We have two fire edges in the hall. One is behind me, behind the stage, and second one is behind me, both sides, left and right sides. Also, we have tied up in the in case of medical emergency, we have on call doctor and tied up with decided ambulance services. Thank you so much.
Thank you. So, yes we have Mr. Sunil Mathur, Managing Director and Executive Officer, Chief Executive Officer of Siemens Limited, and Dr. D aniel Spindler , Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer of Siemens Limited, who will present the operational and financial overview of the company's performance. Post that, we will have the Q and A sessions. Now, before I hand it over to Mr. Mathur, let me begin with the safe harbor statement. Siemens Limited, Siemens or Company cannot give assurance to the correctness of such information and statements. This forward looking information and statements can generally be identified by the fact that they do not relate only to historical or current facts.
Forward looking statements sometimes use terminology such as targets, believes, expects, aims, assumes, intends, plans, seeks, will, may, anticipates, would, could, continues, estimate, milestone, or other words of similar meaning and similar expressions, or the negatives thereof. By their nature, forward looking information and statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by the forward looking information and statements in this presentation. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, the company's actual financial results, condition or results of operations could materially differ from that or those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.
Given the aforesaid uncertainties, prospective or present investors are cautioned not to place any reliance on any of these forward-looking statements. No part of this transcript, nor the fact of its distribution should form the basis of or be relied on in connection with any contract or commitment or investment decision whatsoever. Investors' prospective advisors must be served on specific situation from well-informed legal investment, tax, financial and management professionals. The transcript and its contents must not be distributed, published or reproduced. This transcript does not constitute any recommendation regarding the securities of the company. So, with that, I invite Mr. Mathur to begin his speech.
Thanks, Venkatesh. A very good afternoon to everyone here, and it's great to see everyone again in face. After almost four years, the last time we had a physical analyst meet was about four years ago. I t's good to be able to interact with you. What I intend to do is really start off with an overview of the company, and then take it from there. Will but, both of us want to essentially run through the presentations pretty quickly. More importantly, answer questions of yours. W e will leave as much time as possible to be able to answer questions that are important to you. Maybe just kicking it off, I do believe we had a powerful finish to last year. Yet another good year.
And what I want to do really is, over the next couple of slides, start off really with an overview of the business. Now, having talked to many of you over the last couple of months, there have been a lot of questions around what exactly do each of your business segments do. What can you kind of granularize for us a little bit more about what the business is actually doing, what is included in each of this segments, where you see the opportunities at a segment-wise perspective. So, this time I thought we'd start off with that and give you first an overview of what the business is actually about. Go back to the basics, and a lot has evolved in the last couple of years.
We continue to evolve as a company, and then try and bring that together, show you a little bit about the business, tell you a little bit about our future plans, and then sum it up right at the end. Daniel will then take you through the financial highlights of 2023, and then I will wrap it up, and then we open it up for questions. As I said, we won't go into too much detail. Will show you the slides, we can always come back to them if you are interested. The main purpose is over here to answer questions that are important to you, rather than only give you a download from us. Let me start first with the economy and the way we see the economy over here. I think from an India perspective, very clearly, India is one of the growth markets of Siemens AG globally.
We are the fastest growing market of Siemens globally. There is a huge amount of attention that we have here as the Indian company, where I think it is number three or number four. I think we are number four in size of the Siemens global volumes. The parent company is very keen on continued engagement with Siemens in India, looking at the India story. And the main reasons for all that is really the dynamics and the economics that you see here in the country. If you look at it, I think it is fair to say, we got a stable growth on the GDP side. The economic indicators are looking good, inflation and interest rates are stabilized. The economic situation is continue to grow for a third year, fourth year in a row, actually post 2019.
Yes, you remember, in 2019, the GDP was down to 4.2%, and we are now for the third fourth year in a row, over 6% continued growth there. A lot of growth happening in public infrastructure, public spending in CapEx, roads, highways, bridges, railways, power, a lot of it happening over there. Central government is spending a lot. Yes, we started off in 2019-2020, ₹3.5 lakh crores spending in capital expenditure on infrastructure, went up to ₹5 lakhs, went up to ₹7.5 lakh, and now we are at ₹10 lakhs. But what is different? What is different is for the first time, over 70%- 80% of this outlay that have been announced by government have actually been implemented. And that is the difference, and that is what gives us in Siemens in India and the parent company as well a huge amount of confidence.
Now, I have been asked multiple times, what is happening on the private CapEx? Private CapEx, yes, you recall, pre-COVID 2019, was down to about 52, 53% capacity utilizations. Right now, we are close to 80%, I would say 75%- 80% capacity utilizations, not across the board in every market vertical, but definitely some of the larger ones. But if you take the average room temperature in the country, I do believe we are around 75%- 80%. And that is why up to now, private CapEx has not really taken off fresh capacity additions. But I do believe we are now at an inflection point, where if this continues, and we have no reason to believe it will not continue, private CapEx will start kicking in, because yes, you get to 80, 85% capacity utilizations.
This is when industry starts looking at what the runway is ahead of them, and will start making their plans for investments. So, a lot of that is actually happening. We are getting a lot of enquiries, private sector enquiries, a lot of this are already beginning to turn into tenders. T he PLI scheme is helping a lot, and we are not really directly linked in ourself. We don't benefit directly from the PLI, but our customers are the ones who do get the PLI benefit, and we are the ones who then are able to support them in their plans for growth. So, overall, I do see a very strong resilient economy ahead of us. Most of the micro economic indicators are in place, and now, it's really important that we wait and see how things actually develop, whether this trend continues.
And yes, I said, we have no indications that they will not, and we are very very positive about it. Now, from a Siemens perspective, I would like to just quote from our President and CEO, Roland Busch, which were he outlined really the strategy of Siemens at a global perspective. And this was a strategy that was launched three years ago, where the aim is really to move from being an electrical company to an automation company, now to a technology company, by really combining the real and the virtual worlds. Now, this strategy is actually paying off, and we are seeing this in a lot of our customers, not only globally, but here in India as well, yes, we continue to accelerate our digital portfolio. And I will talk a little bit about this and demonstrate really what we are doing in India.
Many of you visited our Innovation Day, where we showcased a lot of the technologies that we are introducing here in the country, and that we have been working with customers in the country. I will talk a lot about that. Primary driver for all that is the sustainability concerns that a lot of our customers have. A lot of it coming out of regulation, a lot of it coming out of conviction. But either way, this is really the core business, where we believe we as Siemens do have the capabilities to support our customers on their digital transformation journeys, as well on their sustainability journeys. So, yes, we move forward. Let me now just start. Is the mic working? I am not sure, it's a bit low. Let me start right now with explaining a little bit about the Digital Industries business.
Now, the Digital Industries business is really looking at traditional part. So, we have got the factory automation part, which is part of which is really dealing with discrete manufacturing. We have the process automation, which deals with process industries. We have the motion control, which is looking at electrification automation of machine building. For example, we have got SINUMERIK ONE , which is a digital CNC software, which is really simulating and testing process workflows in a completely virtual environment. Now, this is something where as machine building increases, there is a huge opportunity here. And then, of course, we have got the customer services, where customers are looking around really to say, we have got automation, we have got electrification. Can you help us make that much more efficient? Can you help us with cyber security? Can you help us with logistics?
Can you help us keep our machines more efficient? So, this is what this business does. In 2023, we launched the first industry ready 5G router here in India, and this is used to really remotely monitor and service plants and machines and devices actually via public 5G network. This is really the take off, where you have machines communicating via communication device with onto a platform. You get the data onto a platform, you use that data to create dashboards, and then out of those dashboards create apps that make it user friendly to run your factories much more efficiently. This business is operating through multiple industrial market verticals, and you see them all there at the bottom of the screen.
But in each of this, we have the electrification know-how, we have the automation know-how, we have the know-how of the manufacturing process. And now, the real challenge is how can we bring that all together? This is our the four product business units that we have within this vertical. Now, let me give you some example of kind of things that we are actually doing now. If you look at metals, for example, we were asked by a metal production company, can you have a look at whether our equipment, manufacturing equipment? We use a lot of automation there. Can you check whether we are free from viruses? And we went in, we did a virus check, cyber security check over there, and found that they were very highly vulnerable in terms of their machines and technologies that they were having.
And this is where, because we understood the domain, because we understood the process, because we understood the technology, we were able to bring that entire know-how together and introduce, bring introduce to them a completely cyber security framework, which they can use and which we implemented in the plant to make them cyber secure. And these are the kind of things, which bring the competents that we have across all the verticals that I showed you earlier, whether it is automation, whether it is machine building, whether it is the service business. Bring that all together, bring that know-how, bring on to that a layer of data management and so on, and then provide them with the necessary inputs that are required to really monitor the virus attacks that they have on their machines and prevent them from happening.
Becoming increasingly critical, this is going to be one of the largest areas of growth that we see. As companies become go greater for automation, the need for cyber security is going to increase. As there are more attacks coming in, the need for cyber security is a huge opportunity that we see over here. And then, we went to four wheeler manufacturing company, where on the production line, they had an aging production line. Efficiencies were going down over a period of time, and they said, can you help us improve the efficiencies?
Again, over here, we were able to take all the systems that they had, all the sensors and communication devices that they had on all their machines, take them on to a common platform, and remotely monitor and manage and improve their efficiencies of each of their production sub systems and system as a whole, bring them back up to what they were before they started declining their efficiency levels. This is again a huge area of growth. Not everybody has the capability to bring in latest technology, change complete production lines. What you do need to look at is how can we increase the efficiencies in our factories by doing more with less, and more importantly, using what we have, which is all tied up in different machines, different technologies, different automation systems, different platforms.
Bring that all together in order to create homogenized platform, which can then be used to drive productivity in the manufacturing space. If I look at the smart manufacturing space, here again, we have got six verticals. The electrification and automation vertical is basically dealing with medium voltage, less than 33 kV ratings over here, and they deal with medium voltage, both in utilities, but across all the data, all the other industrial verticals that we are looking at. And with that, they are able to really be part of the electrification process that we have across all our industries. Electrical products is more low voltage, runs primarily through distributor channels. These are MCBs, MCCBs, RCCBs, and so on.
And then, you have the regional solutions and services and building products, which is basically building technologies, energy efficiency, fire safety and security, both as individual products, but as sub systems, and finally as platforms as well. And I will talk a little bit about it later. Then, you have the grid technology business that looks at the entire grid efficiencies, both in the transmission as well as in the distribution space. And finally, the e-mobility vertical, which is a new vertical that we have installed, addressing the growing e-mobility market here in India, but also globally. And here again, we cover primarily buildings, but also utilities and data centers and airports, every commercial establishment. It could be malls, stadiums, airports, ports and so on, in addition to industries. Now, here for example, I give you one example of data centers.
Again, one of the largest issues that data centers have is the consumption of power. They are the largest guzzlers of energy. And here, we had a case where you had large data centers, which were co-located hyperscaled data centers, which had different subsystems, be it the chiller, the building management system, the electrical equipment and so on, on different platforms in different technologies. We were able to bring that all onto a centralized platform, and use that platform really to drive energy efficiency for the data center operator, energy savings for them, and also help them improve their efficiencies over there. Similarly, on the commercial estate developers, here again, you have multiple systems.
In this particular case, it would mainly electrical and building automation systems, which we were able to bring on to a cloud platform, and use that to support them in bringing energy efficiencies and making them more greener. Now, again, all of these are only to demonstrate. You saw the hardware part, which comes across each of the verticals that I showed you, the business segments, sub segments that I just showed you earlier. This is where it all comes in. You have our medium voltage, our low voltage, our building management systems, our energy efficiency, all coming together to service a customer. So, we are not only now looking at selling products, either directly or indirectly, but we are using that to really add value. I will talk more about that later on. Then, we have our mobility vertical, which is known to you.
We have got the electrification and signaling part, which is part of the rail infrastructure. We have got the rolling stock, which is split into components and into systems. So, you have got hotel load converters, axle counters, traction motors and so on, which are being manufactured in our Nashik factory. But then, you have got the bogies and the locomotives and so on, which can be used. Bogies, for example, can be used in metros, EMUs and so on, locomotives, passenger trains and so on. And this is where we believe, this is a huge growing market. And then, when you look at the entire package, and you look at rail infrastructure and rolling stock, and you have got to do a complete EPC, that is what we do together in the turnkey business, where we bring it all together.
Customer wants a metro project in totality, covering both electrification, signaling as well as rolling stock. We bring that together in the turnkey business. And then, there is after market sales over there. Here again, we have got the main customer over here, is of course the Indian Railways. Huge opportunities that we see with metros coming up, propulsion systems, locomotives, train sets and so on, bogies as well. A lot of tenders coming out, a lot of tenders in the pipeline. But here again, propulsion systems, particularly, we delivered for the 6000 horsepower of the Indian Railways, part of a tender that they came out with in the last year. As also on the metros, we did the electrification of the Ahmedabad and Surat metros, bring together medium voltage, low voltage, switch gears, transformers as well as the SCADA systems.
We come to our energy business, and this is where we have got the grid technologies, which is basically the transmission business. We have the transformation of industries technology, which is basically generation and automation business. Y ou have got the gas services, which is basically service, after market service, both for steam as well as for gas business. And finally, we have got our engineering hub, which is really one of three hubs that the global parent has here in the country, which is doing the engineering and project management, running across all this technologies, transmission, generation as well as service. And they do the engineering as well as project management for that. So, this is really the energy portfolio, high voltage primarily. The distribution part comes in the smart manufacturing, the generation and transmission part comes here in the energy part over here.
Now, here of course, we have got 765 kV transformers that we deliver to some customers. We have also done some industrial steam turbine plants that we have installed together with GIS technology in terms of generation for the industrial customers. We are doing a lot of modernization and upgradation. Main customers over here are in the area of chemicals, fertilizers, sugar and so on, where they are looking waste heat recovery, cement plants. Waste heat recovery is a huge area of opportunity out there. Now, let me just address briefly, very briefly, the recent announcements that were made around the energy business. Yes, you are aware, Siemens AG, a couple of weeks ago, expressed an intention to increase their shareholding by 18% and took over the shares of Siemens Energy by 18%.
They expressed their intention to demerge the India business of Siemens Energy into a stock market listed entity in 2025. Since then, on Monday, we received a formal request from the promoters to consider and explore the option for a demerger. And that is what the board has finally approved, is to start the exploratory process to examine potential demerger of the company's energy business. They also approved creating a separate 100% subsidiary of Siemens Limited, should it be required at the time of a demerger, provided the demerger is approved. And that is basically kick starting the entire process that we have over here. This has been in line, yes, you are aware, 2017, Siemens Energy Global was demerged from Siemens AG Global into a separate stock listed company there as well.
This is just a natural follow out request, where the parent has turned around and said, in order to increase the focus on the business for both companies, it is important to ensure that we are able to demerge. Now, how does the future look like for Siemens? I have touched a little bit on this. Last year, we launched Siemens Xcelerator. This was basically a platform, which consisted of three layers. One was a tech stack, essentially, which is outlining the entire suite of technologies that Siemens has. The second is an ecosystem. In other words, we need to be partnering. And the third is a marketplace, offering examples of use cases, where real benefits have been provided to customers in different market verticals. The platform is interoperable, flexible, open. It's provided, it can be provided as a service.
The most important, it has to be cyber secure. Now, when you look at this, this is where we are now moving up the value chain. We have been providing electrification and automation products and sub solution, so to speak. But customers come back and say, can you help solve a real problem for us? And this is where Siemens AG came up and said, with Siemens Xcelerator, our intent is to provide a product that can be repeatable to answer a recurring customer problem. To answer a repeatable product for a recurring customer problem. And this means, essentially, can you create a solution that is typical to a particular customer, which can be scaled up within a customer, which can then be scaled up within a vertical, and finally can be scaled up across verticals in an ideal world?
Can you create, or can we create products of that kind? Obviously, everything that we do does not create a complete product of that kind. This is where we said, we need a platform where we allow partners to come on partner with us to find real solutions that we can, where we can really answer customers' problems. And last year, we announced a launch. Already in the first year, we have over 100 use cases that we can start operating on. We will start multiplying. And this is where the scale effect comes in. The scalability factor does come in. We are starting with a couple of verticals, these four verticals that you see on the screen.
Essentially, what we can do, and we have already started, just to give you an idea, we have a steel customer, steel manufacturer, who came in and said, can you help streamline the logistics that we have in our steel plant? Inbound logistics, intra logistics, outbound logistics. And we said, as a technology company, this should be possible for us to actually do. We know how steel is manufactured, we know how things move in and out. We are part of that ecosystem. We are part of the electrification, automation. We can do the digitalization as well. This is where we brought in sensors, RFIDs, counters, platforms, essential, used some of their existing devices, and then brought them on to mounted them on weigh bridges at the entry and exit points.
Created, brought all that information via the sensors onto a platform, and we're able to then monitor the complete inflow and intra logistics and outflow of equipment within the plant. Use that information through data analytics to actually find the seamless way to improve the productivity of that entire process. Now, again, this required automation from a part of the digital industries business. There was an integration of the IoT. It required software, it required digital know-how as well. And this is where you are able with this platform to bring everything together. It's answering a customer need. Now, if you can do this in a steel plant, there is no reason why you can't do it in a food and beverage, pharmaceutical, packaging, paper, any other plant over there.
And this is what we mean by being able to scale a solution based on the pilot cases that you have with one customer into multiple customers, and indeed across verticals. Another example was a cable equipment manufacturer, where he has equipment that is actually manufacturing cables. And he wanted to use our improve the efficiency of that equipment. And here again, using the complete sensors, communication devices across all our equipment, we are able to provide him with that in with those platforms.
Use the platforms to give him information about the wear and tear of the machines, give him information about the speed and utilization levels of the machines, give him information about the quality of the raw materials, bring all that together with the process know-how that we have, and then provide a solution with which they are able to actually monitor the efficiencies of the plant. Finally, we had FMCG, again, a similar process where we are able to create a digital twin of the process of a particular process. This was a process where he was looking at converting milk into powder, and can we increase the efficiency of the purity of the powder, and use that for other purposes as well. Again, because we have the process know-how, we are able to bring all that together.
Not only the factory automation part that we have, not only the process automation part that we have, but including the software and the process knowledge that we have to put it on to a platform and support them by providing them with dashboards that they can use to increase the efficiencies that they have. When I look at sustainability, customers come to us very clearly with sustainability targets. We have hospitality or hotels coming to us, saying, we have to 40% of the cost of running a hotel is actually energy cost. Can you help us bring down those costs? This is where with our building technology systems, with the platforms that we have, we are able to take all the data that they have and help them increase their energy efficiency, bring down their cost, bring down their carbon footprint.
The same with food and beverages, where we are able to now graduate from a pure vanilla solution in a hotel industry. For example, in this one chain, we actually brought them financing from our NBFC, Siemens Financial Services. We went in, we told them, you need to incur certain CapEx if you want energy efficiencies. They said, what efficiency levels will you guarantee? And we said, we can do so much efficiency level, but you are going to have to incur CapEx. And then we told them, and they told us, no no, you will make us incur the CapEx, and then the efficiency doesn't come, and then we are stuck. And that's where we were able to bring in our financing company to go in and finance the CapEx.
And out of the savings that they achieve through the energy efficiencies, they were able to pay back the EMIs to the financing company. And these were the solutions that we did in hotels, in food and beverage. In one customer, we were able to graduate from there to one step further to a pay as you save model. And these are different business models that come in. But again, they run across the hardware verticals, bring in a layer of software and digitalization and process know-how on top of it. Of course, you are aware of the e-mobility acquisition that we did, ₹38 crores acquisition of Mass- Tech, that is now completely integrated. We are now looking at scaling that up.
Maybe a short word to sustainability within Siemens. As you are aware, we launched our DEGREE platform, sustainability platform, three years ago, very clearly covering this six areas of sustainability that we want to focus on. Around the decarbonization and resource efficiency areas, we made an announcement globally, and this is applicable for us here in the company as well, that we will achieve a 55% reduction in carbon footprint by 2025, and get come down in 90% reduction by 2030. In the carbon footprint of our own operations from our supply chains, we will get to net zero by 2050, and get to a 20% improvement reduction in the carbon footprint by 2030. And then we said, we will get to zero waste to landfill by 2030, 50% of that coming by 2025.
From an India perspective, we are well on track to achieve that. Already, a lot of our own energy is coming from renewable sources, and we are adding on to that. Our carbon footprint has substantially reduced in scope one and scope two. Plastic waste is zero completely in the organization, and we are also moving towards, we are on track towards reduction in the overall waste to landfill. So, that's just a brief overview of some of the areas that I thought may interest you. We will then take questions at the end, where you can add if there are anything further you like me to dive deeper into. Let me hand over now to Daniel to take you through the financial highlights of 2023, and take it from there. Over to you, Daniel.
Thank you. G ood afternoon, and a very warm welcome also from my side. It's really nice to see you in person. For me, it's only the second time that I have this pleasure to speak to you in person. First one was, yeah, late in 2019, and now, it's very nice to see you all here. Similar to what Sunil was saying, I will also rather quickly, whatever that means in financial terms, because there is a lot to be talked about about our financial performance.
But I will rather try to not overwhelm you with financial details, because we want to have also after what some time for Q and A. But I would like the opportunity over the next 20 or 30 minutes to give you a broad overview about our financial performance for '23, as well as highlighting our final quarter, the fourth quarter, which was quarter four financial year '23.
And just to remind, our financial year goes from first of October to 30 of September. W hen I am talking about quarter four, it's from first of July to 30 of September financial year 23. Today, few days before Christmas, basically, we are already almost at the end of our first quarter financial year 24. But I would like to tap in to our performance from now, already previous year 23. And I structured my part basically in to four different chapters. The first one is to give you an overview about our key metrics for the financial year 23, followed by quarter four 23. And then, I am tapping in to the different metrics, new orders, revenue, profitability, mix, followed by a third chapter, which is in about the performance of each and every of our four business.
You heard about them portfolio, starting from Digital Industries, or sure DI. So, if you talk about DI, it's Digital Industries, Smart Infrastructure, SI, Mobility, as well as Energy. And then, lastly, since the numbers that we are usually talking about, and all this chapters that I just described, they are based on stand alone figures. So, it's only Siemens Limited, whereas I know that you have a lot of interest in also understanding the consolidated numbers, the group numbers. And in addition to Siemens Limited, we have two subsidiaries, fully consolidated subsidiaries. One is in Mobility, it's Siemens Rail Automation, and the other one is the newly acquired C& S Electric entity, that is part of Smart Infrastructure. And then, I will explain to you how the group is looking like when it comes to financial performance.
So, having said this, let me start with financial year 23. It was not only a powerful finish, I would say, it was a powerful year throughout. And we have seen new orders increase by 138.8% compared to the previous year, largely on account of a very robust base business, which is our short cyclic product business, primarily in DI, as well as in SI products. Certainly, this huge spike, as you all know, comes from the 9k loco order that we were able to record in quarter two of financial 23. But overall, it was a very company performance that we have seen, and that brought us also to a record high order backlog. And we finish the year with ₹45,518 crores of order backlog. That was the old time high, that was after quarter two when we had 9k loco.
And since then, we are very strategically executing on our order backlog to turn it into revenue. Revenue very nicely was growing with 21.3% for the entire year. All our four businesses have achieved the double digit revenue growth, and for the entire company, we were ending about 20%. EBITDA, which is the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, which really gives you the performance, the operational performance of our business, was standing at plus 12.7%. The year before, we were at 11.0%, so that is an improvement by 170 basis points. Similar profit before tax, 14.4% up on 270 basis points compared to prior year, and profit after tax, still double digit with 10.8%. Remarkable here is also our ETR, our effective tax rate, was improving, coming down from 25.6%- 24.9%.
And personally, I am very delighted to talk also about the wonderful cash performance that we have been achieving, which is mentioned here, ₹19.3 billion of cash from operations. It's purely from operational operating activities, primarily. Putting that into relation, we have had ₹25.5 profit before tax in absolute terms, and our goal is to turn from that profitability, cash conversion rate of one minus growth, into cash. If you have 21.3% revenue growth, then you want to have at least 80% of that as cash, and we have been able to achieve this very nicely in the financial year 2023. So, overall, a very strong company performance, and talking about the last quarter of that financial year, it also finished on a very strong trajectory on our profitable growth.
And to put it into numbers, as you can see here, very nicely, orders were finishing with plus 12.2%. Again, very robust in our short cycle product business, supported by some bigger orders. Revenue quarter four ended it even on a 25.0% growth here over year. Again, all our four business have been able to achieve a double digit revenue growth, also in the fourth quarter. EBITA was standing at 11.9% plus profit before tax, 13.4% after tax, 10.1%. All still in the double digit, which is our benchmark, and we have been able to achieve a double digit profitability, not only in the fourth quarter, but consistently throughout the entire year. Around every quarter of the last financial year, we have been delivering on a nice double digit profitability. Earnings per share, fourth quarter at ₹15 for the entire year.
If you add up all the four quarters, ₹53.67, also a nice improvement compared to the previous year when it comes to earnings per share. With this, I want to show a little bit more in detail our development of the key metrics. I am starting here with our new order situation, and prior year is always in blue, and the current financial year, which is 23, is in a bright green color. I wanted to share with you here our previous five quarters to put them into perspective. As you can nicely see, we have always over the last five quarters seen a year over year growth. So, the number within the columns gives you the absolute numbers in billion rupees, and about you can see the growth year over year. So, compared to the respective previous quarter in the previous financial year.
So, starting with quarter four, we have seen a 25.4%, and then throughout the entire year financial 23, we have seen positive orders growth, starting with 5.7% in the first quarter, and then by a wonderful 491.3% in the second quarter. Again, this is 9K, but also a couple of other large orders that we have been able to record. Third quarter 5.9%, and the fourth quarter 12.2%. We see a very nice surge in our order backlog. We finished at ₹455.2 billion, little bit below what we had in quarter two and quarter three. And you see also our orders are coming down. This is a structural normal natural behavior that we have seen also in financial 22, also repeated in 23.
And that allows, you will see that on the next slide, that allows us to have a very steady revenue increase throughout the entire year. So, it's for us very important to have a strong order intake in the first half, so that we can see also a strong order conversion for the entire year. Strong growth momentum in base business, to put it into number, it's roughly around 20%. What we see is a growth, we have seen multiple large orders in mobility, not only 9K. You had from Sunil, it was also for instance Gujarat Metro in Ahmedabad and in Surat, but also data centers, transmission, oil and gas, just to name a few. So, we had a couple of large orders throughout three of our four business.
DI, as you know, is typically not a big project business, but in mobility, SI as well as in SI, we have seen nice nice large orders as well. And that's also something to spend a few words on. We have seen a normalization of an advance ordering effect, how we call it. What does that mean? You may be call in the previous year, and especially also the second half of 22, there was a lot of disruption and constraints in our supply chain. And that was leading to a behavior on the our channel partner side and customer side to start ordering in order to secure slots and in order to secure their deliveries. So, we saw advance ordering effect, especially in digital industries. And now, with the supply chains almost completely easing up, it has been much of a problem anymore.
You every now and then hear little bit of a supply chain issue, but I think that is ongoing, and that will be recurring also going forward. We will never have any more situation where the supply chain is perfectly running. But we manage it very well, and we manage it for instance also with a very close collaboration with our suppliers to have strategic partnerships, or also to have preferred partners to work closely together with our partners, not to rely on single sources, and so on and so forth. So, we have a very elaborate supply chain strategy in place in order to secure our supply, and respectively also then the supply of our channel partners and customers.
So, this has been normalizing, meaning there was a huge ordering effect, especially in digital industries in the first half of the year, and that is now coming down. And it is very important for us to execute now this order backlog and turn it into revenue by avoiding order cancellations, which has been also on a very very low level, thankfully. With this, let me tap into the revenue side, put it as a head. Also, there is a very strong double digit year over year growth, which has repeated for several quarters. Now, you can see, it's almost double digit, starting from the last quarter of financial year 22, with 10.8%, followed by 17.2%, 28.8%, 14.0%, and the fourth quarter with 25% revenue growth.
And the ₹53 billion for that particular quarter from July to September 2023, was the highest, the highest absolute revenue that our company has ever recorded. So, all in all, we see a very stringent order backlog execution, which is leading us to the same steady revenue increase. As you can see, it's from an absolute perspective, throughout the entire year, we saw an increase in absolute numbers. Again, just jumping back to orders, we have seen a very strong order intake in the first half, that allowed us to have a steady revenue increase throughout the entire year. Book to bill, including 9K loco, is at 2.62, meaning we have a very slow order reach, almost three years. However, if I take out 9K loco, it's still at 1.13, so tending towards future growth, also going forward.
And lastly, H2 was benefiting from a strong order intake in the first half, which I have already mentioned. Now, want to give you a bit more insights when it comes to our mix, portfolio mix, and business mix. And let me start with the first one, which is the mix when it comes to domestic and export business. You know that we have a lot of factories here in India, which is part of the global supply chain for Siemens. So, there is a lot of export business happening, also towards direct customers, towards other Siemens entities around the world. And traditionally, we were roughly around 20% when it came to our export business. In '22, it was at 17.8%, and in '23, it came further down to 15.4%.
And the pure reason for this is a very strong domestic market, that we are very delightful seeing here in India, which is I am allowing us to have a very strong growth. And this is our revenue numbers, to have a very strong growth on the revenue side. So, again, our total revenue growth was around 21%. If I now divided into our export business, even so, relatively, it was going down, but on an absolute number, our export business was increasing by 5% as well. So, don't get misled by that information, and think that our export business is declining, just the portion, the relative portion was coming down, due to the strength of the domestic market here in India. Whereas, in absolute terms, our export business was increasing by 5%, and our domestic business by 25%.
On the business mix side, which is some project versus some product and services business. Also, on the revenue side, we saw very steady development, almost on very same terms. 13.5% versus 13.6% is our project business in revenue, and the remainder is some product and services business. Services business is roughly in the range from 10% to 15%, supposedly to increase, because it gives us a very nice profitability. O ur aim is also to increase our services business. And on the other hand, what is very important for us, it's also when it comes to execution of this large orders, to have a very solid project execution in terms of focusing. That this projects also give us a decent profitability, like we have been enjoying it on the product side.
What you can't see here on the slide, but may be also of interest for you, what is the portion of private versus public business. Traditionally, we have been in the area of 20% of our business was public governmental business. It has come down with a strong private focus of our company. It has come down considerably to 10% in 2022, now increasing towards 14% in 2023. In future, now think of the 9K loco order, which is public business. As you know, with Indian Railways, our portion in public business will again come back to historical levels, which were more in the area 20%-25%. Even above, since it shuts a large order that we are seeing with Indian Railways. Having said this, let me guide you through our EBITDA. Same picture like for new orders and revenue.
As said , profitability was maintained well about plus 12% on a comparable basis. And I will explain to you later on our impact that we are seeing from FX and commodities. Typically, we have quite a volatile profitability on high levels, so but there is some volatility, especially because out of FX. We have a lot of import and export content, that's why we are also prone to FX volatility. Even so, we have a stringent FX hedging policy. Same on the commodity side, commodities were also sparking, let's say last 12-18 months, quite considerably. Now, normalizing still, our three most important commodities, aluminum, copper and silver, we have seen a little increase, but we are hedging against that. But overall, we see a very very strong profitability when it comes to Siemens Limited.
I am very happy to say, actually, that every of this quarters that you can see on the slide was about 10%. First quarter 23, even 15.3%. And here, exactly that effect, what I was just describing, was kicking in, that we saw quite some impact out of FX and commodities. But nevertheless, it was a strong quarter, also in the second one, third one, and finally, we finish the fourth quarter with 11.9%. And I put it here on the right hand side, first bullet, without FX and commodity, we have seen a stable development, 12.4% from 2022-20 23 for the entire year. V ery strong and stable operational performance, unchanged operational margin, remain on a very constant level.
NCC, which is non-conformance cost, non-conformance cost, typically arise in terms of project execution, if you have additional unforeseen cost, liquidated damages, etcetera. Our goal is to keep them on a very very low single digit, if not even below 1% level. And we have been able to achieve this, which is very important, if you have a high portion of project business, to keep your NCCs under control, which we have been able to achieve. Then, another very important thing to mention here is, we were very successful, especially in digital industries, as well as in smart infrastructure, to get through with some price increases. W hen commodity prices were increasing, we were able to forward those price increases, input price increases, towards our customers in several rounds, in order to secure our margin.
And lastly, we have seen some increases in discretionary spending, especially travel expenses, or professional legal services, or IT licenses, and the like, and personal expenses also went up. But we have been very much able to offset that with a higher productivity. And I will come to that on my very next slides, actually this one, and then slide after once, to give you a bit more of a flavor about our operational performance on this one. We have shown this in our last analyst call, because you had over so many questions about FX and commodity impact. So, we created this table here, and want to show this to you again for this, for this year, and for the second half of last financial year.
Let me guide you through this one. It may be a little bit complicated for the one that are not so financially expertised. But let me try to help you a little bit, what we wanted to show you here. We have here the revenue, and then we have the EBITDA in absolute terms, and that gives you the margin, the EBITDA margin. And in that EBITDA margin, there is typically also included FX gains and losses. Gains and losses that we have been recording through volatility, especially Euro Dollar versus Rupee terms. And you know, also the Rupee, now it's at 91.2 versus the Euro. There is some volatility in the Rupee, and then commodity, also very high fluctuation in commodity prices.
And that's why we wanted to eliminate those effects, and wanted to show you the adjusted EBITDA in percentage of revenue. So, for 22 and 23, if you now concentrate on the first two columns, then you can see that the EBITDA, as reported for financial year 22, was at 11.0%, and for 23, it was at 12.7%. However, in 22, we had huge losses out of FX and out of commodities, whereas, we were able to record gains in commodity and forex in the financial year 23, through our stringent hedging policy, when it comes to commodities, but also out of mark to market, and realized unrealized gains and losses from revaluation from creditors and debtors, when it comes to FX.
If you eliminate this, then you see exactly what I mentioned on the slide before, that we have a very stable operational EBITDA performance. Actually, it's on the same level on both years, we have been able to achieve a 12.4% EBITDA margin for all our business. In the second half, you see, if you do the same exercise, you see a little deterioration, and that has nothing to do with our operational performance. It has to do also with some additional expenditures, now that we are doing in order to secure our further expansion. You have heard also with the last press release, that we are investing quite a lot here in India, into further expansion, ₹416 crore in VI vacuum interrupter, or power transformer. In 2023, we have invested a lot into our Aurangabad bogie factory, that Sunil was talking about.
We have some additional operational expenditures, when it comes to factory ramp up, R&D expenditures, and the like. And that's why you see little deterioration in the performance in the second half, purely out of that reason. And later on, you will see that in much more detail, when I guide you through the four different businesses. And I saw it would be also very interesting for you to see a bridge, when it comes to profit before tax, from 2022-20 23. And we have been having on PBT, you remember from my first slide, it was 11.5% for 22, then going up to 14.4%. That was the 290 basis points improvement, that I was talking about.
And why have we been able to achieve this, because in the very first place of favorable volume mix and price extraction, and that has improved our profitability by ₹8.4 billion. So, volume mix means, you are shifting your business towards more favorable, more profitable business, product lines, service, software business, etcetera. And price extraction is what I talked about, that we were able to also increase prices in to the market. This was very much of setting some counter effects, like for instance, employee benefits, expenses, employee welfare, salary increases, that we have here experiencing in India. Also of setting other expenses, I mention some of the marketing, logistics, professional service, travel expenses, licenses, IT. Then more, we are going now in to becoming a digital company, then more, we also have to pay for licenses, for instance, or for IT tools and process.
Traveling has picked up. We want to be closer to our customers now than we were in the past, especially during Corona. We want to showcase our technology, and that requires also customer proximity, meaning more travel expenses, which we were able to offset with a better volume and price extraction. Then I mentioned already, we were experiencing some FX gains out of mark-to-market revaluation of creditors and debtors, and through our very stringent and strict hedging when it comes to commodities, we were also able to record a gain. And then finally, we have also some other income. Since we are also giving out some corporate deposits with our nice cash position, we were able to record some nice interest income, and the interest rates were also going up compared to the year before.
It's not only that we have more funds available to place as deposits, but also the interest rate was going up to 6.8% on average, that also allowed us to get more interest income, plus dividends from our subsidiaries, which are also now very successful, and are able to give us some nice dividend payouts. So, all in all, we were then with all these factors, able to improve our profitability by 290 basis points, from 11.5%- 14.4%. Now, let me run you through the performance of our four businesses, starting with Digital Industries, or DI. On the left hand side, you will also see the full year performance, top is the orders, on the bottom you see the revenue, plus the margin, which you see here on that percentage points, within the boxes.
And then the right hand side, you see the break down into the five previous quarters. So, let me guide you through that. I try to be a little bit quicker, because I saw already that time is running, and we want to have some Q and A for you available. But let me give you a bit of an insight, how DI was developing 4% for the full year orders growth. And here we see that impact out of this advance ordering effect. Where channel partners had ordered already quite a lot, and now it's normalizing, and destocking is happening. And for the quarterly break down, you see that we had a very strong first quarter, followed by a solid second quarter, and then normalizing in the third and the fourth quarter.
Book to bill is still at 1.1, meaning that there is some growth to be expected also going forward. And we see a stable year over year growth, on account of normalization of the automation demand here also in the market. Markets are in talk, you heard it from Sunil. We see our key verticals being very strong, let it be metals, or cement, or food and beverage, and the like, which are important for digital industries. So, all in all, our market condition is still very favorable, and continues to remain favorable. We have had a huge order backlog, which is now supporting the quarterly revenue. And there you see the nice impact now, out of stringent order backlog conversion. Our revenue in DI was steadily increasing over the last five quarters. For the full year, 24% up compared to 2022.
And on a quarterly breakdown, you see that every quarter was stronger than the quarter before, and ended at 11.5, which is 26% higher than the same quarter previous year. Profitability remains very very strong in DI, always double digit, 24.9 in the first quarter of 2023. FX and commodity was playing a major role here, but in the second, third and fourth quarter, you see kind of normalized profitability, which is in DI nicely in the range of 10%- 12%. So, we see a double digit profitability out of productivity gains, higher volumes, plus tight cost control, and also good price conversions. Next one would be Smart Infrastructure. 2023 had a very strong top line development, which was leading to consistently improved margin quality. So, Smart Infrastructure was doing exceptionally well in 2023.
I don't want to say against odds, but Smart Infrastructure, I have to say to some extent, surprised me a little bit with the very strong development that they were showing quarter over quarter. So, this is really becoming a crown jewel here in our company. Just to put it into numbers, 25% orders growth, 20% revenue growth, and especially if you look into the margin quality of Smart Infrastructure. Let me read it out here for you: 12.6%, 14.2%, 13.3%, and the fourth quarter at 14.1% is a very strong performance of Smart Infrastructure here in India. We are really delighted about that development that we see in our SI business. So, big thanks to our colleagues here in Smart Infrastructure. What helped them to achieve this margin?
I put it there: better product mix, shifting to higher margin products and product lines, but also increased revenue again with combination with tight control of your cost, allowed us to achieve that nice margin. Surely, mobility, mobility got a lot of attention and focus in financial year 23: 746% order growth. And you know that our 9k loco order is part of that, with INR 263 billion. Nicely, not only growing, but actually surging, spiking. So, gave us a very nice performance in the second quarter, yes you can see here. And then, we have also been in the third quarter, able to get some nice projects. Couple of them, we heard already in electrification, those in rolling stock, but mainly electrification, and some also in signaling. So, solid order growth, may be a little bit underplayed .
Solid order growth, if you take of course 9K to consideration, then it's a massive order growth. But also underline, even without 9K, I would call it a solid order growth, which was coming, especially out of rolling stock and rail infrastructure segments. Then, we see a strong revenue growth out of that project execution, that we are seeing. And here, it's of paramount importance , that the project execution is going smoothly. It's really very large scale projects, that we have, especially in rolling stock. And the proper project execution will be key for success. So, far, we have been able to achieve this, and I am confident also that it will continue like that. Profitability, a bit volatile, yes you can see. Mobility, I am starting with 0.8%, followed by 7.2%, 4.0%, 2.1%. This is impacted by ramp up cost.
This is impacted also by R&D cost. The underlying performance, without such extraordinary effects, would still be in a nice mid single digit range, and as per our expectations. Lastly, Energy, Energy was benefiting from favorable conditions in our key market, which was leading for top line growth, and also to a continuous margin expansion. Orders growth in '23 was some plus 9% revenue, also some double digit plus 13% in Energy. If you break it down into quarterly development, let me focus here only on the revenue. There you see that we have been nicely increasing also our revenue from one quarter to the other, and then finishing with a very strong fourth quarter at $18.3 billion, which also allowed us to record a very decent profitability with 13.0%. So, very stable operational EBITDA margin here as well.
And yes, you have heard, we have also large projects in Siemens Energy Division, let it be from oil and gas, or transmission and the like. So, also there, it's very important that the proper project execution is some solidifying our top line development, which we have been able to achieve in every quarter in financial year 23. With this, I basically come to my last slide. I am yes promised in my introduction. I wanted to show to you how the group is developing. So, far, we have only spoken about Siemens Limited stand alone and continuing operations.
Here, I want to share with you the performance of the entire group, which is Siemens Limited SL, which is then our 99.2% subsidiary, C and S Electric, which was an acquisition two three years ago, plus Siemens Rail Automation Private Limited, which is a subsidiary of our business unit Rail Infrastructure. And if you add up this sum three different entities to and you come to the total, however, for the ones who are not so familiar with bookkeeping and accounting terms, there is also some eliminations happening until you come to the consolidated numbers, meaning that you have some inter-company purchases, sales, etcetera, that you have to eliminate for the group. So, if you add that up under different three entities, then you have to also subtract in the end inter-company effects. Most important here is the last line.
So, for the profit before tax margin, this 14.4%, if you recall, that Siemens Limited has been achieving for C&S. We have seen 10.9%, which is very much in line with our expectations. One time integration cost have not been happening anymore. Integration is fully completed. C&S is fully running, fully operational, and also up to the expectations that we were having into this acquisition, even slightly about that. So, I am happy to report that also in 2023, we have seen C&S already with underlying performance of 10.9%. And Siemens Rail Automation, it's a rather small one, yes you can see ₹2.5 billion of revenue, but another crown jewel that we are having here in our group, because it is not only in 23 recording a 37.2% profitability, but also in the years before.
So, that is a substantial contribution to the success of our Siemens Limited Group here in India, and it's a very successful business. C&S, I would see as the next jewel to also develop. We are well on track, yes I said, with 10.9%. And if you take this three companies all together, then the group is some recording a 14.4% like Siemens Limited alone as well. And then you have to take some inter company eliminations and PF effects into consideration, meaning that you have to write off for intangible technology or customer relationships. And if you eliminate this, then you come to a group profitability of 13.7%. So, it's a little bit lower, and sometimes there may be a bit of a question mark from your side, how is C&S doing, because you can't see it directly.
If you eliminate those effects out of purchase price allocation, then you see that C&S is having a nice profitability of 10.9% and double digit as well. With this, I would like to conclude my part. Hope I gave you good insight into the financial performance and good transparency. I am curious to hear from you what other questions you may have. We are happy to answer now, any questions when it comes to strategy, business, and of course also financial performance. Thank you so much for the time being.
Thanks, and so with that, we can open it up to Q&A, and please raise your hands. Tell us who you are, and which firm you represent, and we can take it from there. Sorry, summary, summary, yeah probably that. Sorry,
Yeah I will take one last slide. I t's summary, and that's basically how we see the environment. One is essentially, we the geopolitical environment still continues to be volatile. We are not really aware of what could hit us next, but we have been very very clear that in the last last year, there have been a whole lot of series of black swan events that have come in. And I think this is now the new normal. We are going to have to learn to operate in a very volatile environment, and we are geared up to do that. Just to summarize again, we do believe the Indian economy is very very resilient. We have a lot of, a lot of positivity about the growth prospects of the country, and we do believe that this is a market that will grow.
It will grow in all the verticals that we are actually operating in, be it manufacturing, be it mobility space. Every city requires infrastructure. The country needs infrastructure, energy, does need also transportation, and so on. And manufacturing will be the backbone for all of that, and digitalization will be the underlying foundation that will bring all that together. We see very clearly new emerging verticals. I have told you about the verticals that we are working in already: food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, water, and so on. But very clearly, there are emerging verticals pushed by the PLI scheme, where we do see investments actually happening from a Siemens perspective. We will continue, yes we have already announced, we will continue on further localization activities to expand our existing capacities.
We will continue to grow our digital portfolio, and we will continue to support our customers on their sustainability journeys through the supply of our products, services, as well as digitalization. That's really our strategy for the year ahead. We have our existing portfolio, we got a portfolio to grow, and we see the market growing here. One of the few markets, we are adding capacities here, not only for ourselves, but also for global, and that will be our strategy for the year ahead. Now, let's open it up to you. Q uestion to you, please.
This is Choklingam from ICICI Prudential. First of all, congrats for great year to the entire team. First, on the mobility order, actually on the business, I think Dr. Spindler kind of talked about without those ramp up cost. It would have been mid single digit margins. Is that the level that we should, you know, expect in that business, or what is the normal state in that business? Because it was the reason to understand that is because it's a pretty large order, and the difference between the L1 L2 was actually pretty big. So, if you could touch upon that to whatever extent it's possible, that will be helpful. And second, on the demerger of the, you know, you know, energy business, that we have kind of talked about, just want to, you know, ensure, did we read it right? That the listing will be in 2025?
Let me, I will answer both the questions. Can you put up the mic? I am shouting over here. Okay, just on the on your first question. So, as far as the mobility order is concerned, the 9000 horsepower, let me put this in context, because we have had this question about the gap between L1 and L2. We have the technology for 9000 horsepower. The competition has the technology for 12000 horsepower. The intent of the railways was to come out with both the 9000 horsepower and the 12000 horsepower tenders together. Practically, no company, none of us, can do both of the orders together. And therefore, since both tenders were coming out together, we took a call that we will go for the 9000 horsepower.
I can't say what the competition decided for themselves, but since we had the technology, we already knew what the price point should be. And that is really the price point at which we bid. We cannot comment at the price at which the others did, but the others did not have the technology and were probably looking for the 12,000 horsepower as their target, and therefore bid accordingly. So, I don't want to speculate, but we are confident on our bidding profile. We are confident on the margin levels that we have bid. They are not margin dilutive. Let me also explain a little bit about the order. This is 11 years of supply, 35 years of maintenance. It is essentially a product business. So, we supply components and subsystems out of our factories and from third parties. We bring them together in the factory of the Indian Railways.
We build the locomotive in the Indian Railways factory. We are paid the moment we deliver the locomotive on a per locomotive basis. The price that we have given is a weighted average price, taking into account 35 years of maintenance and the 11 years of supply of the locomotive. So, what I can say very clearly is this is not margin dilutive for us. It has met our margin hurdles for the business.
And if I may just add one or two more important points, so firstly, it gives us a good load for the next years to come, and also service business for many many years. It also helps us to load our factories, and it also helps us on very positive side effect to be successful in further bidding, since we have a strong localization here in India. So, all in all, we are very happy with that order, because it helps us a lot also from a strategic direction to have a local strong local footprint for rolling stock in India.
On the demerger of the business, look, it has not been decided yet. I don't want to speculate. The board has been requested, or the board has received a statement of intent from the promoters. The board has asked the management to start the process of exploring what that means. Yes, management, we are obliged to look at a 360 view of what it means for the company and for our shareholders. We will examine that process, and yes, and when we are ready, we will place the results of our observations and our findings to the board to take a decision.
The intent of the parent is to demerge the India business of Siemens Energy. The process takes whatever it, the timeline will be whatever it will be. So, I can't give you, I can't tell you whether it will happen, and I can't tell you when it will happen. Right now, we are only, we have only been mandated by the board, based on our request by the promoters to examine the proposal, and that's what we are doing.
One question here, please.
Thank you, sir. This is Harshit Patel from Equirus Securities. Sir, my first question is on our localization levels. Yes, you mention, we have very healthy amount of localization levels, especially in energy, smart infra and the mobility business. However, that DI business would at least on the product side, would largely depend on imports. Now, if not the exact numbers, but if you can at least give the descending order of localization among this three large segments, then that will be very helpful. Also, what are our localization plans? W hat are the product categories that we are currently importing, and we plan to localize them in each of this three segments? If you could give that idea, please.
Look, our strategy as far as localization has always been very similar, very simple. We look at, does it make sense? Is there a market big enough in India for us to start a factory in India and to justify business case for return on investment? Right? How much of our can we achieve the price point that we need to achieve to achieve to reach out to the Indian market? Can we then?
Does it make sense for us to make this product, or should we buy outsource the product within India, or outsource the product from one of the Siemens factories worldwide? That is our view from an India perspective. The parent then looks at it from the perspective. Does it make sense for us to have yet another factory when our existing factories are underutilized? Right? Or are we adding capacities? And can India substantiate or substantially support us in our global network of factories? Right now, we have 32 factories in India, and a large element of our activities are localized, localized for India, but also localized for global, for global supply. W e are a part of local for local, but also local for global, part of their local, of their global network.
If I look go business by business, you are right, our Digital Industries business does not have any manufacturing in it, primarily because to manufacture PLCs and SIMATIC and things of that sort, you have got to have volumes, and those volumes do not exist in India at this point in time. The price levels come only from volumes, and those volumes are available in the existing factories of Siemens around around the world. If I look at our Smart Manufacturing, a Smart Infrastructure business, it is, it is largely localized, which is a mix between what we need for our own requirements and what we need to supply as part of the global supply chain. If I look at our Mobility, we are increasing our localization efforts over there. You know, for a long time, we were only working on the electrification and signaling area.
We have expanded into rolling stock. We opened the bogie factory. We have now gone into locomotives, using the factory of the Indian Railways. So, and we will continue down that journey, yes, and when there are requirements, we will add more component manufacturing into our Nashik. Th at's a continuous exercise on the energy side. We have just announced an expansion for the transformers business there. W e are heavily localized over there, substantially localized there, and we are adding capacities, because the market is growing, not only in India, but growing globally.
Second question is on, we have one unlisted company named Siemens Industrial Software, also Siemens Technology and Services. Now, this is a fairly large entity with revenues close to INR 3,000 crores and very high EBITDA margins as well. So, what is the difference? And this is a service based company, highly focused on exports. I think close to 95% of the revenues come from group entities only. So, what is the difference between what this company does and what our DI? A part of Digital Industries does at Siemens? Is there any overlap between the two entities?
Over 95% of Siemens Information Software, as well as Siemens Technology Services, is purely internal application software, which is done internally local for global. Right? Very little of it is actually being used. Very little of it is actually being used for us in our digital activities here. We want to increase that component, but it's still very very small, low single digits. Right? Now, the reason is very simple. Both of these are 100% subsidiaries of the parent company.
Both of them are only supplying software and services, which are used internally to the global company. So, Siemens Information Software is primary supplying into the US for use for Siemens software globally. The Siemens Technology has got a mixture of R&D, of software, of shared services. So, accounting, HR, and that sort of stuff, and all our internal shared services, which is also purely for global. So, effectively, all the business that we do which is with third parties, external customers, non-internal, comes into this Siemens Limited legal entity. Whatever is done local for global as part of their global portfolio development, more as a shared service resource is done out of India, is out of this two company.
Understood, sir. Thank you very much.
Yeah, right next, you please. Yeah, hi sir.
Thank you. This is Mayank from HSBC Mutual Fund. On the mobility business, for the last five quarters, the margins have been pretty depressed. Like you said, that we have been opening, re-opening a Bogie factory, and we have also incurred significant R&D cost. F irst piece is the re-opening exercise over now, or where are we on that piece. And we are generally not very heavy spenders of R&D in this entity. W hat nature of R&D have we undertaken in this business?
Okay, so the mobility business is heavy CapEx. Right? And yes, we have, yes, we are growing the business. We will continue to invest in that business. It is a business where we were under invested in the past. Yes, I said, we were not present in rolling stock. And that is something that we intend to build up.
Competencies in, but that is heavy, heavy capex over there. We are also looking at our smart infrastructure business, which we also announced as part of the 400 million investment, where we are looking at expanding capacities there as well into localization, but also expanding capacities there. As far as mobility in particular is concerned, there is an impact that will be there on the bottom line as we continue down the journey of making this more local, this business for some time. But we are getting very good orders, both on electrification, signaling, and now also on rolling stock that will boost the top line as well as bottom line in the years ahead. That is the investment that we are doing. What was your second question?
On the R&D piece, sir.
So, we benefit terrifically from the R&D, which is done by the parent company. So, again, we do not see a necessity to duplicate the effort by doing the R&D within Siemens Limited. The parent company spends close to seven billion euros a year on R&D. A lot of that is done out of India in some of these entities that were just mentioned over there. A lot of that is done globally. And then, we take the benefit of that R&D in the products and solutions that they have to first sell them in the Indian market, then go toward the localization and adaptation to meet the needs of the Indian market specifically. W e don't do the core R&D, but we adapt through our localization efforts and our localization measures, global products to local, to local requirements.
One back there, please. Yes,
Yeah, hi sir. Thank you for the opportunity. This is Kunal from BNK Securities. Sir, you did mention about you know T&D as one of the key areas. If you can , talk in detail about the outlook in the T&D segment. And also, you have recently announced capacity addition in transformers and switchgears. W here will be our capacity post this addition? And a related question to this is that, is this capacity addition largely related to the domestic market? Or we are seeing opportunities for this products in the export market as well? Thank you.
No, thanks for that question. T ransmission and distribution, or transmission in particular, is growing not only in India, but globally. As you get more renewables coming into the grid over there, the requirement for transmission will increase.
And that's what we are seeing here in the country as well. Both for normal substations, 400 kV, and so on, but also moving into the high, high end ones, HVDC 765, 800 kV substations there as well. So, we believe very clearly, the requirement for transmission, stabilization of the grid through STATCOMS, FACTS, etcetera, that will be a huge requirement. In India, we see a huge potential coming up. TBCB programs are running on the distribution side. RDSS is gaining more traction over there. So, transmission overall, we do see a growth. There is under capacity in the global market and in India around transformers, power transformers. And this is now slowly a booming market for equipment suppliers, not only within India, but globally as well.
So, when we look at the expansion that we are doing over here, part of that expansion is to serve the expanding capacities that are required for the Indian market. But a lot of it will be for capacities that are required for the global market as well. Sir, and how much would be our capacity post this expansion? Total capacity, we let you have the numbers. Thank you so much. Hi sir, this is this side, Amit Anwani from Prabhudas Lilladher. My question, first question, pertains to CNS Electric. We acquired that company two three years back, with the intent for to have a complementary full scale portfolio on LV side. And I can see the the margin for FY 23 was about 10.9%, much lower than the overall margins for the company.
So, just wanted to understand, is it playing well with the kind of strategy we acquired this business for? And at the same time, if you would let us know, which markets it is catering and the distributor led revenue in CNS Electric, as well as Siemens as an entity. Yeah, so our strategy for CNS was essentially to get into the second level market, what we call the mid level market. Siemens has traditionally for all its products been in the prime markets, yeah in the premier premium markets. And we were beginning to believe, we need to get into the next segment, which is why we look for a company, which was more active in the mid segment. The second synergy effect that we saw is, Siemens was very strong on the industrial market, low voltage. CNS was very strong on the infrastructure market, low voltage.
And this is where we saw the complement, the complementary benefit of that. We could bring that together and address both markets. So, it was a perfect fit. The third rational for CNS was exports, to see how we can use the exports over here as part of the global export strategy, to penetrate markets where cement's price levels were too high. And we needed to get into premium markets. So, let me go by one by one. The margins that we have over here are better than pre-acquisition margins. Right? So, we have actually improved on the pre-acquisition margins already in the third year of acquisition, where we have brought in a whole lot of measures to turn it around.
So, we are well on track in continuing penetrating the Indian market, bringing in the search, the synergies between the Siemens business on the industrial side and the CNS business on the infrastructure side. We have started now, and this is where we should expect margin improvements to happen on getting into the export market. Now, getting into the export market takes longer. You need to get approved by the regulators in the countries, and that takes time and so on. But we have now started penetrating into Asia Pacific, a region, Middle East and South America. And those are the markets that we see a huge potential for. So, moving down the line, I think we are well on track over there. In fact, the growth that we have seen in CNS has been better than our expectations there, both top line and bottom line.
And we also see now an expansion, also expected in the top line, bottom line, yes, exports start kicking in in a real way in CNS. Yes, two more things maybe. First, we have also, I guess you have heard it, the Sinova brand, which is a Siemens brand within CNS, which helps us also to boost it domestic as well as the export market. And we have set up already a distribution network in order to cater for that additional export business, which should lead to expansion. My next question on the order intake, this year we did about 78% base order growth, excluding the large order. And you highlighted multiple opportunities across areas, and as well as private CapEx at the inflection point. So, do you expect the sustainable intake growth to go up in double digits for next two to three years?
What is your thought on order intakes in coming years? So, I am not going to give you a guidance on the future, but I do see as India's growth increases, GDP continues. I have outlined to you the opportunities that we have over here. And I do expect a growth in the top line coming over there. Yes, I said, the only cautionary term, cautionary phrase is a volatility in the environment. There could be some slow down due to elections in large orders. Decision making may get delayed, but not cancelled. I believe the demand in the Indian economy is very strong. It is realizing, so there could be some delay, shifting from a quarter to the next. Overall, the Indian demand scenario I see is very robust, and we will be part of that growth story.
My last question on LV Motors business, which we wanted to sell to parent six months back. You highlighted that time, it's on outsource model, not making sense for us, and the patents are with Siemens AG. So, what is the status now on that business after what every events unfold? Ya, so you recommended to the shareholders not to vote in favor, and that is the current status. The business is very much still a part of Siemens Limited. We will continue with the business within the constraints that we already informed you, and we will see what happens with the with the parent company. When that, when an event happens over there, then we will have to review with our board, what's what steps to take, what the options are on the table. Thank you. Ya, sir, this is Rahul Gajare from Haitong.
Where are you please, if you stand up. Thank you. Yeah, so you know, I have a question on mobility. Given that, this is a fairly long cycle of execution and maintenance. Do you all have a back to back arrangement with your vendors? You know, because what I do understand is typically globally, vendors don't give more than 15 to 20 years of warranties or you know, the price holding capacity. So, what is your thought on how will you manage the entire service journey of about 35 years? So, this is not new business for Siemens. We are doing this all over the world, right? So, we have, and this is where digitalization also plays a huge role, where you can do predictive maintenance up front, where you can work with your suppliers together, where you can bring every please, sit down, where you can bring everything together.
So, yes, we expect very clearly that we will get the benefits, and that's all calculated into the margin calculation that we have based on the experiences that we have worldwide in doing similar projects. So, a project of this kind is not one of one in the world. Let me put it this way. This is fairly standard business, where over a period of time, you are having to make deliveries, and then you have long term maintenance contracts that kick in over there, and you use all of that to negotiate with the prices, with suppliers, terms and conditions, with suppliers, warranty conditions, with suppliers as well. But globally, do you have contracts with such a large time frame of service? Yes, yeah, okay, thank you. Hi, may be not of the size.
This locomotive order was the largest size of locomotive order, but the nature of the contract, let's say, the supply and long term maintenance is standard. Yeah, I mean, since we are talking about 9000 horsepower, you talking 9000. Yeah, since we you know, what is really holding back the 12000 horsepower? I don't know. Thanks. Good question. Afternoon, this is Deepak Gupta from SBI Pension Funds. My first question is, what is the outlook on operating margins over the next three to five years, as a share of mobility business increases in the overall revenue piece for the company? We are not providing any guidance there. We have given you complete data, including the potential for the future. We have told you that the mobility business will grow, will grow top line. We have told you that the margins meet our margin hurdle targets.
We have told you that smart manufacturing and digital industries is a huge opportunity for us. We have told you, yes, we, yes, we scale up standard solutions into repetitive solutions for our customers. The margin quality needs to improve over there, so you can put that all together. If you could share, what is the margin hurdle that you work at? No. Okay, and second and last question is, Siemens Energy and AG had their restructuring few years back. It was decided to do that in India currently. How would the equation work in terms of the cost? There are lot of, I believe, there are lot of synergies with the energy business gets from the parent right now, which is Siemens AG. How will what work? Sorry, the relationship between Siemens, Siemens Energy for six years post the merger, right? Our global de merger, right?
Where is the problem now? Okay, so it's going to update. So, why was this done six years back? Then when I can't speak on behalf of the parent company. So, both the parents took a call at that point in time not to demerge the Indian company or not to approach the Indian company for demerger. We heard about it at the same time that it was maybe a day earlier then you heard about it, where we got the information from the parent company about their intent, and that's it. Sure, yeah, we have run out of time. We have maybe last one or two questions at the most. Yeah, good afternoon. This is Ashwini from 3 P Investments. I wanted to know, globally, since the manufacturing cost have been rising, because inflation on man power for the first time after many years have been rising.
So, how has it increased your competitiveness versus the US plants or the European plants? You mean, global inflation is rising generally, because the manpower inflation everywhere have been rising? That's a very good question. So, India was in the traditional manufacturing. Labor arbitrage was the strength of India, right? Cost per head per hour of a European American blue collar was substantially higher than cost per head of an Indian blue collar. And this was a critical part of the manufacturing process, where India had the benefit of labor arbitrage between the two countries. Reality now is that digitalization has changed that completely. We have a factory in Germany, where the productivity level is 99.9%. The quality level is 99.9%. Now, India operates at an average productivity level of close to 70% to 75%.
There is no way you can bridge that 25-30% productivity gap through skilling people. Digitalization will be the only response to that, right? So, right now, the labor arbitrage, the inflation effects on salaries in America versus India are don't play much of a role anymore, because they are going in the West, because of aging population and so on, has gone in very rapidly into digitalization. We have a long way to go. We have large companies that have adapted digitalization, but we need the entire supply chain, large, medium and small, to adapt digitalization. Only then you can get synergies that will give you the productivity levels that can actually outpace whatever the West is doing. That is going to be the critical factor for India to become a manufacturing hub globally.
Gone are the days where India will get the advantage just through manufacturing, just through labor arbitrage. And sir, the second question was on Xcelerator program, which you said. Now, the services business here, how do you bundle it with the product? Is it coming with the new product plus the service, or is it coming on retrofit kind of business on the existing population, which you have got? And is it agnostic to the brand? Let's say, you do something, which is not on install base of Siemens. And so, it where is, so we have got the classical service, and then there is the Xcelerator, Siemens Xcelerator. They are two different things, right?
So, the classical service business is you have an install base, and you are doing after-market service of those, and you are using, and you are increasing the efficiency of your service by providing greater value to the customer as well. So, it's not only repairs and maintenance, but it's also, yes, I should, improving productivity and so on, reliability of the plants. That is standard. In some cases, we do it only for our own equipment. In other cases, using digitalization tools, yes, I mention to you, we are able to service even customers, not equipment, but the software. Use the software to direct the customer what needs to be done in the equipment. And how is it charged? Basically, how do you make money there? I mean, what is the way?
It is, let's say, for example, if you sell a product, cost is X, price is Y, Y minus X. What? How do you make money in this? How does the customer on what basis? Does he pay you in this case? So, it where is, if you are looking at Siemens Xcelerator, yes, I said, that's a completely different story. Where the customer comes and says, can you give me energy efficiency? And we say, okay, either you pay us for the software and the services that we are actually doing, or you pay us based on outcome, pay as you save, right? More you save, the more you pay, pay us over there. Or you have a standard delivery of a product, and you get your margins based on the product. So, it can be, it can be a combination of everything.
Sure, thank you very much. Next question, the last question, please. Yes, this is Aditya Mongia from Kotak Securities. The first question is on the cyber security business that you were talking about as being a very large growth driver incrementally for the DI portfolio. Could you give us a sense of how to think to the opportunity over here? Yes, in for instance, let's say, every site is like what, like a million dollars, and there can be so many sites. So, I won't give you numbers, but I can tell you, give you a feel of what that means. Every plant that has automation in it has got the risk of cyber security, right? Yes, the world gets much more digitalized, the danger and the risk of cyber security events increases.
So, effectively, every plant in the country that has got a machine or a subsystem or a system that is automated has a risk of cybersecurity linked to it. The same thing with every energy plant, all your grids, all your substations, all your generation plants, everything over there has got the risk of cybersecurity, because they are all linked into standard DCS systems or whatever, which are controlling automation and control systems over there, which are controlling these machines, plants and subsystems over there.
And that is really the opportunity, where you go in and you do an audit of the machines, do an audit of the subsystems, and you are able to use that friendly hacking method to identify whether it is possible for viruses to come in, and then to introduce cybersecurity measures to ensure that the machines are protected, the automation systems are protected, the plants are protected overall. Just a second, and thanks for this answer, clarify. This is a second question, final one from my side. So, you talked about the parent spending a meaningful sum on R&D. I think you quote $7 billion. If I am not wrong, that's about 6% of the sales of the global parent in India terms. The way we kind of think to royalty is a much lower number than that to the parent.
Do you think through that, being a limiting factor? Maybe the market is not set for today, but is that a limiting factor to what you can do inside the country? And do you see some conversations happening? I you say, we are paying too much royalty or too little royalty versus what the parent is spending on R&D. Is less. Thank you, that's a great negotiation that we are doing. But reality is, we have access to all the technologies that they have. We take their technologies, we first adapt them, or we take them one to one over here, and then we localize them. I don't see the payment of royalty as being a limiting factor to getting access to royalty. Quite to the contrary, the parent company sees India as being their largest growth market.
So, it is in their interest globally as well to provide us with all the tools and all the know-how, so that we can actually grow the business in the country. So, much to many countries around the world that are growing at the rate at which we are. I am sorry, that has to be the last question. I know, this can keep going on for the rest of the day. Thank you very much, first of all, Mr. Mathur and Daniel. Thanks very much. This is, this has been indeed a pleasure for us to host this event after four years. It has been very good for all of us to also meet you in person. Thank you very much for joining, joining us and for your insightful questions.
In case there are any questions, you feel have not been adequately answered, please do get in touch with me, and I will see how best to address them. So, thank you very much once again.