M&A over the last 18 months. Finally, we are focused on growing our returns to shareholders, and we have a progressive approach to dividends. Donal talked earlier about our agile business model and our growth focus. This manifests itself in our approach to capital deployment. Our priorities for capital deployment are driven by our views on the long-term sustainable growth that can be delivered from any deployment.
We have clear priorities for capital allocation across the two pillars of organic development, CapEx, and M&A. As you can see on the right-hand side here, in particular, we are focused on accelerating the growth of our Healthcare and Technology divisions and in building our capability in new or renewable energies. We believe there's a substantial growth opportunity in our Healthcare business. The market growth rates are strong across both the health and beauty market and in the sectors which are addressed by DCC Vital. The overall environment is one of increasing consumer interest in healthcare and nutrition, and a backdrop of policy and regulation, which also plays to the skill sets we have in DCC and our position as a well-invested player.
We have built scale into the healthcare division over the last two to three years in particular, and the organic growth we have delivered has been very strong. We see long-term market growth rates available to us to be in the range of 4%-6%. In technology, again, we are focused on building out the specialist capability we have in what is a growth industry. The industry is one of constant change, but one where the supply chain services and route to market we offer tends to be ever present and growing. We believe the market growth rates available to us here will be in the range of 3%-5%. Our energy business produces incredible cash flow that enables the development ambitions of the entire group.
We are focused on redeploying those cash flows into areas which will support our capability to lead our customers in energy transition. This is a really exciting area. There will be huge investment by all economies in energy transition over the next 30 years, and the emerging energy areas we will play in will have high market growth rate of at least 5%. Finally, we continue to deploy capital in consolidating in our markets and building our customer base where we believe there is a clear transition pathway for them and a profitable cash generative transition for DCC. This prioritization of capital has been reflected in our acquisition activity over the last 2.5 years.
Indeed, over that time, we have deployed GBP 1.1 billion on acquisitions. Between 75% and 80% of that deployment has been in scaling our healthcare and technology divisions and bringing in new energy transition capability into the group. This deployment is clearly evident in the mix of profits being generated now by DCC. Just three years ago, DCC Healthcare and DCC Technology were combined 26% of our total profits. Today, on a pro forma basis, they were approximately 40%. The group in total is 1.6 times the size it was three years ago. The mix shift is quite substantial. We have talked at length about building out our tech and healthcare businesses in North America. Some of the acquisitions are listed here on the left-hand side of the slide.
We have deployed capital into renewable power and solar too, to give some examples of the high-growth energy transition capability we are building. On the right-hand side, just some examples of how the same capital allocation priorities manifest themselves in organic capital expenditure. We are significantly expanding our capacity and form factor capability in our health and beauty business. We will deploy substantial CapEx in the next year in adding a new facility to our business in Minnesota and building a gummy line in Florida. We're investing in EV charging and renewable or lower carbon fuels in the energy sector. We are investing across our business in decarbonizing our own energy use. To finish up on the capital allocation side of things, in just the last 18 months, we have deployed well over GBP 900 million on acquisitions.
Our balance sheet remains strong, and we believe we have the opportunities and capability to continue to be acquisitive and to invest in organic development CapEx for growth. Our capacity to be acquisitive is enabled by both our balance sheet, but also by the very resilient and cash generative nature of our business. Our business model and the cash generative nature of our business means DCC can deploy at least GBP 6 billion in M&A over the next 10 years relative to our capital employed of GBP 3.7 billion today. This capital will be deployed to where we see the greatest growth opportunities for DCC. Today, we have outlined those priorities to you. The great thing about bringing growth businesses into the group and combining them with our existing quality businesses and group culture is that they in turn create more growth opportunities for us.
It is this mix of organic and acquisitive growth that we believe can continue our track record of double-digit earnings growth over the longer term. Finally, for me, before I hand you back to Donal, in terms of communicating with the market, we have already held a couple of sessions which were relevant to our themes today around the growth and capital allocation of DCC. Conor Costigan, who leads our healthcare business, held an informative teach-in on the growth opportunity in DCC Healthcare at the end of September, and that webcast is available on the website. At the half year stage, we took some time to talk through some of the great initiatives we are taking to lead our customers through energy transition. Again, that is available currently on the website.
This week today is another step, but we realize we have more work to do to articulate the growth opportunities available to the group. With that in mind, we plan on hosting a couple more sessions early next year. Firstly, Tim and team will provide the market with an update on DCC Technology and the growth opportunities available to us there. After that, we will hold a longer event focused specifically on our strategy for the energy sector and how we expect to grow by leading our customers on their own net zero journey. With that, back to you, Donal.
Thanks, Kevin. In summary, DCC's consistent strategy has, and we believe will continue to deliver superior growth and create significant value for all our stakeholders. We have built a business of real scale in North America in a relatively short period, but the most important factor is that we are only just starting. The acquisition of Almo is an exciting and significant step in scaling our capability in DCC Technology. Our capital allocation framework is aligned to our strategy and aligned to growth. Our priorities for growth are clear, and we are excited about the growth potential across all our three sectors. Finally, we believe that our strategy will continue our track record of double-digit earnings growth for our shareholders. Many thanks, and we'll now open up the line for questions.
Thank you, Donal. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from Allan Smylie of Davy. Your line is open, Allan.
Good morning, Donal, Kevin, Tim, and Clive. Congratulations on the transaction this morning. I have a few questions, please. Firstly, on Almo, it'd be helpful if we could get some color around the growth rates of the business, either historically or how we should think about market growth going forward. Also, if you could give us a sense of the profit mix within the business, just given you're entering some new and potentially quite exciting segments. Then a bigger picture question for Donal, really around capital allocation. Donal, in the past, you've said you reactively allocate capital to attractive opportunities as they arise. It sounds like in the presentation today, and I'm alluding to slide 25, you're now taking a somewhat more proactive approach to allocating capital to future growth opportunities. If you could comment on that.
Then, you know, as a follow on, are there now parts of the energy portfolio that you think will be somewhat de-emphasized from a capital allocation, you know, perspective if the pathway to energy transition is less clear cut? Thank you.
Thanks, Allan. I'll have Kevin to talk a little bit about the Almo kinda growth rates historically and going forward. Like it's, you know, it has been actually a high growth business and, you know, the market that we're in and one of the really exciting things about the opportunity is not only does it give us that number one position in the specialist Pro AV market, which is a, you know, is a high growth market generally across the world, but a high growth market in the US. It also brings us into new areas that are also high growth. You know, going forward, we'd see that business growing kind of 3%-5% organically, but building on a long track record of growth. Kevin.
Yeah. Allan, in terms of growth rates looking out, I guess the, you know, the industry bodies that we would look at, you know, there's a trade player in Pro AV or the industry forecaster would be AVIXA. They would be calling out, you know, kind of 4.5% growth in the Pro AV side over the next 5 years, which broadly we would agree with. You know, on the appliances side, I think again, you know, outdoor appliances growing very quickly, major or premium appliances growing quickly, you know. You have solid growth rates on appliances by 2.5%. Then in certain areas growing upwards of 5% or higher.
Blended basis addressable, you know, for Almo in total, it, you know, very much feels somewhere between 3%-5% organic growth opportunity for us and, you know, has been organically.
Hello. Please hold the line while we reconnect our speakers. Thank you all for your patience. We now have the speakers back on the line.
Hello. Apologies about that, sorry, Allan. I think Kevin was pretty much through the first question. If there was any additional points that he hasn't covered, just let us know. Just looking at the capital allocation priorities, Allan. You know, DCC has been and is committed to diversity within our business model. That's nothing new. You followed us for some time. You know that the different sectors have grown at different rates, you know, both the organic growth, but also our ability to deploy capital across the different sectors. You know, we very much want to be deploying capital in line with the growth trajectories of the different sectors that we operate within.
As Kevin outlined earlier, you know, clearly, we are in a high growth healthcare sector, and we'd love to have a much bigger healthcare business as part of the group. The technology sector, again, is a high growth sector, and we've been growing very well over the last number of years. Almo is a material step increasing the scale of our technology business globally. You know, we believe will help accelerate the growth of our technology business by bringing us into new areas and new platforms for growth. You know, on the energy side, you know, there's going to be phenomenal capital deployed to drive energy transition.
As we've talked about many times in the past, and we'll talk about in our energy session next year, you know, we are just very well positioned to support customers on that energy transition journey and on their journey to net zero. That's gonna create lots of opportunities for us and opportunities not just to grow the business organically, but to deploy capital in some of the areas that we've been deploying capital in, whether it's our renewable electricity, whether it's our solar, whether it's investment in EV fast charging. You know, you'll see us continue to do that. You know, our core asset within our energy business is the 9 million customers that we provide energy products and services to today across the 12 countries that we operate within. We want to continue to consolidate those customers.
You know, is there areas that we won't deploy capital in? Well, absolutely, there'll be areas that we won't deploy capital in the energy sector. Just like in the past and in the other sectors that we've been in, where businesses don't have the growth trajectory, don't have the cash generation, don't have the ability to transition customers to low carbon and ultimately zero carbon solutions, well, then they won't fit within our portfolio. We will actively manage that. I think when we look at the areas of focus, you know, the areas of focus are really in those lower carbon areas as we go forward.
Just to add, Allan, I'm sorry, not to step back too back too much to Almo, but just you did have a question just on splits. You know, obviously Pro AV is the largest part of Almo, and it represents just over 40% of revenues on an underlying basis. Appliances would be just under 40% of revenues. Then the fast growing e-commerce or fulfillment side, Allan, would be roughly 20% of revenues. So that'll give you an indication of the splits in Almo.
We move on to the next question.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Kate Somerville of UBS. Your line is open, Kate.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks very much for the presentation. My first question is on, so on slide 26, you give a really good idea of the energy outlook in the sort of more positive areas. I was wondering if you could give us an overall sort of midterm outlook in energy. My second question is, within your energy division, can you remind us what percentage is coming from non-fossil fuels and what the returns are in the non-fossil fuel versus the fossil fuels?
Finally, I think the margin for Almo is around 6%. I was wondering where you expect this to get to and where the cost savings are coming from. Many thanks.
Sure. Thanks, Kate. Look, you know, on the energy side and we kind of called out, and Kevin called out on the slide the, you know, and we said put in 5%+ in new energy growth, that's gonna be plus, plus because, you know, clearly the opportunities in the low carbon area is gonna be very significant. I think say, you know, estimates of about $100 trillion to be spent to get to net zero by 2050. There'll be lots of areas in the segments of the market that we work in within the energy side where, you know, particularly focused on the off-gas grid and the market where we have a particular strength, you know, will create plenty of opportunities for us.
We see that element as high growth. You know, we're very confident in our ability to grow our existing business, even though, you know, traditional volumes will decline over time with the ability to manage our cash contribution from our existing energy businesses as we are transitioning customers to lower carbon fuels. That's kinda low, you know, 2% plus kind of growth is where we see the existing business and, you know, our ability to transition customers to lower carbon fuels. You know, in terms of our volumes today, you know, we've grown very significantly in the low carbon areas and just shy of 10% of our volumes.
You know, volumes are different to traditionally kinda liters of fuel or tons of gas because we're investing in renewable electricity, we're investing in solar. About, you know, about 10% of our business now is in clean energy areas. That percentage will grow further as we go forward.
Just to emphasize on that case, I mean, you know, we've obviously built, you know, they're small but growing positions in renewable power and solar. You know, the returns we're getting from those acquisitions we've made and the businesses we're building organically are no different to those of the rest of the DCC group. You know, we're generating mid-teen returns from those investments, albeit that we're still early in their growth journey. You know, we'd be encouraged by the progress we've made so far on returns in those areas.
Maybe Clive, you'd like to talk a little bit about just the margin profile within the Almo business and impact on technology.
Okay. Thank you, Donal. I suppose, Kate, the first thing I'd say is, we just see real opportunity in relation to top line growth at similar margins. As you point out, the 6% or so margin of the business is impressive, but it's in line with similar businesses that we have elsewhere in technology that have deep specialisms, exclusivity and own brand elements. As Kevin spoke about, you know, the market growth as mid-single digits. We think we can gain market share ahead of that growth and deliver revenue growth. In relation to cost synergies, there is cost synergies on the Pro AV side, but we want to maintain the really strong market presence of our combined businesses.
That's relatively modest, maybe about 1% return on capital employed on cost synergies. We'll also be looking at growth into Canada, where Almo doesn't have a presence in appliances and home comfort products. We have a strong presence in our JAM business.
Super. Thanks, Clive. We might take the next question.
The next question today comes from Rajesh Kumar of HSBC. Please go ahead, Rajesh.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is, after this deal, how much more capacity do you have on the balance sheet? Just looking at the available cash and cash generation that's available for redeployment, how are you thinking about, you know, 2022 capital allocation? Are you sort of end of the line of your pipeline for deals or, you know, are there more in the pipeline which you're thinking about? Second question is on, you know, the business mix in Almo. So you've given quite a lot of color of what they do, how they do. Could you just run us through the type of growth rates you're getting in those different market segments and why?
Sure. Great. Thanks, Rajesh. I'll take the pipeline piece and I'll give Kevin the balance sheet piece to answer. Just on the pipeline, look, you know, and again, you know, we talked about this at the full year. We said we have a pretty active pipeline from an M&A perspective, and one deal does not make a pipeline. We have, you know, as always, lots of things in play across the group across our three core sectors. We feel good about the opportunities to deploy capital going forward. You know, M&A is one of those things, Rajesh, that is a little bit like the buses.
They come in at different times, sometimes together and sometimes a little bit spread apart. You know, it's always about timing, but yeah, we're pretty pleased with the pipeline we have across the sectors.
I mean, I guess we're pleased that firstly we've deployed well over GBP 550 million in the year so far in terms of acquisition commitments. Notwithstanding that level of spend and notwithstanding the fact that we, you know, will have spent GBP 900 million or more over the last eighteen months, the balance sheet remains very strong. We finish FY 2022 with pro forma net debt/EBITA of around about 0.4 times. You know, on a look forward basis, the balance sheet will have plenty of capacity. As you know, we sort of set a leverage kind of, or an upper end of leverage at about 2x.
You know, very substantial room for further capital deployments from 0.4x, where we think we've finished this current financial. Plenty of capacity and balance sheet.
Again, Rajesh in terms of the mix, and there is different growth rates in the different segments of the Almo business. Clive, you might like to just take Rajesh through that.
Yes. As Kevin said earlier, like overall it's sort of 3%-5% growth across appliances and Pro AV. In the appliances, there will be higher growth in channels such as e-commerce. E-commerce has, if we even take out the COVID, is probably mid-teen growth. You go into certain product categories. Air treatment, outdoor would be higher growth versus major appliances. As I mentioned earlier, the Almo business has had long track record of exceeding that market growth, gaining share, going into new territories, adding new brands, adding new lines for existing brands. I think the 3%-5% is a good guide overall, but we hope to surpass that.
Great. Thanks, Clive. Might take the next question.
The next question comes from George Gregory of BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is open.
Good morning, chaps. Thanks for taking my question. Just on, there's a lot of useful color on the Pro AV. I'm just keen to understand how you see the appliances part of Almo. Is that a business that you know will continue to grow? Or do you see it being sort of kind of it's deprioritized within the mix of activities? And how do you view this, I guess more importantly, the structural outlook for distribution of consumer appliances, please?
Yeah, look, thanks, George, and I think it's a very exciting area actually. If you think about the home, you know, and the whole range of products that people consume or use within their homes, you know. We've been providing tech products, you know, into the home, and that's been a big growth area for us. But you know, home appliances is a major spend area for customers. It's very much similar to the tech products. You know, there is the replacement cycles, there's people refurbishing their properties. You know, so it's a big new market area for us.
You think about the smart home of the future, and our ability to provide the total range now of products for our customers from consumer appliances, consumer electronic products, air conditioning, which is a part of the Almo business. Ultimately as we go forward, you know, within our energy businesses, our heat pump solutions, our solar solutions, you know, the whole range of smart tech products that go into the home. Building out our business in the appliance area is a really good growth opportunity for us, as an organization. Maybe Tim, you'd like to add something to the growth objectives of technology within this area.
Yeah, right. Thanks, gentlemen. George, thanks for your question. You know, I think you've covered much of it in terms of the context of the smart home, the proliferation of consumer electronics, and definitely see this as a major growth area. It's also an opportunity for us to service our channels to a greater extent and really cover more of their wallet.
It's an area that we've already been in, albeit in a less material way in some of our more successful acquisitions, like Amacom, for example, where we've been involved in large spots distribution, and we see it as a major opportunity to service both the market, the customers and our vendors who absolutely are similar vendors across multiple parts of our vendor landscape, whether or not it's IT, all the way through into appliances and even air conditioning. It's the same customers. Absolutely to your question, George, it's a growth opportunity and something that we will be looking to double down on.
Super. Thanks, Tim. Take the next question. We're getting a little bit tight on time, so two more. Two more questions.
The next question comes from Christopher Bamberry of Peel Hunt. Please go ahead, Christopher.
Good morning, gents. Just about three or four questions. With regard to Almo, how well invested is their IT and warehouse infrastructure? Secondly, you've talked about their e-fulfillment and e-commerce capability. How does that compare to yours? What extras does it bring? You mentioned GBP 6 billion of capital you could deploy over the next 10 years. Could you give us some of the assumptions behind that, please? Thank you.
Thanks, Chris. The answer to the first bit is well invested from an IT and a warehouse infrastructure perspective, and not just as well invested, but you know, we have a huge focus on sustainability across our group. There's not a lot we need to add to the Almo business. Their focus on sustainability is very significant and you know, they'll be net zero across their operations, I think by 2024, and have been investing in solar and so on.
Like a wonderful footprint of warehouse infrastructure across the businesses and the technology, you know, that enables the business to deliver to, you know, within two days all the products across the entire market. Maybe Clive, you'd like to just talk a little bit about the fulfillment business and what it brings to us.
Yeah. I touched on this a little bit earlier in terms of some of the products that it sells, but the fulfillment business supported by that large box handling capability is really an attractive space in terms of air conditioning and air treatment products and other sort of outdoor living products. We look to expand the product ranges that they're currently selling and also add in other products, particularly in formats that suit the warehouse and are more defendable in terms of the capability and the services that we can provide into e-tailers.
Like the e-commerce business, the overall market is probably growing in mid-teens% and we continue to see that growth going forward and we think we can do a lot with that part of the Almo business.
One of the focuses, Chris, that we've had and has been the direct consumer element of our business. You've heard us talking about that within our technology business over the last number of years. You know, this acquisition further strengthens our capability within that area, whether it's supporting vendors, bringing their brands directly to their direct end consumers, or whether it's supporting the you know, the online retailers or mainstream retailers who want to develop their online presence. You know, that's been a real driver for growth for us all the way through the pandemic. Kevin, on the assumptions.
Yeah. Hi, Chris. You know, I guess you'll be familiar with you know, our capital deployments over the last number of years. You know, we've regularly talked about an ambition to deploy GBP 300 million-400 million per annum on capital. I suppose if you look at the last 18 months, we deployed well over GBP 900 million on capital in that time. I suppose as we look out and over the next 10 years, I guess, you know, a 6 billion plus number really is continued confidence in the cash generation, the growth outlook for the group, and I guess the scaling up over time of what we believe, you know, the appropriate level of M&A spend for the group will be.
You know, if you take it that the growth and the scale opportunities that we have delivered, for example, in North America, every time that we have expanded, we have found that it brings more opportunities towards the group. You know, we believe we will have the financial capacity to spend that sort of money. But more importantly, we believe we'll have the opportunities and the capability in DCC to execute against it. It's really just to say that we believe, you know, continued confidence in the financial performance of the group, the cash generation of the group, our strong balance sheet today, and then the opportunity set and the capability to spend the money.
Unfortunately, we've time for only one more question, and I know there's probably more questions on the line, but we will note everyone who has raised questions with the operator, and we'll get back to you afterwards. We just take the final question, operator, please.
Our final question today comes from Thomas Truckle of Jefferies. Please go ahead, Thomas.
Kyle, thank you for your time today. I just have two quick ones, if I may. Just coming back to Kate's point on cost synergy. Is there a way in which we should consider the phasing of those cost and commercial synergies, or would it be fair to evenly phase those across the next three years or so? Coming to tax rate, is there a particular tax rate we should have in mind for the Almo business or keep relatively in line with the current group? Thanks.
Thanks, Thomas. Kevin?
Thanks, Tom. No problem with either of those two. I mean, yes is the answer to the first question in that I think we would be kind of considering a pretty steady phased profile across the three years in terms of getting from that broadly initial 12.5% return to the 15% return within three years. Phased basis there. On tax, yeah, I mean, you'll know the U.S. corporation tax rates are higher than a lot of the rates we see in Europe. You know, we would broadly be assuming a corporation tax rate of about 26% on profits coming into the group from that part of the world.
You know, tax rates are always subject to change, particularly at the moment with government looking to pay for all the support they've put behind the COVID pandemic. You know, as we see it at the moment, 26% or so out of North America. Okay?
Super. Thanks. Thank you all for all the questions. Sorry we don't have more time to deal with more questions. Maybe just to leave you with a couple of comments. You know, firstly, you know, the acquisition of Almo is a really exciting development for DCC. It increases our operating profits, our earnings per share by 10%. Materially accretive on a full year basis. It significantly scales the technology business and expands our capability out into lifestyle products, as we've talked about earlier. Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, you know, DCC has now spent GBP 900 million on M&A in the last eighteen months.
Not being able to get out and about, it hasn't stopped us deploying capital, which augurs well for our ability to deploy capital going forward. You know, a key aspect of not just this deal, but the last number of years for DCC, is the growth of our business in North America. Now, you know, North America accounts for just north of 30% of our capital employed. Not bad in less than four years. All the sectors are large, fragmented markets where we still have relatively small shares. 7% in technology, 3% in healthcare, and 2% in the energy sector that we operate within. Lots of room for further growth.
Our return on capital employed in North America, you know, the entry level was about 12%, up to 15% now. I think we're making really good progress applying the DCC business model, that we talked about, earlier. Our capital deployment priorities are clear, as Kevin outlined earlier. They're very much aligned to the growth trajectories of the sectors that we operate within. You know, diversity is hugely important to DCC. Healthcare and technology on a pro forma basis now account for 40% of our group operating profit. You know, we continue to grow clearly in the renewable and lower carbon areas of the energy sector.
As we've just talked about, we have capacity to deploy another GBP 6 billion in this group, building on the GBP 3.7 billion of capital that we've deployed to date. The shape of the group will very much be driven by the capital that we deploy going forward. You know, DCC is making really good progress on the sustainability agenda. You know, renewing our getting our AAA rating from MSCI recently, again, reinstated, you know, moving up two notches in CDP. That's all really good progress. We're scoring well from an ESG perspective. Overall, the group is in really good shape. Today is a big day for us. It's a great day to welcome the Almo business and the Chaiken family into the DCC family.
I just like to thank you all for your time. Thank you and have a good day. Take care.