Welcome to this Capital Market Day presentation. I'm very pleased to see so many here in this room, familiar and some new faces, and we have started this session with a film introducing the new Multiconsult Group brand. Multiconsult started as a Norwegian consultant engineer, and we now have a multidisciplinary business with architects and engineers, and introducing a new Multiconsult Group brand also underlines our strategic ambitions on growing our operations from our current business. The agenda today, I will give a brief introduction following up on some of the points from the film. I will then give you a deep insight into who Multiconsult is, giving you also some of the historic perspective on what we have become, and then we will go into our strategic ambitions, and to do that, Kristin Augestad, who is EVP Architectural, will give you more of the details.
Then Ove Haupberg, our CFO, he will come on the stage and give you more insight into the financial and sustainability targets. My name is Grethe Bergly. I am the CEO of Multiconsult. Continuing on what we just saw, since 1908, we have taken on complex challenges to build and be part of something larger, something that will last for generations, and we enable societies where people want to live and work, building schools, education for our children, providing energy systems for a sustainable future. However, as the history of our company since the 20th century going into the 21st century has been characterized by large transformations and a changing world. We have taken on and solved some of the very large and complex challenges.
Looking ahead, we see that the challenges are even larger, and we have a deep understanding in the company that everything we do will have a lasting impact. Not only are the challenges ahead larger, but we will also see changes happening much faster, which requires us to innovate and adapt. The solutions of today are not the solutions of tomorrow, and we need to use our expertise and insight to provide the solutions required. To be able to transition towards a net zero future, we will step up and remain at the forefront. This is Multiconsult, and I can see that in this room are the same people who actually followed us during the quarter presentation. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. But for those of you who are listening in, we are a Norwegian-based company. We have more than 3,800 employees.
We have a geographic footprint in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, in addition to a large project portfolio giving us a footprint in more than 45 countries. And in the last four years, we have developed a very profitable company with good and strong growth. Since the start of this decade, we started building the company for the future, setting higher ambitions. And we saw a strong growth with the company being listed in 2015. We continued the good growth, scaling the company to a revenue of about NOK 3 billion. But during this period, it also became evident that we needed to make some adjustments as revenue flattened and profits fell. In the last four years, we have grown the company through organic growth and M&A, providing shareholders value. And we now have a strong platform for the growth that we present here today.
Everything we do and grow as a company, we do through a multidisciplinary role and a leading position in various domains. This is an important part for us when we now are going to look into where we're going to grow in the future. We have a market leader position in healthcare in Scandinavia. We are involved with some of the largest hospital developments in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and we are, through this position, we are also set for the next phase when all these hospitals need to be rehabilitated and maintained. We are a global renewable energy specialist. Our history started with hydropower, and we now hold strong positions in hydropower, in solar, and in onshore and offshore wind. We also have an international footprint, in particular in developing countries. Our business is strongly linked to the development of places where people live and work in urban areas.
Urbanization is a driver for our society, and the cities need to take a front role as we move towards a net zero future. We provide comprehensive integrated solutions for all the faces of this development through our engineering and architectural companies. To safeguard natural diversity and the climate above ground, you need to have an insight of what's happening below. We have extensive experience in using our expertise and equipment in geotechnics to provide sustainable solutions for construction, mobility, energy, and climate adaptation, and our companies are involved in parts of community building and the development of infrastructure such as transport, communication, water, and energy supply. We have a considerable experience and projects and a leading role in Norway, Sweden, and Poland. All our value creation takes place through the projects.
And we are now going to give you a little flavor onto the type of projects that we are currently doing and that we think will also be typical of the future where we will get involved. In 2024, construction started on the new Rikshospitalet. It's one of the largest hospitals in Scandinavia, and Multiconsult and LINK are here working together developing this hospital. And it's a project where we will be taking a role for over 10 years. Northern Lights Project is the first terminal for CO2 storage in Norway. We were first involved helping the client Equinor find the right site, doing the site preparations and marine structure design. We were then involved as a subcontractor to Aker Solutions on the EPC contract, doing all the civil design. And this terminal is currently open, ready to take CO2 from Europe and Norway. Global warming requires climate adaptation.
We are now at a stage where adapting is more profitable than repairing. Vågåmo is a brilliant example of the investment here to adapt, adaptation, being prepared for the rainy seasons, but also being prepared for the predicted effects of climate change, and lastly, to create sustainable solutions, we must transform and preserve what has already been built. This transformation of the Aarhus Sykehus is a very good example of how you change a hospital to a modern residential area, and we, as architects and engineers, are increasingly seeing that our activities are aimed at creating circularity and transformation. Multiconsult has grown both organically and by acquisitions over a period of the last 10 years. We have acquired and integrated a number of companies, creating capacity and expertise for our clients and our own projects. Acquisitions over the 10-year period have contributed to more than 1.6 billion NOK in revenue.
The companies, they vary in size, they vary in geographical areas and sector exposure. When we look at acquisitions, we followed three main axes. We've looked at geographical areas where we don't have a presence. We have looked at capability and expansion building around the positions that we already have. We've also looked at repositioning when we see that there are things happening in the market dynamics to be prepared to take a larger part of the value chain. Our growth is created by taking a bigger position and following the project further along the value chain. In recent years, we have had a clear objective to expand our catchment area. The acquisitions of A-lab in 2023 strengthened our ability to enter earlier in the value chain where conceptual design and development take place.
It's a supplement to the existing subsidiaries, Multiconsult Norway and LINK, who are mainly positioned further along the value chain. With comprehensive value chain exposure, we can create synergies and also ensure that we are present where the need is greater in various market cycles. Multiconsult is all about the people, and we therefore invest heavily in attracting, developing, and retaining our people. We have created a competitive edge by being one of the preferred employers, ranked number five among the top five, both for professionals and engineers. We carry out regular surveys to make sure people are thriving or making adjustments, and on the Employer Net Promoter Score, we get a high rating for our employers in the fact that they would recommend Multiconsult as a place to work for others. At Multiconsult, we believe in co-ownership and as a way of contributing to commitment, long-termism, and sharing.
And through our programs and share allocations, we now have 83%, more than 85% of our employees are actually co-owners in the company. And as a company, we want to mirror the society around us. And diversity and inclusions are central to our recruitment. And at the present, we are very proud that we see an increasing number of females, and currently 43% of the people working in Multiconsult are women. It's all about the people, but it's also more and more people in combination with technology. We believe that technology will play a major role in the development of the company going forward. We are concentrating on the digital core for our core business, the group methodology to utilize technology, and last but not least, maintaining a robust, scalable digital foundation.
Here are some examples of technology solutions that we have developed and that give us direct competitive advantage in our value proposition to our clients. multiSecure doesn't look very exciting, does it? But this is our most advanced application powered by generative AI designed to conduct efficient quality assurance and analyze operation and maintenance documents. LINK's Augmented Architect is a service that provides data-driven analysis to streamlining projects, minimize potential errors, and improve accuracy in project descriptions. The tool suite developed in-house in LINK leverages AI and precise digital calibrations. MultiMap is not new to us, but we are continually enhancing it to offer a state-of-the-art portfolio mapping for owners of buildings, and MultiPlacer exemplifies our commitment to automating repetitive manual tasks, enabling us to deliver higher efficiency and quality in our design processes. We will now present our updated strategy with the strategic ambitions for the next period.
We presented our strategy in 2021. And as you all probably remember, it was a period of a pandemic. It was a period where the world had a very unforeseen future, or so we thought. Fast-forwarding three years, we are in the midst of a geographical development, geopolitical development, and macroeconomic situation that no one could have predicted. That's why when the surroundings change, we have seen the need to update our strategy to be able to take in the changes that we see and provide a new strategic spectrum. Geopolitical dynamics are changing fast. There is uncertainty. There's war in Europe. We are seeing more and more intervention from governments. We see an EU that has started protectionism during home shoring to protect their value chain when it comes to energy and natural resources. Climate changes are accelerating.
New challenges are created to our societies, both for private and the government and public institutions. Sustainability is now being redefined, and we will see more investments having to go into this area. And last, technology disruption happening faster. We have hardly heard of AI in 2021. Now it's setting the agenda for most of the way we think about developing our companies. So in our scenario thinking, we have concluded that we need to prepare for a highly dynamic outlook, but it gives both risks and opportunities. And there are some outlooks that translate to significant growth drivers for us. There's an accelerated energy transition in the EU. We see investments increasing from the last decade to the one that we're entering into. We see urbanization in the Nordic as cities are preparing for a growing population. They need to adjust to facilitate the people who are coming in.
There is a lot of investment needed in infrastructure and sustainable transformation. Climate action will increase exponentially to prepare for and adjust to the current and future effects of climate change. There are huge investments required, and they are driven both by governments and by private business. We will address society's development and the opportunities in our industry with this updated strategy. We must think outside the current framework and limitations. We must stretch further. We must change the established. We call it Think Beyond. We are moving from, in the early 2000, we developed Multiconsult to be a multidisciplinary company with a footprint all over Norway. We are now looking at how we've created a footprint also outside Norway. The next phase, we need to build on this footprint.
We need to build on the companies we have to see how we want to take a leading international market position, so looking at our strategic ambitions, we have considered where do we want to grow, what kind of projects do we want to be involved with, in what geographic market should we grow, how do we maintain our profitable company at the same time as we keep growing, what is our contribution to society, and what are our ambitions on sustainability, and our strategy sets out how we want to develop the company long term. We will continue to be a multidisciplinary company with positions and grow in all four business areas, but we have picked out five areas where we are now going to strengthen and where we see huge potential. We're going to develop and continue our position on complex and large projects.
We're going to expand our position as a preferred partner in the energy transition. We're going to be a major role, a player in driving urban transformation and development. And we will take a role on safeguarding biodiversity and climate. And last but not least, we will work on increasing our impact in the Nordics and in Poland. And to give you some more insights into what lies behind these five areas, I would like to welcome Kristin Augestad onto the stage.
Thank you, Grethe, and good morning to everyone. I will now give you a bit more insight in four of our strategic ambitions before Ove takes you through our ambitions regarding market and then our financial and sustainability targets. Starting with projects, we have broad experience and highly skilled capabilities in both our architectural and engineering subsidiaries in leading and solving complex and large projects.
We have designed some of the largest hospital projects in Scandinavia, public and commercial buildings, infrastructure, and renewable energy projects, all in deep collaboration with clients, with contractors, with our partners and subcontractors. This gives us a unique position to grow in complex and enlarged projects where we can take a leading role and position. We see large opportunities in hospitals, in educational institutions, in defense, in road and railway, in harbors, and in power production and supply. We see increased complexity because of increasing demands on project management, digital development, and construction design. Also, the potential for advising clients on sustainable solutions and in accordance with future environmental requirements have become significantly greater. Focus on technology and security in building and construction is increasing against the background of the industry's development and geopolitical uncertainty. So to sum it up, and thank you, now we have the right slide.
Our position on complex and large projects is unique for all our subsidiaries and provides opportunities for further growth. So how will we meet this? Firstly, competitive edge by leveraging on multiple disciplines and competency areas to solve complex challenges in the society. Secondly, technological transformation and collaboration by leading the way in leveraging digital tools and artificial intelligence to ensure effective collaboration and efficient processes. And thirdly, fields of growth, continue to develop our expertise in infrastructure, energy, and urban development. As our second strategic ambition, we see a potential for scaling our position within the energy transition. Our foothold in the Norwegian market is strong, and we see a potential for using our capabilities in power production, in transmission and distribution, in industrial development, and in new industries. In power production, hydropower is part of our DNA as a company, and we see potential for further growth.
In recent decades following the green transition, we have also gained broad experience in solar power and in offshore and onshore wind. We have international experience in transmission and distribution, where we have been involved in grid analysis and design, design of transformer substations, and grid development. Combining our capabilities in power production and grid is an important asset. Industrial development is an important part of the energy transition. In Norway, we have been a part of the electrification on offshore and onshore facilities and supported traditional industry with reduction of energy consumption, which is also a strong contributor to the industry transition. We are also taking part in innovations and design in the new industries. We have been pioneering with carbon capture and storage and will address these opportunities further. Also, the development of low-carbon energy solutions opens up interesting opportunities for integrated advisory.
Competition in this sector is international, paired with strong local content requirements. We are prepared for leveraging our experience and using the capabilities and competencies in our subsidiaries. To sum it up, we will expand our position within energy transition to enable the rapid scaling within different markets and across geographies. How will we meet this? Firstly, meeting different demands for the energy transition. Comprehensive services in power production, transmission, industrial development, and the new industries. Secondly, increasing our footprint, enhancing our position in the energy transition in our core regions. And thirdly, increased value chain and group offering, taking positions in larger parts of the value chain and utilizing group-wide capacities. Our third strategic ambition is to be the driver of urban transformation and development by leveraging our multidisciplinary competencies and expanding our capabilities.
In the Nordic countries, an increasing number of people will be living and working in cities and urban areas. And this must be met with sustainable solutions to build climate, nature, and people-friendly places where we all can live, work, and thrive. And more than before, both our clients and end users have strong expectations on our ability to build and transform in a sustainable way. A key element in taking a leading position in urban transformation will be to integrate expertise from both architects and engineers. We are exposed to different parts of the value chain and different clients, and we see a potential for creating client value in combining our capacities and experiences. Urban development will be more about transformation than building something new. And this opens up opportunities in a relatively immature market where we have the opportunity to develop strong internal and external partnerships.
Urban transformation is complex, covering competence areas from buildings to infrastructure, mobility, and nature preservation. Projects span from early phase advisory to detailed planning and engineering and design. We have the capability to follow our clients through these phases, integrating architecture and engineering and external partners when needed to solve the challenges urbanization brings. To sum it up, we will combine creativity, design, and our technical expertise to drive urban transformation in a nature, climate, and people-friendly direction. So how will we meet this? Firstly, leverage our integrated expertise. We will combine our capabilities across several areas from design and planning of sustainable solutions to engineering and project management. Secondly, growth initiatives. We will build further on our value chain integration in order to meet the changing societies and demands. And thirdly, fields of growth. We will use our expertise in urban development, mobility, and sustainable cities.
Our fourth strategic ambition is to enable safeguarding of biodiversity and climate by integrating sustainability capabilities and expanding our service offerings. Having participated in research and development projects and taking on projects with high environmental goals and also advising on measures and solutions to prevent the effects of climate change, we have constantly developed our capabilities and our expertise to meet increasing needs of society and our clients. Adaptation to climate change, net zero emissions, and production and protection of biodiversity will play a more important role in the future and with increasing demand. This stems from stricter regulation, awareness, and demands from clients and consumers, the experienced effects, the experienced negative effects of climate change, and more and more companies having sustainability on their strategic agenda.
To sum it up, we see an opportunity to take a clear position on sustainability with a value proposition that resonates across client groups. How will we meet this? Firstly, we will enhance capabilities. We will enhance our capabilities in offerings that contribute to nature positivity, net zero, and climate adaptation. Secondly, leveraging group competencies. We will make use of our sustainability expertise to offer solutions that safeguard nature and climate in all our complex and integrated projects. And thirdly, strengthening our offering. We will integrate sustainability advisory into our core business to support clients with their strategic sustainability agenda, net zero emission plans, and ESG reporting. And now over to Ove, who will give us some details on ambitions regarding market.
Thank you, Kristin. So our fifth strategic ambition is increasing our impact in the Nordics and Poland.
Our target market holds multiple avenues for growth and with positive growth outlook across the different geographies. You see this to the left in this picture, and we will focus on the regions where we are present today and where we see further potential. We aim to strengthen our position in the Nordics and Poland. We have a strong foothold in Norway and business area leading positions in Scandinavia and Poland. We aim to grow through both organic initiatives and M&A. Firstly, to invest in the subsidiaries, and we will expand into the identified business areas based on existing capabilities across the Nordics and Poland. Secondly, is acquisition of local generalists. We continuously monitor acquisition opportunities with local advisors to build a platform for further growth, but we will also address opportunities for making larger acquisitions when we see strategically fit. Thirdly, acquisition of smaller specialists.
We will consider acquisitions of specialist advisors across key focus areas. Our strategy will be a phased effort with active monitoring of market opportunities. We are building on our group strategy and adjusting for dynamic business surroundings and stepping up our ambitions. The horizon is 10 years with phase one towards 2030. We will build gradually on our current strengths and grow Multiconsult from our platform and with our strategic objectives. Sequentially, we will expand our position according to market opportunities. This also includes ambition of geographic scaling and positioning in the Nordics and Poland. Another way of seeing this is profitable long-term growth via strengthening our competitive position. Our platform for growth is our existing business areas. We will develop our position in all existing markets continuously and throughout the strategy period. Profitable growth is in our company DNA and will be so going forward.
Another part of our DNA is our strategic ambition number one, expanding our position in complex and large projects. This will be part of the platform for growth in all business areas. We will build on our position in enabling green transition. That is, expanding our position as a preferred partner in energy transition, driving urban transformation and development, and safeguarding biodiversity and climate. Throughout the strategy period, we will gradually be expanding our impact in the Nordics and Poland. Let's take a closer look at M&A as a lever for growth and value creation. M&A will continue to be a lever for growth and value creation in our strategy outlook. We will build on our experience of leveraging regarding growth and acquisitions. Acquisitions address through our existing geographic position and growth avenues derived from our strategy.
We will keep a thorough understanding of the Norwegian market developments in order to solidify our position, and this includes all business areas. But going forward, we will look deeper into acquisition opportunities in the rest of the Nordics and Poland. The ambition will be to either grow position from the relevant segment position or to expand our capabilities and position. We'll also look for acquisition opportunities outside our current value proposition. This can be sustainability advisory or adjacent services supporting our strategy. The M&A criteria can be summed up as: We will seek to find targets with strong alignment to our strategic goals. Furthermore, as a people business, we always aim to find a good cultural fit and committed leadership to take part in a shared platform. We will prioritize targets with a strong financial track record.
We aim for targets of a moderate size to be able to scale up and build a platform for growth. But when strategically reasonable, we also are in a position to address and enable business transformational acquisitions. We plan to use a structured M&A execution. We will approach the target screening in a structured way for all relevant geographic areas. We use objective criteria to screen the market and base criteria on both our multidisciplinary position and adjusted strategy, of course, as well as financial performance. And we will address targets strategically, but also be able to follow up on opportunities when they arise. And based on this approach, we'll have a rolling shortlist of investment opportunities. Then we are moving to our financial and sustainability targets and also to confirm part of them. Started with profitability.
After the turnaround program, Next Level in 2019, Multiconsult has performed on a stable high EBITDA level for more than four years with margin levels in the area of 9%-10%. So we confirmed our profitability target on 10% measured on an annual basis for a strategy period. On revenue growth, the combined aggregated revenue growth has been 10% in the period from 2012 to 2023. And we confirm our growth ambition of 8%-10% over the cycle, including M&A. On gearing and equity, we confirm our targets, maintaining our financial strength and predictable and stable dividend policy. A normal gearing between one and two with a maximum of 2.5 measured as net interest-bearing debt, excluding IFRS 16. But in special circumstances, for example, with M&A opportunities, the ratio may increase to three. The equity ratio should be about 25% to maintain our financial strength. Dividend payout.
We confirm our ambition on dividend payout of at least 50% of the group's net profit annually. The dividend may vary based on the market conditions, the cash flow, the financing opportunities, equity level, and M&A activity. Then our last but not least target, and that is on sustainability. Sustainability is an important part of our strategy and values and forms an integral part of the Multiconsult Group. In a world where climate change is taking place at an increasing pace, it is necessary to take our share of the commitment to reducing emissions. Multiconsult Group is committed to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, and the achievement of national climate reduction targets, agreements for nature preservation, and climate adaptation.
Multiconsult builds sustainability through three axes, and that is through our own assignments, that is through our own operation, and that is through our contribution to the society. And what we achieve through our assignments is our most valuable contribution. But following the advice that we give our clients, we also have to set quantifiable targets for our own footprint. And we are now currently in a process of validating the targets to become net zero by 2040. And the validation process is planned to be complete in January 2025 by Science Based Targets initiative. And the Multiconsult Group's targets in the path towards net zero are 50% emissions reduction for Scopes 1 and 2 by 2030. And 2019 is a reference for all these targets. 30% emissions reduction for Scope 3, limited to the purchase of goods and services and flights by 2030.
90% emissions, and that is net zero for scopes one, two, and Scope 3 by 2040. In this, Scope 1 are our direct emissions, Scope 2 are our indirect emissions from energy, and Scope 3 are all emissions that we're not producing ourselves, but are indirectly responsible for in our value chain. We are currently developing measures which map our targets for each year and for each subsidiary. By that, Grethe, I hand back the stage to you.
Thank you. To sum it up, our strategic ambitions for the period going forward are developing the position on complex and large projects. It's an expansion on the position as a preferred partner in the energy transition, driver of urban development and transformation, safeguarding biodiversity and climate, and increasing our impact in the Nordics and Poland.
How we interact with our surroundings is part of our DNA and our culture and describes the way we operate our business. We will build on this to reach our strategic ambitions. With our clients, we enable value-creating projects, linking our success to our clients' success. In the industry, we shape the industry as an integrating player. On climate and environment, we develop sustainable solutions. When it comes to colleagues, we create an environment where people and competence are nurtured and thrive, and we challenge the established and innovate with technology. What we have done is who we are. What we do is what we become. Think beyond, and that completes this session, and we now open up for questions.
Martine Kverne from Nordea Markets.
I was just thinking about, for example, when you present the numbers on the sustainability and the green shift, for example, like the NOK 1.6 billion in annual clean energy investments and so on. What is the approximate share for the technical consultants here? And what is your, how do you see your market or your place within that?
Which one are you on now? You're on the...
Like when you were talking about the clean energy investments and the grid investments?
Yeah. We're looking at what we have done now is to show you the whole picture. And where it's going to land, we don't know. We know that on a normal, very often we take about 10%-15% of the total, I think, on a normal project. But we don't know because we think the dynamics here are going to change.
But there's a huge opportunity for us in this market as they also are expanding. But we haven't put a figure on what part of it that we think we're going to take. We have tried to show you now that we have a position in a lot of these areas that we think that we can expand from when we go forward.
Great. Thank you.
Bengt Jonassen from ABG. Maybe a couple of questions. There's a longer-term trend. How do you think demographic changes will impact you? The second question would be, I think I hear that you are looking more into acquisition outside Norway compared to earlier. Could you elaborate a little bit about the difference between the different markets? Our impression from the outside is that at least some of the markets are a bit weaker than the Norwegian market.
And the final point would be on your margin target. Has there been a discussion to raise that target?
Discussions, yes. But raising, I'm not sure. To take that, we think that we have said that we want to deliver on the level with our peers. And we're seeing that that's the top peers in our industry. They are around 10%. So that's why we maintain that target. That's a comfortable level to deliver profitability back also to our investors, at the same time in being able to invest in developing our own business going forward. The second one was the market. There's a robustness in being present in different markets. And we are seeing at the moment that both Sweden and Denmark seem to be picking up faster in some of the business areas, like buildings, than we are in Norway.
And that's the reason why we want to have a bigger foothold. There are also other industries. For instance, in Denmark, the pharma industry is much larger. And it's a very direct comparison and synergies from the hospital buildings that we can build on. So there are areas in these countries where we think we can build a stronger foothold. And the first question was on the demographic changes. I think on the whole, we see that in the biggest cities, it will create opportunities for us. But it's also a fact that once people start leaving an area or the population changes, there will be more need for care for elderly people. But also then maintaining and maybe even closing down will provide projects for the kind of business that we are. I'm not sure, Kristin, if you...
Oh, I think that sums it up. Yep.
But we see in Norway, which we, of course, we know the best, we see that there are areas at the moment that are growing. And we are following all the projects that we can do on this. No questions? No questions. No. Then thank you, everybody, for turning up here today. And we are looking forward to the journey that we're starting. And have a nice day.