In 30 years, ASSA ABLOY has evolved from a regional lock maker into a global leader in access solutions. It's a remarkable journey made possible by a rich heritage, the enduring entrepreneurial spirit of our people, and our unwavering commitment to creating a safer and more open world. Over a century ago, Swedish businessman, August Stenman, founded the company that would become ASSA. 40 years later, Emil Henriksson, a Finnish precision engineer, invented the revolutionary disc tumbler lock, giving birth to ABLOY. These visionary entrepreneurs gave our company its name, and their legacy lives on. The merger of ASSA and ABLOY in 1994 marked the beginning of our journey. In the first decade, we rapidly grew and consolidated, acquiring leading businesses worldwide. We built the world's leading lock group. In the coming decades, we grew our offering into total door-opening solutions, covering everything that is connected to doors.
Our journey continued, and today we're the global leader in access solutions, helping billions of people move through a safer, more open world with ease. For over a century, Assa Abloy and our iconic brands have developed products that ensure people's safety and security worldwide. Our oldest brand, JPM, was founded in 1645. Sargent, founded in 1875, grew from a hardware shop into a security industry leader. Yale, established in 1868 by Linus Yale Sr. and Linus Yale Jr., introduced the modern pin tumbler lock system. Over 300 acquisitions, all driven by the same entrepreneurial spirit, have joined our journey in the last 30 years to develop more innovative access solutions. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, our successful journey continues. Together, we will continue to lead the industry with innovations for unmet needs and help create a safer and more open world.
Beautiful Prague, and welcome to our Capital Markets Day 2024. Thank you for being so many to attend and making the journey from London to Prague, I guess, or from sunny Stockholm. I understand it's very difficult. You have two weeks good weather in Stockholm, and then you have to come to Prague, so luckily it's also good weather in Prague. Thank you also for most of you making the trip tomorrow to Rychnov, one of our more important factories for EMEA. It will be a very interesting visit, where we will show how we handle complexity in a very efficient way.
I understand it means a lot, taking 1.5 days or 2.5 days out of your busy schedule, so we will pay back during the day with interesting presentations, good Q&A, good discussions, good demos outside of this meeting room. But we also have a plan B. If that doesn't work, we will try to satisfy you with some Czech food, some Czech beer, and perhaps some other drinks tonight. Czech beer, the second-best beer in the world after the Belgian beer. Let's go back to 30 years back. We were born 30 years ago. We celebrate our thirtieth birthday. I know privately, it's not such a nice birthday to celebrate. I guess it stops when you're 18 or perhaps when you're 21.
I can tell you, for the younger people in the room, it only gets worse when you're 40 or 50. I don't know about 60 yet, let's see. But professionally, I think it's a different story. We are very proud to celebrate our 30th birthday because we can look back at all the fantastic things we have done over those 30 years. This is our birthday certificate, our prospectus that we handed out 30 years back. Quite interesting, two extracts out of that prospectus. One is, at that time, already 30 years ago, we showed about the importance of aftermarket to us and to our business, and that helped us to be less cyclical in our industry. As you know, we make better margins on aftermarket than on new build.
If you have a downturn, normally it's new build that goes more down. You have a shift to aftermarket, you can protect your bottom line and your cash flow. Also, very interesting to see that 30 years ago, we were already talking about electronics and electromechanical, so the shift from mechanical to electromechanical. Quite visionary, if you ask me, 30 years back. For those that were shareholder 30 years ago, I know there is some in the room. I see Melker . Melker is a shareholder 30 years ago. Of course, the Latour family and the Melker Schörling family were owners at that time. I don't know if there is other owners.
If you look today, over the 30 years, we increased our share price with 16,800%, and we increased our dividend with 6,500% from SEK 0.20 back in 1995 to SEK 5.40 this year. I guess you have worse investments in your portfolio. Czech Republic is also an important market for us. We do around SEK 650 million in this country, mainly through Entrance Systems and EMEA. EMEA representing 54% of that SEK 650 million, Entrance Systems 33%, but also Global Solutions and HID, which are growing strongly in this country. We have several factories here, several sales offices, and around 1,300 employees.
The agenda for my presentation, or I should say, our presentation, because I will do it together with our CFO, Erik Pieder. We'll give you an up business update. We will explain you again, why we are in a good industry with strong positive market drivers. We will zoom in on our major activities to accelerate growth. We'll zoom in on how we realize cost efficiency, and we will leave you with some key takeaways. If I start with a business update and perhaps start with our strategy. Our strategy, we explain in a, I would say, simple way to our 60,000 people in the group through our strategy house. Our strategy house is built up out of different strategic items, starting with our vision.
It's our vision to be the global leader in providing innovative access solutions that help people feel safe and secure so that they can experience a more open world. A more open world, it's all the Amazon experience. People want it to be smooth, you know, easy, fast. But of course, if you talk about access, you want to do it in a safe and secure way, because it's also the safety, security of your family, of your children. So for us, safe and secure are two words where, where we really want to make the difference. We want to be seen as the expert in safety and in security when it comes to access, solutions. We are the expert to talk to when you want safety and security for your access solution. We deliver solutions in an innovative way. Innovation is really in our DNA.
It's in everything we do. For us, innovation is much wider than just new product development, developing new solutions. It's also the way we run our processes. We run even admin processes, we run marketing. It's also the way we run our operations through automation, robotization. Then clearly, we are the global leader. We are the indisputable leader, leader in the Western world, in Europe, after the acquisition of HHI, definitely also in the US and in South America. We are a strong leader in most of the emerging markets, and there are definitely pockets where we have room for improvement, countries like China, some countries in Southeast Asia. But overall, we are clearly the global leader. It's our mission, of course, you will like that, to build sustainable shareholder value.
But we also want to provide added value to our customers, our partners, and our end users to make that shareholder value creation sustainable. We want to be a world-leading organization where people can succeed. We consider our people as our most important asset. It's really our people that make the difference. You can have fantastic new products, ideas. If you don't have the right people, it will never work. And then, obviously, we want to conduct business in an ethical, compliant, and sustainable way. We have our financial targets that remain the same. We want to grow 10%, as key, grow over a business cycle, 5% growth organically, 5% growth through acquisitions, and we want to do that with an EBIT margin within the 60%-70% corridor. We have our strategic objectives.
They are really our compass. They guide us in everything what we do. Growth through customer relevance, product leadership through innovation, cost efficiency in everything we do, and evolution through people. And then we have some common, I would say, group-wide strategic activities. We obviously want to continue with our successful acquisition journey. We want to actively upgrade our large installed base. We want to generate more recurring revenue, software as a service, service contracts, man in the van in Entrance Systems. We want to increase our service penetration, and we want to grow in emerging markets. Sustainability is really embedded in everything we do. We are the market leader. As a market leader, we want, we want to be also the leader when it comes to sustainability in our industry.
We see sustainability as a way to further reduce our cost, optimize our operational footprint, and to further increase our relative position in the market, coming with new, innovative, sustainable products and solutions. Last but not least, our core values and beliefs. Empowerment, we have trust in people. We give also people the freedom to act. Innovation, we have the courage to change, and we have also the courage to change when things are still going good. Integrity, we stand up for what is right.
If I go back a little bit on the financial targets, and go back to previous capital markets day, and perhaps go a little bit back to, I would say, end of 2019, beginning 2020, when we finalized our first internal five-year strategic plan, that we then also shared with you during the capital markets days back in. When was it? In May 2021, we expressed our ambition for 2026 to become a SEK 150 billion top line company and a SEK 25 billion bottom line company. If we then look where we stand today, in the middle of that journey, you can say that... You can see that despite very turbulent times, we are really well on track to reach those targets.
I would say, if things stay like they say, we should be able to reach those targets a year to 18 months before the 2027 deadline. And that despite a COVID-19 crisis in between, a period of hyperinflation, a period with important component shortages, and today, definitely, a market that is, especially on the residential side, a little bit depressed. So we are quite proud of that achievement. If we zoom in a little bit in the different divisions, EMEA is definitely is clearly the division that is most hit by the residential downturn, and also rather exposed to residential. I think they have done a great job in implementing cost measures.
If you consider that they took out 450 million SEK cost in six months time, I think it's fantastic achievement, really protecting and further improving their bottom line and, and protecting their... and improving their cash flow. Some very nice acquisitions they did in recent year. Acquisition of Veral, a U.K.-based company, and then Doorbird and Kinetron, that also have product expo displays here outside of the meeting room. We will come back on Doorbird and Kinetron later in the presentation. Americas, if you go back to 2019, I think fantastic story. Great value creation, a division where we clearly outperformed the market, as well in North as in South America. Leading also to record strong underlying margin, record cash flow.
I would say, a division fired on all cylinders, and are also very excited about the acquisition of, HHI and all the nice things we can do now also on the residential side in U.S. and Canada, in particular. APAC, perhaps we should make a difference between China, Greater China, and the rest of APAC, where we still see strong commercial market, but also challenging residential market. Despite all the challenges internally and externally in China, positive margin trend over recent years, and then also some very nice acquisitions. Acquisition of D&D Technologies in Australia, and Caldwell, in addition to our fenestration window hardware business in Australia and also in the U.S. Global Technology is made up of, Global Solutions, where Stephanie will later give us a deep dive, and HID.
I would say if we correct or take the disturbance of the PACS recovery business out, remember, PACS, we had a semiconductor shortage just two years ago, built up a big backlog. We invoiced that backlog a year ago, and now we look against a very difficult comparison. I would say the underlying demand very strong, as well on Global Solutions as on HID. But of course, again, that PACS story impacting the mix in a negative way on the short term. But despite that, still good EBIT results. And then also in that or in those two divisions, very nice smaller and mid-sized add-on acquisitions in recent quarters. And then last but not least, Entrance Systems, I would say another star division.
If you see our story in Entrance Systems over, I would even say, the last 15 years, if you go back to when we bought Besam 17, 18 years ago, a small sliding door company in Sweden. In the last 10 years, doing the one acquisition after the other, Entrance Systems being our biggest division today, creating fantastic shareholder value with record high margin. Very proud also on the service side, where we have this plan to grow our service business high single digit year after year. An ambition we have achieved over the last two years, and we will continue to achieve in the years to come. Successful integration, very successful integration of Agta R ecord, contributing as well top line as bottom line wise.
And also here, Massimo, our head of Entrance Systems, will give a deep dive later today. As we have limited time, and I'm most probably already over time, I will not have the possibility to comment on all the different points of our strategy house. But let's zoom in on product leadership through innovation. Something that is really important for us, something where we make the difference in the market. Like I already explained, innovation for us is much wider than just product and solutions. It's also the way we run processes, we run our operations. But if we zoom in specifically on product and solutions, we really have increased our R&D efforts. When I started back in 2018, our R&D spend was 3.2% of top line.
Today, it's above 4%. I think 4% is also a good number going forward. If you consider that we have grown significantly over those six years, of course, in absolute value, the increase has been very important. We increased, since 2018, R&D spend with SEK 3.3 billion. We also increased the number of employees working in R&D. Where did we spend that money? A little bit overall, overall, I would say, definitely in our mechanical core. Definitely also on the shift to electromechanical, further extending our product and solution offering for electromechanical solutions with mobile credentials in particular. A lot of effort has gone also, and investments have gone also into global technologies as well as on global solutions to build the different verticals.
Definitely, we'll come back on that as in HID. And then we, I would say, from a very low level, also increased R&D spend in Entrance Systems, helping us also on the organic growth side. 22% of our top line comes from products that we launched in 2023. We registered more than 230 patents last year, more than 900 since I started in the company. We launched more than 450 new products last year. We launched more than 2,500 products since I started back in 2018. Let me give you one example of R&D and show you that also acquisitions are important in R&D. Sometimes we don't develop technology ourselves. Sometimes we come across interesting technology.
Kinetron is a very good example of this. It's a partner with whom we work together since many, many years. They are specialists in energy harvesting, and we bought that company back last year. They have some product demonstration outside. Frans, who is heading Kinetron, can explain to you. But basically, what they do is they use kinetic energy that you use if you touch a door. For instance, if you touch the door handle and move the door handle, you create kinetic energy. That kinetic energy, through a small generator, is transferred into electric energy, and that makes that you don't have to change your batteries or don't need a battery anymore. So fantastic operational efficiency gains in a hotel or in a commercial building.
No problems at home that your battery is flat if you have a Yale Doorman or a Yale Linus, and also good for the environment, obviously. So very excited about this technology acquisition we did last year in EMEA. They will serve as a technology hub for the, for the group. If we then go and zoom out a little bit on the industry, we are in a good industry with very strong, positive, long-term market drivers. There is a drive coming from an increased demand for safety and security. If we like it or not, but people have the impression that they don't live in a more secure world today than, let's say, ten years ago. They believe it's less safe, less secure than ten years ago. That creates good business for us.
Movement of people and democratic change, urbanization goes on. People move to cities. People become richer. The middle class population is increasing. That's our target audience. So a bigger pie to be divided by the same number of players gives us good opportunities. Digitalization, new technologies, the whole shift from mechanical to electromechanical and digital. That drives R&D up in our industry. It takes also the pure cost players out of the equation. A bigger pie to be divided with less players, also something we like. Sustainability is a strong growth driver. Like for like, you get more money out of a customer if he does a sustainable solution versus a traditional solution. And sustainability definitely also drives technology up in our industry.
Again, fewer players that can offer a true sustainable solution. So again, more business potential for us. And then the fact that local regulations stay local but become more stringent is also a good thing for us. We like complexity because we are convinced if you are the best in mastering complexity in an efficient way, you are the winner. We are very good in managing complexity. We will show you that tomorrow also when you visit our factory in Rychnov. But again, in interest of time, let me just zoom in on one of them: increased demand for safety and security. Rising security threats and public safety concerns, I always take the same example, the shooting in schools and universities in the U.S. A crazy guy coming in with a gun and killing students and teachers.
That has created a whole new business for us. I would say unfortunate, but it is like that. All those schools, K-12 schools, all those universities are being upgraded from a mechanical solution into a sophisticated electromechanical solution, where if a crazy guy comes in with a gun, with one push on a button, you can lock down all the classrooms. They have bulletproof glass, the doors are closed, and the students and the teachers are safe in the class, and in the meantime, police can come and hopefully kill the guy with the gun. We see that going on constantly.
There is still a lot of schools that have to be upgraded, universities that have to be upgraded, and I would say it's almost a license to operate if you are a university or a school in the U.S., today. Regulatory requirements. I just take one example. Here in Europe, the NIS2 regulation, an E.U. directive, on cybersecurity, that will come in effect later this year. It emphasized, of course, cybersecurity. It also emphasizes physical security, and therefore a lot of critical infrastructure and higher security buildings will have to be upgraded physically to a higher security level. Again, very good business for us. And then changing work environments.
The shift to remote work also means that there is an increased need for, I would call it, adaptable security solutions. One day you want to work in that office, another day in another office, the third day at home. So you have to manage these different security needs. And you can do that, of course, in a much better way if you have an electromechanical solution. And that brings me to this point. We see a further shift from mechanical to electromechanical. Further acceleration of that trend after COVID 19, because there is clearly so many more things you can do in an electromechanical way than in a pure mechanical way. And electromechanical solutions offer a high level of security. You have advanced authentication methods.
You can remote monitor and give remote control to people that need access to a building or a meeting room or an office. You have state-of-the-art encryption technology, and you also have audit trails and access logs on who came to the office, when, where, how. You can see suspicious behavior, and so on. Our Elmech product category is our fastest growing category. If you look over the 8-year period, 2015 to today, our Elmech category has grown close to double digit, 9%, whereas we as a group only grow around 4%, and where our mechanical category only grew around 2%. Our mechanical category is today around 25% of group sales.
Our Elmech category is around 32% of group sales, and you will further see that shift from mechanical to electromechanical. If I then zoom in a bit on main items that will give us an acceleration of our growth, I will not talk about pricing, but pricing obviously is also an important factor to accelerate organic growth. We will live in a higher inflationary world. We live in an industry where we can pass through inflation through price increases to the market. If prior to COVID-19, price increases on average have been 1% per year, in a higher inflationary world, if inflation is 1% higher, we will get 2% price, so we only need 3% volume rather than 4% volume to realize the 5% organic growth.
But these are the strategic activities that will help us in accelerating our organic growth and our acquisition growth. We continue with successful acquisitions, actively upgrade the installed base, and generate more recurring revenue, increase service penetration, and then grow in emerging markets. If I take them one by one, start with the successful acquisitions. We acquired more than 350 companies since we were born 30 years back. Last year was a record year in number of acquisitions and in value, obviously, because we acquired HHI, 24 acquisitions, and that was on top of a record year, the year before, 21 acquisitions. What is our acquisition strategy? We want to buy 15-20 small companies, EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million per year.
We want to continue what we have been doing for the last 10 years. We buy a smaller mechanical competitor in a local market, and I would say now, more and more, also an electromechanical competitor, because the electromechanical competitors are now big enough that they are interesting for us to buy. We close their operations, integrate their operations into our operations, get operational synergies, and then give them access to the full ASSA ABLOY product portfolio, and therefore get also synergies. We want to continue to extend the core. I always take the same example. A couple of years ago, we bought a company, Planet. They make very innovative door seals. We were not in door seals. But door seals, obviously, with sustainability, become a very important component on a door.
When we bought the first door seal company, no operational synergies because we were not making door seals. Then we bought the second and the third one, yes, because then you can combine your operations. But clearly, as synergies, because you can sell those door seals with your existing sales teams. The third one is service and distribution. That's mainly in Entrance Systems, where we want to continue to buy dealers and service companies to get direct access to the lucrative service business, doing service on industrial doors, pedestrian doors, loading docks, mainly in the Western world. And then the fourth one, access to new technologies. We still have some technology we are interested in, and we don't have in-house yet. Kinetron energy harvesting was a good example of acquiring technology.
We want to acquire more technology when it comes to biometrics. There are some technologies in Entrance Systems that we would like to have so many things still to do on the acquisition side. We often get the question: "But are you not running out of steam? Have you not bought everything that is available in the market?" The answer is no. If you look in most markets, if you take us together with our two main competitors in the market, we would have together less than 50% market share. So in every market, there is still many smaller players that we can acquire. We have identified more than 900 potential acquisition targets. Obviously, we are not talking to all of them, but we are talking to many of them.
Sometimes we talk, and they want to get married immediately. Sometimes it takes years. We are talking to Agta Record, I guess, for more than 10 years, but it's important to be there when the other party is ready to sell. And to have, of course, the balance sheet that you can buy those companies. We have the balance sheet. We can continue to do those 20 acquisitions per year. Give it to the end of the year, and we will also be able again to do bigger acquisitions, because by the end of the year, our net debt EBITDA should be back on historical numbers. I would like to ask Sascha Keller on stage, because I want to zoom in on one acquisition we did some time back.
Sascha is the founder together with Bernd Mueller.
Yeah, right.
They were the founders of DoorBird. DoorBird is a German company out of Berlin that makes IP telecom solutions for residential applications, multi-residential applications, and commercial applications. We bought DoorBird back in October 2022. You founded DoorBird in 2006, 2008, 2000-
Yeah, almost 10 years ago.
Yeah.
Right. So 14.
So, perhaps, Sascha, to start, give us a little bit. I mean, you are now a year and a half part of the Assa Abloy family. Give us a little bit your experience. How did that journey go? What is your experience after one and a half year?
Yeah, it was a very inspiring journey so far. I've met many, many great leaders within the organization, within Assa Abloy, and what I was really overwhelmed with is the great support I received from all the local organizations and the global organizations by Assa Abloy. The support, the interest, et cetera, although we are still a small daisy compared to other Assa Abloy companies. And of course, it's great to have such a big organization in the background with big financial resources, human resources. So we are super keen and confident to see Dorlet flying on a much higher level than before. So it's yeah, great journey so far.
Perhaps, why, why did you sell to Assa Abloy? Because you were-
Um-
... a successful company before we bought you.
That's a, that's a very good question, of course. When we looked at Assa Abloy, we have seen that Assa Abloy can not only help us to grow DoorBird worldwide, so we are a German company, of course, with traction also in the United States, but Assa Abloy can really help us to grow worldwide, and also much, much faster than we could have achieved on our own. Whereas, what's very important, we also have a technology transformation going on right now, so the majority of the door intercoms in the whole industry are still analog. So, it's a perfect time to establish DoorBird as a professional IP door intercom. Means Assa Abloy can really help us a lot to accelerate.
And, if you look at the traditional door intercom manufacturers, they all struggle with developing firmware, cloud apps, et cetera, and this is where Assa Abloy can really kick in and, help us to... Yeah, that we become, the global brand for professional IP door intercoms in, in the global market.
After a year and a half, what would you say, what are the synergies? What is the success we have realized, together?
Yeah. Honestly, of course, we are going through different phases when it comes to synergies, sales-wise and technology-wise. Sales-wise, we've spent the past months with lifting sales synergies in North America. North America was, prior to the acquisition, already our strongest market, with around 50% of our revenue. Yeah, Assa Abloy US, DSS, and Assa Abloy Canada, they have done a very professional job, a very professional process to roll out DoorBird in North America, which is happening right now. Next step is, of course, to also establish DoorBird with the help of Assa Abloy in EMEA, considering, of course, the EMEA region is way more fragmented than America or North America in particular. Yeah, also, technology-wise, we benefit a lot from Assa Abloy.
Assa Abloy is the global leader for access control, and they can help us a lot with combining that also with our door intercoms. Also, HID will play a role there with their credential technology. Yeah, we are yeah super keen on lifting these synergies anytime soon. But of course, the mission for us is not only to grow DoorBird, but to provide a full solution by Assa Abloy for all these entry doors. That's possible by combining access control together with an IP door intercom as a seamless solution by Assa Abloy.
I think what Sascha didn't mention, of course, was that we have a little bit more money than when Sascha was on his own in his company, so we can also s pend a little bit more and invest a little bit more money to accelerate some of the growth initiatives that Sascha has had in mind, but was more limited as a smaller company. Here, when we see that the business case makes sense to invest, we obviously invest because we want that faster accelerated growth. Thank you.
Thank you.
Sascha, Sascha will be there also, during the coffee break, where he will show some of the intercom products that we have with Doorbird, and he can also answer more questions that you might have. I think that's a good step into the next strategic activity. Actively upgrading our install base, we want to do that on the residential side. We also want to do that on the non-residential side. As you know, on the non-residential side, we are active in, I would say, all verticals. What's good is that we are not extreme exposed to one vertical. There's no vertical where we have a double-digit exposure. All verticals have only single-digit exposure.
Our two biggest verticals are, education and healthcare, and I propose that we zoom a little bit in on those, two when we talk about the shift from mechanical to, electro mechanical, upgrading that, installed base. It's all about safety and security. It's all about operational, efficiency. I will take those two verticals, and I will also, take, enterprise, because we often get questions about, there's less office space, what does that mean for, our Assa Abloy business? So I will also comment on, enterprise. If I start with, with healthcare, what is important is for you to realize is that we have dedicated solutions for the different, verticals, because there is some things that are special, vertical by vertical. What is special for, education, for hospitals?
I would say mainly two things is this here around tracing, tracking. We can, with our electromechanical solution, we can trace and track doctors, a very important asset in a hospital. We can track patients, we know where they are, and we can also track critical equipment. I would say through our solution, being able to know where the doctor is, where the patient is, and where the equipment is, we can save lives. It's also a good purpose for the world. We do that through our, you know, positioning system. You should imagine in a big hospital, things get lost, and they don't know where the doctor is, they don't know where critical equipment is. So finding and locating and trace it is very important.
Obviously, the other thing is, what is very important is hygiene. Hygiene is important in hospital in general. Definitely after COVID-19, became more important with low-touch or non-touch door openings. People don't want to touch, they don't want to get infected. And then they also want to seal off, in a much better way, compartments, one compartment from the other. They also want to seal off, in a better way, surgery rooms. We have solutions with our hermetic doors there. It's a huge potential, a very important vertical, as well in the U.S. as in Europe. The other one, education, I already gave the example of the shooting in the schools. Is, I would say, the main reason why there is a lot of upgrade of installed base in education.
Perhaps we should make a distinction between K-12 and universities if we talk about U.S.. I think similar is true in Europe, where in K-12, it's definitely also about security, where in universities it's also about a requirement pull from the students. Students want to use their mobile phone for everything. New generation wants to use their mobile phone to pay in the canteen. They want to pay in the gym. They want to get access to the dormitories, to the different classrooms and so on. We being the leader also when it comes to mobile credential offering, are very well placed to take advantage of that trend of upgrading a pure mechanical solution in a university to an electromechanical solution.
And then the last example I want to give on the non-residential side is the drive for shift to make in enterprise. We often get the question, "Yeah, but people work from home. There is less office space. Office is in a crisis. What does that mean for you, Assa Abloy?" Like I said, first of all, we are not very exposed to offices. Offices are not in our top three verticals, but we also don't live off square meters or square feet. We couldn't care less, as a matter of fact. What we are interested is in number of door openings, and we are convinced that yes, there is gonna be less square meters, but most probably there's gonna be more door openings, and for sure, the door openings are gonna be of a higher value.
What will disappear is those big landscapes where 200, 300 people sit in a meeting, in an office all together. You will go to smaller offices, but with more breakout rooms, with more meeting rooms. And all those breakout rooms, meeting rooms, have a door opening, and that door opening will be of an electromechanical nature. They will have an HID reader. They will open automatically. We have seen several examples, is SEB here. SEB? Yeah. I was in your office in New York, a couple of weeks ago. You were before in a big office in New York. I don't know why you went to smaller one, because you make good money in SEB. But you decide to go to a much smaller office, but much more modern office.
So very nice, I must say, very nice breakout rooms, meeting rooms. Every breakout meeting room had an HID reader, fully electromechanical. So for us, this is very good. It's a much smaller square meter, but much more revenue for us to take. So I would say this trend, if it's already something, it might even be a positive trend rather than a negative trend. Of course, they upgrade to ELMECH for safety and security for increased efficiency. I mean, if people change bank, if he goes from SEB to another bank, otherwise you have to get the mechanical key back and keys get lost. If he now, in electromechanical solution, moves to another bank, we just cut him off, and he has no access anymore to the SEB facilities.
And then, of course, sustainability through, you know, automatic regulation. You can also regulate who has access to a floor, who has access to a building. You also can increase energy efficiency, linking it also to a building software solution. I was myself, I think Björn was there also, and Erik was there for sure, in London. Bishopsgate is a futuristic new building. The people that live in London, you should go and visit it. So they have plenty of sensors in every room. They measure oxygen, they measure light, they measure if there is people in the room. And based on all those parameters, they then decide on the temperature in the room and the lighting of the room, optimizing energy efficiency.
Our full access control solution is integrated in that complete ecosystem. A good example of sustainability and how an office will look like in the future or a building will look like in the future. Why is that upgrade of installed base interesting for us? One, because we sell a second time, and selling a second time is always good, but we also sell more the second time. If you compare a pure mechanical solution in a commercial building 15 years ago, we would sell mechanical door hardware in the building. We would sell some electronic access control on the perimeter and have a couple of readers on the outside, but inside it would be pure mechanical.
Now, today, that same building in an electromechanical solution, we of course still have the mechanical door hardware, but we also have electronic access control on the perimeter, but also inside the building. And the fact that we have that also inside the building gives us also the possibility to sell software, software as a service. We can offer mobile access, we can offer touch-free applications, and then definitely the drive for green specification also makes increase the value per project. So more sale and a second time sale. Here, the same thing, I want to zoom in on one specific project. Being in Czech, being in Prague, we have chosen a project here in Prague.
For the sports fans around here, the O2 Arena, and then around O2 Arena, they built a whole ecosystem of other buildings. We can explain much better with video than I can do, so I propose we play the video.
Welcome to Prague and the O2 Arena area, a shining example of how strong customer relations have evolved and grown through collaboration, leading to the addition of many new projects over the past 20 years. Assa Abloy has supported the O2 Arena area with more than 15,000 products, components, and solutions in 6 different customer segments. The collaboration began with the design and construction of the O2 Arena back in 2004. With a capacity of more than 20,000 visitors, built for the World Hockey Championships, the O2 Arena is one of the leading facilities in Europe for sports and culture.
The main competitive advantage of Assa Abloy is that it provides complete door systems. From one manufacturer, I have all the equipment, locks, drives, panic hinges, in good quality and good reliability.
In 2010, Gallery Harfa opened their doors. With 160 shops, offices, and a large flow of customers daily, a service agreement was signed with Assa Abloy for its 700+ doors.
The Harfa Gallery shopping center is visited by many thousands of people every day. This means that safety is our top priority. In the event of any problem, fire, it is necessary for people to get out of the building as soon as possible. This means that the service agreement is very important for us in this case, so that we can solve any problem immediately.
The successful collaboration between the O2 Arena and the Assa Abloy team led to a new project within the O2 Arena area in 2019, O2 Universum, a multifunctional congress center.
When building O2 Universum, we decided, based on reliability and experience, to use the Assa Abloy door system. The good quality of the products and the reliability of the O2 Arena operation led us to this.
One of the keys to success has been the close collaboration with the architects.
O2 Universum is a complex building, both in terms of operation and technically.
The architects had to fulfill all legislative requirements, including ventilation, fire safety, and escape routes.
We consulted all the requirements for these doors with the specification team of Assa Abloy. We have repeatedly used the services of the Assa Abloy specification team in other projects. [Foreign language]
Also in 2019, Harfa Business Center commenced operation with a wide range of Assa Abloy products and solutions, such as fire-rated steel doors, HID readers, and door operators for sliding and revolving doors. In 2021, the iconic Hotel Stages opened its doors next to the O2 Arena.
We didn't want to have another boring hotel on the market. So when we, when we were creating the concept of the hotel, we always had, like, a story of every guest is a star on the stage. We were looking for some reliable partner who will provide us the most up-to-date technologies. Security and comfort to use was, was another important factor, and not last but not least, also the price and the service after the implementation was one of the most important factors as well. We take the collaboration with Assa Abloy not only as a business relationship, but also as a partnership. Talking about the installation process, talking about the service process, that all was working and is working very well. We have one strong partner who can deliver all the solution and all the service and support for all...
Everything related to doors, locks, and closing system of the hotel. Assa Abloy is specialized delivery of the solutions for us.
Thanks to Assa Abloy's strong position in the market, the ability to design and deliver technically complex solutions and meeting customer requirements within different types of constructions, Assa Abloy has become the main supplier of door hardware to the O2 Arena area in Prague and many more large-scale projects all over the world.
I think fantastic example of how initial contact is to a project and then how you can upsell to other projects. I think the red line is customer support. Deliver what you promise to deliver, and you will get more. But I think in the presentation, they were also referring to specification activities, and therefore I want to welcome Radek Pazour. Radek is a colleague of ours here in our Czech operations. Radek works in the specification team, and Radek has also been instrumental, I would say, in this project. So, Radek, welcome, and perhaps as an introductory question, tell us a little bit, what has been your involvement in the O2 Arena project?
Hello, Nico. Good afternoon, everyone. I joined ASSA ABLOY in 2008 as a sales guy, and after six years in sales, I moved to the specification team, and I was directly involved in O2 development back in 2017, when the O2 Universum project was kicked off. And I specified the building together with the architect you saw in that video.
Mm-hmm. Perhaps for the audience, they are not experts like you. Perhaps guide us a little bit through, you know, a construction project. What are the different phases in such a project?
Yeah, sure. I'm happy to do that. For that purpose, I create this simple slide which shows you construction project phases. So we step into the project quite early in the design phase, sometimes known as a pre-project phase. That's the first phase on the screen. During this phase, architects must finalize construction documentation with all the blueprints, detailed specifications, and also detailed cost estimates. Based on these cost estimates, the final budget is approved, and investor can tender general contractor. So this is really the right moment when we can step into the project, and we can help architect to find the right solution for their openings. And to be able to do that, we need to fully understand all the customer needs.
We need to have a strong technical knowledge, and we also need to know the local standards and legislation. Our delivery is a detailed specification that completely fulfill all the requirements in a detail describe the whole solution, and also we provide a detailed cost estimate, so we help the investor to have all the costs under control. Once this is done, the construction can start it. As I said, investor can tender a general contractor, and that's also the moment where we hand over project from specifications to the sales team. So the sales team can continue during the third phase, construction phase, where a general contractor open the tender for all the technologies including doors, access control system, master key system. So as you can imagine, our sales guys are preparing quotes. They are preparing samples.
That's the right moment also for negotiations, and we, as specifiers, we are supporting the sales team. We are defending our specification against our main competitors. So if it's really needed, we can also clarify a very complicated solution or even justify that solution in front of all the key stakeholders. During this phase, if we are successful, we can close the deal with the customer. We can sign the contract and then we can hand over to the installation phase. So that's the fourth phase, and we call it closing phase. During this phase, we are delivering all the doors and the door hardware to the general contractor, or we are delivering it through our installation partners. And if we successfully install everything, we can close the project, and then we are moving to the last phase, which is operation phase.
Where, again, we hand over project to the service department, and they can offer a service agreement to the customer, the same way you saw in the video in case of shopping mall, Galeria Harfa. So as you can imagine, the process is quite long, complicated, and the internal collaboration is also an important factor for our success.
I get often the question on a new project, I mean, why do you win a new project? We heard, I think in the video, that positive customer experience, you know, deliver what you promise to deliver is very important. In your experience, how important is that? How often do you win a project because of that positive experience?
Yeah, it's true that the previous experience of customer with our products is important, and also a good relationship with key stakeholders like investors, contractors, and architects. These things are very important. The reason why we were selected as a supplier for O2 Universum was said in the video. You heard that, yeah? Customer was very happy with a solution that we have in O2 Arena. Products we delivered back in 2004, over, let's say, 20 years, works without any major issues, so it was really an easy decision for them to go ahead with the same, same solution. So I would say, the previous experience with products and very good reference is a key to success here.
But very smart people in the room, Radek, so they will say, "Yeah, but the first project, the O2 Arena, you had no, no reference because that was the first project." So why, why did you then win the O2 project?
Yeah, it's, it's true. It was before I join Assa Abloy. At that time, I knew that we were a leading supplier of locks with FAB brand, and together with Abloy products, we managed to solve quite complicated doors. We provide a very sophisticated solution for their doors. So I would say it was the brand recognition of FAB, then also our expertise and our very good products that help us to win that project.
Mm-hmm. And then, I mean, if you looked in the whole Universum project, something in particular that stick out, that you said it was really special, difficult?
Yeah. Yeah, definitely yes. I think architect even mentioned it a bit in the video. We had there one very big challenge. I'm talking about the door to the main hall, series of the doors. And, as you can imagine, in these public buildings, a significant higher attention must be paid to fire safety, and O2 Universum was no exception to that. We had to solve basically all the requirements you can imagine at the door at the same time. Yeah, so for architects, it was a big pain point. They were very concerned, and they even said that it's like a nightmare for them. But we managed to find the right solution. We really helped them.
It was complicated solution, quite expensive, but yes, Nico mentioned complexity is something what we can, we can do, so customer was very happy, and you can imagine, in these cases, price plays almost no role. It's the solution itself that helps them, enables them to progress with the project. So this happened. Solution really works, and we are happy that customer is happy.
You mentioned price. That's another question we always get. I mean, your pricing power, I think it's quite clear on the aftermarket side, but price must be important, I guess, on new projects. Explain a bit, how important is price for new project?
Yeah, yeah. Price is one of the parameters that is always important for customer, for sure. As I said, during the design phase, we can help architects with our specifications, and we can provide detailed cost estimates. We are helping customers to ensure that their budget is under control. The tool we are using, Opening Studio, is helping us a lot because we can see all the costs, and if we need to do some changes in the specification or adjustments, we can see immediate effect in money for the customer. This is very good, especially for price-sensitive customers.
He will explain Opening Studio, has a demo on Opening Studio outside. Perhaps for the audience, quickly explain a bit what is Opening Studio in a couple of words, and then how important is Opening Studio for a new project?
For us, it's very important. I cannot imagine specifiers working without Opening Studio. Yeah. This tool is integrated with Autodesk Revit and ArchiCAD, let's say, two dominant BIM tools that are used by architects over globe. This software really speed up the whole specification process, so it's helping us a lot. But it's not helping only us. Yeah, this enables also other stakeholders to work and collaborate in an interactive way. I'm talking about locksmiths, suppliers, contractors, distributors. Yeah, thanks to the Opening Studio, they can have all the information in one place.
Y ep, perhaps he's a bit modest. I think Opening Studio is by far the best tool that you can find in our industry. Our architects love it. It's one of the reasons how we can turn architects that normally specify competitor products to us. I think it's important for us internally, like Radek said. It's also important for architects, it's important for contractors. It helps them realize operation efficiency. But again, Radek will and can explain that during the coffee break, and give you a demo. Radek, you know we always want more, so what's the next project?
Actually, we have two similar projects in the pipeline. They are still in the negotiation phase, so I cannot be more specific, but what I can tell you is that in next two years, we hope that these projects will be closed. And thanks to the O2 Arena and O2 Universum references, we believe that we are in a strong position to win these projects.
We will take over Prague to start with. Thank you, Radek.
Thank you.
And like I said, Radek will be there during the coffee break if you have questions for him or want to see the demo. Good. Back to our strategic activities, still on upgrading installed base, but moving from non-residential to residential. We see a similar trend there. Also, on the residential side, we are moving towards digital solutions, digital door locks. Here, we should not forget that we are still early in that in that trend, even early with solutions. Digital door lock was invented by iRevo back in 1998. We bought iRevo back in 2007. I would say that's when our digital door lock story started. So still very young business. There is one market that is fully penetrated, it's South Korea.
If you live in South Korea, 95%, max—minimum 90% of all front doors for residential applications have a digital door lock. Many of them have a iRevo digital door lock. But if you look around the world, perhaps in China, it's, I don't know, 20%, 30%. If you take the U.S., some people will say it's low single-digit penetration or. Sorry, high single-digit penetration or low double-digit penetration. If you take in Europe, yes, in Sweden or in Finland, it might be a little bit above 10%. In U.K., around 10%, but if you then go countries, Germany, Italy, Spain, it's close to zero. So a lot still has to happen. But what you see is that, you know, the broader your, your smart offering, the more you, you sell.
So that's why we are accelerating our new product development around digital door locks. Clearly, demographic change, millennials are much more open to adapt to new technologies. They want that seamless Amazon experience, and then also new business models like shared economy, Airbnb, and so on. You know, digital door lock is a very easy way to get a lot of different people in into the same house. Hopefully not at the same time. And the same thing on residential. If you compare a pure mechanical residential customer versus an electromechanical residential customer, you can get much more money out of that customer in an electromechanical way than in a mechanical way. Your product offering can be wider.
As what is true on the mechanical side is definitely true on the residential side. The lifetime of a, you know, digital lock and a digital solution is much shorter than a pure mechanical solution. Where in a mechanical world, you will only change your mechanical lock when you move houses or when they break into your house. You know, on a digital solution, you will also change your lock because you want to have the new version, you want to have additional biometrics, you want to have a better software, and so on. Generating more recurring revenue. On one side, software as a service, our, I would say, most fastest growing product or solution. It grew 160% since 2018.
When I started back in 2018, recurring revenue was only 2% of top line. Today, it's more than 5% of top line. Very good, profitable, business, as you can imagine. Very good example here is mobile access deployment in hospitality. Hospitality was the first one to come with mobile access already back in 2015. You have seen there that installed base growing with 3,300% since 2015. We see similar evolutions starting a bit later in other verticals.
I would say that recurring revenue today is still, in the first place, something that happens in global technologies as well in global solutions, where we have that ecosystem around a specific end customer problem, or in HID, where we have mobile credentials, where we have softwares to handle, let's call it plastic credentials. But we see now recurring revenue also coming more and more in our geographical divisions. EMEA, for instance, has launched an Incedo platform, so it's a software layer where you couple all your hardware, your electromechanical hardware, to the same software layer. Obviously, when they sell an electromechanical solution, we also try to sell that Incedo software, and then they get recurring revenue. And we have rolled that out now also into APAC, and we have a very similar solution in the Americas.
Then field service subscription, I will not talk too much. Massimo will do that in the Entrance System section. That's of course, service contracts. It's mainly service contracts on Entrance System equipment, industrial doors, pedestrian doors, you name it, linking that customer for long term with you, creating that customer loyalty, giving you the possibility also to upsell during the lifetime of the product and the solution. And then increased service penetration, again, Massimo will come back on that. It's a high priority for Entrance Systems. We want to grow our service business high single digits for the coming years. I would say the market is not the limiting factor because we can also do service on competitor equipment in a very profitable way. It's more our own ability to scale up.
If you want to grow, let's say 10% to make it easy, we have more than 3,000 technicians, close to 4,000. Let's say 4,000 technicians. It means that we have to add 400. We have a little bit efficiency, 380 technicians every year on top of the technicians that go on retirement, on top of the technicians that don't want to be a technician anymore. We have to get them up to speed, train them. So that is the biggest challenge to grow faster in service. Like I mentioned, service has better margins than equipment, so if we grow service faster than equipment, it also has a creative effect on bottom line margins. And then last but not least, growing emerging markets.
Again, here, perhaps it's good to make separation between Greater China and the rest of the emerging markets. If you look at the rest of the emerging markets, we have been growing with a CAGR of around 10% since 2015, so I think a good achievement. We want to grow faster in emerging markets than in mature markets. Of course, China, if you include China, the picture looks very different. You know that we have had our challenges in in China, that we have been very internally focused 3, 4, 5, 6 years back, where we changed also our strategy for China. Our China strategy is delivering underlying good results.
Just a matter of time for the market to bottom out and to turn, that we will also be able to show that in a better way in our financial results. Like I mentioned, in Greater China, we are now close to positive growth again. Still a small negative growth on the 12-month trend, and still small negative EBIT on a 12-month moving trend, but it doesn't need that much to come back into black figures as well when it comes to organic growth. As to bottom line, what's our proven strategy in emerging markets? If you take South America, that's how we became the undisputable market leader, I would say, in every country in South America. We prefer to do a smaller acquisition of a local player.
Then we have a platform, a platform we can build from. It gives us a little bit of scale. We can invest, bring other products to the market, and then grow that country and take, you could say, country by country. It's important that we are local. Local means we have a local team that understands the local market and also local products. Because, again, the needs in every market are very different, something very unique for our industry. We invest in people in our organization, local people that stay there, that give us that continuity. South America, again, fantastic example. I was in Mexico, Peru last week, visiting also two of the acquisitions we did in Peru.
Most of our people have been there 15 years, 20 years. That's what our customers want. They want a long-term relation. They don't want somebody that changes every 3 years, a new face. Also, our market is a very complex market. If you look at other industries, perhaps the products are easier to learn if you come from outside of the industry. In our industry, you really have to have deep internal knowledge because your customers are very experienced on the products themselves, and they expect from us to be even more experienced. So therefore, this seniority is very important. I think Tim can also discuss about that when he talks about HHI later. And then, like I said, local footprint, local knowledge, feet on the street.
All this together with pricing, of course, will then give us that 10%, 10% CAGR over a business cycle. Continued successful acquisitions will give us the 5% acquisition growth. The other items, together with pricing, are the main items that give us the 5% organic growth. And then we want to do that with a bit margin within the 16%-17%, and there, Erik will tell us what are the main actions to keep cost under control and further improve the bottom line.
Thank you, Nico, and also a very good afternoon from my side, and thank you for taking the time to come here. Like many, many, probably some of the Swedes here, we would prefer actually to be in Ostrava to watch the Swedish national team playing hockey instead of being here. But, you know, if you look on the Swedish team, I mean, they are built up by a very strong defense, where they want to protect either the blue line or the goal, and that's a bit sort of how you should look into the cost efficiency in everything we do. We protect the bottom line by being more efficient and also by being able to generate cash in order then for Nico to be able to work on all his growth initiatives, whether it's organic or inorganic. I will cover, What do I need to do?
Try it.
Is it working now?
Yes, I think so. Test.
I'm testing, testing, testing, one, two, three. Can you hear me? Ah, that's good. I probably didn't say that much anyhow. The only important thing that you should remember for the first part is that Sweden will win the hockey championship here in two weeks. That's the only important thing. Anyhow, so I will guide you through some of these points that we do from a cost efficiency. This is not everything we do. I mean, we will look we also work actively on pricing, we work on automation, we work on what we can do in order then to reduce the indirect spend, or let's say, the indirect process, whether it is in production, whether it is in sales, or whether it is in admin.
We also look on admin, we look into IT, what we can do, and, I mean, we also sort of look into the new technologies, like for instance, robot process automation, and we're also taking baby steps, I would say, within AI, with the aim, of course, of being more efficient and protecting the bottom line. This is probably something that you are most very aware of, is our consolidation of footprint, the famous MFP programs. We have now done nine. We are in the middle of implementation of program number nine. You can see accumulated, we have done savings of SEK 7.2 billion. When we talk about these programs, I think it's two main things to remember.
One is that all the programs that we have include personnel reductions, and the second is that they are sustainable, which means that the cost that we are taking back, taking out is not coming back in again. As you can see through the graph, you can see that, okay, the bigger we get, the more savings we generate through the programs. And I mean, there's always ideas, whether it's sort of, let's say, in, if I call it in organic part or coming through the acquisitions, we always sort of work actively in finding new products, projects. And you can see the number 9, which was the one where we had the highest saving, and we also, I think, had the shortest payback period. In 2023, as you can see, we generated almost SEK 1 billion savings from the programs.
For this year, we have sort of what we have remaining of the programs is roughly SEK 600 million, but we are also now looking into the manufacturing footprint program ten, which will either be launched end of 2024, or you perhaps need to wait until Q1 2025. Tomorrow, we will actually see an example in the Richenov factory. We acquired the factory in Richenov in 1997, and we soon realized that this is a place where we actually can sort of consolidate cylinders and Elmech products from the whole of Europe. So this has become our center of excellence. In total, we have consolidated productions from 12 countries, and of course, it's so that if you have smaller factories, which you can't fill completely, you run one shift or you run two shifts.
Of course, if you consolidate all of this together, you can run them 24/7. Of course, you can work on your labor efficiency, where you can see that we increased it by 5. Of course, you also get the economies of scale when it comes to material, when it comes to components and support functions, as well as we can then also invest in the latest technologies, like connected machines. What is really good in Czech Republic is also the long tradition of engineering. It goes back to even to the Bohemian time. So we can have very strong engineering skills in Czech Republic, and they're also at a good cost level, but also combining and having the R&D people, where you actually have the production, also creates efficiencies in order for them, in order for us to faster being able to launch new products.
A little bit then how this one works in practice, as, I mean, as I said, how do we work to protect our bottom line? As you've all seen, and as you all know, EMEA's, let's say, market is not that great. If you look in 2023, EMEA sort of was down -8%, where, of course, the biggest drop was then in the Nordics. They were sort of down almost 30%, the market. And as I sort of see a lot of faces who have followed us for a long time, you also know that the Nordics is, let's say, our most profitable part of EMEA. So we need to do, let's say, to do a number of things, which we implement rather fast. We talk a lot about the centralized model, which is something that helps us here.
So what we did last year was that we sort of did short-term cost savings, which for me, I roughly had an effect of SEK 500 million. We had the MFP project rolling, and we actually added MFP projects, so we got sort of savings from those ones of roughly SEK 250 million. Then we continued to work actively on pricing. Even though that the market went down, we were still able to continuously increase our prices. We also increased the focus on indirect spend. A lot of times, you know, the focus on procurement goes on direct material, but there is quite a lot of low-hanging fruit if you look into the indirect part. And then we also, already earlier during the year-...
We implemented a new segment divisional structure, which sort of helped us also to be leaner, faster, and more agile in implementing the other four actions. And you can see the result there up on the right, where you can see that we were, with the measures that we took, despite that top line went down, we were able then to defend our bottom line. What is good with this is that when the market comes back, we are, let's say, already, let's say, slimmed and trimmed in order then for really profitable growth. Next part, if I go to logistics, and I mean, the starting point with logistics is at the end of the day, that we should be able to support and deliver our customers in, let's say, the best possible way.
What we do is that we follow this up with the help of the Net Promoter Score, in order then to see that we can sort of follow our customer satisfaction. But at the same time, within logistics, on one hand, we need to be fast, and we need to be able to deliver. We can also sort of see that there are a lot of efficiencies that are possible in this. Like, for instance, we can consolidate and optimize warehouses. This is something that we have actually done up in Scandinavia. We can also use, let's say, leverage the group when it comes to, you know, working with partners, when it comes to freights and so forth like that, and we can also utilize so that we fill up the containers when we send them, as well as the trucks.
This, of course, also is a part of being more efficient. By sort of working on the, let's say, on the planning processes, we can also look into how we ship, because, you know, the more we can ship by boat, it's much better for our cost versus if we need, you know, I mean, instead of having to send, send it through air freight. And also when it comes to, let's say, this of, if we have a good planning process, we can also utilize our container betters, better in order then to make sure that this is an area where we can be most efficient. Another part here is, of course, when we also look into here, where we can phase out sort of legacy products and by that, also reduce our complexity.
Reduction of complexity is something that also helps us from a product cost. This product cost reduction also goes hand in hand with our initiative when it comes to science-based target on our environmental impact. If we sort of look into... I mean, we constantly review our supply base to see sort of where is for us optimized, where is the most optimal to be, where can we sort of do more together as either a division and a group, in order then to sort of be more, I would say, professional in this. We can also, as I mentioned before, if we can reduce the complexity, if we can reduce the legacy, we can also streamline, let's say, our our component assortment to be, let's say, to have a better volume.
You see here also that our focus, and we focus a lot on this cross, cross-collaboration, and we can also sort of not only having good contracts, but we can also benchmark. This is also something that we see very, a lot of times when we come to acquisitions. I think Tim is gonna come back a bit on that one, where we can sort of see where we can utilize. Am I in the way, James? I'll move so you can see, because that's good for you. And last but not least, and this is perhaps more where the science-based part comes in, is the operational excellence. You can see what we can do on VAVE when it comes to design, when it comes to components, when it comes to production.
This VAVE is also a part that we then can also look into when we come to lean. We also work a lot with should cost and to see, okay, what are sort of the parts of also using the lean methodology in a good way? Sort of, what is the waste that we actually can take out? And I mentioned before, here an area is the indirect spend, where we sort of see that there's also opportunities to further, let's say, trim our cost. Just to give you some details on the direct material exposure that we have, here, I think it's interesting to see when we talked about this in 2022, you can see that there is a shift of the raw material has gone down with 5%, but then the electronics has more or less gone up in the same way.
But on the raw material, you see that of course, in 2022, the cost went up. We were able to offset this with pricing, and as you have heard us during the call, we have also been good in maintaining the prices, and of course, that helps us, let's say, in the gap between price and cost. You can see the split up there, where you can sort of, I mean, still raw material is one third, and if you look into the one third, 63% of that is steel. On that part, so of course, steel is very important still for us, but it sort of, it's shifting a bit also where electronics, and this is of course, also part of our transition versus more electromechanical solutions.
I mean, if you look from, yes, the prices on the raw material has gone down since 2021, but those ones who are good in looking at the graph can also see that they are still higher than what it was in the pre, in the pre-COVID times. I talked a bit about logistics, and I'll sort of also talk a bit then about the working capital, where, I mean, I would say that, yes, we work on all the three components of working capital. We make sure that we sort of keep our accounts receivable and our overdues under control, and we today, with sort of with the situation that we're in, perhaps with the not best market considerations, we make sure that, you know, we get paid, because that's an important part.
I think it's also what we can do when it comes to payables in order to extend our payment terms for the suppliers. But I think this is, I would say, inventory is an area where I think that we did, last year, a very good job because, you know, our cash conversion was 128% last year. For those analysts that don't put that in the model for 2024, because I don't, I think we're gonna go back to normal, more normal first, but we still have a lot of things to do here. One thing that I talked already about when I talked about logistics is also the replenishment, and you should know, let's say, we have developed our own replenishment tool.
Why I talked about it in on the logistics is that, you know, if you know the levels that you need for the next weeks or months, you can also plan, let's say, for inbound, and so you can also plan with the suppliers, which is something that is, let's say, helping us, as we are using, of course, the algorithms here. But of course, we're also seeing what. I mean, getting the understanding what we actually, what we have in the inventory, so we don't sort of order things double, and we make sure that we have the right ordering points when it comes to this.
As I was saying, I mean, this is what we do in order then to protect our bottom line or let's say, our defense, and I'm sure that we're gonna be as successful as Sweden is gonna be in two weeks when they go to the O2 Arena and actually win the Hockey World Championship. With that, I give it back to Nico for some key takeaways.
It's always dangerous, comparing your performance with, a sports, team, and perhaps we should talk about real sport, soccer, and a country where they play best soccer, one of the best soccers in the world, Belgium, where my team, Anderlecht, with still two games to go, is in the lead in the play-off. So let's see how it goes, but I'm not so sure that saying that doing as good as Anderlecht will be good enough for us. We want to do most probably better. Let me leave you with some key takeaways. We are the global leader in access solutions. We are the undisputable leader in our industry. We have the deepest, or we have the largest installed base, the deepest know-how of access solutions and innovation, and we have a solid platform to maintain our leading position.
We are operating in an industry with very strong, long-term, positive market drivers. It's a good industry to be in. We have a well-proven strategy. We have an evolution of our strategy. You will not see revolution. It's evolution, further fine-tuning of a proven strategy, a proven strong strategy that has delivered strong and stable financial performance for the first 30 years, and I'm absolutely convinced will continue to deliver stable and strong financial performance going forward. Thank you for your attention, and with this, I think we can go to Q&A, and the moderators will explain how this works. I think it's rather simple, but yeah.
It's rather simple. Q&A, you just indicate with your hand if you want to raise a question, and Carl and Isabelle will come with a microphone. Yes, I see a hand over there. Carl, please hand over a microphone. And then we-
Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation. It's Andre from UBS. I wanted to ask about the inevitable question about the acquired growth. Now that you are 50%-60% bigger than you were in 2019, your acquisition pipeline seems to be about the same in terms of number of companies, but has changed quite a lot, I think. Regionally, you've got a lot less now in Asia-Pac, but more in EMEA and Americas. Could you comment on that mix change? And also, has the average size per company grown 50%-60% to keep enabling that 5% growth going forward?
Yeah. So if you say we are 12–13-billion-euro company, let's make it easy, we are a EUR 10 billion company, that means we have to do EUR 500 million acquisitions per year, right? We will do 15-20 smaller acquisitions. If you say we do 20 acquisitions of EUR 20 million, to make it easier, we do 15 of 30, but let's make 20 of EUR 20 million. That means EUR 400 million. That means we need one of EUR 100 million every year, or one of EUR 200 million every two years, or one of EUR 300 million every three years, or one of $1.5 billion every 15 years. On the smaller acquisitions, I explained our acquisition strategy.
With that acquisition, and continue buying in the core, extending the core, buying service companies, and buying technology, we are absolutely convinced that we can continue with this 20 acquisition of SEK 20 million per year for the coming many years. Those 900 acquisition targets, I mean, if you do 20 per year, that's a lot of years we can go on with that story. And like we explained also before, as we continue to extend our core, we continue to see new opportunities, because by extending the core, door seals, we bought the first one, we bought a second one, we might buy more door seals companies, as an example. So on the small companies, I'm, I'm convinced we can continue with that story for many years.
When it comes to geography or division, I have no opinion. First come, first served basis. I mean, we work with a simple discounted cash flow model. We look if the acquisition fits in our strategic rationale. Every division, every year, there's an update of their five-year plan. They have a rolling five-year plan forward five-year plan. As part of the set of their five-year strategy plan, they have also an acquisition strategy. EMEA says, "This is the type of acquisitions we want to do." They define a list of all potential targets, they go and talk to them, and we work ourselves through the pipeline. The same is true for all the other divisions.
If tomorrow, five acquisitions come in in EMEA, and all five make sense, they all have the right payback, the right outcome, the right strategic optionality, we will do them all five the same day, because we are not limited by cash on those smaller acquisitions. If it's five in the US, we will do it in the US. If it's five in India, we will do in India. So we have no strong opinion. I must say, personally, I like very much the US, because US is a bigger uniform market. Yeah, multiples are perhaps slightly higher in the US than in Europe, but you make also, in general, like for like, much better margins in the US than you do in Europe.
There's only one location where today we will be very skeptical, but if somebody would come with a proposal in China, because in China, we first want to see more stability, profitability before we do new acquisitions, but over time, we definitely also want to be a consolidator in China. Now, when it comes to the bigger acquisitions, there, of course, there is not hundreds of them, but there is enough bigger acquisitions to also there continue the journey for many, many years to come. I hope that some of those acquisitions don't come in the coming quarters, that it takes to, you know, next year or a little bit longer, that our balance sheet again is a little bit stronger, back in line with historical numbers, that we can do again those bigger acquisitions.
I would say today, our firing power is most probably around EUR 1 billion. If something comes up, EUR 1 billion, we can do through funding. If it's higher, we would have to raise equity, and then it, of course, it would be a different, a different, story. I think we want. You have seen our historical numbers. We want our leverage to be around those historical, numbers. We, we want to go a maximum, very temporary, perhaps, just saying something, 3.5, something like that, because if you go above 3.5, we would get problems with, our rating, and that's something we obviously want to, avoid. But again, there is, there is enough of those bigger, potentials, as well.
Perhaps not as big and as expensive as HHI, but between SEK 20 million and SEK 4.3 billion, there is enough targets to come.
Isabelle, will you please give Daniela a microphone here on the first row?
Thank you very much. Good afternoon. So just asking on the targets, basically, the 5% organic growth, as you mentioned, higher inflation environment, so 2% is pricing, and we have a little bit less organic than before in volume terms. But you also, how do we tie that with the ambition to increase the penetration in electromechanical, the higher recurring, and service? Is it an underlying construction environment that you're just assuming is weaker, and what exactly is that underlying environment?
Yeah. So it's 5% CAGR over a business cycle, so we should look over a business cycle. When I started back in 2008, I looked at the performance of my predecessor because we are all a bit competitive. My predecessor, over the 10 years or 11 years he was here, he grew 9% CAGR per year. You can look at two ways: 5 + 5, 10. You can say the guy failed miserably. I think it was a fantastic achievement. If you can grow 9% CAGR year after year for 10 years, I think it's a fantastic achievement. If I can do 9%, I'm sure shareholders will be very happy for the next 10 years, and I will be very happy and proud as well.
But to show you, if you looked at the details, growth was mainly coming from acquisitions, and it was a little bit higher than 6% acquisitions, it was a bit lower than 3% organic. When I came, we said, "Let's see if we can increase the organic part of the growth," because obviously, organic growth is the most rewarding growth, the most value-added growth. Let's see if we can increase that below 3% to closer to the 5% that we have as an ambition. So we saw the whole project of Together We Grow. 1% more organic growth is the difference between a good company and a great company. We want to be a great company, and we created really that atmosphere in the whole group.
If there is a country where we grow 4%, how can we grow 5%? If there is a vertical where we grow 7%, how we can we grow 8%? If Global Solutions grows 9%, why doesn't they grow 10%? So we really created that whole momentum. If you look 2018-2023, end of 2023, we grew, I think, 4.8% organic, so very close to the 5%. And then, of course, a little bit lower, because in total, we also did slightly above 9%. So we did a little bit below 4% acquisition and growth. And there we can only blame DOJ, because if DOJ had approved a little bit earlier, we would have had over 5% growth acquisition, but that will, that will come now.
So I mean, we are very close as well on the organic side with the 5% and on the acquisition side. We believe targets should be very ambitious, but achievable. We have proven that they are very ambitious, but achievable. Going forward, I agree that if we continue to live in a higher inflationary world, and we can get a better price component than in the past, the pure volume growth should become a little bit easier. If we continue to see that shift from mechanical to electromechanical, that should also help us. But again, it will perhaps make it a little bit less difficult to go to the 5% than before. But it's not good enough to say we're going to make six or seven or eight.
We will be very happy if we can make organic growth CAGR of around that 5% over the business cycle going forward.
Why don't we take first one here?
Thank you. Christian with Pareto Asset Management. Your strategic actions build up to a quite credible growth story, I think. I'm a bit more surprised of your sort of cost or profitability defensive style. You talked about protecting the blue line. So, and we still miss a capital return target. But could you please just elaborate a bit more on how you're going to grow margins?
Yeah.
And ultimately capital return, which is what we really care about. Thank you.
Mm-hmm. So we have said we want to grow 5% organic, 5% growth acquisitions over a business cycle, and we want to do that with a margin within the 16%-17% EBIT. First, to be precise, if we would come close to the 17%, and we have a choice, we will choose more growth, investments in more growth over better margin, because we believe higher growth is a better shareholder value creator than higher margin. That's true, of course, if you have 16%, 17%, it's a different story if you make 2%, 3%. And let's not forget that the last years we have been below the 16% or only close to the 16%, so it's a very hard work to get back into the 16%-17% corridor, where we are almost now, even including HHI.
What you should not forget is that there is two or three aspects. We have inflation, and if you have a higher inflation, you have higher price, but you have also higher cost. So you will have to find efficiency gains to cope with that high inflation. That's one. Two, I mean, if we want to stay ahead of competition, we have to make sure that we also have operations that are run in a cost-efficient way. So we will have to continue to invest in automation, in robotization, that also needs money. And three, when we do acquisitions, what is our sweet spot? We buy companies, again, EUR 20 million that make high single-digit EBIT.
Then we, over time, let them grow with that 5% organic growth ambition and bring them over time to the 16%-17% corridor. That needs %money. That, first of all, they. If you start at 8, to bring them to, to 16%, it's not happening in 1 or 2 quarters. You take that, negative, mix with you, much more longer than just 1 year that you see in the acquisition, in the or in the bridge, because the second year it's reported as operational, result, while we are still working on improving that, that margin. I would say that's the 3 reasons why we believe 16%-17% is a, ambitious but achievable, corridor. I don't know if you, Erik, wants to add on the return on-
No, but first, I mean, I think, you know, I think you missed on to interpret what I mean with protecting the blue line. What I mean with that is that we should be above the 16%. That is, for me, that's the minimum where we should be. And I mean, then, as Nick said also with this, with sort of the investments that we do in companies and so forth like that, that is sort of why, in reality, we need to be more efficient in the organic part in order then to, let's say, to be able to cover for the acquisitions. I think that you're right that we don't have a target, specific target on return on capital employed.
I mean, what we, what we work with, and I mean, you see it every time when we have a quarterly, that we actually show what we have. Internally, what we work with is that we have what we call operational value added, which is OVA, which in a way. I mean, you know, it's EBIT and, you know how it works. And that is something that we look on internally on group, we look at it on divisions, as well as when we do acquisitions, that we want to make sure that they, at least midterm, have a positive OVA creation to the group.
Rizk, here on the first row, had a question. Isabelle, please hand the mic.
Thank you for your time. I just want to come back to the one slide on the compounded organic growth by product category. When I compare that slide versus previous CMDs, the main difference is the global tech growth has actually closed the gap to. Sorry, the Entrance Systems growth has closed the gap to global tech, so which is roughly now 5%. Under the assumption that your service business within Entrance Systems continues to grow at a high single digits, so we just assume that a normal, a new normalized growth for Entrance System should be close to 5%.
You must make a lot of assumptions to come to the number. But it's clear that, you know, service is today 26% of Entrance Systems, 26% or 27% of Entrance Systems. It's mainly in pedestrian and in industrial. And we have indeed an ambition to grow service high single digits. I think in a normalized world, we will not grow our equipment high single digit, which means that we have a further shift towards service, and therefore also have a good accretion, at least from that mix, on the bottom line. And I mean, if you can grow 26% or 27% of your business at high single digits, you need less on the equipment side.
I think everything depends, of course, also on where the growth is coming in the different segments. Because if you take perimeter security, if you take our residential segment, there, obviously, we don't have service business. Yeah, we sell some spare parts, but we don't do direct man in the van service. And that's also where we see a part of that growth opportunity, and there it will then be pure, you could say, equipment growth, more residential garage doors or more fencing business. I think in the fencing business in the U.S., we have a very strong market leader position, but you can continue to do better than the market. We definitely did better than the market in recent years, but there is a limit to it.
So in a way, you are growing there in line or slightly above the market. Whereas on residential, it's true that we are one of the three market leaders in the U.S., but we are still small in Europe. So everything will also depend on how fast we can grow with our garage door business in Europe and in the rest of the world, where Entrance Systems, compared to other divisions, is even less exposed to emerging markets. Entrance Systems is a more Europe- and North America-centric. So depending on how successful we will be in developing those emerging markets, yes, the 5% could be very ambitious or very conservative over a business cycle.
One final question before we go for the break.
I think there is, we should also give him, because he had his hand up in the beginning-
Oh, sorry.
So we can have two.
Okay, two questions.
Thank you. Matthias Sonner from DB. At the last Capital Markets Day, you spoke a lot about the green specification business, which seemed to be a very solid growth driver. So I would be interested to hear how you view the landscape right now in terms of incentives and regulations to drive the push towards greener buildings. Because I know some business leaders of other companies, like heat pump manufacturers, are quite disappointed with sort of what the politicians are doing and say that it's not enough. So, do you think it is enough? Do you still see this as a solid growth driver?
Yeah, I'm the head of Assa Abloy, so I will limit me to my task that I've in Assa Abloy. I will not comment on politicians. I mean, I think it's very difficult, hard task to be a politician today, so I leave that to all the qualified politicians that we have in the world. But it's true that we were driving a little bit on the green wave in Europe, in the sense that they get, you know, subsidies for heat pumps and so on. And so what you then see is that if people do a refurbishment for energy reasons and they refurbish a building, they take the access control with it, because access control is 1%-2% of the project cost.
So they, you know, it's an easy thing to decide, "Let's do it together with upgrade of HVAC or whatever." So we definitely are indirectly profiting from that. I would say that on access solutions, the green or the sustainability drive is also much wider, at least in Europe. I think sustainability today is still a subject for us, I would say, almost exclusively in Europe. Yes, we have a couple of projects in the U.S. Yes, there is some high-level government projects sometimes, but it's still very limited. It's extremely limited in Asia. It's still mainly a European thing.
The only really indicator that we have is our spec business, and we measure our green specification separately, and that is growing very high, very high double digit, even in Q1 this year. Whereas our spec business in general is only growing, you know, mid-single digit in the world. So, we see a very still a very strong traction even today, despite, you know, people saying von der Leyen and all, so on, "She's, she has to be reelected. She, she puts less focus on, on, on green and sustainability." We still see that momentum very much happening for new build and for big refurbishments. A green spec in Europe is, I would say, 20%-25% more expensive, like for like, than a mechanical project.
It's mainly to do with ETF certificates, so that you prove that your products are made in a green way, that you don't use hazardous material, and this type of things.
Thanks.
That's important, sorry, for a LEED certification and, and these type of things. Yes.
Thanks for squeezing me in, Nico. It's James Moore from Redburn. I wondered if we could just talk about profitability across the five businesses and where you see the best opportunity from here, and if you could give any levers as to what's really behind that, that would be great.
I would have said, I would have hoped we said, "Let's go for coffee break," but... No, it's a good, it's a good question. Let me start with Entrance Systems, because I get this question all the time. We have said that we said 2, 2 years ago, midterm, 3, 4, 5 years from now, we want to bring Entrance Systems to 16%, to the bottom end of the, of the corridor we aim for. We are now a couple of quarters around that 17%, and everybody starts now dreaming it's gonna be 18%, 19%. I've always said we internally are still happy with the 16%. We believe the 16% is still a very ambitious, number. I tell, Massimo something else, but, you know, just I have to keep, pushing him.
But we are happy if Entrance Systems can be within the corridor, so above that 16%. Why do I say that? Because Entrance Systems is very steel related. They make loading docks, steel garage doors, steel perimeter security, fences is steel. And with steel, we are done with pricing for, you know, the foreseeable future, because steel has now stabilized, yeah, on a high level, but definitely much lower than it was a year ago. So, we are happy we can keep steel prices. But we have, of course, still inflation in labor. Our labor inflation for the group was around 6% last year, is around 4% this year. Massimo has logistics inflation, energy inflation, so he has to compensate for that.
And today, he has very low or even negative volume growth, so, you know, it's difficult to maintain those margins. So that's the answer for Entrance Systems. For Global Technologies, we have always said that in a normalized world, when the PACS, cards, readers, controller, backlog story is behind us, that's a division that should make a margin between 17%-18%, so above our corridor, but not 19% or 20%, like some of you are dreaming or were dreaming about. The reason being also is that we continue to invest very heavily in that division. Stephanie will explain you that we have a mature business around hospitality and around marine.
With very good, solid, bottom-line margins, but then we have a lot of, I think, four or five other verticals where we are really investing, where we are very small, but where we have the ambition to bring them, top-line wise, you know, similar as, as hospitality, you could say, and that will give a positive volume leverage over time. But for the time being, we grow faster in those verticals that have much less margin, and therefore, that story is dilutive in the bigger picture.
We have a little bit the same story for HID, where, yeah, PACS is the strongest profit generator, and we are investing very much in IDT, for instance, or in IAMS, verticals that are smaller, lower margin, but we want to bring them on a more important critical volume. And then we have our geographical divisions. Americas, I think, has been fantastic profit evolution, if you exclude HHI. I think this is a good reference. We are convinced that we will continue to increase HHI a bit, quarter after quarter, for the coming quarters. I've said at previous occasions that I would be very disappointed if we would not make double-digit EBIT for HHI this year.
And when once the $100 million bottom-line synergies kick in, now in the first 5 years, we will bring HHI to 16% or above EBIT, and that will then help on Americas to bring them, you know, again, up. You can make the calculation yourself. If we take APAC, you should make a distinction between Greater China, which is around 40% today of APAC, and the rest of APAC. The rest of APAC makes margin similar to EMEA, where it's, you know, business as usual, continuous improvement, where we should see margin improvement slightly, you know, over time as we grow. The big upside, which might also be dilutive, is Greater China, because in Greater China, we make today close to zero.
If we do a very good job, I've said it, we can make high single digit in China. But if we make high single digit in China, we continue to grow... We start to grow again 20%, of course, it would be dilutive to the, to the division. It would be a good value creator, shareholder value creator, but dilutive to the, the division. And then last but not least, EMEA, it's not a secret that I've said that I'm not entirely happy with the bottom-line performance, from EMEA. Of course, there is some external reasons. First of all, the SEK. I mean, the SEK, if you look over the last 3-4 years, it costed EMEA 100-150 basis points. So there, perhaps the politicians have to do something in Sweden, I don't know.
Clearly, they are in a very tough market on the residential market side, with a negative mix with Sweden, Finland, and the U.K. But I think we also have to do better internally. We were too late with price increases in EMEA once the inflation started, and therefore, we were too late through the whole cycle. And we have to find ways to faster come back to volume growth, because volume growth will be very critical in EMEA to get that operating leverage, and therefore, improvement of the margins.
Thank you. There will be more opportunities for Q&As as the afternoon proceeds. And we're heading towards the break, where coffee and tea will be served out here. You can charge your equipment on the stations here along those tables, where there are different chargers. And during the break, don't miss our product displays that we've talked about here during the first part of the presentations. Björn, is there something in particular? I mean, they're all there, and you should watch them all.
Just go out and have a look at them. Maybe one thing I can challenge you to do, go out and try to register your face in the Control iD unit there, without an instruction book. I managed to do it, so see if you can do it yourself. Then talk to Tim and the Kin Long and, Torbird, and, and they are there to show their products.
We'll ring you in after, at 3:40 P.M., with this little bell.
A little bit later, maybe.
So go enjoy a break, and see you out there.
Thank you.