Up and running, and we say hi, and good morning, and welcome to everybody here in Fotografiska in Stockholm. It's a cold winter day today, huh? But we say a warm welcome, and we do say also a warm welcome to everybody that are joining us live right now during this Capital Markets Day. My name is Jonas Galneb, and I will be the host for this event. We will have a great couple of hours ahead of us that we will listen in to the Bufab journey right now, discovering the next solution. So we will do it, like, in two parts. We will have a one hour, more or less, and then we will have a break, at least here in Fotografiska. We will grab some coffee and some sandwiches and so on, and we hope you do the same where you are watching.
Then we will have part two, and we will also make it possible to ask some questions later on. All right? We're up and running for it, and before we begin, and before we let the President and CEO, Erik Lundén, take the stage here, we will look into Bufab: The Movie. Here it comes.
Our mission at Bufab is to create peace of mind for our customers. Since our foundation in southern Sweden in 1977, we have been passionate about C-Parts , and on a constant journey to always improve and find new solutions for our customers. In close collaboration with our customers, we have developed our company to be a full-service supply chain partner and a leading player within C-Parts and technical components. Today, we have our parts in all kinds of different applications, industries, and geographical areas. At Bufab, we always put our customers first. We create value for our customers by creating tailored solutions that suit each customer's needs. By offering a full range of solutions within sourcing, quality control, engineering, sustainability, and logistics, we improve our customers' productivity, lower their total cost, and remove all headaches related to C-Parts .
Our extensive global network with thousands of suppliers and hundreds of thousands of different articles, gives our customers options and makes us confident that we can deliver what we promise. We have decided to make sustainability an integrated part of our day-to-day business. We can make a difference for our customers within this field and aim to lead this development within our industry. But what makes us unique is our people and how we operate. We call ourselves Solutionists, and we are dedicated to creating solutions for our customers. We are fast, flexible, dedicated, and trustworthy, and we don't go home until we have solved our customers' issues. Our Solutionists are empowered to make decisions as close to our customers as possible. We are operating in a changing environment. Megatrends shape our industry and drive demand for reliable, full-range C-Parts suppliers.
It is a clear global trend for industrial companies to reduce the complexity of their supplier base, and surrounding factors like trade barriers, supply chain constraints, digitalization, and sustainability have accelerated the trend. We at Bufab aim to lead the market development and be our customers' first choice. Looking ahead, it is clear that we have just started our journey. We have many more customers to whom we want to give peace of mind, and we will continue to improve and discover the next solution for our customers.
Good morning, everyone, and, from my end as well, warm welcome to Bufab's Capital Markets Day. My name is Erik Lundén, President and CEO of Bufab Group, and it's great to see so many here at, Fotografiska in Stockholm. Of course, also, a warm welcome to all of you that joins us online. We will have, three exciting hours in front of us. We will talk about what we've done in the past in Bufab, but more importantly, what we aim to do going forward. I would like to start to talk about three things that I want you to bring with you when you leave this meeting today around lunchtime. So there are three key messages. Today, we will talk about our position, where we are.
We believe that we are very well-positioned to take the next step on our growth journey. We also believe that we have strong drivers behind us, market trends that will help us take the next level on our journey. The second thing is, of course, our new strategy that we call Discovering the Next Solution. We have had many years of success in Bufab, but as we see it, much more to come. And there are things that we can do much better also in the future, and those opportunities we want to grab. And as part of our new strategy, we also have decided to do a review of our manufacturing business.
Some of you might have seen that today on the press release, and I'll also talk a little bit more about that, why the board of Bufab decided to do a strategic evaluation of our manufacturing business, Bufab Lann and Bufab Hallborn. Then finally, I would like to talk about our ambition as well. We have high ambitions for the future, and also this morning, you might have seen that we'll raise our profitability target and reach 40% EBITDA by 2026 at latest. And hopefully, we will get a good understanding why we believe that is achievable and how we will make it happen. The agenda we have in place to go through this, I will start to talk a little bit about who we are, about our market, and our position in the market.
Then I will have three of my colleagues in the management team. It will be Johan Lindqvist, Carina Lööf, and Johan Sandberg, who will help me talk about our strategy. Also, I will have three MDs. As you know, we have 50 companies in the Bufab Group, so three MDs will be here today to talk about their business as well and how they add value to our customers. Then, Pär Ihrskog, our CFO, will go through our ambition, our new financial targets, and then I will have a closing remark. Then, of course, we will have time for Q&A at the end as well. Before I jump into who we are, I would like you to know that you will see a lot of nice slides during this presentation today.
In each product you will see on the slides, you see a Bufab part in it. So that gives you a little bit of idea of our diversity as well. So have that in mind when you see all the slides throughout the presentation. So let's start with who we are then. And I actually want to turn it around and say what we have become in Bufab. Bufab was founded back in 1977 in the deep part of Småland. And back in the days, what we were good at was to source cheap screws, bolts, parts, and nuts from Asia, and sell it little bit better price than competitors that sourced from Europe. That was the starting point from Bufab.
Then also, we were very successful in working with our customers hand in hand and grow with them, and add more and more value to them throughout the journey. So throughout the years, we added on a lot of things to ending up in a turnover today that is SEK 8.9 billion. And the value that we added have happened throughout the years. A lot of things in our offering has become because of close collaboration with our customers. And then on top of that, we also acquired companies on the journey that helped us be even broader in our offering in adding even more value to our customers, and ending up to be one of the global leaders in C-parts and technical components. As of today, we have a strong global footprint.
We are operating in more than, fifty, sorry, through more than 50 companies in more than 28 countries, and we have more than 800 Solutionists in our organization. I will come back to why we call ourselves Solutionists. And what we do for our customers is to provide different kind of solutions between within C-parts and technical components. And to our help, we have more than 175,000 items, and those number of items is actually increasing every day as we speak because we follow our customers on their growth journey. And then, to our support, we have more than 8,000 suppliers around the globe to ensure that we have the right parts at the right time for our customers as well, with the right quality. And looking back, we are proud of our history.
To be frank, we are not good at looking back. We're looking forward all the time, and we will look for continuous improvement. But now it's time, when we have a capital markets day, to also look back and see what we have done well. And looking back, we have 45 years of profitable growth in Bufab. We have had organic growth above the market. Because of good growth, because of good margin and good cash flow, we've been able to also acquire company. We have now acquired more than 50 companies since we were founded in 1977, and we also been able to have good profitability and good cash flow throughout the years.
We have, I would say, a very attractive business model in a very attractive segment with the C-parts and technical components, and we haven't had any year with operating loss so far. In 2014, we got listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, and since then, net sales CAGR has been 16%, and on EBITDA, we have a CAGR of 18%. So also a good journey since we got listed back in 2014. So, what are the key factors behind the success? And I would like to bring up one that we believe are the key factor for success in the past, but also in the future, and that is our people. And I will come back to why we call ourselves Solutionists.
There are two things I would like to talk about when it comes to our culture and our people, and I would like to start to talk about our values, who we are. We are an entrepreneurial company. As we said in the movie before, we want to take decisions as close to our customers as possible, and that the people are empowered to do so around the globe. We call ourselves a family of entrepreneurs. How we work? We work as a team. For us, our commitment to the customer is the most important, and to be successful and deliver on those commitment, and do it better than competitors, we have to utilize all the resources we have in the Bufab Group. So we're good in we are good at doing that and deliver as a team. How we contribute?
We see ourselves as a, as a responsible partner to our customers, and I think this is very important. This goes back to what I said before, that we set up something, we want to deliver on that, and we don't go home until we sort out the issue for today. Our promise then to our customers, linked to that, is that we should be fast and flexible, we should be dedicated and trustworthy. And all in all, it comes up to that we should be, as we call ourselves, Solutionists. And one important part of this is, of course, also to ensure that when we get new people joining Bufab, that they are the right kind of people that suits in our culture, but also that they challenge us as well, because we want people coming to challenge us and make us better.
Of course, when we add new companies to our portfolio, we spend a lot of time to understand that they have the right fit for Bufab Group. A few words about the market and position, and here, I would like to start to talk about A, B, and C-Parts and why we are so passionate about C-Parts in Bufab. Start with A- and B-Parts . Those are the parts that most companies, industrial companies and others, are spending most time on. A- and B-Parts have high value. The direct cost for those are high, often around 80% or so of the total cost. The know-how in the companies around A- and B-Parts are big. They spend quite a lot of time with those suppliers, and it's quite often very close to the company's core business.
Often, number of suppliers are limited. We talk about maybe a few suppliers of A- and B-Parts to an industrial company. Quite often as well, management spend a lot of time with those players and ensure that they have the right price in place, right quality, and so on. Look, in total, the direct cost is 80%, and the indirect cost, which means dealing with those A- and B-Parts , are low, maybe around 20% of the total cost. I can just take myself an example. When I was working for Sandvik, before I joined Bufab, I spent quite some time with A- and B-Part suppliers, but my headache when it comes to deliveries and issues was actually with the C- parts.
So I was doing a big consolidation in Sandvik to ensure that we had the right C-parts suppliers in place. I was not the only one. I think there are many out there that have the same problems, because when it comes to C-parts, it's a different story. Here, we're talking about often about quite low value on the parts. The cost for procurement costs related to the value in relation are, of course, high. It is a big risk with C-parts. If you have one C-parts failing, and not there at the right time, the whole production line can stand still, with huge consequences for the customers. Same thing with quality issues as well. The problem with C-parts is that they are many, and often also you have many players to work with.
Often, you may be ending up having 20, 30, 40, or 50 different C-parts suppliers. The internal knowledge around C-parts as well are quite low. It's not close to the core. It should just be there, and it should just be sorted out, so to say. And what we see very clearly is that the complexity for our customers increases all the time. They got more and more regulations they need to follow, and also, they... be more and more costly to follow up on all suppliers that they have. So therefore, it's a big consolidation ongoing. To have less suppliers, they can sort out the all the headaches they have related to C-parts. And what is the beauty here is that if you look at the total cost dealing with C-parts, it's a different thing completely compared to A and B parts.
Here we have indirect cost, dealing with the part as the higher thing. All the FTEs that are involved to take care of the C-parts and ensure that they are the right parts at the right place. That is the highest. We're talking about 80%, and the direct cost for the part itself, much lower. Here, we talk about 20 or so, approximately. And here, Bufab comes in and ensure that our customers get peace of mind, that we take care of everything related to C-parts and technical components. So I mentioned in the beginning that you can see C-parts more or less everywhere around yourself, and the same thing here, if you look around the room today. You have C-parts in that TV, you have in those chairs, and you have it on those lamps up there.
More or less everywhere, we have C-parts. So in all industry, you have C-parts. And of course, we have the opportunity to grow in the industries that we think make sense for us and for the future. There are a few mega trends that are shaping our industry and that helping us on our journey, and also actually helping us to get more opportunities to grow. And I would like to go through three of them. The first of all is that the C-parts markets in general are growing. It's changing more or less all the time and also expanding. The second thing is the demand for a full supply chain partner. That increases all the time as well. And then on top of that, more focus on the total cost dealing with with C-parts. And then thirdly, maybe not a big surprise, sustainability.
It's a big impact for our customers and the whole market when it comes to sustainability, that are shaping out the future when it comes to C-parts. I will quickly go through each one of those, and I would like to start then with the C-parts market that continues to grow, change, and expand. Start with the market as such. The C-parts industry is fantastic. I was a consultant many years back when I started to read about C-parts industry and fall in love completely because it was so extremely fragmented business. But with a strong underlying growth and a demand from the customer for bigger players that could sort out their issues with the C-parts.
This is still the case today because the market are still very fragmented, even if a consolidation is ongoing as we speak right now. Our market share, even if we are one of the biggest player in the world, are very small and very difficult actually to tell how big it is. We talk about maybe 1%-2% or so, maximum, globally. It's a very fragmented market going through a big consolidation. When we compete, we compete with local players, more or less, most of the, 90% of the cases or more than that, are small, local players. Family-owned players, maybe SEK 150 million, SEK 200 million in turnover, that are specialized in a certain part within the C-parts environment.
What we see as well is that those players get more and more issues to compete with a bigger player like Bufab. Of course, we have bigger players as well in the market, Würth and others, but quite seldom we actually compete with those guys. It's all the local players that we compete with. A funny fact about our market share is actually the fact that every time that we are growing, our market share actually decrease in many cases. One example is TIMCO, that we acquired last year. TIMCO has a turnover around SEK 800 million, and when we entered that business in U.K., we realized that our addressable market totally expanded and our market share decreased because we went into a new segment.
So adding SEK 800 million was actually a decrease in market share because something totally new opened up that expanded the market share for us. And that's quite a good example of how our industry works. And to look at the summary of this slide, you can say that this, for us, is a major opportunity. We want to lead this consolidation, of course, by helping and serving our customers in best possible way. Of course, reaching new markets, new segments, and also new customers. The second thing I would like to talk about, of course, is the demand for a full supply chain partner. We see a global trend around us that are all industrial company, more or less, want to reduce the complexity when it comes to C-parts.
I mentioned initially about all the suppliers they need to deal with, and for every day, that becomes more complex for them. So it's a big headache, and they want to reduce number of suppliers. They also become more and more mature when it comes to C-parts, which is good for us. Many customers come from looking at the price for the items, but they start to realize the same thing as I just explained, that the total cost, a big part of that, is actually indirect cost that they need to reduce. All the man-hour they spent on taking care of C-parts. So we see increased focus on total cost, and that changed the dialogue we have with our customers as well, and help us actually to grow and take market share. A few players meet up with the new demand that's coming from our customers.
They want global presence in many cases. They want us to have sourcing for different parts of the world. If something happened to interrupt the supply chain, they want us to be able to source for somewhere else. A local player, quite seldomly, have any options. They also want to ensure that we can help them with their supplier base in total, lead this consolidation, and also help them with all the kind of regulations around C-parts. Once again, I just mention sustainability as one example. A and B parts is a big thing for them, with the complexity around reporting sustainability. Take the C-parts with many more suppliers, that becomes a big headache.
A good thing from our perspective is that's only a handful of players with global scope and ambition, because to raise the bar and become big, it's a big journey to take. So we have put ourselves here in a very good position. Also, we see a lot of macro factors around us that are accelerate this consolidation. Those things are not news to you. You have seen them around us now for the last couple of years. Supply chain constraints impacting a lot, the industry, and a lot of questions come back about, "Where do I have my parts? I need them at the right time, I need them in a certain place, and I want to source from a certain area, or I want to have options." That is happening all the time.
Also, questions about near sourcing comes up as well. They want alternatives, they want to have sourcing, maybe locally in Europe or in U.S., and have questions around that as well. Trade wars and barriers is also good for us. The more you can say, mess it is around us, the better for our industry and actually for us to take market share to a certain extent. Same thing come with the last bullet here. Financial turbulence, inflation, and the cost pressure also drives the demand for consolidation. Most companies around us now, they look at the cost right now. They try to push down the cost, and of course, to do that also within the C-Parts.
So a part of me actually like this environment right now, where we have a lot of cost pressure, because for me, that's opportunity to take market share, because it's a consolidation ongoing when I talk about that. If they have 20% as direct cost for the C-Parts and 80% indirect cost, they will look at the total cost and will go for consolidation, and they will change the market share for sure in the market. Okay, number three then, sustainability. I've already mentioned number 1 here, but this one is very important to highlight. Regulatory compliance and reporting becoming a bigger thing for the companies. Many companies have realized that now it's actually coming. Before, I could talk about it, but I didn't need to do that much. Now, I actually need to, to show what they've done.
And when it comes to C-parts, we can play a key role here to help our customers with this journey with C-parts. We also see that increased demand for transparency. Customers wants to know where the products are coming from. Have we sourced them from the right place? Or have we control of the whole supply chain? Put yourself in a customer's shoes where you have 20, 30 or 40 suppliers of C-parts, and maybe thousands of C-parts to deal with. To have control over that and transparency about the flow is very difficult, obviously, and here, Bufab can come in and help. And then we have a shift, thirdly here, a shift that are changing all the time and helping also some segments to grow quite quickly, and that is the adoption for renewable energy.
That's also impacting our industry quite a lot. So how do we in Bufab then create value beyond C-parts and other players out there? I've given you a flavor already, and I would like to recap again the slide I started in the beginning. For us, it is the journey to what we have become and the position we have today that give us a very good position, and a pole position to grab market share. Because we have gone from a traditional trading company for simple screws, bolts, and nuts, to become a global leader in C-parts and technical components. And this is the advantage we have versus many of the small players that we compete with.
And of course, it's difficult to explain what we're doing, because have in mind that we have 50 Bufab sister companies, and they all do their tailor-made solutions for each and every customer. So our offering look different. If you go and visiting Bufab Finland, or if you go visiting Vlissingen, they have a different way of create value. But to give you an idea, all of them provide large value made of small parts. So everything that fits in a Euro pallet, more or less, we do. And it could be technical things, and it could be more simple things as well, but more or less everything we can do.
To give you an idea, we can divide it in four areas, what we do today, within source, simplify, improve, and secure, and I would like to start to talk about source then. First of all, our supplier base. I think this is one of the key aspects to our success, is that we have more than 8,000 suppliers around us. And actually, every time that we, adding a company or actually growing with the customers, this is actually changing as well. We're getting more suppliers on board, but at the same time, we also, of course, remove some, some suppliers that's not there for the future. So this work is ongoing all the time.
But having a broad supplier base, more or less covering the whole world, is a big advantage for us to ensure that we have the right supplier base to support each and every single customer. And what we do is that we help our customers with their supply chain journey completely, from A to B to C and so onwards. And we put up a tailor-made solution for them that suits their needs for the future. And to our support, we have what we call a full range offering. I mentioned initially, 175,000 items that are expanding as we speak right now, with new solutions for the customer. Because what happened quite often is that we start with, I will call it, quite simple consolidation. And then we've been working with a customer for some time, we get more and more advanced.
We help them with their development, we help them with their R&D process, and we get more advanced products. In many cases, actually even B parts that we supply. And to be able to do that, we need to have a broad offering, and we need to help each other. Therefore, we also acquire companies with different profile, that are expert in certain area, that can be helped in that specific region, but of course, also utilized by other Bufab companies. So the full range offering that we have and that we have created throughout the years are very important for our offering. Simplify, and here, of course, reduction is very important. And here, we're talking about total cost and reduction of cost for our customers through a consolidation of the C-part suppliers. Replenishment, we helping out.
We have logistic solutions that we can provide, that are tailor-made for our customers, and of course, also one delivery. Imagine if you have 20, 30, 40 C-part suppliers, it also a big headache just to deal with the deliveries, and here we make sure that the right stock at the right time. Improve, I mentioned also before that warehouse logistics issues is quite common when it comes to C-parts. A and B parts, quite simple, C-parts, more difficult. And many of our customers, they're actually quite poor in forecasting, to know when they need this, the parts there. They just expect the parts to be there at the right time. So here we can help out and make them more efficient and lower the total cost when it come to warehouse logistics with our solutions. We also do kitting and assembly.
And a good example of what we mean with kitting and what we do for our customer, all of you have been buying something from IKEA, and you've got those small plastic bags. That is most likely a Bufab bag you have in your hand. And nowadays, also the right number of screws, bolts, and nuts in those bags as well. That's the one thing we can do for our customers, as example, because those things are obviously C-parts. And then we have engineering R&D. I already started to talk about that, but quite often, and in many of our sister companies, we get more and more of an engineering company, R&D company.
Because as you grow with the customers and help them to develop the next generation of product, we are already in that process, in R&D process, to ensure that the right parts in place for the future, with the right quality and with the right price. That's part of being more mature in the relationship with our customers. Then we have secure. I've already mentioned sustainability, and all the regulations actually that comes with sustainability is a big thing that we can help out with globally right now. How it works in Bufab is quite often that demand starts somewhere. Sustainability is a good example. It started off, obviously, in Northern Europe, so Bufab Sweden are really good at this.
But then what we do, that, when it comes to other countries, now it starts to be more question about the Southern Europe as well. Soon, the U.S. and Asia will most likely follow. Then we have some experts in the group that knows how to deal with this. They have an offering ready that they can take, so we don't need to invent the wheel again. Quality, I also mentioned, is extremely important that you have the right quality. Equally important, we have the right quality on the C parts than on the A parts or B parts. You get the same problem if the machine is not working, if the problem with the small part. And then, of course, inventory management and on-time delivery.
Helping out to have the stock at the right place, ensure that they have the right stock also in-house at the right time, and that we do this in an efficient way, both good for us and good for our customers, and that they don't need to think about it. It should just be there, and we should sort it out for them. So all in all, what we do is that we give our customers peace of mind. We do it in different ways across the globe, but all of them create peace of mind for our customers. And of course, maybe this is given, but I think it's a good reminder, the more peace of mind that we create, the higher margin we can get, obviously.
Looking back, and also to a certain extent still today, there's a little bit too much product and price focus. You have the product and you price a little margin on that product, but that is changing. We're going now from product and price to actually looking at the value that we provide. What is the total value we give the customers? And the more value we add on that list, of course, the more margin we will get as well. And that's one of the reasons why we can now raise the bar and go to 14%, 2026, instead of 12%, as we delivered so far. And what we do is that we take care of high value and high volume products. This is the landscape that give you an idea of how it looks like in our environment.
You have here customer value and complexity to left, then you have volume. And if you want to buy few items of whatever C parts, you don't go to Bufab. You go to maybe Amazon, or you go to a local store and buy that. Then we have the local C parts players and the regional C parts players. They are helping out with the bigger customers actually, because when I talk that they have maybe 20, 30, 40, 50, could be big industrial companies, they are actually buying from small, local, and regional players. But what we are doing is that we are taking care of the consolidation. So we take market share from the local C parts players and the regional C parts players and put them up on the value chain.
So we get the products with high customer value and higher complexity, and then, with total high volume. In the past, this has been a problem for us, actually. We have been too much customer-focused sometimes, and been down and grabbing customers with-- That's not good for us, to be honest. They don't see the value that we have, and then it's better that they buy from someone else. And this is a journey we are on, actually, to gradually improve, to ensure that we actually, get a gross margin that makes sense for, for the, for the value we create. And for us, the big potential is actually to improve our product and customer mix that are very, very broad as of today.
You will later hear Cynthia, MD for ABS, talking about their journey when it comes to product and customer mix and how they improve the gross margin. This is a journey that many of our companies are actually on right now to get an understanding of how we actually can do this, and we'll do this also for other Bufab companies. To give you an idea of how it could look like for a typical Bufab customer, here we have Väderstad, a customer in agriculture. To understand that it's not an easy thing for them to sort out their C-parts themselves in-house with all those suppliers, is that we are providing more than 2,000 unique items to Väderstad in more than 6,043 bins, actually.
In their one production plant, there is a lot of bins with C-parts. We provide them with 40,000 order lines, and 95% of the items are special, which means there are some kind of drawings behind. So it's quite complex, and to our help, we have 140 suppliers. And of course, now we maybe understand why Väderstad started this journey and started work with Bufab. For them to deal with this themselves become a nightmare, obviously. Their cost, it got higher, and they had also more quality issues. Going to Bufab, and we take care of this, will help them to get, what as we call it, peace of mind, and of course, lower the total cost.
And this is how it works quite often, and I would like to give you an example, also in value, how it could look like. And, of course, all Bufab companies look different and the customer look different, but it give an idea how it could be for a customer. Take, for example, a customer that have around 1,000 C parts, and as a starting point, maybe 30 suppliers. Quite often, then, they have some issues with this. It starts with quality issues. Maybe of those 30 suppliers, 25 do a fantastic job, but five have some issues that interfere with the production line, so they start to get problems. They also see that the logistics costs are very high. They don't go, don't get any scale benefits of this, so they have a lot high logistics costs. They also get increased demand sustainability.
It needs a reporting. You have transparency around what are actually those guys sourcing from? And on top of that, they also need to take care of everything when it comes to quality and the purchasing, of course, in-house. So they have approximately 15 FTEs involved taking care of all those things. Total cost, SEK 20 million for C-parts. Direct cost, just buying the parts in this case are low, SEK 4 million, but indirect cost to take care of this is high, SEK 60 million. We have a discussion with this customer, and we say that, yeah, year one, we can enter, and we can take care of 500 parts, and we can phase out 10 of the 20. Let's start with that.
So we start with that journey, and they realize that, okay, those guys actually secure the quality, and they take care of the deliveries. We also provide them with sustainability reporting, so they don't need to think about that. They also see that instead of having, let's say, 3-4 people working with quality, they can remove half of them, let's say, from the beginning. And they realize when we have done it, it actually gets smoother and cheaper for them. So they have only, let's say, around 12 FTEs involved in total. And after year one, the total cost for them are decreasing by, let's say, 15%. And also, they have less quality issues than others. And the big saving is not in direct cost. The big saving is in the indirect cost for this customer. What happens then, year two?
We realize, and they realize, that there's much more value we can provide, actually. This is just starting our relationship. We take on additional 250 parts and phases out 10 more. We also realize that we can help them with logistics solutions and VMI solution at their facility. They realize that is a good thing that can lower their cost, and they think it's a good idea. So let's, we work on that. We also start to help with engineering support. We start with more complex parts. We started with the simpler ones, and we get more complex parts, and maybe even got involved in R&D process.
And now, after year two, we end up being 8 FDs involved from the customer side, and the total cost decreased with additional 5%, let's say. And then year three, the journey continues. We take over even more part, but we realize as well that there was not 1,000 C-parts. It was much more than that. Because that often happens, actually, when we go out there. With the first meeting and the first review, we realize maybe we have a potential of 1,000, but in many cases, it end up to be 50% more than that. Because a lot of parts that the customer don't even see as C-parts. And also, when you grow with them up in the value chain, there are more things that we call C-parts, so to say, because the definition is very broad.
And we have become a trusted advisor for them now. We help out with sourcing, supply chain, engineering, and sustainability as well, and they, they realize that they this is better for them because they can focus on the core business, and that is not C-Parts. That you just work out. And of course, the good thing is that people talk to each other. So this company have a factory in Poland as well, that they have the same issues at the factory, in this case, let's say, in U.S. has. And we start a dialogue with that factory, and we get a new potential of SEK 10 million and another 1,000 parts, and we start to work with a new factory. But in this specific case, the savings continue, and they get additional 5%.
So this is just an idea of how it could look like when we add value. So yes, we lower the total cost, but the biggest saving is coming from the indirect cost saving with our customers. Yes, but we are not only growing with the organic growth. I mentioned in the beginning that we have done a lot of acquisitions, and to be more specific, 51 since 1977. Since we got listed back in 2014, it's 14 acquisitions, and we have added more than 900 employees and SEK 3.4 billion in turnover to Bufab. And we are, I would say, a different, more diverse, and a stronger company today, just if you compare a few years back.
This graph shows Bufab since 2018, and we have divided our company in the new strategy now in three different types of companies. And I will come back to more details, but very quickly, trading, that are the biggest part, are a traditional Bufab company. They have a broad range of products, and that the company, that our trading company, look the same, more or less, in each country. Sweden and Finland have more or less the same offering and more or less same way of doing business. What we have added recently, I would say that this has accelerated the last five years, is niche companies. They have a specific profile, and they are good in a certain area. They could be, for example, BUMAX, it could be Magnetfabriken, and we have a few others.
If you look at acquisitions, the last acquisitions were done, seven of them has actually been niche companies. And that part in orange here are increasing, becoming a bigger part of Bufab. And then we have the manufacturing business. That is the smallest part, been in organization for, in Bufab, a long time, and it's been more or less stable here. Here we have Bufab Hallborn and Bufab Lann, around SEK 400 million in turnover. So we are a different company today, and I would like to share how that looks like in more detail. But let's start with the overall situation. We have 64% of the companies are, as we call, trading companies, 31 are niche companies, and then 5% of our turnover is manufacturing them.
Those are run independently with full profit and loss. EBITDA range is quite broad. We have companies performing 2% EBITDA, up to 30% in EBITDA. If we start then with the traditional trading companies, they have a broad range of C-Parts and technical components. How it works is that when we grow with our customers, for the trading companies, quite often we end up in also supplying B parts. Sister companies that are trading companies have similar customers and similar local market knowledge, and their focus is to become local market leaders. They don't compete with each other. So Bufab Finland and Bufab Sweden, they're both trading companies, they are within the boundary of the country, and they don't go in across and enter a new country.
EBITDA range for trading companies are between 2%-22%. It's also quite big range here when it comes to EBITDA performance. And then we have niche companies, and this is the area that is increasing lately. This is companies that are supply chain partners still, with a special know-how. Often meeting more complex customer demand, it could be, in some cases, actually a long selling process, more like project in certain cases, but in others, it's more or less linked to engineering or that were specific products that have a little bit higher complexity. In those cases, we can have own manufacturing if we think it makes sense. One example will be mentioned and further described here today, and that is BUMAX.
And we have made a big change here in the new strategy. In the past, those niche companies were actually treated like all other companies, so they had regional limitations. Magnetfabriken, they didn't go outside, Sweden without going through a Bufab company. The problem with that strategy was that the Bufab companies in another country didn't have the competence in many cases to actually sell that product. So we ending up doing a good job in the home country, but had problems to actually expand that company to other countries as well. So now we are changing that. They have full P&L globally because they don't compete with our trading companies.
So their plan that they put in place now, in the coming three years, will be a global growth plan, if it makes sense, obviously, and they decide the way they go to market outside the home country. They can, of course, utilize the Bufab trading company that we have in that company, if they think it makes sense. If not, they can use their own sales force or using a distributor to enter that market. And therefore, we believe that that can accelerate the growth for those niche companies. EBITDA range for niche companies is also quite broad. We're talking between 7% and 30% as of today. And then we have our manufacturing companies. Here they are, two of them in the group, Lann and Hallborn. Turnover, SEK 400 million. Their core offering are in manufacturing capabilities.
They have the majority of the sales to automotive, and there are few synergies with the group. Approximately 5% of the turnover of Bufab Hallborn and Lann is going into Bufab, so quite different than the other companies in the group. EBITDA range for Bufab Hallborn and Lann are between 5%-10%, and in this industry, that I will say are a little bit different than we are operating in the trading and niche, having a EBITDA range of 10%, around that, is actually a very good performance. And as we have raised the bar for Bufab Group, and we want to reach at least 40% EBITDA, this will be a very difficult for a manufacturing company like Bufab Hallborn to actually achieve.
10% is a very good performance for a manufacturing company. Looking at CapEx, it also is a lot of CapEx in this industry. When you do manufacturing and also trading, you have a big part, CapEx, obviously, and, of the group's CapEx, 40% is actually Lann and Hallborn. So, therefore, the board of Bufab have decided to do evaluation, as we don't see manufacturing as core business going forward. So, we will immediately start evaluation to see what we'll, what we'll do with the manufacturing business, with different strategic options, obviously. So, looking then, how we are when it comes to diversity, we are, I would say, very broad. On this slide, you see, 10 different industries, but we are in much more industries than those 10.
We are actually in 30 different industries as of today, and also in many subsegments, and no subsegment are larger than 10% of our net sales. This diversity that we have, of course, helps us now in times like this to reduce our volatility, but it also creates opportunity for us as well. Each sister company in Bufab, they can decide their own growth path, as long as profitable and as long as they're growing quicker than the competition, and each sister can choose where to grow. We don't need to be a certain segment. If we've been in a segment that is not profitable, or we've been a segment with low growth, we can easily go to another segment.
That is the pressure and the opportunity we put on our sister companies to ensure that we are in the right segments with the right growth opportunities going forward, obviously. I would also like to mention sustainability. We aim to lead the development when it comes to sustainability in our industry, and I would say that we are very well prepared, even if we have a lot of work in front of us. The work started many years back. This timeline starts in 2016, and many things that we started with was actually because of regulations and other things, but ending up to be something that actually adding value for us today, but also for our customers. We start off to talk about responsible sourcing programs with our suppliers.
We talked about code of conduct with our suppliers and all those things. We signed up for EcoVadis in 2017, and then I would say the big shift for us, we really started to take our CO2 journey seriously, was when we signed up for Science Based Targets in 2021. And we said that we will be part of the Paris Agreement and improve. Linked to that, we started with our sustainable supplier engagement program, started to work with our suppliers to get them on board on this journey. And as we speak, a lot of work is ongoing to put ourselves in a really good position for the future. Because we have, a very, I would say, aggressive plan when it comes to sustainability, and we are advancing for net zero together with our customers in 2050, and, and this work is ongoing.
The beauty here is that I think, for ours, it started off to deliver on our commitments to the market, but now it actually goes out to us as something we can add value to our customers. We meet the customer today, especially in Europe. This comes up on the agenda. This is one of the big selling pitches we have today, actually, because we are on the front end, and we can help them on their journey. So we have gone from something that we did for our own to deliver, to actually something that's added value for our customers. And of course, when that starts to happen, that the sales guys in the organization realize that, "I can sell these things, actually," then you get a different attention and focus also in the organization.
And much more MDs and others realize, "This is part of my P&L now, and I can actually raise my P&L by making this happen." And that is a big shift for us when that starts to happen in organization. So looking back then, on our performance financially, we think we have a solid, financial development last years. Those graphs you see, from 2019. Revenue, has been solid and improving with stable CAGR every year. And I think we show now that we are quite resilient, in times like this, when we see a fluctuation in demand for different industry last year or so. Same thing, I think we're showing resilience also in the margin.
We have, we said last year that our short-term initiative was now to take market share, protect or improve our margin, and ensure that we get better cash flow. I think we've done a good job when it comes to the margin, to maintain a good margin and show the customers that we have a good value we provide in times like this as well. Cash flow has been a journey for us. We strategically decided to have a lot of stock throughout the pandemic because there was a lot of supply chain constraints, and we needed to have stock to support our customers. And on top of that, there were long lead times during that time.
We had a lot of inventory, and we had a weak cash flow, and we decided also last year that now it's time to really take a big grip on our cash flow and work with our inventory, and that is paying off. So, this year so far, and also in Q4, we're expecting very strong cash flow. And part of that is, of course, linked to inventory and release of inventory. And looking at our Net Working Capital journey, we'll come back to that because that is one of the area that we see in our new strategy that we need to improve, how we work with Net Working Capital, and especially inventory, because here we see a big room for improvement. So we will come back to that topic.
So to sum up, we think we have done well, but this is just the beginning of the journey as we see it. We have major opportunities in front of us that we need to capture now. We have a strong offering and a strong value to our customer. That is clear. And the last couple of years become even stronger. We want to give more customers peace of mind. Secondly, there are still things that we can improve and do better. We're changing now in our operating model to help our niche companies to grow. We see that we have a lot of work to do with our margin, to improve our gross margin, have a right, product and custom mix. We will address that. And of course, also work with our inventory.
So if you're in the training business, you should be really, really good in Net Working Capital, obviously, because that's part of our DNA. Then number three here, we feel that the market trend are behind us. There are global trends that will help us on this journey that we can fly on, so to say, and we aim to lead this market consolidation. All in all, then, we see major growth opportunities in front of us to grow. And as I mentioned, we think that we have just started our journey. This is a world map where we have the Bufab sales companies today, but in many cases, we actually have a very low market share, even if you start to get a good footprint.
To give you an idea of our potential, our market share is less than a few percent, as I mentioned, maybe 1 or 2%. We are very small in the market, even if we were one of the biggest. Secondly, let's say that we could only work with our existing customer base. That would be enough by far to double our turnover... because our market share with existing customer base are still low. It growing all the time, obviously, but it's still very low. But luckily, we can also grow with new customers, but it would be enough for us to have the existing customer base to grow. Thirdly, Bufab Sweden, you know, Bufab was founded back in Sweden, so it's still one of the biggest companies. Have a turnover around SEK 1 billion. Here we have 30% market share, more or less.
Difficult to get a good understanding exactly what it is, but let's say around 30%. Let's say that we aim to reach 10% market share in some other countries, in this case, Poland, Germany, Spain, and France. That alone, only 10%, will be additional SEK 13 billion turnover to Bufab. So the potential is always huge to become much bigger than we are today. And I think it should be easier now to grow as we have this footprint than we had back in the days we were growing in Sweden, because we are much bigger now, and we have a much better starting point in many of those countries than we had when we were growing in Sweden many years back. So all in all, we have just started our journey.
So to make this happen then, we have updated our strategy, and, we call the new strategy Discovering the Next Solution. We are very proud of our past. We think we've done a very good job. So what we have done is now to take the good things that we had in the past, building our success, but then address areas we can do better going forward, and also ensure that we capture all of the potential that we see in the market. And therefore, we have put together a new strategy, but a lot of things are familiar for the organization. So our strategy is for profitable growth, and I would like to start here to talk about our mission.
This will not be a big surprise to you, because what we want to do is to create peace of mind for our customers by creating sustainable and outstanding value. We have set five focus areas. The first one, customer value creation. You will get a few examples of that from organization, how that look like, because of course, that differs in different part of the Bufab organization. Secondly, accelerating efficiency. There are many areas we can improve on how we do things and become more efficient. Today, you will get one example. Johan Lindqvist will talk about working capital, because it's one of the few initiatives that actually will happen globally. In every company, Bufab company, they now have a plan for their Net Working Capital in the coming three years.
Therefore, we take that as one example, on what we're doing on this focus area. Right. Other than that, there are many other initiatives in each of the companies within this, this field, but Net Working Capital is something that happen for all companies in the group. And then we have sustainability. Here, we are looking from the customer point of view. Yes, we want to deliver on our targets, but what we'll talk about here is how we actually also add value for our customers when it comes to sustainability. World-class supplier base. If you're in this business, you need to have the world-class supplier base to help us on this journey. So Carina will take us through our journey with, our supplier base.
And then at the end, Johan Sandberg will talk about M&A, how we aim to drive the market consolidation. We say in Bufab that we deserve M&A. So when we have a good growth, good EBITDA, and a good cash flow, then we can acquire companies, and acquire good companies that fits our portfolio. So Johan will go through how we aim to continue working with that. And our fundamentals that will make this happen going forward, of course, is our people. This is critical for us, that we continue to develop our culture, and that we still have a strong solutions culture also going forward. And then linked to that is also that we have a good operating model. We have further developed our operating model.
We're talking more about empowerment, accountability, but of course, also very strong performance management. They're absolutely critical if you work in decentralized operating model. And all in all, what we want to achieve, that is profitable growth. So we would like to start to talk about customer value creation, and we think it's then best to start to listen to the ones that knows best, and that is the customers. So we will start to listen what the customer thinks about Bufab and value creation. So please.
Bufab is a major strategic and global partner of Schneider Electric, okay? The collaboration between us lay on solid foundations and has a long history back for many years. I would say the relationship is very positive. We communicate well, and appreciate Bufab as a supplier. Bufab provides support on the most vital needs of Scania, like, service, customer orientation, global approach, proactive response to the new challenges. I would say that this is the values we seek among our preferred suppliers, among our partners. The value for us is that instead of using a lot of suppliers for C-Parts and standard parts, we can rely only on Bufab. Scania can take advantage of Bufab's broad supplier base and knowledge to consolidate the orders for C-Parts there to them, instead of splitting them up to a lot of other suppliers .
This gives Scania value, and we can focus our time on other activities. I think Bufab adds value by being a local competitive source for the products that we utilize in our recreational vehicle industry to produce the units that we produce. We expect high-quality parts delivered on time, and Bufab certainly meets that demand. The first thing comes to my mind is Bufab is operating with the appropriate stock level, which ensures the component availability all the time. This result, reliable planning for Schneider Electric customer orders. First of all, supply chain, second, solution orientation, three is quality. Okay, let's go first. Supply chain. You guys are serving over 30 locations in Europe smoothly. Your highly developed supply chain management allows us to run our factory smoothly, again, without any major disruptions. Second is solution orientation.
When it comes to all inquiries, we experience solution orientation. Okay? Third thing is quality. In terms of quality, Bufab represents high standard. The market becomes more and more regulations-driven. I think we all see that, facing new geopolitical challenges, as well as new trends within business sustainability, and Bufab assures the right answers on those. You know, when we are turning to Bufab, we can be sure that they are on top of those. They are on top of the current challenges, and they look for answers on those. That's very, very supporting. Bufab is collaborating in all sustainability initiatives launched by Schneider Electric, and executes all necessary steps to reach the defined targets on operational level.
Bufab is a supplier with high focus on sustainability in the same way as Xylem is. For Xylem, it is important to use suppliers that has the same focus as we do. One other important thing is the distance between Xylem and Bufab, which make sure that also the transportations is consolidated and minimized. You know, Bufab is seeking solutions to be, like, one step ahead of market needs, and it is great to get answers on newly popping up questions, such as sustainability concept, C-Parts management, inventory management, cost drivers management. I think it's nice to have insight into such knowledge provided by Bufab. Very well in many aspects. To mention some things: reliability, quality, sustainability, and flexibility. These are only some things that make Bufab the perfect solutionist.
Simply, the communication between the two companies is, to me, the core of being successful for both companies. The communication, as long as it's open, honest, it just... It works very well to make sure that we have all the products that we need when we need them. Neither company is burdened with excess inventory or obsolete inventory. We commit to what we think we're going to use, they bring it in, and then it's there when we need it, as we need it.
All right. Now it's time for a break before we move on to listen to some of our companies around the world. We're gonna do like this: we have 15 minutes break right now in here in Fotografiska. For those of you that are joining us online, make sure that you also grab a cup of coffee or standing up, because in 50 minutes, we will be back here on stage, and we will have a call from the U.S. We see you in 15 minutes.
... Sasha, hey! Cynthia?
Yeah.
You can hear me?
I hear you.
Good. I'll be back.
Okay.
Okay, so, welcome back, Bufab's Capital Markets Day. We will continue talking about customer value creation, in our strategy part. And we saw the customers before. Now we will listen to the sister companies, and actually three of them. So, we will have... First of all, Cynthia joining. Cynthia Alvarez is MD for ABS in the US. Talk about the different type of companies in Bufab. ABS is a trading company, have SEK 800 million turnover, EBITDA 15%-20%. And I mentioned before that we have some companies been very good in working with their product and customer mix, and also through good pricing. And here, ABS has been a role model since they joined Bufab back in 2019.
Cynthia will give an example of how we can do it in our industry to be better at this, and especially for us in Bufab. Then we have Bufab Ireland. Kevin is here, talking about his company. It's also a trading company, a smaller one, but with strong growth. 100 million SEK turnover, more or less, and EBITDA 15%-20%, and have very strong financial development. A little bit of a turnaround, actually. We have been a loss-making business, and now have strong sales growth and also a good profitability, and on a really good journey now to continue that growth here in Ireland. And then we have BUMAX here. We have Lars Holm talking about BUMAX, and BUMAX is one niche company then. Different than ABS and Bufab.
Around SEK 300 million turnover, EBITDA around 25%-30%, and here is a big potential for further growth. So, Cynthia, Kevin, and Lars will take us through how they add customer value, and a little bit also what they aim to do going forward. So having said that, I leave the word over to Cynthia. Are you with us, Cynthia?
I'm here, Erik. Hello.
Excellent. Welcome.
Thank you. Thank you, Erik, and hello, everybody. I am Cynthia Alvarez, the MD for ABS. I've been the MD since 2019. American Bolt and Screw was founded in 1946. Oh, that's a typo. But anyway, we were founded in 1946 and acquired by BUFAB in 2019. We have 85 Solutionists, and we have a total of seven locations, six of those in the U.S. and one in Mexico. At ABS, we hold the industry together through our dedication, teamwork, and quality of C parts. We pride ourselves in selling bulk quantities, which allows us a fast-paced and efficient operation. Combined, we have over 300 years of experience in the industry. Some industries that we serve are the RV industry. Here, we sell over 200 items in addition to fasteners.
We sell here our ABS patented drawer slides, gas struts, light out rollers, cabinet hardware, and many other items, all the way down to toilet paper holders. And then we have our cargo industry, where we sell over 150 items. Our skin screws for aluminum siding are the highest volume item for this industry. We also sell our patented bar lock, E-track, tie-downs, entry door flush locks, rubber bumpers, jacks and couplers, everything down to the safety chain. A quick story on our safety chain: there was an older couple that was traveling, and they were pulling their trailer. They lost control and their truck actually went off the cliff, but the trailer stayed on the road. So they were hanging off the cliff by the safety chain. The chain held up until help could come and pull them up.
So basically, the chain actually saved the couple's life and their dog. All three of them were in the truck that had flipped over. So I thought that was a pretty nice story about how our safety chain is a pretty good product. And then we have our modular home industry. Here, we sell over 200 items. The main item that we sell here is the ICC-approved lag screw. This is a structural fastener for the bottom of the frame. And among other items, we sell all of the cabinet and drawer hardware, such as pulls, knobs, hinges, slides, the exterior and interior locks, porch brackets, and multiple other items. This is just to give you an idea of how much ABS does in addition to fasteners. We offer many solutions to our customers at ABS, depending on their specific needs.
Our VMI just-in-time approach help give our customers peace of mind with their inventory levels and their needs. ABS does not have one cookie-cutter approach. We work with each customer on a case by case to provide them with the most ideal solution that works for both sides. This, in turn, creates a long-term partnership. Our on-site QC lab has been instrumental in working directly with our customers to expand our product offering and design items specific to their applications. In some cases, these items have become legally patented items for ABS. Thanks to our QC lab, we are also able to offer our customers peace of mind through stable quality. We also have our own in-house kitting machines, which allow us to handle our customers' bagging needs quickly and efficiently. In 2019, when we were acquired by Bufab, our gross profit margin averaged about 35%-36%.
Since then, we have made a number of changes to improve our efficiency and pricing. Some of the changes that we made were passing on tariffs, which had not been done previously. We implemented daily price modifications as needed. We properly quote our fill-in product, so if we run out of overseas and we have to source domestic, we quote it based on the domestic price, not off of the overseas like we used to. Corporate quarterly pricing is now something that we do for our larger customers with multiple locations. We now account for freight out when quoting. This was not done before. Quotes are done by our inside sales staff only, and we've been working really hard training inside sales to quote based on the customer's requirements, to ensure that ABS is paid for the job that we're doing.
Our biggest challenges with price increases were not with our customers. The challenges that we faced were internal, with our own sales team. In some cases, we had to part ways with some of our employees who could not or would not adapt to our need for improved margins and efficiency. Today, as you can see here, our margins have improved to about... Our gross profit margins have improved to about 47%, and this is thanks to the hard work done by the ABS team and our strong relationships with customers. Looking forward, ABS will continue offering VMI solutions, keep quality consistent, and offer vendor consolidation for our customers. We will also continue to offer a local presence for smoother, quicker deliveries and sales representation.
Building strong relationships is how we have grown with our existing customers and how we will continue to grow with our new customers going forward. Thank you very much.
Oh! Good morning, everyone. Hello, my name is Kevin Donnelly. I am the Managing Director of Bufab Ireland. So I really want to thank you for this opportunity to share some information on my company, Bufab Ireland, and of course, how we create value for our customers in Ireland. So you will see some photographs, some pictures of the impressive and innovative machinery that our customers produce in Ireland. And all of these machines that you see in front of you include components, both standard fasteners and special parts, that are supplied by Bufab Ireland. Top left-hand corner, you'll see a Sandvik crushing and screening machine. Top right-hand corner, you'll see a double-deck bus. Bottom right-hand corner, you'll see a Moffett truck-mounted forklift. And bottom left-hand corner, you'll see a range of industrial pumps.
I'll explain a little bit more about these customers in the next slide, but to start off with, I'll talk a little bit about Bufab Ireland and of course, try and show you our business model and, on how we have developed. Bufab Ireland have around about 100 customers. Those 100 customers cover around about 4,000 part numbers, individual C-class parts that we supply. If we look at the balance of parts, 46% of those parts are standard fasteners. What we call a standard fastener is an item which you would associate with a, a typical fastener company, so a hexagon bolt, a hex nut, or a washer. We also supply special parts, and by definition, these parts are advanced technical parts, according normally to customer drawings. They could also be assembly parts, they could be kitting items or also distribution items.
The interesting fact is, when we look at the split, it's almost 50/50 between standard fasteners and, of course, special parts in terms of the part numbers. But when we dig a little bit further and have a look at the revenue stream coming from those part categories, you'll see with our standard fasteners, we get 27% sales revenue. If we look at our special parts, we get 73%. You can see the focus in Ireland has been very much on looking at special parts. This is the demands coming from our customer, 'cause they ask us to supply not only the standard fastener components, but also special parts. And we do this with the use of our VMI logistics solutions. It's very easy to grow share of wallet of customer when we have a well-run and put together VMI logistics solution in place at the customer.
So, major customers and some of the products. You've seen some of the, the products earlier on that were manufactured by, in the previous slide, by our customers. I'm gonna talk through some of those customers. I'll just ask you to look at the photograph in the background. That's a Moffett truck-mounted forklift. That's produced by Moffett in Dundalk, and they're part of the Hiab Group. I would guess, one time or another, one of us have seen this truck mounted on the back of a trailer, driving, and we've driven behind it. This is produced in Dundalk. They are the world-leading design and manufacturer of this type of equipment. We're very fortunate to supply to some customers that are world-class and cutting-edge.
Sulzer Pumps Ireland Limited, part of the Sulzer Group, they're a major manufacturer of pumps for the dewatering industry, and of course, in the mining and construction. Sandvik, I'm sure, is a name that you will all recognize instantly, and in Ireland, we supply Sandvik for their crushing and screening industry. And also interesting point to note is that Northern Ireland produce 80% of the world's mobile crushing and screening equipment. We are, what they call it, the screener triangle, as opposed to Silicon Valley. We have that in Ireland. Wrightbus are a leading-edge manufacturer of sustainable transport. Wrightbus are leading edge in terms of manufacturing buses that are powered by electricity.
Of course, hydrogen is also one of the new fuels that we're looking at going forward, and Wrightbus are enjoy the accolade of being the first manufacturer to produce a double-deck bus powered by hydrogen, and we're very, very proud that our components are in these buses that Wrightbus produce. Lapp UK and Ireland are also a large manufacturer of cable assemblies. So you can see we have a diverse range of customers in Ireland. But how do we create value? We create value to our customers because we operate close to them. We're very much involved in supplier consolidation exercises with our customer, and of course, we give logistic solutions through our VMI, which are innovative and match the needs of our customer. Of course, this is all wrapped up in sustainability.
We're gonna talk about a case whereby we transferred some business from one of our sister companies in Bufab Vlissingen in the Netherlands across to Bufab Ireland. In this instance, we're gonna talk about Moffett truck-mounted forklifts. Bufab Vlissingen had been the account handler for Moffett's for a few years, and in the end of 2021, the decision was made that this business would be transferred to Ireland. One of the key reasons for that was due to Brexit. The complications surrounding Brexit meant that delivering parts from UK suppliers to our customer in Dundalk, via our sister company in the Netherlands, made it more difficult. This wasn't an easy decision, but of course, within Bufab, there's always the focus that we should have a local company be in the speaking partner with our customers.
Of course, this is for the benefit of not only the customer, but also for Bufab and the synergies that we can create. As a result of this close cooperation with Bufab Vlissingen and our customer, Moffett, we have managed to create to bring in some value over and above their expectations. In 2022 and 2023, as a result of the movement of the account to Bufab Ireland, we have increased the turnover with this customer by 53%. We have increased the number of parts that we supply this customer by 25%, moving from 500 parts to now over 625. How did we do this? We did this by using a well-integrated VMI logistics solution and being a solutionist, and we still have to discover the next solution for this customer.
We're very proud that as a result of this movement of the account from Bufab Vlissingen to Ireland, Bufab Ireland was the first supplier within Moffett to achieve a 100% score on their internal supplier capability. We're also the highest supplying-- highest-scoring supplier in our category, and we continue to be that. We did that yet again with VMI and a hand-in-hand approach with the customer. In 2022 and 2023, we have consolidated more than 20 suppliers for Moffett, and that includes more than 125 parts. Our customer recognizes the value in the reduced total cost of ownership when Bufab supply these parts, and as I said, there's 20 suppliers. Some of these suppliers are well-known, some are very small.
But Bufab can handle the sustainability aspects because we have the credentials, while some small suppliers will not have those and can't support our customer in that respect. They instantly recognize the value that we create in TCO and, of course, sustainability. But we haven't stopped there. In 2024, due to the good momentum that we've developed with our customer, Moffett, we will continue on more supplier consolidation exercises, and we will look at another 7 suppliers in 2024. We'll consolidate them into Bufab, and we will then bring on board another 151 parts.
We haven't stopped there because as Moffett move to their factory of the future, planned for 2026, we'll be integral on how we help them plan their production footprint and how we introduce our logistics solutions into Moffett's to help them be more efficient and to be a factory of the future. Of course, looking forward, you can guess for Bufab Ireland, the focus will be aim for a VMI logistics solution where possible. We recognize and we understand that when we create a VMI logistics solution with our customer, we get increased satisfaction. We also get profitable growth, and this profitable growth we need if we're gonna outperform the organic Bufab growth targets that exist in the next three years.
I wanna thank you for listening a little bit about the journey that Bufab has been on, and of course, how we're going to continue to focus and develop and create customer value for our customers in the future. Thank you.
Ten minutes. Yes, hi, Lars Holm is my name, and I'm really proud to say that I'm the Managing Director for BUMAX. And I'm also super happy that I'm at this point, you know, we're gonna enter a journey for the future, and exciting to be there. Of course, I need to change the slide. Sorry. As you can see, BUMAX is an old company, we were founded in 1899, and did start to produce the first stainless steel bolt in the world in 1926. So we have a long history behind us. We are producing high-strength stainless steel fasteners, and we start actually, where the standard A4-80 ends, and the standard A4-80 is actually the highest quality you can buy as a private person on the open market.
So where that ends, we take on, meaning that we are aiming for critical application in tough environments. We also proclaiming that we are doing the strongest bolt in the world, which we do actually, so that's. I'm proud of as well. The main market is in Europe and in North America, and we are expanding the market, especially now with focus in North America, with more people. And when we have a stable foundation to stand at in United States, we're gonna turn our eyes towards Asia. So what's the difference then between Bufab and BUMAX, and where do we fit in? Obviously, yeah, we are a niche company, and we have our own manufacturing site up in Åshammar, Sandviken.
Bufab is our largest customer today, and if we look to the past and the history, the strategy was that we should sell through a Bufab sister. And that strategy, to be honest, didn't fly. We started to shift about three years ago to take on some business ourselves and, with a good result. And the new strategy we have, that we should stand more and more on our own legs and take care of the P&L, it's playing straight into our hands, I would say.
So our future and the past, if we look back three years from now, we have doubled the turnover, and if you look for the future, we say that, "Yeah, we're gonna double it again the coming three years." It's a pretty tough statement to say here on live TV and in front of an audience, but at the same time, if you look at the project pipeline we have, it's full of really good and interesting projects. So I'm pretty comfortable that we're gonna achieve that. So if you look into the segments we are working on, you're gonna have a better understanding how I can say that. In the background, you see actually the CERN, the particle accelerator, it's put together with BUMAX high-strength material. The defense section is super big for us.
We do deliver a typical application, I would say, it's submarines, and we do deliver to almost all NATO's submarines manufacturing around the world, except for U.S. Navy, so far. Aerospace is also a big segment for us, and it's growing rapidly. We're sending more and more stuff out in space, and a typical application is satellites, rocket launchers, and of course, ISS, the International Space Station, is put together with our products. Fusion, nuclear, and energy, yeah, of course, it's booming. Everyone in this room was affected about the energy crisis last year, and of course, they're pumping in money into that type of business, and we are part of it. We have the marine and offshore. It's the old core business for BUMAX.
It's at some points. I also think that's been blocking us for taking on other segments and other markets because we've been focusing too hard on corrosion, seawater, saltwater. So if we remove the eye patch and look around us, we're gonna see new segments coming, and construction is one of them. Construction, with all the regulation we see around the world, with sustainability, BASTA regulation, and so on, it's gonna be a big market for all type of stainless steel, and we will be one of them. Another segment that's not on the slide is the high-tech market. We're talking about semiconductor market is also a game changer for us, for BUMAX, starting in the early 2024. Good. Then, if you look why the customer choose BUMAX.
We are not the cheapest solution, but we're the most reliable solution on the market, I would say. And we take the solution to a deeper level, hand in hand with the end user, the customer, and looking into their end product. I mean, since we're producing the strongest steel bolt in the world, we can actually downsize, make a product a little bit smaller, but just as strong. It can go from M10 to M6 and make it lighter. If you put that into a drone, we're gonna get that drone lighter, can fly higher, reach longer. That's the approach when we're talking about the solution. I'm also really proud of our R&D team because we go also hand in hand with, with the customer and looking into the real, real need they have.
And they are also working constantly to develop the next generation. Then we—if we take, yeah, the know-how, I'm super proud. We probably have one of the best technical department when it comes to stainless steel in the world. Sustainability, of course, it's a big point for everyone. When it comes to BUMAX, it feels like I'm bragging now, but it's actually the truth. It's in our DNA. First of all, we're producing a product that will last forever, and I mean forever. That's sustainable. We are using a material, stainless steel itself is also sustainable. We're not using any overseas transportation. We source from my neighbor, Sandvik, and Fagersta. So we have about 10 minutes drive to the closest source, so that's sustainable. We can downsize and use less material. That's also sustainable.
So we put that all together, it's unbeatable. On top of that, we have created an EPD. EPD stands for Environmental Product Declaration, and I have not seen any other manufacturing in the world has created that yet. So, it's a big punchline, for, a selling point for the market. So we're not just producing the strongest steel bolt in the world, we're also producing the probably the greenest. So looking forward then, of course, we need to work as a brand sales, independently from the group with a full profit and loss, continue work on the next generation and focusing on R&D. And since we doubled the turnover the past three years, I don't see any point why stop now, so we're gonna double it again coming three years. Yep, that's me. Thank you.
So thank you, Lars, and hi, everybody. My name is Johan Lindqvist. I'm the director of the segment North, the companies in Nordic countries, and I will talk a little bit about efficiency, and in this case, mainly Net Working Capital. As you all know, of course, Net Working Capital is a quite hot topic today due to many reasons, but mainly, I think it is that the money today cost money, so to say. So I will tell you a little bit what we do in Bufab right now, to be in a better level in the future. All these companies that we have, 50 companies, have today a three-year plan regarding the Net Working Capital, and I think the majority of the companies will reduce the Net Working Capital.
Some will probably also increase them due to the business model, because if you can get paid for that, I think it's also necessary to do that, so to say, have an increased Net Working Capital. For us in Bufab, it's mainly the inventory we talk about when we talk about Net Working Capital, not so much the payables or receivables there. Within the group, we try to share good information, so we have a lot of synergies, we think. We will use our best practice and knowledge, so if we find good solutions or good tools to work with this, of course, we will share them together.
We will also do some benchmark, of course, because we are pretty much lookalike companies in the group, and then we can do benchmark and see if some, some company find the best way to do this. And of course, we try to see if we can copy that to other companies and also countries, of course. We will, of course, measure it, net working capital in each company, and, we do it in different ways, but also to do it and can compare, so to say, the net sales, in relation to net working capital, or also EBITDA level in relations to, our net working capital. So if we look back a little bit, regarding our net working capital.
So if we start in 2014, we have been, let's say, between 40 and 45 all the way to the pandemic, because then it's starting to be a little bit crazy. We stopped buying the first half year, and then after that, we buy as crazy to fulfill the needs of our customers. As I think Erik mentioned before, we decide to have a high stock there to really make sure that our customers have deliveries so they can keep on their production. That was important for us. And now we are pretty much down to this normal level, a little bit above. I think we're a little bit above 45, but as Erik said, also in the Q4, we expect also a lower inventory there.
So, let's say we are more or less back to normal level, but we also know since the past that we, Bufab level is not the best in class, and we would like to be best in class, of course. So we think there is more to do there, definitely... And then, some of you maybe say: "Okay, why haven't you done it before if you know what to do?" so to say. But I think, one thing, as I said before, is that today, money costs money, more important. And I also think that before the pandemic, we focused much more on growth, I think. So that's probably the simple reason.
If you look into a little bit what we should do now, if I go for the Nordic companies, where I'm most familiar with, we will do these three things, among more, I think. It is, for example, deeper collaboration with the suppliers. We try, as Carina probably will mention later on then, to consolidate our volumes to fewer suppliers, meaning that we can also put some pressure on them. For example, to have consignment stock. They maybe can own the stock, but in our warehouse, so we can pay, you know, when we use it, so to say. That will, of course, decrease our inventory quite heavily and also shorten the lead time for the customers, of course.
We will also do much more, be more transparent, you can say, with the data and with the forecasting from our customers to our suppliers. We can be more sure that they know what we want for the future there, and our customer wants, you can say. Another thing that's also a tricky thing, I think, and a challenging thing for us in Bufab, is our customers' forecast. To be honest, the quality of the forecast from our customers are high and low, you can say. Some of them are really good, and some are really poor, to be honest.
And we try to navigate there, of course, and see what we can do with these, these numbers, to crunch it and see what will be the really need that they have next year or, or next month, whatever it is. So there, we need to have skilled people, and we need to have good tools to really see the accuracy of this forecast. And that's not an easy thing, I can promise you, because we have, as Erik said, 175,000 part numbers, and monitor them and see what happens there is not an easy thing. We also need tools for that, of course, to see and discuss with the customer, what is the reason that they are sending forecast for 100, but they only buy 70? Is that the trend that they will have in the future or not?
What should we do? Another thing is item management. To take care of these part numbers, this huge number, we really need to monitor them in a good way, meaning that we need to know if they are ramping up or ramping down or end of life or whatever it is. Maybe the customer put this part number in through three other products that they use. Of course, suddenly, it is increasing a lot, this demand. So we need to have good item management behind this. And in the bottom there, maybe also is maybe the foundation for this is to have good data analyzed. Meaning that we have people that can do it, we have tools, as I said before, but also need to have a really good quality on our data.
I think we will touch it again then when Carina talk about sustainability, because today is a lot of data needed to report everything in sustainability, but also take care of this item management. And if you don't have the quality in, your item, items and that kind of stuff, you can't start doing machine learning or using AI, because if the data is poor, you can't do it, I promise you. You don't get the result that you want. So this is a little bit what we would like to focus on in the future, and I'm, to be honest, quite sure that we can take a next step there with Net Working Capital, and especially then, as I said, regarding our inventory. So thank you very much. And now I think, it's time for Carina.
Thank you. So still, good morning, everybody. My name is Carina Lööf, responsible for sourcing and sustainability inside Bufab, and I will go through some activities that both our customers and ourselves are seeing in both the area of sustainability and sourcing. So first of all, I will talk about our decarbonization journey that we started in 2021 by signing the Science Based Targets initiative. That also led us to realize the emissions that we actually have in our full value chain. So our Scope 3 emissions is 99.6% of our total emissions. By that, we also started a sustainable supply engagement program to make our suppliers do the same journey as Bufab. And to do that, we helped our suppliers with trainings, we have the tools for them, and give them the knowledge that Bufab have today with our suppliers.
I think it's really important, and with that, we also secure that we will have 70% of our spend into the supplier engagement program by 2025. That data that we gather from the engagement program is important both for us, but especially for our customers, so we can provide them with their carbon footprint on the specific items that they are buying from us. In 2026, we also secure sustainability audits on 80% of our spend. By 2030, we will reach net zero of Scope 1 and 2 , our internal emissions. Here, all 50 Bufab company have done a really good plan to point out the steps and activities that are needed for each single company to reach net zero for Scope 1 and 2 .
Then we continue with the suppliers, so by 2031, we will have reached a reduction of 55% in our value chain, and then net zero by 2050. Our customers, they are facing higher demands on compliance regulations. For example, we have the material compliance with REACH, RoHS, conflict mineral, among many, many others. We have the sanction packages that have increased also during the war in Ukraine. We have the EU Taxonomy, where we drive the sustainability investments. We have the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that just came into force now the fourth quarter of 2023, where we need to collect all the emission data in the full value chain back to the mill. So actually, it's a lot of data that our customers needs to fulfill and provide the data on. And we also have the regional and national legislation.
We have the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive that come into force January 1, 2024. Here, we have a main part of our customers are actually into this legislation, and that is also applying for, for Bufab. During the latest years now, we have really done a good platform for sustainability, so we can do reporting in a really good and structured way for our customers. We generate the customer value by the carbon emission deduction that we are doing to limit global warming on 1.5 degrees Celsius. We have the human rights due diligence that include our enforced code of conduct in the full value chain. We do not do business with any supplier unless they have signed our code of conduct.
Then we also do the conducting the sustainability audits, supply audits, quality audits. So we have a robust due diligence process with our supplier partners globally. Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, here we are in line also with the initiative that we have with the Sustainable Supplier Engagement Program. Actually, what we already started over a year ago, that data is exactly the things that the EU now are asking from the suppliers. So it's the same thing with our customer and with Bufab. So we have really important and good information to provide there, and we keep records of the imports that we are doing.
On the conflict material, here we have a yearly scanning with all suppliers and items in Bufab to make sure that we are not using minerals from conflict areas. And the trade regarding the trade sanctions here, we do require records from our suppliers, and we make them also signing off the trade sanctions agreement before doing any business with them. I think this shows a comprehensive strategy with a commitment to sustainability, ethical sourcing, and regulatory compliance in the full value chain. Okay, now I will talk a bit about our world-class supplier base. So in the coming years, we will continue to focusing on the partnership consolidation, and we do consolidation to out of those 8,000 suppliers that we have, we consolidate to the partners that performing best.
Partnership qualifications is that they should be competent, competitive, compliant, so we can give our customer peace of mind. We find a lot of synergies here. We make sure that we have the best total cost of ownership for our customer, and we bring in savings, especially large savings we find through the group sourcing, where we really have a lot of similarities among our sisters... So here is extra good synergies for those categories, so to say. And we have the sustainable supplier engagement program also in force here in the full value chain. When it's come to risk mitigation, dual sourcing is one very important part, especially now in a very volatile geopolitical market. So we secure that critical items have dual sourcing on different continents and countries.
For the efficiency and digitalization, this is really the way forward. We work with the consolidation, we're optimizing the logistical flow, and we save worked hours. I also think that the digitalization that we're working with also makes it much easier for us to collect this large amount of data from all the transactions that we're doing with the suppliers. And that is actually a goldmine for us that we can give further to our customers. The shortened lead times that we are doing by forecasting and building consignment at our partners help us to improve the net working capital. Here is also some of the key metrics that we have for the world-class supplier base, is to do the saving of 3% per year.
We do the reduction of carbon footprint by 55% per year, and the sustainability audit of 80% of the spend by 2026. By those initiatives and actions that we have ongoing here, we deliver the best total cost to our customer—to our customers, sorry. So by that, I will introduce Johan Sandberg. So thank you very much, everybody.
Oh, there you go. I got sound, good. So my name is Johan Sandberg. I'm responsible for M&A in Bufab Group. Two months ago, I was at our global leadership conference in Båstad and held a speech like this. It was the last summer weekend in Sweden, and we were showing Båstad at its very best. In front of me was more than 100 of our top leaders, coming from Taiwan, from Poland, from Austria, and from California. When I was standing there and looked at the audience and the number of new colleagues in the room, it was quite amazing. It's amazing to see how we grow, how we add more and more companies, but how we also add more and more people.
Not only are we adding new business every year, but we keep on adding new companies as well. In our culture, we want and expect and contribute to the acquired growth. People are extremely proud of that we successfully managed to mix organic growth with acquired growth. Since Bufab was founded, we have acquired more than 50 companies, 15 of them since 2014. We have added more than 900 new colleagues, and as well, 3.8 billion SEK in sales. To make acquisitions successful, we have developed a list of things we look for, as well as the opposite, things that we avoid. Following this has proved very successful for us. We look for well-run companies. Bufab is not a turnaround company. We want companies that are profitable and are well-run. We look for growth synergies.
We look for companies where one plus one equals three. Will they contribute to our growth? We also look for win-win deals. We are convinced, and we also know that it's possible to make deals that are good for the seller, but as well for us. Also, we want them to share the Bufab values and culture, and actively support the group diversification and risk mitigation. We avoid companies that are not supply chain partners, companies that do not supply C parts, production companies, and high-risk countries. When we do this, we are successful, and the acquired companies are as well. When we buy and integrate according to our strategy, the acquired company actually accelerates sales and/or profitability. We have internally talked about this quite a lot, but only looked at the individual companies.
I decided to dig a bit in the numbers a few weeks ago and see if it's just a feeling or are the consolidated numbers saying this as well. Here you have the last six acquisitions that we have owned for more than two years, and you can clearly see that this is happening. On the left, you have five years of sales and profit development before joining Bufab. On the right, the development when being part of the group. If I would add the companies that we have owned less than two years, the upward trends on profitability and on sales are even stronger. I think this is super cool, and it shows that Bufab Group adds value when we buy according to our strategy. This is what you want as an owner. So what is the recipe that we use after transaction?
So when I joined Bufab, I got a master's thesis from a student in a Dutch university. He'd been looking at the integration process according to the handbook and compared it to what we do. His conclusion was that Bufab is not following the commonly used integration process, but we are achieving results, and clearly, we must be doing something right. I also have the Baker McKenzie Post-Acquisition Integration Process handbook in my office, but we don't follow that because that's not our way of doing things. When we buy companies, we never call them or treat them as subsidiaries. We never go in with an aggressive cost synergy plan, and we never make a top-down integration plan. Instead, we talk about sister companies. We focus growth synergies. We let the new sister company pull on the things they want from the group.
Obviously, we have some mandatory stuff that is implemented, but sisters run their business. You might think, does this really work? Yes, it does. Not only in performance numbers, but as well, it gives us access to entrepreneurs that want something else than only the maximum price for their company. I travel a lot and meet a lot of entrepreneurs, and I can tell you, not all of them think like you do. You look for highest return at a certain risk level. You're professionals in maximizing money return, but these guys, they, and ladies, they value some other stuff as well also.
Last week, I met an entrepreneur for a coffee, and his largest concern was, "Do I need to implement the Bufab computer system?" And my answer was, "No, we can dock into your database and get what we want." The week before, I met a founder, and he was wondering, "Do you keep the company name? Will you stay in my village?" And my answer was, "Yes, unless you decide else." When I was in Båstad in that conference, and I talked about M&A, I constantly got the question, "Johan, when will we buy a new company?" Probably, you will ask me the question today as well. However, we do not have a target to buy a certain number of companies. We think it's dangerous, and it could tempt us to not follow our criterias.
As you all know, to buy, you need money. To get money, you need profit, and you need cash flow. We have all of this, and it's a cycle that Bufab has handled very, very well over the last decade, and we are getting into position again. We make money. We have a strong cash flow. I'm having coffee and discussions with a lot of targets, as I should do. So my answer to that question is lots of interesting projects going on. Thank you. And now it's up time for Erik again.
Yes. Thanks, Johan, and thanks everyone else that have been on stage. So, we have two important things to talk about as well when it comes to our strategy, and that is what we call our fundamentals. And those are two things that will make us successful and actually deliver on the strategic areas that we just discussed, the focus areas. The first one is our people and our solutionist culture. And I started off when I talked about our success in the past and the key reason behind, I started to talk about our culture and our people. And this is the same slide, because we believe that this will also be a success for us going forward, that we continue to develop our values and our promise, and continue to have this strong solutionist culture in place.
My job, together with the management team and all the MDs, is to continue to ensure that we have the right people at the right place, and that they can continue developing our culture, and with always having the customer first. But linked to the culture, we also have our operating model that we think is a very important part of our success. And this model, that are very decentralized, we have further developed, now in the new strategy. The foundation is the same. As Johan pointed out, we have the sister companies with full profit and loss, and that remains. Although, what we have done, as I mentioned before, is that we have actually strengthened that mandate. The niche companies, they are now allowed to go outside their home country to take the next step. That's one thing.
And also, we made it very clear to all the MDs that they have the full profit and loss. That includes, of course, the net working capital. It includes also sustainability in all things that are their responsibility. That's not always been the case, unfortunately. What they need to follow as well, when they set up their plans for the future, is, of course, things that we see as mandatory, that Johan Sandberg just mentioned. Few things that we think are very important, how we treat each other and how we treat people around us, and of course, also things related to reporting that we're a listed company. But beyond that, they run the show. They put the three-year plan in place, and what we demand for them is profitable growth, and that they grow quicker than the market.
And then also, we have synergies and support. We have a situation, as Sambi just said before, that it's up to them to pick from a smorgasbord of things we have in Bufab, and that's working very well. When you work decentralized, a strong performance management absolutely critical for the success, and that everyone knows what is their mandate to have. And to make that very clear, how we look at this is that what you want to have, first of all, with a decentralized operating model, is actually quick decision-making and ownership. A MD should know that he's responsible for delivering on his plan, and that he has the right team in place to make that happen, and that decisions are made as close to the customer as possible.
Then you get strong execution and often very good result close to the customer. Linked to that, we need to have empowered people on all the levels in organization. People should feel, "How do I contribute with my job every day to Bufab success? What is my part of it?" That is very important for us in Bufab, that everyone knows how they can contribute. And then, of course, clear KPIs and simple KPIs, I must say. Should be very clear what success look like X years from now. And therefore, from a top management point of view, I'm a very simple man. I look at simple KPIs to see the trend of going in the right direction, and linked to that, a strong performance management. And what do we mean with that?
Yes, we believe in continuously improvement, and that is the key for success, that every sister company has a good journey. Obviously, the journey will look different for different companies in the Bufab world. Here, we try to illustrate with those bubbles that we have different companies that are different positions in the world, and they have different journey to go. And what we do for the top management is that we look at the trend in the companies. We look at the net sales development, we look at EBITDA development, and we look at profit or net working capital, how this working together. And as a baseline, we have asked all the companies to have a three-year plan in place that makes sense for their opportunities going forward.
Obviously, BUMAX have a different plan than ABS, for example, and also we have companies that you saw before that have much lower profitability and lower growth rate, for example. Therefore, we have told the companies that you are in different phases. Some companies are in, for example, stability phase. They might have low profitability, and then they need to fix that. They might need to work with the customer and product mix that is wrong. They might need to work with the team. There's not maybe right person, right place, and get all those foundation in place, they can reach profitability and then take the step to growth. Other companies, they have done that very well. They have already stability in phase. They have the right customer product mix, they have a good organization in place, and they need to invest to take the next step.
BUMAX is a good example of that. Here, we need strong growth now, and they are ready. They have a strong foundation. So each company have different plans in place right now, and in some cases, we don't care if we lose some customers in some cases, because they might be the wrong customers, and that is part of the plan. So we look at the trend on the three-year plans, and then that they go in the right direction. If not, we want the plans to proactively come up with an improvement plan and react proactively if you see deviations. So therefore, I think it's very important that those three-year plans are aligned with us, obviously, and then we will see that they will deliver accordingly, and if any deviations, that they practically take actions.
Of course, we are a very competitive company, so people in Bufab, they like to look at each other and learn from each other. We have benchmarks with companies, how they perform, league tables and others, which are very good tool, actually, because no one wants to be in the lower part. Everyone wants to go up, so they look at the trend and so on. But the beauty is that they don't compete with each other, so they can talk to each other and learn from each other. So therefore, it works very well. We benchmark and learn from each other, each other, and that is part of how we'll be, be successful also going forward. I mentioned briefly about how we learn from each other then, and we have a structure for this as well.
We call it best practice circles and committee. There are 8 of them, actually, as we speak in Bufab, where people from different parts of organization talk to each other and learn from each other. And this goes, as we speak right now, might be dialogue ongoing between different companies, how they do things in their, in their world. And then they learn from each other, of course, adjust depending on their needs, and make it happen. And that we have seen in many cases. Right now, we have a lot of discussion about Net Working Capital. All of a sudden, the phone starts to go warm. They have realized that some guys are really good at this. They start to talk to them, learn from them, and then they come up with a new plan, how they will...
that suits them, but we're learning from other company, how they will take the next step, as an example. And we believe that this is a very strong tool and that will help us also going forward. Every time we add a new company. Sister companies are curious, what are they good at? How can they have that kind of profitability? How can they have that inventory level with those kind of parts and so on? So that is something that's very important also going forward, and to continue developing the best practice that we have in organization. As part of our new strategy, we have also changed or will change from first of January, how we are reporting. We have had now segments, and we'll go from segments to regions. There will be five of them.
Will be Region Americas, Region West, Region UK, Ireland, Region North and East, and Region Asia Pacific. And we believe that this new setup we have in place will work very well with the new strategy and how we also aim to work with performance management. And linked to that, I will partly have a new management team. You met a few of them today, but I also then will have, Johan, that is responsible for West, Urban, responsible for Americas, and Mathias that are heading our Asia Pacific region. That was it regarding the strategy. Now, I will leave the word over to Pär and talk about our ambition for the future.
Thank you. Thank you. My name is Pär Ihrskog. I'm the CFO of Bufab Group. As you might have seen today, the board of directors have updated our financial targets. And also Erik mentioned that earlier. But before we look into those, I would like to just look at our present or current financial targets, which were launched 2021 in our last capital markets day. We have four areas: profitable growth, profitability, financial stability, and a dividend policy. 10% net sales growth year-over-year, 15% growth on our earnings per share year-over-year. We have an EBITDA margin of 12%, and our net debt EBITDA range is between 2 and 3. And finally, we have a dividend policy to distribute 30%-60% of our net profit.
So, how have we performed on these targets the last couple of years? On net sales, we have been above the target in 2021 and 2022, but slightly below the target in so far this year. We had strong organic growth and help from our acquired companies back in the history, not so much acquired growth in 2023. And also, we are facing, as you know, a weakening demand. Our earnings per share has been well above the target 2021 and 2022, but so far, 2023, we are below, very much explained by the higher interest rate of financing cost. Our profitability target, we have gradually improved year-over-year, and the last three years, we've been more or less on our target, going above the target that we set out.
The present year then being a 12.5, twelve months rolling in Q3. And also as in the previous slide, our end target of our EBITDA margin was 2023. Our dividend has been on the lower range, around 30% the last three years, and we've been within more or less the range when it comes to net debt, EBITDA, between 2 and 3. Slightly above when we did the acquisition of TIMCO. Let's look then at the new targets. First of all, we reconfirm the structure as such. We keep the four areas: profitable growth, profitability, financial stability, and the dividend policy. And we also reconfirm the target as such on all areas except our profitability. We keep a net sales growth year-over-year with 10%.
We keep the 15% earnings per share growth year-over-year. We then increase or raise the bar on our EBITDA margin to 14%. Gradually, we will improve, and we have the ambition to reach this at least, latest 2026. On our financial stability, we keep the range as well, 2%-3%. No, 2-3 times. And finally, dividend policy is also unchanged, 30%-60% of net profit. So let's discuss and show what, how we think we can reach the profitability target of 14%. So we believe we have significant potential for margin improvements. You have heard, my colleagues today talk about, showed examples and activities in various areas where we believe it will bring improved margins. Let's start with the value creation.
With continuous focus on the value creation, we think we can drive increased gross margins. We have also talked about our product and customer mix. We will continue to focus on that, and that will drive improved margins. We have talked about the sourcing. We believe we can do more in sourcing, pricing best practices, supplier-based consolidation, and logistic efficiency. We also believe, we can continue our journey on, internal productivity improvements, utilizing best practices, continue with digitalization, and, being a data-driven organization. And also, market share growth within existing customers, increasing share of wallet, that will lead to operational leverage and improve our margins.
And finally then, our new strategy directions will focus on our core business, which is trading and niche companies, will improve our margins. So, all in all, this is assumptions and our beliefs, how we can reach latest 2026, 14% in EBITDA margin. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Pär. We are getting closer to the end now, and we just have one more thing on agenda before we leave the room open for questions. And that is a closing remark from my end. I would like to end where I started, with today's key messages. I hope when you leave this room, that you have got a better understanding of our position. We strongly believe that we are in a very strong position, as of today.
As I mentioned, we have gone from a traditional trading company, being good in screws, bolts, and nuts, to become one of the market leaders when it come to C-parts and technical components. We also believe that the market are with us. First of all, we're operating a fragmented market with strong growth, but also consolidation ongoing. Secondly, the demand for a bigger player that take care of the issues around the C-parts is very clear, and here we are there to grab market share and ensure that we are the first choice for our customers, customers when they consolidate their C-part suppliers. Then thirdly, there are also a lot of things happen in the world right now that will help us to grow.
All those issues around us, supply chain constraint, trade wars, and actually also conflicts and others, are helping us to take market share. But cost inflation, cost pressure, and cost pressure in general, is actually helping us to consolidate quicker than we've done in the past, when it's more or less a upturn period, so to say. So we believe that we are in a strong position, and the market trends will help us. But to make sure that that is happening, we have this new strategy in place, and I would like to call it that we're building on our success. I mean, a lot of things we have discussed today is not a revolution. It's an evolution. We try to fine-tune and address areas not working well, and ensure that we do those things a little bit better in the future.
I'm very confident, when I've been discussing with the organization, that those cornerstones we have in place now, with those fundamentals, are the right one for the future, and that we can continue to give our customers peace of mind and give them sustainable and outstanding value. Finally, we have high ambitions for the future. We want to continue to grow, but we want to continue to grow in a profitable way. Therefore, as Pär pointed out, we have decided to raise our profitability bar to reach at least 14% by 2026, and we think we have all the tools to make that happen. We are also confident that the value that we are providing to our customers will continue actually to grow all the time.
And therefore, we call this strategy Discover Next Solution, because we're on a journey for continuous improvement and adding more and more value to our customers. But all in all, I hope you have got a good understanding of position, our new strategy, and what we aim to do going forward.
That was it for today. We will now leave the floor open for Q&A. Yes, we will, because, now it's time for you guys in here and also online. For you that watching this online, we do have an email, as you can see on the screen right now, that you can send your questions to if you have any questions for Erik, Pär, and the others that have been up here on stage.
But of course, also for you attending here at Fotografiska, what we're going to do is that we're going to just repeat the question so they can hear it as well online. All right, so while we're waiting for questions from online, I guess it's time for the audience in here. Do we have any questions for Erik or Pär standing up here? Yes, we do have a question here to start with. So Erik, repeat that question afterwards.
So out of all of these factors you mentioned, like markets, are there any that are more important than others? For example, growth markets or efficiencies, and what can you do on each and every point of this?
Yeah, I would say that when it come to margin and margin improvement, I think working on our gross profit and mix of products and customer are a very important part for that driver, I would say. So I think that is maybe the easiest way of driving our margin improvement, I would say. Sorry, I didn't repeat the question. I just-
But you can do it afterwards now.
Yeah. Yeah. So- It's like Jeopardy!
It's like Jeopardy. You do it the other way around. Do it the other way around.
Yeah. Yeah, the question was, what is anything that was more important than others when it comes to driving the profitability improvement? Correct. And then I mentioned that I think that the gross margin improvement that we aim to do, I think is a leading key.
You saw here also that we have a quite broad range of companies in terms of performance, but all of them are in the same industry. All of them have the same opportunities. So obviously, that we have areas where we can address going forward, and that we aim to do. Mm-hmm. So yes.
Good. Thanks for that question to start. We have another one here.
Yes. Thank you. So the working capital, you mentioned that you would like to be best in class in terms of working capital management. What would that be in terms of sales?
Yeah, we got a question about Net Working Capital, and that we want to be best in class, and then the question is: What is best in class? Yeah, I wish I could answer that because there's no other peers that look like Bufab that we can compare with. So what we decided is that we should look from each sister company, what is their best in class, where they are as of today, and put a plan in place accordingly to be better. And that differs quite a lot, and that it's here we put our focus. So we don't have a focus on group, we have focus on the different sister companies and what they should perform, and that is they should be best in class in their world. So we don't have anything on group.
And if you squeeze me, okay, what will that be on group level? I don't know. I think we're on a journey here to understand our potential and to find a balance between, of course, what we keep in stock and the money we get out of it, so to say. Because as Lindqvist pointed out, we have no problem to keep stock if we get good return for it. But it's balance between top line, EBITDA, and what we keep in stock that are important for us. So time will tell where we're going to end up at, but I think, to be honest, that this is a never-ending story. We will continue working on this for years to come, and we know at least that we have big room for improvement overall.
Mm-hmm. All right, we do have another question in the room as well.
Yeah. Thank you. On your targets and raise margin targets, could you please elaborate a little bit on the assumptions you made in the generation of the cycle that you can see?
Yes, we've got a question about assumptions for our raised target on EBITDA, I guess you said. Yeah, so we look at this over a cycle, and we want to reach this by 2026. That is what we have said. And we believe that this is a gradual work, that we actually started already to improve. And if you look at that potential that we have, and internally, but also, of course, working with our customers and get the value out in a better way, we believe that by 2026, we will reach the at least 14% EBITDA level.
So that's based on the analysis we've done in the strategy, the areas we can improve and work on, and also, of course, the potential we will see now when we're releasing some of the companies on their journey as well, and put a little bit extra pressure on the ones that are in a stability phase and profitability phase to step up as well. So, we end up that, 20 by 2026, we should have, at least, at least 14%.
We could add also to that answer, this journey is fully integrated in our three-year plan with our companies. It's not me and Erik who has the ambition, it's our companies, our sister companies, who has the ambition.
Mm-hmm. All right, as you can, as you saw, for you that watching this online, we do have an email, and, we do have some questions coming on from that, online, formula. I start with this one. Why don't you have a cash conversion target on Net Working Capital targeting your financial targets?
Yeah, I also got some comments about that earlier this morning, and we do have targets internally on cash conversion and Net Working Capital. Very important targets for us in our performance management. We believe they are more operational, and we use them very much in our communication with our sister companies. But we believe, if we are very good in cash conversion and in our ambition to reduce Net Working Capital, it will support our ambition to be in the right range when it comes to net debt EBITDA. So indirectly, it supports that financial target we have on financial stability.
All right. Thank you so much. I see there coming more questions here. Do we have any question, more in the room? We goes over here. Yeah, we do have one more here. Go ahead.
You mentioned product mix and customer mix as important drivers for gross margins. Are there any areas where you wish to grow more and areas you want to kind of decrease, stuff like that, that help us understand more how you want to raise your gross margin improvement, perhaps specific regions like north and west that have been underperforming?
Yeah, we got a question about how we aim to raise the gross margin, and if there were any specific regions that we focus a little bit more, if I get you right.
Or product mix.
Or product mix. Now, I would say that we start with the first one about the regions. It's no specific regions. This comes more back to actually in which segments we operate and which customers we have taken on board. That is the number one. And not at all, I'm thinking about the region, but there's no aspect of region at all geographically. It's only the. And when it comes to products, yes, I think it is. I showed before, I had a slide here of the landscape of, Bufab versus smaller players. And, I think we've had a tendency in some cases to hold a little bit too tight, with customers that have low volume, products and maybe sometimes also low-value products. We are not the best partner.
If we should be partner for them, they need to pay for it as well. And here, we have opportunity to raise the price levels, actually, and see if they are with us. If not, it's not a big issue for us. So we want to be up there with more complexity and more volume, and today we have a big tail that we need to work with. And so we're going more towards technical solutions and a little more advanced solutions as well for our customers in offering. So that you can say will impact and help us on our gross margin journey.
... All right, I have an update here live right now, and we do have one question more from the audience online. Regarding the margin target, is the improvement mainly to come from higher gross margin, or is better SG&A efficiency as important?
Quite much linked to the first question we got-
Yeah.
I would say that it's more working on the product and customer mix. Of course, we have a lot of things we can improve in terms of efficiency and how we do things, as well, and that's a continuous journey that we have that will contribute as well. But, we see a bigger potential, in the short-term horizon to work with our product and, and the customer mix, for sure.
Mm-hmm. Another question here: How will you be able to reach EBITDA margin of 14%?
Same thing. I think that we explained today.
Yeah.
I think we have a very strong, offering that will really create value for our customers. That will, will help us, for sure. And then, once again, that we are more strict on the product and customer mix. And that is now reflecting in the plans that we have, we have got bottom up from our companies. And as Pär pointed out, it's not the management team's plans we're talking about. It is the sister company's plan on how they should improve their, in this case, gross margin and EBITDA margin. And they have their individual action plans, that they are taking to going towards that direction.
Yep. All right. Do we have any other questions in the room right now? Yes, one more.
I can take two.
Yeah.
First off, you showed a graph on the, the distribution between the different type of companies trading and each, product companies. And of course, the product companies might disappear on those. But otherwise, do you see a desire to change that split going ahead, more focus on niche companies and something like that through acquisitions?
Okay, we got a question about our different type of companies, that we have trading, we have niche and manufacturing, and if you have any plan to further develop one of them more than others. First of all, the obvious is that we are focused on our core now is the trading and the niche. If you look at the trading and niche, both of them are core for us, and we will aim to grow both of them. So both organically and inorganically through acquisitions, they are equally important for us going forward. And combined, they are very strong as we see it, because often, trading companies can leverage from niche companies, and actually other way around as well. So having them growing both hand in hand will make each sister company stronger and also Bufab stronger. That is what we believe.
The second question, touching upon the cash conversion again. I mean, you reiterate the leverage target 2-3 times, but now with much higher interest rates, so much more going to interest payments of the earnings. So have you adjusted your internal cash conversion target to a lower level than it was 3-4 years ago?
We, um-
Repeat, uh-
Yeah, so have we revised our internal cash conversion targets, was the question. Yeah, we don't have a, an internal outspoken cash conversion target, but we are focusing much more on that. I am focusing much more on that in my dialogues with the sister companies. And when we talk about net working capital, it is our. It is extremely important that everyone feels net working capital and having activities, how to reduce is very, very important. And that's how we will get the positive cash conversion. But we don't have a, an internal outspoken cash conversion. But every time it's below 100, I get really nervous, and every time it's above 130, I'm happy.
All right. So, it's almost 12 o'clock now, and we are soon heading for lunch. So if we don't have any other questions, I see there are still typing some questions here, and we will have to come back to those. But we do have some one-to-one meetings afterwards. For everybody in here at Fotografiska, it's soon time for lunch. Are you up for that? It seems like you're up for that. All right, so it will be lunch here out in the restaurant, and after that, we will have some one-to-one meeting for those that have booked those. And for you that are attending online, thank you so much for watching this event. And, Erik, we are now-- This, this has come to an end.
Yes!
Yeah.
Thanks a lot, everyone, for coming. Thanks all of you that joined us online.
Yeah.
Thank you.
This was Bufab Capital Markets Day 2023. Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas!