Welcome, everybody, to Ferronordic's Capital Markets Day. Welcome to all of you that join us here on site in Stockholm, but also to all of you that join us online. We're very happy for your interest in our company. My name is Erik Danemar. I'm the Group CFO at Ferronordic and also the Head of Investor Relations. I want to start with presenting today's speakers. We have our President and CEO, Lars Corneliusson, speaking with us today, and Henrik Carlborg, our Head of Business Development. We also have Vic Green, the President of Rudd Equipment Company. He's joining us online, as is Koen van Eemschot, who is our Aftermarket Business Director in Germany. And then, of course, yours truly as well here on site. Today's program is about three hours.
After my opening remarks, I will give the floor to our CEO to give an overview of what Ferronordic is today. Thereafter, Henrik will delve deeper into our thinking on M&A. Thereafter, we'll move to look more specifically at the markets and operations. We'll start with the US, and that will be presented by Henrik together with Vic Green, joining again online from the US. Thereafter, we will have approximately at 2:20 P.M., we'll see how that moves, but a 10-minute break for refreshments, and then we'll reconvene, and at that point, Lars and Koen will start to present our German business, and thereafter, I will come with the last section, which is the financial performance and our financial objectives. We have two people joining online, and to make things easier, after their respective presentations, we will take questions for them.
For those of you who are here, please consider questions that are more specific for them at that point. For those of you who are online, please consider this also as you file questions on the registration page. Great, you can help me a bit as the moderator if you mark it US or Germany or even Vic or Koen. It makes it easier for me to find the question for them. Otherwise, the rest of the questions will leave to the end of the sessions for the last 30 minutes. And with that, I'll give the floor to Ferronordic's CEO, Lars Corneliusson.
All right, thank you, Erik. And also from me then, very welcome to this Capital Markets Day, both here in Stockholm and online. I want to present a little what is Ferronordic today, a little about the background, but mainly how we look like and what we stand for. And also, first of all, I would like to explain Ferronordic as an investment. This is a theme, these things that we're looking at here, we will come back to, we will revert to them throughout the presentation. Why is Ferronordic a good investment? We have a robust and scalable business model. We have a strong brand portfolio and very good OEM relationships. Sustainability is an integrated part of our business model. We are very well positioned to benefit from trends in electrification, infrastructure investments we will talk about, and shared assets models we will also talk about.
We're poised for organic growth and bolt-on acquisitions in the U.S., a strong market with growth potential. Germany is a turnaround case that will capture recovery and obviously the network, brand, product extension and opportunities. We're open for strategic M&A, and we have a very experienced management to execute this. We are certain that this will create value and dividend potential. We will create a stronger balance sheet. We will improve the cash flows, and we will improve the growth and the margin. So very quickly, we were founded in 2010. We're headquartered in Stockholm. Since 2017, we're listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. We have today 814 employees across three markets, which is then Kazakhstan, it's Germany, and the United States. We have 40 sales and service locations, and we have a long-term revenue of roughly last 12 months, sorry, revenue of roughly SEK 5 billion.
Kazakhstan is part of our business. We will not talk too much about it. It's a smaller part. It only represents today 4% of our revenue. So we will focus on the big revenue drivers, which are the United States and Germany today. Some of the background for you that have been with us since the start, you know that we were founded in 2010 when we acquired the Volvo Construction Equipment Distribution in Russia. And we expanded a lot. We developed a lot. We started with six outlets. We ended up with more than 80 outlets. By the time the war came, we had 1,500 employees. And during that time, we developed into a very, very performing company and a performing dealer for the brands that were represented. We were awarded the Volvo Dealer of the Year, et cetera, et cetera. And we had a good run in Russia.
Thanks to that, obviously, that made it possible for us to make an IPO and got our shares listed in Stockholm in 2017. It also gave us an opportunity to move outside of Russia. We became then the authorized dealer for Volvo CE in Kazakhstan in the end of 2018. And then we expanded to become the biggest independent dealer for Volvo and Renault Trucks in Germany. In 2020, we have roughly 18% of the German market. So basically, the base for what we have been doing for many, many years as Ferronordic was based in Russia. But something happened in Russia, as we all know, and we were forced to leave the market, unfortunately. And we did that very successfully, I would say. I mean, we did that by selling, and now I mean selling the assets we had. We got the net asset value out from Russia.
Not only did we sell the business, which was one thing, but the most difficult thing was actually to get the money out from Russia. We did that. It was a very intense year in 2022, believe me, before that happened. The day before Christmas in 2022, we got out. We then, already of course before that, embarked on a mission to see where we should go next. We had the capabilities, we had the experience, we had the relationships with our partners, suppliers. We then, in less than a year, actually concluded the acquisition of Rudd Equipment Company, which is one of the largest dealers for Volvo Construction Equipment in the United States. That's where we are now. The business model is very simple. I mean, it's not rocket science.
We create new population by selling new equipment, new trucks, and renting them out in order mainly to be able to do service and part sales to them with service agreements, overhauls, and then concluding the cycle with either used sale to customers or major component rebuild sales. But also we do rebuilds. This is mainly for Volvo Construction Equipment when we actually rebuild old machines and make them new, give them a new life. Obviously, we are buying used equipment from other markets into our sales area, and we are buying used equipment that we're trading out to our sales area. For instance, if we go and make a trade in a competing brand, we would like them to get out of our area. We would like to keep our brands in our territory. Now, so let's go back again. This is how a dealer works.
So it's not how you do it. It's not what you do. It's actually how you do it. And we have a very, very strong vision, value, and strategic cornerstone mentality. Everybody knows this pyramid, even the customers, actually, which is good. And our vision is to be the leading service and sales company in our markets. And here there are two words that are more important than the others. And the first one is service, which comes before sales. So service, we do the sales in order to be able to excel in the service side, in order to create customer loyalty, in order for us to have repeat customers that are giving us more business, both when it comes to aftermarket, but also, of course, repeat sales. The second one is leading. We want to be leading.
It doesn't mean that we need to be the biggest, but we should be the best. Our customer deserves that. We represent strong brands, but they are only as strong as the support and the relationships that we have with our customers. And again, who is the referee when it comes to deciding in our industry who is leading? Well, obviously, it's the customer and the customers. So in order for us to reach our vision, our mission has to be to support the growth and leadership of our customers. We will talk a lot about that today, how we do that and how we can support our customers to grow and by that grow ourselves. And our values and operating principles are respect, and by that we mean respect within a company and, of course, towards everybody outside the company.
We work with quality, meaning that we perform very, very high standards towards customers every time, so we actually live up to customers' expectations. But the most important thing is that we work with excellence, so we actually overperform on customers' expectations, and our strategic cornerstones are a great team, customer centricity, building on strong brands, and operational excellence. Our strategic objectives: service and parts absorption rate of at least one, meaning that the gross profit that we make selling parts and service should cover our fixed costs. That has been with us since we started. We've been in volatile markets. We've seen ups and downs and handled that in a good way, I think, but it means that we need to make sure that the aftermarket and the service and parts business is covering our fixed costs.
We should be able to survive without selling a single new equipment or truck. Again, leadership in the market for construction equipment and trucks. Again, the customer satisfaction is what we talk about. Expansion into related business areas. Obviously, we want to use the network that we have to be able to add complementary brands to the brands that we're already representing. Sustainable transport services, we will talk about that more, what we mean with that. But we see new trends in the industry where this is clearly something that is something we want to catch and actually drive that development. Industry-leading digital service and sales platforms, meaning that we should be in the forefront when it comes to how we relate and how we proactively service customers, how we proactively not only service, but also sell machines and trucks to our customers, and geographic expansion.
So for those of you who've been with us for a while, you've seen those strategic objectives. But sustainable transport services is something we've added now. So a great team, which is we're a people's business where we're dealing with people. This is the most important thing that we do. We want to have experienced management. We want to have agile sales teams that can react to different trends, that can see opportunities where others don't. We want to have top industry technicians. Technicians in our industry is rare and difficult to find and difficult to keep, really. And this is one of the most important challenges that our industry is facing is how do we attract, how do we keep technicians. And out in the markets, we want to have a flat and flexible organization.
And in order for that to happen, we are following a circle of recruitment, selection, and onboarding, performance management, focus a lot of training and development, talent management, and succession planning in our industry. This is extremely important, succession planning and how we deal with that. And obviously, reward management, which looks different from an environment that we were used to, to the environments, some of the environments where we are in today. We have to deal with that differently, but it's extremely important. And obviously, putting that all together into designing effective organizational structures. And if you can do this in a good way, you actually create a great team. And that's what it's all about. It's the people out there that are doing the business.
It's the people out there that are keeping the contacts with the customers and making sure that they can develop and grow, and so will we. We have definitely, we want to be in the forefront when it comes to everything about sustainability. We have conducted a double materiality analysis in 2024. We are preparing for the ESRS reporting line, and we make a footprint and impact analysis to set our sustainability objectives. Just a few examples, 16 out of 22 workshops in Germany were certified for renewable energy in 2023. Now, e-trucks, electric trucks accounted for 2.7% of the sales in Germany in 2024, six months, 2024 versus 1.7%. You might say it's not a lot. It's not, but we're moving in the right direction. We're focusing a lot on that.
Where we are focusing more on the ESG focus, obviously, is the environment helping customers decarbonize, an important part of our job. Driving operational efficiency contributes into a circular economy. We want to, for instance, drive and develop further, rebuild, et cetera, and of course, building an efficient infrastructure, and we've put a lot of focus on health and safety, a lot of not only measurements, but also training on that in general, but also on safety aspects. So I think that has been with us for a long time, and we are very, very driving. We want to drive this, and we want to see this as a huge competitive advantage for us if we can really handle sustainability in the way we want to do it. Now, building on strong brands we talked about, so these are the brands that we represent today.
We represent Volvo CE in the United States and Kazakhstan, Volvo trucks and Renault trucks in Germany. We also have Hitachi excavators and rigid haulers in the US, Link-Belt cranes in the US, Sandvik, Bergmann, and Mecalac backhoe loaders. So these are the brands we represent. We're very proud to do so, and it fits into our vision of being leading to be the best. We have very good products that we are representing, and we want to represent them in the best way we can. Now, what we see in the industry clearly now and going forward is the green transition. There's a lot of talk about what's going on, but it's clear there is no way it's going to not happen. There is a strategy to reduce CO2 emission and to transform the mobility industry, and no doubt about it.
We, as you know, for instance, in the U.S., a lot of focus on infrastructure investments. Demand for investments is driven by the need to upgrade existing infrastructure and by using new technologies. We will talk about that when it comes to the U.S. section, and we also see a strong shift in ownership models that customers demand when it comes to machine ownership or not ownership, rather, which is called equipment as a service, we can call it, which is like flexible models where we offer trucks or equipment on flexible rental subscription methodology or pay-per-unit and sometimes even pay-per-ton, pay-per-kilometer, et cetera, et cetera, which is something that we see coming. We want to drive that as good as we can.
The executive team to do that is myself, Henrik, you will soon see, sorry, talking Nadia Semiletova, who's our human resource director, Erik Danemar is our head of general counsel and head of treasury, commercial director, Onur Gucum, and Anton Zhelyapov, who's director of rental and used business. The names that have a Russian voice to them, they're mainly working with the German market. This is the board of directors, very diverse, very good, engaged board of directors.
We have Stefan Jufors as the chairman. He used to be the head of Volvo Trucks for many years. Annette Brodin Rampe. She's got a career in communication. She's also the chairman of the board of Storskogen, for instance, myself, Håkan Eriksson, representing our main shareholder, Aurora, tech, sustainability, personality, and a great member of the board. Niklas Florén, who's working, he's the managing director of WirelessCar. So Henrik will talk now a little about our M&A strategy. So please go ahead, Henrik, and I'll leave that there.
Thank you, Lars. So the financial objectives that we have, they are based on our business as it stands today within the current geographies. But of course, we also consider other opportunities to grow through acquisitions. We are open to enter completely new markets. We don't really hide away from anything, and we will look at opportunities in an opportunistic way. But the main idea is to leverage what we have. So the focus at the moment is really to dig where we stand and look at bolt-on acquisitions in the markets we're operating in today. I will start to talk about, say, the soft criteria when it comes to evaluating targets, potential targets, the key one being really a common culture and shared values.
Lars talked about our value pyramid, where our vision is to be the leading service and sales company in our markets. Our mission is to support the leadership and growth of our customers. We can build a culture over time, but it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time to do that. So we don't particularly mind if the companies that we buy would not be very sophisticated when it comes to commercial processes or personnel structure. But that's something we bring to the party and something we can fix. But there needs to be a high level of customer centricity in the companies we buy. There needs to be a potential to add value, meaning, I mean, we are, with our history and our experience, we are experts in running dealerships. We need to be able to use that experience.
We need to be able to use the resources we have to benefit and professionalize the companies that we would acquire. There needs to be growth potential in the companies we look at. The key now is really to find companies that generate profit and generate cash flow so they would be more or less mature. But there needs to be an upside in these companies for us to be interested. And of course, scale advantages. Scale is important to reduce our per unit cost. If, as we grow bigger, our purchasing power improves and the cost for every piece of equipment we purchase and resell will logically be reduced. We have great teams centrally and in our markets, and we need to use these teams and the resources we have to professionalize the acquired companies that we look at.
By getting scale, we also improve the utilization of the existing resources we have. Some examples of this, when it comes to Rudd in this case. In the U.S., we have two amazing training centers with full-time training personnel. We use them to run institutionalized apprentice programs for entry-level technicians. We use them to develop the technicians we have and all the way until they are certified masters. This is something that Rudd has that other dealers don't have. If we acquire further more dealerships in the United States, we can use these training resources to train technicians from these dealerships as well. So we benefit the acquired dealerships. At the same time, we get a better utilization of the training resources we have, and we reduce the cost per training hours and the entire cost of the training center as a percentage of our total business will go down.
In the U.S., we also have a central parts warehouse and an in-house freight system. We have this to get a very high parts availability without the need to store too much parts locally in our branches. It also enables us to share tools, very expensive special tools between the locations we have. So you don't need to have these special tools in every location, but we can share them and ship them around easily. If we add more brands to our network or if we buy more dealerships, we can use this central parts warehouse and the internal freight system to benefit those dealerships as well. And this means then more business, higher utilization, and a lower cost for this whole setup as a percentage of our total revenue.
Looking at the harder M&A criteria, they should be, if we buy companies, that should be value accretive to our total business, meaning that the return on invested capital and the earnings per share should increase when we do an acquisition. Now, the target from the onset is at least that the ROIC from day one should be higher than our cost of capital. Within a two-year period, we should at least have a double-digit ROIC on the businesses we buy. And within a three-year period, the ROIC we look for should be higher than the ROIC we have in our financial targets. The businesses we buy should have high free cash flow to deleverage and support further growth. This means that at the moment, we are looking at mature companies predominantly, and we are less interested in turnaround opportunities. Now, why did we enter the United States?
We looked at several geographies during this time. I mean, we have as our strategic objective to grow, to expand geographically, and we looked at several geographies, and the U.S. really stands out as super interesting to our industry. First of all, there is a consolidation of the Volvo dealer network going on in the United States. So that's why we started looking at this from the beginning. There is also, I mean, it's the second largest construction equipment market in the world after China. The demand for machines is expected to remain high. I will talk a bit more about that shortly, but the demand for machines is expected to stay high, more or less regardless of what's happened to the general economy, and we felt that this is a market where our experience and our history can really make a difference.
So coming back to why we believe that demand for construction equipment will remain high in the United States. One in five miles of highways or larger roads in the United States is classified as in poor condition. So is over 43,000 bridges. The need to upgrade the United States infrastructure is immense. Now, there are political programs in place to enable this type of infrastructure investments. The largest and probably most known is the IIJA, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which in total provides $1.2 trillion over five years. An important thing about this program is that it's also bipartisan, so it's supported by both political parties. So it's expected to remain regardless of what happens in the elections. In total, as of today, there are a little bit under $600 billion in announced federally supported projects.
In our territory, the territory covered by Rudd, the corresponding figure is $81 billion. These programs typically require matching by the participating states or the companies that are running the projects. The actual amount to be available for infrastructure investments should be much larger than these federal programs cover. We will not speculate here today how much this means in terms of additional market potential. But it's fair to say that, I mean, this is where we based our expectation that at least the demand for construction equipment in the United States will remain as high as it is today. Why did we buy Rudd Equipment Company? Coming back to our soft criteria and our harder criteria. Rudd has a culture that is matching the Ferronordic culture one to one. It is a leading service and sales company in its market.
It has a very high customer-centric culture. We had strategic alignment. It's a large dealer with new capabilities and know-how. I mentioned the training centers, the warehouse, a lot of really good things that are existing in this company. On the quantitative side, Rudd has a history of solid profit generation and solid cash flows. And we think we bought it for a reasonable valuation. There are significant scale advantages here. Rudd is an excellent base for continuing our expansion in the U.S. market. It's also a good network that we can leverage to add additional products and services going forward.
And which Vic will talk about later, we see a lot of growth potential in Rudd today. Our market share, particularly for excavators, is low. And we see a big opportunity to grow the market share for excavators for both Volvo CE and for Hitachi. We also don't think we touch nearly our full potential when it comes to the profitable service and part sales. So now we will talk about the U.S. market and our U.S. operations more in particular. And this will be done by the President of Rudd Equipment, Mr. Vic Green, speaking to us directly from our U.S. headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. Vic.
Thank you, Henrik. It's a pleasure to be here and join you online. Good afternoon to everybody there. First of all, on behalf of everyone at Rudd Equipment Company, I would like to mention the excitement that is still in place from the acquisition by Ferronordic last year. We're 10 months into it, and you can still sense the excitement around the company. I would like to go through the history of Rudd, introduce you a little bit to who we are.
There's been a lot of talk about the culture. We believe that's very important to who we are, and we also think that it's been a perfect match with Ferronordic. We identify with it, and it is some of the same values, a lot of the same values, so again, it's been a great 10 months so far for us. This year is our 72nd anniversary. Henrik, could you please go to the next slide? Thank you. This is our 72nd anniversary. Mason Rudd founded the company in 1952, moved his family to Louisville, and at that time, the Clark Michigan product was the leading product for the company, kind of the flagship product, if you will. The picture you see below is the location that he moved the company to in 1957. We are still in that building. It doesn't look anything like that now.
Those cars you see in front of it are not our cars today. But anyway, it's still where we sit, quite a bit larger and a couple more buildings than. Next slide, Henrik, please. We started in the 1960s to expand the company, both in offering and also geographically. We moved into Indiana and opened our branches in Evansville and Indianapolis. Also moved a little bit eastward of Louisville and Kentucky to Corbin, Kentucky. The rigid-frame haulers, Euclid trucks, came on board. We also were one of the first Driltech drill-blast-hole dealers, which is now a Sandvik product. Next slide, please, Henrik. As we move into the 1980s, I was going through the history. I started trying to identify which period of time was the most impactful.
And really, you could argue as we go through this that they were all really impacted where we stand today and who we are today. But in the 1980s, it represents our largest expansion. We moved into Pennsylvania. We moved into West Virginia. We opened up our St. Louis branch and our Fort Wayne branch as well. We also became a Hitachi Construction Equipment dealer at this time and took on the lines of Link-Belt and Tamrock Drills, which also would later become Sandvik. So we're in a growth mode, and it was a good period of time for Rudd, and it positioned ourselves for, quite honestly, where we are today. Henrik.
As we move to the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, and we look at who we are presently, an important move for Rudd, if you look at our geography that we cover, there was a hole in the middle of it. If you look at Ohio, we were west of it, south of it, and east of it. But you have to get through from one side of the territory to the other. We really had to go through Ohio. We moved into Ohio, opened up our Columbus branch, our Cincinnati branch, and then we moved into Cleveland as well and opened that branch. That represents a large part of our market for Rudd Equipment Company. It was a perfect fit for us as well. We also added Bergmann haulers, which is a small two-axle articulated hauler from 5-ton to 15-ton haulers.
And then probably the most important thing and why we're here talking today is the acquisition by Ferronordic of Rudd at the end of last year. Next slide, Henrik. So as I mentioned our footprint, you can see in this slide that we filled that gap where Ohio is. The shaded part represents seven states. We do have a small portion of Tennessee and Maryland as well. In all of our territory, we are the exclusive dealer for Volvo Construction Equipment and Sandvik as well. We're also exclusive for Hitachi and Link-Belt everywhere, but the Ohio territories. A big advantage that we have, speaking of the footprint that we cover, is one, we have a lot of customers that will move from one state to another doing work, and they're somewhat transient.
They have the ability to get consistent service from Rudd Equipment Company, where if they're looking to other dealers for other manufacturers, they have to go from one dealer to another dealer to another dealer throughout our territory. That consistency is a value to them. Also, what it provides for us is being able to move our technicians. You've heard a couple of times about one of the challenges everywhere is finding good qualified technicians. With our footprint, we can move all of our technicians on a temporary basis to take care of needs other places in the company. But we also have specialized technicians that we can move throughout the company as well that have different capabilities than some others. Some big advantages that this gives us over our competitors. Next slide, please.
If you look at the customers that we cover throughout the company, there's some major segments of the customer base. Primarily, you can look at all of the branches in the construction industry. The waste, particularly landfill transfer stations, are prominent across the territory. Stone aggregate producers as well, and we're in the forestry segment too, particularly the sawmills. You'll see a lot of Volvo wheel loaders within the sawmills across our territory. In addition to these, there are pockets of mining within Rudd's area of responsibility. Next slide, please, Henrik, and also, there is a presence of demolition. That's primarily within the larger metropolitan areas, but there are demolition activities elsewhere. There's also a pretty good scrap industry. Again, as a general rule, it follows the rivers that flow, but you can see scrap yards various places throughout Rudd's area of responsibility. Next slide, please, Henrik.
So Henrik mentioned some of the large projects and the infrastructure projects and some of the conditions. You can see here that we have quite a bit of large projects going on now within Rudd's geography. Just to mention a few right here in Louisville, across the river, in Indiana that we're servicing out of this branch is a mega data center. We have a customer that is doing most of the dirt work, the site work out of the Columbus branch that's there working. And again, I mentioned the consistent service that they see. Even though they're used to dealing with us out of Columbus, they're here seeing the same level and commitment to service out of the Louisville branch as well. You go just a little south of Louisville, and there's a Blue Oval EV battery plant that the total investments approaching $6 billion.
Big site there as well. Go into West Virginia, and we have a customer, Nucor, that is constructing a sheet steel mill. We do a lot of business with Nucor already. We sell them a lot of Volvo products, and this is about a $3 billion investment, and it's about a 45-minute ride in a service truck from this new facility to our branch in West Virginia as well. Also, there's another large project that's getting ready to kick off in the Cincinnati area, which is the Brent Spence Bridge. It's part of the infrastructure money that Henrik spoke of. Right now, they're estimating that project is going to approach $4 billion. We have customers in that area that are set up perfectly to supply stone for the project and then other subcontractors as well, so we've got those large projects within our area that we cover.
But if you go back historically and you look at Rudd, the consistent contribution from the smaller contractors and the relationships we've established with them drives us as well. While we welcome these large projects, still the consistency of the normal small contractor is part of our business that we embrace and we've built our foundation on as well. To give you an example of what I'm talking about, a couple of weeks ago, made a trip from Pennsylvania through Maryland and down through West Virginia, and traveling through those states and about a five-hour drive, there were 11 highway, mostly bridge projects, different projects going on.
Of those 11 projects that we drove through in that 5 hours, customers that we are doing a lot of business with and have done a lot of business with for a long time were the prime contractors on 10 of those 11 projects. So that's just that consistent business that we strive through our service and through our efforts and through our relationships to continue to drive them back to us. Next slide, please, Henrik. Something that we've talked about and Lars spoke about it, and Henrik spoke about it as well, drives what I believe makes us special. Everything starts with our people. If you look at all the different items listed from the training centers to the sales to the in-house customer support center that we have to our machine rebuild, it all takes people.
Over 32 years ago, when I came from a competitor to come to work for Rudd Equipment Company, the first thing that impressed me was then, as a young man, was the people that Rudd has. That's something that we've built the business on. That's something that is in our culture. We have a can-do attitude. People just continue to chip in and do their part and understand our business and that the customers drive our business. And it's our people that makes us special. We have all of these things that make up the company that we do differently than others, but it's the people that drive these businesses and these portions of Rudd within us. Henrik, next slide, please. So we lead with service. As Lar's mentioned, it is a fairly simple business.
We sell a piece of equipment, and then we provide the support that provides additional value to the customer, keeps their machines running, and when they're ready to purchase their next piece of equipment, they come back to us. It's as simple as that. The reputation of Rudd Equipment Company is one of support, one of service, one of taking care of our customers, one of promoting uptime for our customers. And that's known through our manufacturers. Volvo routinely uses Rudd as an example on our capabilities to support our customers, and we lead with service. Our other manufacturers do as well. That is what we're known for. It's our reputation. So next slide, please, Henrik. So training. This is the beginning. This is what it takes to drive our service business.
One of the hardest things right now for us to do, as I mentioned earlier, is go out and try to find technicians to come to work for us, and that's difficult pretty much everywhere. We made the decision years ago that if we bring people into the company, we train them on how we approach the customer. We provide them with a continuous training that works better for us. We have the two training centers, the one here in Louisville. We also have one in Cleveland. The classes that we put on are typically. We like a max number of 12 participants, so it's small classes. If it's 8 to 10, we're fine with that, but we don't want to go over 12 people because we don't feel like that we can properly train our people with any more than that. They're week-long courses.
They're customized, designed by our trainers, which our trainers, all of them, were in a service truck. So they have a great feel for what these technicians are facing every day, and they design the curriculum around real worksite scenarios and try to address the immediate needs of those customers. And then housed in our training centers also are our technical call center. So we bring in calls from all the different branches if there's an issue that they might be a little bit delayed in finding a solution for, and we keep that data in-house and use it across the company if we happen to see those same scenarios again. Our training centers use a train-the-trainer program, which means our manufacturers will train one of our trainers. And so then they're able to use that same training and certification to go back and train our technicians.
Therefore, everything we do is certified by the manufacturers as we train. Next slide, please, Henrik. Our apprentice program is where it starts. As we bring technicians who are new to the company and they're entry-level technicians, this is a program we start them in. It's a two-year program. There's a good mixture of classroom as well as field time. They spend no less than two weeks per month in a classroom setting being trained. These sessions both are done in Louisville and in Cleveland. They're also, as they return to their branches, they're monitored by the training department to see what they're working on to make sure that they are getting out on the field. We use our master technicians that are at the branches as an aid in mentoring these entry-level technicians.
The idea is to get them in a two-year period from the fundamentals of what it takes to be a technician through advanced diagnostics as well. Interesting comment from one of the apprentices that's in the class that will graduate in December, having a discussion with him about the value of going back to the branch and learning and the classroom learning as well. The branch he works at has a significant amount of Master technicians, but he said that he tends to learn more from one of the newer, younger technicians who has been with us for six years but had been in a service truck for three years.
When asked further about it, he said that the master technicians, the mentorship is great, but sometimes they're able to identify problems quickly and skip some steps to get to a resolution where the younger people go step by step by step. So it helps him learn better to go through the proper steps of diagnosis as he works his way towards the master technician quicker diagnostics of recognizing an issue and solving the problem. Next slide, please, Henrik. So speaking of our master tech program, this is something we're very, very proud of. In fact, we just had our master tech testing last week here in Louisville. And to get into the master tech, to be at that master tech certified level, it's a challenge.
They start out at a certain level, whatever they test into, and then they progress throughout, whether it's shop or field mechanic, level one, two, three, four, up to a master tech level. Again, they have to be nominated, and once they're nominated, they have to be approved to enter the program and to test as a master tech. Part of the criteria for being entered into the master tech testing is they have to obviously be able to diagnose and repair quickly, but we also look at the attitudes and then how they approach the customers. We look at their organizational skills. We look at how they work through processes of getting to an end result, an end solution. We go as far as to look at their service trucks and how organized it is and how clean it is.
So then they get into the program and they come to Louisville, and it's a week-long learning and testing period. It culminates with a day of testing, and what that encompasses is there's stations where the training department has bugged certain machines, and it's pretty difficult problems that they have to diagnose and solve. There's a judge at each station. They measure the time that they take to solve the problem, but they also look at the method, the steps that they took to get to the resolution of the problem. These technicians leave their branch and come to Louisville to do this, and there's a lot of stress associated with it, and as you walk back and you watch them studying and you watch them preparing for the test, you can sense the stress, but you have to understand that they leave their branch.
Everybody at their branch where they work on a full-time basis knows that they're there testing to achieve master technician status, and if they don't pass, then they have to go back to that branch. Now, they can enter the program again and test again, but it takes them a year to get back into the program, so it's a great program. It's something, again, that sets us apart from our competitors, but we're very proud of how we bring technicians into our apprentice program and grow them through the master tech program, especially with today with the difficulty finding technicians, but it also allows them to grow within the culture of Rudd Equipment Company. Next slide, please. Our rebuild program. We have several branches that are certified by Volvo to rebuild Volvo equipment, but we don't only rebuild Volvo equipment.
We rebuild other brands of equipment too that we sell. Hitachi. We do several Hitachi rigid frame trucks and excavators. Primarily, it is Volvo machines, wheel loaders, and articulated trucks, and two branches will handle most of our rebuilds. We have others that will catch some overflow if need be. It's a customizable rebuild program. It starts with identifying a candidate. These are marketed and sold usually by our sales reps that market our parts and service capabilities. They also sell our rebuilds, but it starts with identification of a machine that's a candidate. We then prepare an estimate for the customer, sit down, show them the benefits and the value that is created by refreshing and creating essentially a new machine that they get a second life of their initial investment, work through the scope of the work with the customer.
Agree to the scope of the work with the customer. We bring the machine into one of the branches, and we start tearing the machine down. Once we get the machine torn down, we identify anything else that might be additional to the scope of the work that we initially presented to the customer, and he agreed to. The customer comes in, visits. We physically show them what we've done with the machine and what we advise needs done as well, so then after that happens, we go back together with the machine, and the customer has a finished product. There's testing done at the site, and then one of the technicians from the rebuilding branch will follow the unit to commission it as well. This is a program that we actually help pilot with Volvo. Next slide, please.
I think we have a quick time-lapse video here that we can show of the rebuild process. Okay. Quick video. We don't typically move that fast, but we've got some really good technicians. But that was a video Volvo put together. Parts availability. So Henrik mentioned our central parts warehouse in Cincinnati, and we utilize this. All of our stock orders go into our central parts warehouse, and then our branches will pull from that. It supplements and makes our parts availability off the shelf next day. It's a huge competitive advantage for us. So we have our own freight system, internal freight system. And so I'll give you an example of what happens. A branch needs a part that's located at our central warehouse. They have a freight truck that will leave their branch that evening once all the orders come in.
They exchange parts with all of our branches, heads back to their branch, and is there early in the morning, usually by 5:00 A.M., 6:00 A.M., so our parts departments can unload the parts, get them on the service trucks, or have them ready for the customer to pick up. Big advantage with us because of the footprint, again, that we cover. We also have a used parts department located at one of our branches, and primary function they bring in, whether it's Volvo machines, Hitachis that have been decommissioned or should be decommissioned, and we part those machines out, clean the parts, put them on the shelf, and different solution for the customer that might have a different need, and financially, through used parts, they can purchase what they need. We do have a dedicated sales force that I spoke about earlier to market and sell our parts.
They're trained and they're experts, and the customers look at them as solutions providers. Next slide, please, Henrik. Componentry. We have the capabilities to rebuild a lot of the components, most of the components that are on the machines that we offer. We can do this in different fashions depending on the customer's need. If they have a component and they have the time, there's a couple of different options that we can bring their component in and do a repair and return on their component. We can offer a full rebuild on this machine. And also, we have exchange components in stock to where we've taken a core, rebuilt it up so the customer brings their core in, takes the component we have on the shelf.
It's a quick turnaround, and then we rebuild their core to put it back on the shelf for the next customer that comes along. We also have a machine shop located at our Cincinnati branch. We can do multiple things, full machining capabilities there, but we also have the ability to reverse engineer and produce parts that are hard to find or no longer available. Next slide, please, Henrik. So we move forward to today. What growth opportunities and where do we see immediate opportunity to grow? You can see the three areas that we've shown here from market share, rental fleet efficiencies, and then parts and service growth. Next slide, Henrik. So market share. Essentially, what this does for us is we get more machines out into the field.
When we get more machines out in the field, eventually, the circle of life of the machine is we start selling parts and providing service for these machines. The biggest opportunity here to gain the market share and gain machines in the market are excavators. Across the board from our geography, excavators every year represent 50% and some years more of the total machines that are sold within Rudd's AOR. The way to increase this share is through rentals. Next slide, please, Henrik. Rentals for excavators, particularly, are a primary growth. That's how excavators go to market. That's how they're sold, is through the rentals.
We can make our rentals more efficient through a number of ways, but the one thing that it provides for our customers is a quick turnaround if they have a quick job and the flexibility for when they take it out or how long they're going to need it. The customers are willing to pay for this flexibility and this quick turnaround as well. What it does for us is, number one, we keep the utilization on our rental fleet, but also if a customer happens to take a machine out early in the year, whether that be February, March, or April, and they have a short-term job and then they have another short-term job, then it turns into a longer job.
Before you know it, they've had this machine all of the construction season, and they're able to take advantage of some of the rent that they've invested in this machine and turn it into a sale and convert it to a sale. If they happen to send it back, it also gives us a machine that's ready to sell to other customers. So in terms of the efficiencies that how we can handle these rentals better, we need to recognize quickly those machines that have low utilization and move those out of our fleet. And we also need to make sure that we build on those models or those particular machines that have the high utilization. We also need to tailor our rentals to become more flexible to stay on rent. So ways we do that is the terms of our rentals.
We have a set parameters of how we rent equipment, but the flexibility to fit the customer's need is a way to create more utilization of our rental fleet. Also, if we look at investment in attachments that are needed, particularly with excavators, to make them more of a utility machine, it enhances our ability to keep these machines out on rent as well for the full construction season. Next slide, please. That leads us to the service and parts sales. Everything that we really are focused on, we want to sell the machines. We want to get machines, increase our population, get them more and more machines out on the market, be aware of where the machines are, and take advantage of these populations that we've created through increased market share and increased sales.
At the end, we need to be proactive and make sure that the customer knows that when they have an issue, we are the ones to call to provide a solution to make sure they get those machines back up and running, and this will promote growth for our parts and service revenue. We will continue to be aware of our population, continue to build our population, and continue to train and build our sales force as well, so with that, Henrik, back to you to talk a little bit about the business dev elopment side.
Thank you, Vic, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the projects that we have been working on since the takeover, starting with automatic lead generation. I will talk more about that on the next slide. Other digital tools, this would be anything from barcode scanners to make our parts management more efficient to looking at digital solutions for field technicians to prepare their time reports and their work orders. We are also working on developing the CRM system in Rudd. Network improvements, I will talk about that more in depth. We are looking at additional services and products that we could add to the network, and we are evaluating further U.S. expansion.
The automatic lead generator, I think those of you who have followed us throughout the year, you are familiar with this. It's a way to use AI to make our sales more efficient, particularly the service and parts sales, but also new equipment sales. The way this works is that, well, first of all, all the machines through their telematics systems provide an enormous amount of data all the time. Now, we also are in position of large amounts of data through our service history. So we are in a good position to know that when something is about to break down, depending on the signals that the machines are sending. So the amount of data created by the machines is just so immense that there's no way for a human being to work with this on a manual basis.
So we need to optimize this. So what we do is, in essence, to connect then every machine out in the field with a specific customer. And that customer is connected to a sales rep, be it for parts and service sales or for new equipment. And then, based on our service history, we create rules that when a certain signal is generated by the machine or a series of signals occur within a specific time frame, that immediately or automatically triggers a sales lead.
That goes through the CRM system to the mobile phone of the sales rep, who will then be prompted to contact the customer to make a specific offer. This is something we did work with and used in real life in our previous business in Russia, and that we are now bringing to our new business in the US. A very important part of this is then to ensure that we follow up, that the sales reps actually do what they are prompted to do by the system, and also analyze, are we generating a lot of leads that don't result in sales?
Because then we need to go back, change the algorithms so that these leads no longer appear, so we are now in a phase where we are cleaning up databases, and we are about to start creating the rules, but this is something we look at launching within relatively, well, not short time. It really depends on how long each step takes, but we are working actively on this, and for the future, this is also something where it will be very interesting to see how we can enhance this even further when we use AI and so on to make the rules even more efficient or to analyze leads to find out how they can be more effective. Looking at the Rudd network, there are some improvements that need to be done to reach our growth objectives.
We need to be closer to certain customers to gain this market share in excavators and to capture this full potential of the service and parts business. We have two existing locations that I think need upgrading, but there is also an opportunity to add smaller satellite branches in large market areas. On this map, you have a few locations that we think are potential locations for satellite branches in order to increase market share and get higher penetration of service and parts sales. I don't believe that these investments will be significant. They are more within the framework of maintenance CapEx.
So looking at further expansion opportunities, I think our main focus now is really to grow Rudd organically with the existing business and existing customers. Vic talked about the opportunity to gain market share for certain products, particularly then excavators, and to grow the service and parts business. We are looking at possibilities to add additional brands to the network to increase the business as a second focus. And thirdly, then continuously analyzing and looking at opportunities to grow further in the United States through acquisitions. Right. I'm ready with my part. Now.
I think we have a short time for some Q&A.
Okay.
So I would then we're largely on time. Maybe first give the chance to the floor. I have a few questions online, but specifically on the US business. And while we have Vic with us from the US, first I'll ask if there's any questions from the audience. I have one here.
Yes. Hello. Adrian Gilani here at ABG. Just first of all, has Rudd's strategy changed materially since you became part of Ferronordic? I mean, did you run things differently before, or are you doing more or less the same thing now since before the acquisition?
Vic, I leave that to you.
Primarily, we're running things the same as we did before. There's some enhancements that I spoke about in the presentation that we're actually looking at for growth. For example, the excavator growth market share-wise and also the parts and service, the population growth, as Henrik talked about, the lead generator. Those are things that are going to enhance and build on what we're already doing. But in large, we're functioning as we always have as a company. We feel like that we do things pretty well. We can always do things better, but there's been some things that I just mentioned that Ferronordic has brought to the table to help enhance what we're already doing.
Okay. I understand. And a second one from me. With all the sort of training and apprentice programs you talked about, presumably those exist because there is an underlying issue of finding technicians. Can you talk about sort of how big of a problem that is, and is that a bottleneck for growth for you?
I don't want to underscore that it is difficult at times to find technicians, but the apprentice program and how we develop technicians is as much about developing the way that they would fit into Rudd. So we still can find technicians as well, but through the apprentice program, we have an organic generation of technicians every year that we can put into our services. And I don't think it's a bottleneck to growth if we handle it properly.
Okay. Understood. That's all for me, so thank you.
Rutger Smith, I wonder what is the market share for excavators and why is it low and what could and should it be?
To start with, I don't think we will say what the market share is or what the exact aim is, but Vic, you can talk about the history.
So I think it's been more past of a focus of where we were looking and the direction we were going as a company in terms of how we handle our business. The excavators are more of a rental tool, and it's not been an area historically of focus for Rudd Equipment Company in terms of a rental fleet. So that's something that we've looked at in the last probably four to five, six years to start gradually growing and participate more in the rental market, which in turn will grow our share in excavators.
Hi. Can you talk about your exclusive brands, Volvo CE and Sandvik Drills, if I remember correctly? And is that guaranteed by a certain amount of time, or is there a period? When how does that work, that exclusivity?
Well, that is based on the dealer contracts we have with these brands where it's said that we are the only dealer in our designated territories, meaning that other dealers are not allowed to sell there, nor are our supplier partners allowed to sell directly in those territories.
My question is more, how long time is that guaranteed for?
Well, until they would be terminated or something would happen. I mean, these contracts are lasting for without they don't have an end period, so to say. And can you also clarify the kind of market share development for Rudd for the last, let's say, six to eight years overall?
Vic, in general, market share-wise?
In general, if you look at by product line, we've grown in certain areas within the Volvo line. Link-Belt Cranes continues to grow our market presence there, continues to grow, as well as Sandvik Drills. Both of those have primarily grown through the rental market, something that we didn't necessarily enter into in the past in a big way, looking to rent those products, but we found the need for it, and we entered into it, and it's really helped our growth with those products.
Thank you. Maybe we can take one more question, then we'll leave the rest of the questions to the Q&A session at the end. All right. Just a quick question, maybe more for Vic. So you mentioned kind of the Anders Åkerblom from Nordea, by the way. Sorry So you mentioned kind of the consistency and contribution from the smaller businesses historically being kind of the bread and butter, if I interpreted that correct. But now, of course, we're seeing an influx of larger projects. I mean, how should we think of that in terms of kind of pricing and kind of your ability to maintain healthy margins going forward? So just anything there would be helpful.
So I don't want to marginalize these large projects, but a lot of the contractors or the customer base that are going on to these large projects, that's been a course of business for a while. There tends to be more and more of them now. So I don't think the mix of our customer base, nor necessarily the margin, is going to be affected. I think what it presents for us is increased opportunities and, as Henrik spoke about earlier, reasons for the market to grow. So the mix of the customer base and ourselves should remain constant. We're dealing with a lot of these customers already. There just seems to be more and more of these projects coming out, which will enhance opportunities for us.
Then thank you very much. I think here we break for 10 minutes, and I would ask everybody to be back in their seats at 35. That means that we're five minutes behind schedule, which I think is okay. When we start after the break, we will start with Lars, and Koen will join us from Germany online, so we will then look at the German business segment. So thank you very much. Let's all break for about 10 minutes and be back by 35 minutes past. Thank you.
Germany, so I took my jacket off. I should do like this maybe as well, but let's keep that. Why Germany? Why on earth would a dealer go into the most competitive market in the world, where you have two of the biggest truck manufacturers' home country, when you're selling Volvo and Renault? So why did we do that? First of all, we wanted to expand geographically, as we talked about. At that time, we had a very, very strong fundamental base of positive cash flow and a fantastic profit coming from a big country in the East, which helped a lot. So when Volvo asked us, "Do you want to go into Germany and become a large, probably the largest dealer?" we were hesitating a lot. We looked into it, and then we saw big opportunities to do so. Germany is the economic powerhouse of Europe.
It's the largest truck market in Europe. If you're anywhere in Europe and you need to transport something from one part of Europe to the other, you have to go through Germany. That's how it works. We saw that Volvo had an intention to improve and consolidate the German dealer network, and we wanted to be a part of it. It was a clear turnaround opportunity. The business that we bought from Volvo had been losing money for 20 years, so we knew that it's going to be tough. But we saw an opportunity to gain market share. We saw an opportunity to get better synergies between truck sales and the aftermarket. We saw an opportunity to make a difference and use the knowledge that we had from Russia, where we were a biggest, actually, independent truck dealer also in Russia.
And we wanted to expand our truck business and get a foothold in Europe. So that's why we did it. And we did that then in late 2019. And in 2020, we purchased from the Volvo Group the assets related to sales and service operations for Volvo and Renault trucks in an area of approximately 13% of the German market. At the same time, we also acquired an independent dealer Auto-Haas, who was responsible for another 5% of the market. So at that point, we then had 200 employees and 11 workshops. Now, the strategy was to expand and improve the dealer network in our sales area, meaning that we saw an opportunity to take full control of the service and parts sales in the sales area that we have.
So at the time, there were a lot of independent workshops doing only aftermarket, whereas the Volvo part of it, they sold the trucks and did service. But these guys, they only did service. We saw a possibility to gain control of the service and parts sales in our area. And again, as you all know, it's in the service and parts business that our industry makes the money, I mean, particularly in trucks business. We also saw, by doing so, by increasing efficiency on the organization, by enhancing the network, getting a more stringent delivery to the customers in the area, we should grow the market share and population. And obviously, we did this in collaboration, the plans with our partner, Volvo. So what are the results? Since then, we have acquired another five authorized Volvo and Renault workshops of these workshops that I mentioned.
We have opened another four new workshops. The existing workshops, we have renovated. We have upgraded them, including a greenfield flagship facility in Hannover, which you're all very welcome to visit whenever. It's beautiful. We have a service and parts sales, which is up 126% since 2020 to 2023. We had our ambition on market share was partly impacted, of course, by supply constraints following COVID. COVID, unfortunately, came to Germany six weeks after we took over the operations in Germany. That obviously halted a lot of the measures and the actions that we wanted to do, but that was what it was. And clearly, and importantly, reorganizations and personal changes to boost the efficiency of the operations. A lot of challenges. The strategy took longer to implement than we had expected.
It was complex to acquire and integrate these new businesses that I talked about with different cultures, systems, and processes. COVID, as I mentioned, disrupted the supply chain, and not only that, but the most important thing, I think, was that it slowed communication and changes. It's difficult to implement a new company culture on Skype or Teams. It is, and then came another thing which hurt us a lot. We had to exit the Russian market, and that in early 2022, and that took enormous amounts of attention from top management, more or less 26 hours a day for a year. We're trying to get out of there in a decent way, unfortunately. Anyway, we also had German administrative hurdles and very rigid organizational structures. It is hard to restructure and reorganize efficiently. All right, it's Germany.
What takes an afternoon in Russia takes half a year in Germany, roughly, to change. That's what it is. And again, it's hard to attract new technicians. We talked about it. In Germany, we also, and Koen will talk about it, we also have an apprenticeship program where we're working to developing, which is actually also the state is part of that. But it is hard to attract new technicians. So we ran into a lot of challenges, and things have not turned out the way we wanted them to do. Clear, no question about it. It has taken longer time than we expected. We knew it's going to be hard, but not that long as we expected. However, we have increased total sales by 132% from 2020 to 2023. Service and parts sales total have been relatively stable at 27%.
Obviously, the higher that share, the healthier the gross profit, obviously. There is a limit to it because you also need to sell trucks in order to have something to service in the years to come, so there is always a balance there. The organization we had, we were doing fine, as you can see on the revenue side. We were growing, growing, growing. We expanded the organization. We trained the organization. We changed the organization and we then grew this SG&A by 120% in absolute terms, but it declined as a percentage of revenue and then it was poised for further growth, and then the market stalled in 2023 and we ended up with having too high costs for the market that was there, so we had to embark upon an efficiency program, which we did.
We launched it in 2023 and, well, beginning Q4 to make the German business more efficient and resilient. Coming back to what we talked about, the service and parts absorption rate of +1%. That's the aim where we're targeting. And the program then, it's a reduction in both horizontal and vertical administrative units. We reduced the number of regions. We made the organization more flat. We removed the number of middle management roles. And we analyzed our cost structure across all functional areas without hurting the possibility to sell more hours in the workshop. So to do all this with minimal impact, both on the service side but also on the truck sales side. So we depict here roughly where we're taking the costs. And as you can see, by far, the biggest is general and admin costs and admin costs.
We are now confident that we've achieved the level of SEK 60 million per year savings on a rolling basis, annual cost basis, in late Q2 2024. So where are we today then in Germany? We have 20 service locations throughout most of central and eastern Germany. We have a sales area that covers approximately 18% of the German market for heavy trucks. The expansion of our service network and integration is mainly completed. I'm not saying it's fully completed, which it never will be, but it's mainly completed. There might be some spots here and there where we might need to add, change. But we have a good network in Germany now. It's taken a long time to integrate, to make it one team, but we have a good functioning network now. We have professional teams for service sales and support.
We have a service organization that is well positioned for growth, and we see a potential for substantial increase of market share and population growth, and again, population growth and the correct population growth is important for our ability to have a profitable business in terms of making money on the aftermarket. You need the right population, and I will come back to what that is, and we have a more resilient platform than we used to have, so what are then the opportunities ahead that we see? First of all, the initial plan that we had, it stands, but a lot of work remains still to make it happen, and what we need to do, again, we need to create a bigger and long-term profitable truck population by growing market share.
So we need to grow the market share, but we also need to make sure that we increase the share of rigid trucks in our sales. And what is a rigid truck compared to a truck tractor? A truck tractor is a tractor that drives on highway with a semi-trailer. It's by four by two, two wheelbases and a semi-trailer. Run very efficiently on the highway, either inside Germany or from Germany or outside here and there over Europe. It's in the territory for three, three and a half years, and then we tell the customer, "Now it's time to sell it because it's time for you to make more money to invest into a new one." So we will buy the old one back, and then that's the circle it goes. That's good. We need those trucks.
But a rigid truck would be a tipper truck, would be a garbage truck. It would be trucks that are staying longer in our population with more axles, and that are simply better trucks for our service and parts business. And they stay longer in our population. And obviously, the longer a truck stays in our population, the more parts and service per year it will require to keep the same productivity. And we have traditionally not been strong, if I put it mildly, on selling rigid trucks in Germany anywhere. And this is clearly a very, very good sign that we've seen in the last quarters when our market share has dropped in total, but our rigid truck sales has not. Actually, we're strengthening our positions in that very important segment to create a profitable aftermarket. It's the same as selling an articulated hauler for Volvo CE.
I mean, they use 24 hours a day. They work all the time, and they need to run and they need to be serviced in a proper way to give that profit for the customers that the customer deserves and creates and wants and deserves and demands. So this is, again, to grow the parts and service sales, to increase productivity. One very, very important part of the German expansion plan is leadership in electric trucks and sustainable transport. We'll talk a little more about that. Now, this is the biggest truck market in Europe, and 55% of the market is tractors. That's our strength. We are strong. We are relatively strong in selling tractors. 45% of the market, half the market, are rigid trucks where we have opportunities to grow. In 2024, we're only expecting 2% of the total truck market to be electric.
Now, we expect this to grow significantly in the coming years. One other thing with the truck market in Europe, there is no seasonality, and registrations are evenly distributed over the year. So as you can see then, these columns are heavy truck registrations. The line is average truck toll mileage index. It's meaning how many kilometers are they driving on the Autobahn per year as an index back to, if I'm not mistaken, 2008. What is it? Yeah, eight, yeah. And it follows roughly more or less. And as you can see, no question about it, it's dropping LTM by 15%-20%. And that's what we are experiencing and have experienced in the numbers you've seen in the last quarter. We're probably quite early into that cycle, earlier than others. So that's what it is.
It's still a very last 12 months, very strong market, but as we said in the beginning of the year, it's likely to not be that strong in the coming end of the year. And you see now numbers, so there's no secret there. But it's fairly stable. It will come back. Now, the shift to electric is something which is talked about a lot nowadays. It has been talked about a lot for many years, but nowadays it has another, maybe another tweak on it. But the EU law is still there. Manufacturers must cut CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 for new trucks sold in the EU compared to 2019 levels. So what we assume, quite conservatively, I think that 20% of all trucks in Germany by 2028 will be electric. No doubt, Volvo and Renault trucks are market leaders, first movers in electric trucks.
The amount of investments that have been made and then the market positions that Volvo and Renault Trucks have are there. And of course, that will help us growing overall market share. McKinsey says that prices for e-trucks will be lower than today, but still 50% higher than today's conventional trucks, which logically then would mean that revenue will grow significantly when we sell more electric trucks. And what we see from subscription data, which is something that is interesting, I think, is that repair and maintenance costs for e-trucks are similar or higher than for conventional trucks. So potential for service and parts should remain fairly stable. There's a lot of information. There's a lot of things going around this, but this is what we see. Koen will talk more about that in a few seconds.
But what we see also, obviously, moving into electric, we talked about this equipment as a service. We see other models of ownership. We see other subscription methods, et cetera, coming into play here. And the assumption is that the transition will generate multiple new opportunities. And we have started already. We have an electric rental fleet, and we are well situated to capture new opportunities. So we placed already in December 2021, we placed the first order for 32, sorry, fully electric medium trucks from Volvo and Renault. In the meantime, after some time, to be honest, and a lot of work, we were awarded 23 million EUR in government subsidies to promote electric transition. And we want to develop the rental business to help customers in the transition to battery electric to be experts ourselves in sustainable transport solution.
We want to go as far as to develop in-house sustainable transport services capabilities ourselves. If you remember, we did that by using contracting services when we said, "Okay, let's do it ourselves," in order to not only sell a service and take an extra cut of the value chain going upwards, but also to learn a lot. What is it to be a customer operating these machines, or in this case, the electric trucks? Now, our rental fleet, we're expecting it to be 100 trucks by the end of this year in our rental fleet. So we're growing that. Of course, not. And as you all know, the electrification has not taken off as was planned, discussed, hoped for, but it's coming. So what is the sustainable transport solution?
What we see in the market is that we see the customers of our customers, they're increasingly want and need to procure zero-emission transport solutions because they want to reduce their footprint. But our customers don't want to take that step to buy electric trucks because it's a big shift. It's a big new thing. And we potentially see a potential for lower TCOs, total cost of ownership of the truck, and higher profitability.
Certain of the customers' customers are even prepared to pay higher rates for customers that actually run electric. But customers, there's a lot of reasons for that, claiming infrastructure, charging infrastructure, claiming new technology, et cetera, et cetera. So what we see an opportunity to do here is to fill the gap by providing sustainable transport services to transport buyers and use the experience that we have gained in other markets being contracting services to actually becoming a leading service provider.
I'm not saying the biggest, but again, a leading meaning. And then use that knowledge to leverage for selling and promoting electric trucks in general. And we have a pilot project that we expect now to start in the second half of 2024. So that's something we're working on. And we believe this is a bumpy road. It's not going the way everybody expected, but we want to be in the forefront, and we want to drive this development as much as we can. And so far, so good, I must say. So that's about it. And now I want to hand over to Koen. Are you with us?
Hey, Hear me.
That's very good. Thank you, Koen. As our Aftermarket Director for Germany, we'll talk a little more about the very, very important service and parts business in Germany. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Lars. Let's start then, please, with the first slide. Right. What we aim for is to deliver productivity to our customers, and with that, we aim actually for a win-win situation, so our business model in aftermarket is as such that we advise our customers about the timing of a service, but the type of service. We provide, of course, the service with the best possible quality, and as such, we secure a maximum uptime of the truck and a longer life of the truck. It's a clear win for the customers, and it's also a clear win for us because by doing so, we provide or we secure a steady inflow of pre-planned workshop orders, and that is basically summarized how we plan to secure an organic growth for the future.
Whereas in the past, our growth, our aftermarket growth was a mixture of growth by acquisitions and organic growth. Now, the question is, of course, do we have potential to grow? And for that, please, the next slide. The answer is a clear yes, even with a non-growing population, which is obviously not the target, as Lars explained. We want to grow our population, but even with the population that we have today, we have a clear potential to increase our sales because our potential, based on the current population of 8,500 Volvo and Renault trucks, we only grasp a too small percentage of this potential. And our target is to capture 23% more of that potential that we currently have by 2026. So we have a clear potential to increase the sales. We have a clear target to increase the sales, the aftermarket sales.
The question is, do we have a plan, or do we know how to increase this sales? And the answer is yes, and that I will show on the next slide. This organic growth, it will be based on two cornerstones. First is population. Know your population, know our population, identify each truck in the population, and based on this knowledge, offer tailor-made solutions and offers to the customer. And the second cornerstone is dynamic pricing, smart pricing even. But let's first talk about population. So next slide, please. Yeah. So how do we plan to capture the maximum of our population? What we have done in the past three months is that we have identified each and every truck of these 8,500 trucks in our population. We know how old they are. We know how they are used and what segment they are used.
We know how often they come to the workshop or not come to the workshop. And based on this extensive data, we are able to produce the best advice on when and how to service these trucks. We are also able to prepare, then tailor-made offers for each and every one of these trucks. And this toolbox of knowledge and recommendations we give to our aftermarket salesmen to go out to the customer and try to convince them to come to our workshops. So that's basically step number one in how we capture our population. Whatever offer we make, the first and best offer we always make is a service contract. More about that on the next slide. What is a service contract? It means a customer pays a fixed monthly fee for three, four, or five years.
For that fee, for that monthly rate, he buys actually peace of mind. The only thing he has to do then is wait for our call. We call the customer to say, "Yes, your truck, the service is due," or, "A preventive repair is due." There is absolutely no reason for the customer to decline this invitation because the workshop visit will be for free. It's covered already by the monthly rate. By doing so, by these regular workshop visits, of course, we secure then the maximum uptime and a longer longevity of the trucks. A clear win for the customers and a clear win for us because we secure, again, a steady inflow of pre-planned workshop orders. It's very important that we sell as much service contracts as possible together with the trucks.
We are doing so by making this already attractive offer of a service contract even more attractive by offering some extra goodies specific for Ferronordic. We offer free replacement trucks when the customer truck is in the workshop, or we offer free pickup service for the customer's vehicles. The second way to increase this service contract penetration is we are preparing very professional marketing material focusing on the total cost of ownership of the service contract and with facts and figures prove that it's actually financially makes sense for the customer to buy a service contract. Another tool to increase capture of the population is connectivity. Here, we have specialists in our workshops who receive signals coming from the trucks, early warning signals, and based on these signals, we contact then also the customer and advise him to come to the workshop for a service or preventive repair.
It's a less powerful tool as a service contract because the customer, of course, has to pay for this visit. So you have less guarantee that the customer will indeed come to the workshop. But anyway, it's a very powerful tool to contact the customers and try to convince them to the workshops. So all of this, the population, knowing the population, the service contract, and connectivity will increase the share of potential that we capture and as such, the aftermarket demand, and then the question is, can we meet that demand? Do we have enough mechanics, and do we have enough hours available to meet that demand? Please, the next slide, and our first thing that we do is that we have been doing, that we continue to do, is to increase the productivity of our mechanics. Now, what is productivity? What defines productivity of a mechanic?
It's basically three factors. It's availability. Is the mechanic in the workshop? Of course, he is not when he's on holiday. You cannot really influence that, but you can. What we will try to influence in a positive way, with positive measures, is the sickness rate. By providing a healthy and safe work environment and also a pleasant work environment, a good atmosphere, team spirit, and soft issues like that, we are actively working on these things. Second factor is utilization. I have been talking a lot about pre-planned workshop orders and why? Because that is the best way to avoid idle time, and the less idle time, the higher the utilization of your mechanics. Last but not least is efficiency. What we have done, our mechanics or technicians, as we say, they all have tablets these days.
In these tablets, they can add or enter all their information on what type of work they have been doing on the truck, and that information entered in a tablet automatically flows into our systems and means that no information got lost. In the past, when everything was documented on paper, papers got lost or the text was not readable, and not every minute that was worked or not every job that was performed on a truck was invoiced because the information got lost. This is now history thanks to this paperless, digitalized way of working, so that's how we increase productivity to meet the increasing demand. Second cornerstone to increase our organic growth is dynamic pricing, smart pricing, so it's obvious that some work is more complicated than others, and for that complicated work, you need highly skilled technicians, highly trained technicians with specialized equipment.
That type of work cannot be done in unauthorized workshops. Obviously, you can charge a different rate for that type of work than for the simpler tasks that can be done by a trainee or can be done in a non-authorized workshop. This dynamic, smart way of pricing will allow us to capture more work, more of the potential than if you would just have a flat price increase, for instance. That's how we work with pricing to capture the maximum of our potential. That brings us to the next slide. A word about electrification of our population. The key word here is, at least for me, is uncertain. We don't really know by when the majority of our population will be electric. We don't really know when that will happen.
We also don't really know exactly what the effect of electric trucks is on our aftermarket potential. Studies coming from the car industry suggest a 40% lower parts consumption for electric trucks. Now, our own experience does not confirm this figure. On the contrary, in the last 12 months, 1% of our workshop visits was done by electric trucks. But this 1% represented 2.5% of our aftermarket sales, meaning that we actually have double or more than double as much parts and service consumption for those electric trucks than for the traditional diesel trucks. But again, 1% is, of course, probably statistically not relevant yet. And so it's, again, the key word is uncertain. But there are a number of things that we do know. And for that, please, the next slide.
What we do know is that working on an electric truck is much more complicated and requires a different type of mechanic. The mechanic working on electric trucks is actually more an electrician or even an IT consultant than the traditional mechanic. And that means, and this mechanic also needs special equipment provided by Volvo in our case. He needs special and regular trainings also provided for by Volvo. And that means enormous hurdles for non-authorized workshops to work on electric trucks. And that gives us a comfortable feeling that, I mean, probably the parts and service consumption potential per truck is lower, but we will capture close to 100% of this potential. And that will more than compensate this lower potential.
On top of that, because it's such a specialty work and done by a new type of mechanics, electricians, IT consultants, we, of course, it's justifiable to charge then a higher rate for this type of work. And those two positive factors, higher rate, capturing 100% of the potential, gives me a comfortable feeling to say, "Yeah, I don't see electric trucks as a threat for our aftermarket business," on quite the contrary. And on this positive note, I would like to conclude my part of the presentation. Thank you.
Then we go up for, yeah, some quick Q&A. On Germany, there's my spot. We're again a little bit behind, but I suggest we take a few questions as we did with the U.S. and steal time out of the Q&A at the end. So we get a chance to ask questions to Koen and to Lars, of course, in the context of Germany. So I would again start with the audience. Any questions from the audience to start with?
When you sort of, you say you want to sell more rigid trucks because they provide good aftermarket revenues for you guys, what's the value case for the customer to buy a rigid truck rather than the trailer trucks?
No, it's not for the customer. I mean, it's a segment which is almost 50% of the market. So it's the same customers. It's just that we haven't been very successful in competing in that segment before. So we just need to get in there and do our own work to take a share of that market, a bigger share of that market than we have. Frankly speaking, I think that also comes down to having, as we talk about, an agile sales team. We need to reach new customers that we haven't talked to before and not only the old ones that call us up and say, "We want to replace trucks." That's what we're talking about. It has nothing to do with customers. It's really our job inside the organization to fix that.
Okay. Then also, I know you never sort of give the exact number on the absorption rate, but are you able to reach one-time absorption rate with the current population in Germany and just sort of upselling or capturing the current population, or do you also need to grow the population?
To be honest, I could not. Yes?
Yes. Perfect. Thank you.
Any more questions from the audience? Or one more?
Sorry. Pardon me if you mentioned this already, but what is the average age of the fleet in Germany? Is this something you've communicated?
Again, before you answer Koen, is it a tractor or a rigid you're talking about? Because it's completely different in terms of the average tractor would be two and a half years. The average rigid would be four, five. So it's a very different ballgame, roughly. These are rough numbers, but something like that. Go on.
Well, I could give you the age of every of these 8,500.
Now, it's a very good question because obviously, but we know what it is. But you need to segment the trucks and then you, like we do, right? Then you go in. But that's why we want rigids because they stay longer in the population. Of course, a truck tractor is staying three, four years in Germany, then it will stay somewhere else for a long, long time and maybe somewhere else to the third life, right? But we want to service them in Germany.
Thank you. We'll send you that Excel sheet with every single truck. I'll take one question from online and then we'll move on so we don't ignore the people who are online. Are you happy with your workshop footprint or are you looking for more acquisitions/divestitures to optimize?
I think I answered that. We have a good footprint. There might be some. In general, we're fine. We have a good footprint. There might be opportunities to grow when we see the population that we can make money from day one, opening up something, but it's no more strategic investments.
Thank you very much, Lars. I suggest then we move on, which is my cue.
Okay. Very good.
Thank you very much, Koen.
So then I step in and I will speak about our financial performance and our recently released financial objectives. My colleagues esteemed have paved the way for me. They have presented the opportunities and potential that we see in our respective business areas. They've presented where we are today and where we can go in the future. I will start from the finish. So I will start with our financial targets and then I will go back to what our financial position looks at this point. I will focus in on some of the key items on our financial statements, income statement, balance sheet, and some mentioning also of the cash flows. And then I will also discuss a bit how these items may change as we implement our strategy.
So starting with those financial objectives that we released yesterday, given the, again, opportunities and potential that we see in our markets, we have set ourselves the ambitious target to double our revenue from 2024 in our current segments by 2029 on an organic basis. Let me unpack that a little bit. 2024 isn't finished yet. We're using six months, 2024 times two as a base. We could use LTM, but then we'd need to use Proforma RAD. So that's the base we're using. Our current markets or segments, that's our sales area in the U.S., our sales area in Germany, and Kazakhstan. So there are no acquisitions, no M&A activity included in these targets, but we do allow for network optimization, network improvements within our sales areas and in the direct adjacent areas to our sales areas.
We also allow for adding new products and brands to our current infrastructure and our current sales platform, so that's how we define the revenue target. When it comes to operating margin, this is then driven by the revenue streams that we see, the ones that we expect to propel this growth forward in the next five years. We believe that we can reach above 6% within these five years that we have in our horizon here. Speaking of net debt to EBITDA, we set ourselves the aim to be under three times net debt to EBITDA. We look at the growth that we expect and the margin we produce, what cash flows that will generate, but of course also the assets that we need to produce this growth, and this is a number that we think is appropriate for us, three times.
We say over a business cycle, that means that over certain periods, economic weakness, we can deviate from this target in the context of a strategic opportunity, i.e., M&A activity. We can deviate temporarily, but this is what we should go back to. Dividend policy, we set the aim for Ferronordic to pay at least 50% of net income if our net debt to EBITDA is less than one. If our net debt to EBITDA is more than one, we say at least 25%. This is, of course, subject to board discretion. The board should consider from legal requirements to, of course, our investment opportunities and investment needs when they set the level of dividends. The idea of the capital allocation policy is to support organic growth, support CapEx with high returns, and to support debt repayment, so we're staying in line there.
Also to support dividends and M&A when the time is right for that and the opportunity is right. As I said, I will start now going back to where we are at the moment and where we're headed. I start from six months of this year. This is what it looked like in the first six months. What do we see here? We see a U.S. business that is doing very well, but that, as has been discussed, we believe can do even better. We believe that there is a lot of upside potential over time in the U.S. We see a Germany that is, as Lars just pointed out, suffering from low sales in a weak market. We have taken actions. We have reduced costs.
We have made the business, we believe, a lot more resilient, but without, we believe, hurting our sales and aftermarket potential, but rather priming it. So we believe we're in a good place now to grow going forward and capture a recovery when that comes. Central Asia, i.e., Kazakhstan, is now a very small part of our business, less than 4% in six months of this year. Still, there also we see good potential for growth from where we are today. We're far away from where we believe we can be. We also see group costs that for this current scale of our business are too big. So we need to grow the business or be more efficient in those costs. And we believe that we can grow our revenue without increasing our fixed costs. Moving over to some of the specifics on our income statement.
This slide shows to your left, you have the revenue distribution by business activity. On your right, you have the revenue distribution. This is again six months by geography or region. The revenue distribution is important when we think about the business model, of course, at all, but looking also forward where we see the potential. It speaks to the growth potential. It speaks to the margin potential, importantly, and to some extent about risks also. 36% of our revenue is aftermarket business in six months of this year. This is, as we see it, stable and recurring business. So that is a less risky component of our sales. If we look geographically, more than 96% of our sales now in six months are in developed markets. So we have moved from being what we once were coming from emerging markets to really becoming a developed market company.
As we look forward, there will be shifts to some extent when we set these targets, as I said, from the revenue opportunities that we see. For example, the electric truck market developing in Germany, there are significantly higher tickets there. So you would see an increase in that revenue stream when we look at, again, the distribution. If we look at the geographical distribution, then towards the horizon of our period, we would expect to see about 50% of revenue in the U.S. and 40% in Germany. So Germany catching up, partly driven by those higher tickets for the electrics that become a bigger part of the revenue mix. Something about gross margins, two main factors that we can say drive gross margin in our business. On the one hand, we speak of revenue mix. And by revenue mix, we see three different components. That's how we disclose it.
We have, on the one hand, new and used equipment and truck sales. On another, we have the aftermarket or the service and part sales. And then we have other sales. Other sales refer to mainly rental income. And as Lars mentioned, really, the more aftermarket you do, the higher would tend to be your gross margin. So the mix between these between quarters can drive margins and, of course, in the long term as well. If we look at the second part, that is product mix, that would be within the new and used trucks and machine revenue stream. So there you would have basically to make things easier. The more complex machines or trucks you sell, the more specific they are, the bigger would be the margin. And that can also cause shifts in gross profits between quarters.
You will see the ranges here showing what variations we've had since January 22 on a quarterly basis within a certain segment. And that's driven a lot by these factors. Going forward, when we look again into the future, we see, as I mentioned, different shifts in the revenue stream and increase in new truck sales in Germany driven by electric partly. But we also see big growth in our aftermarket given the potential we see there. But in general, looking at gross profit as an effect of all these different factors that impact, gross profit is not the biggest driver for the EBIT improvement potential that we see. That potential rather comes from scale as we see it. This is our fixed cost, if you will, our SG&A. Selling expenses would be correlated with sales. It would include sales bonuses, sales commissions, etc.
So there would be a component that correlates with sales there. But G&A really are functional departments, are administrative support units. These are fixed costs. And on these costs, we need to get better return or make them more efficient. And that's what we believe we can do as we grow our revenue going forward, again, looking at those revenue opportunities that we see. A look at the balance sheet starting on the asset side. This is the 30th of June. So what it looked like at that point, you will have our workshops to the far left. Then you will have the rental fleet in the U.S., the big red piece there, and then in Germany. In Germany, both diesel and the nascent electric business. And then you will have some other PPE fixtures, fittings, etc., Goodwill. And then we have the inventories.
So these are our products that we or machines and equipment that we expect to sell. And then, of course, trade in other receivables. Looking first short term, we have said in our communication in the first two quarters of this year that we have too much stock still in Germany and Kazakhstan. We are working on that very hard to get back to normalized level. So from that, we would expect to see a decline in the inventory line there. But looking more long term, with higher revenue comes higher inventories. That said, one of our clear objectives is to reduce inventory days and receivable days. So even if it in absolute terms would grow with increased revenue, we are targeting really to decrease the percentage that we hold. So inventory and receivables as a percentage of revenue.
When it comes to the rental fleet, we heard from the U.S. there that this is a part of the sales and marketing strategy in the U.S. to be able to offer a rental fleet. So that will be a component that remains on our balance sheet. That said, in the U.S. as well, we will, of course, want to keep this rental as short and efficient as we can to turn the inventory that we have in or sorry, the rental fleet that we have in the U.S. as well. Looking on the liability side of the balance sheet, that is, of course, very closely tied. That's how we fund the assets on the asset side of the balance sheet. In the short term, again, we are looking to normalize the stock in Germany and Kazakhstan.
That would lead to some reduction in bank loans and floor plan because this inventory has already moved out of payables. But what we would expect to see over time from the strategic plan and the financial objectives that we said is that trade and payables grow with revenue, but again, not as a percentage of revenue, but in absolute terms as we increase sales there. The rental fleets, both the fleet for conversion in the U.S. and the electric fleet in Germany, they would be on the floor plan or bank loan side that we see in this liability side of the balance sheet. If we double-click on our liability side to get a bit of detail on what the debt profile looks like, we see the following picture. We are, this is effects that are clearly more near term. We are predominantly floating, almost 80%.
So in that sense, we stand to benefit from a rate cycle that is declining. If we look at currencies, we have about two-thirds of our debt being US dollars. So that makes that rate cycle more relevant to us and about one-third of euros. In terms of currency risks, all our US business has US dollar assets and US dollar liabilities. In Germany, all assets are euro, or sorry, all liabilities are euro. So in that sense, we don't have direct currency risk. You would see big movements in our consolidated income statement. That comes from the fact that the parent company gives loans to the subsidiary entities in euros to Germany and to the US in dollars. So the parent company has currency exposure in that way. And that you will see below the EBIT line in our consolidated numbers.
In terms of maturity profile, you can see that to the right here. It's really the bank component, the revolving credit facility and the term loan that has maturity dates there. The floor plans in Germany and the U.S., these are lease lines, which means that maturity is really tied to the sale of the asset. They do start amortizing after six months between 2% and 5%, and then that accelerates to 12 months. But in basic essence, they're tied to the sale of the asset again. That leads us in that floor plan discussion into our cash flow cycle. I wanted to include this slide to give you a sense of how our cash flow cycle works. This would be a typical cycle where we place an order. On the point of shipment, we have a number of payable days, which are interest-free.
How many days depends on what product, how long delivery days are expected to be? Are there any expectations of stocking the specific product? So there are a number of factors. But safe to say that payable days to Kazakhstan are very long because of delivery and logistics it takes to get product there. For a tractor in Germany, they are quite tight and short. If we can sell the product within the interest-free payable days, great, we pay and we settle the payables. If we do not, then the payable would transfer non-cash into a floor plan or through a cash transaction into debt financing. If on this graph here, we would look at the rental fleet in the US, you would see the rent receipts there.
So in that case, the inventory or the PPE in this case would go out to customers and yield rent until we pay it when we settle our funding commitments for the products. I want to stress on this, as I have on the balance sheet and in this presentation, our objective is, of course, to tighten this as much as possible. We want to reduce inventory days and we want to reduce receivable days. Quick look at CapEx. CapEx really dominated by rental. As you can see in the U.S., in the first six months of this year, almost exclusively rental. Germany, about two-thirds of CapEx is also related to our rental fleet, part of it diesel and a bigger part to, again, the growing fleet of electric trucks that we rent out in Germany. Looking forward in the U.S., that will remain an important component.
Henrik mentioned that there are certain improvements that we'll need to make or complements to our network that we want to make. Not something that we offer guidance here for several reasons, what our expectations are there. We may lease properties, we may do some kind of greenfield, or we may expand on the ones we have, and we also don't know when the timing will be of this, but workshop and real estate is a component, as we can see also in Germany. Now, from strategy that we've heard to financial performance, try to connect the dots, the opportunities and potential we see and how that may be reflected in our key metrics. So, as mentioned, we expect US and Germany to contribute about 50% and 40% respectively of revenue.
In the U.S., we see growth potential from increasing market share for select products, including excavator, compacts, rigid haulers, but also growing the aftermarket business related to the population that we grow in the U.S. In Germany, we expect a growth in the electric market where we believe that we can have an important market share, and as just presented by Koen, also see potential to grow our important aftermarket business. Beyond this, we see opportunities in both segments to improve our network, but also expand brand and product portfolio on our already existing sales platforms. EBIT margin, we will see changes again in revenue mix and product mix, but on balance, the big factor that will drive EBIT margin higher is scale and scope as we grow our business without the corresponding increases in our fixed costs, so really gaining operating leverage there, you can say.
When it comes to net debt EBITDA, our aim is to reduce inventory days and receivable days, increase capital turnover on our balance sheet, and then, of course, with the expectations we have for higher revenue with stronger margins, we expect also cash flows to improve. Cash flows would reduce the numerator, and then at the same time, we would expect to see higher EBITDA also to increase the numerator, and that would give us more room on the balance sheet and drive net debt EBITDA lower. Balancing factor would be the, again, rental investments we're doing that would work the other way to increase to some extent the net debt EBITDA leverage metric. There we go. So that brings us back to these targets that I presented in the beginning, so I'm not going to stay on those now.
I want to give you an opportunity to ask questions on them later. I wanted to mention also some of the other metrics that we will look at very closely or that we do look at very closely. Absorption we've discussed. That is the extent to which gross margin from the aftermarket business, which is more stable, which is recurring, covers our fixed costs. And here, as we've said, we do expect a growth in our aftermarket business, both in the U.S. and in Germany, but not a corresponding increase in our fixed costs. And that would raise our absorption ratio over time. In terms of invested capital turnover, also something that we keep a solid eye on, how quickly can we turn our invested assets on our balance sheet? And here we are targeting very actively a reduction in inventory days, also receivable days.
Beyond that, we're always looking at optimization of our fixed assets. Could that mean that we would shift from owning to leasing properties? It could if we believe that is optimal and strategic to us, beneficial at the time when we analyze it. Yeah, growth in rental conversion fleet and electric, that would work in the other way in terms of invested capital turnover. ROIC, one of the most, in my view, important indicators or KPIs, well, we do expect high revenue and margins while trying to increase the turnover of our capital, so that should contribute to improving ROIC over the horizon, and we're also looking at when we do every CapEx and investment for an accretive ROIC, and of course, looking at bigger transactions like M&A, as Henrik touched on, there also it should contribute to our ROIC improvement.
SG&A as a % of revenue is something we keep a close eye on because we need really to be very efficient there as we grow revenue to see that the fixed costs are not running away. With that, I'll want to finish where Lars started about Ferronordic as an investment. We believe that we have a very robust and scalable business model. A big share of our revenue is the recurring aftermarket business. And that's the part with the higher margins. We have a strong brand portfolio, we believe, and very good relationships with our OEM partners. That gives us opportunities to grow outside our current areas, but also to achieve deeper positions in our current markets. Sustainability is an integrated part of our business. A lot of what we do is related to circular economy.
And when we sell machines or trucks, it's either very energy efficient and very clean or it's outright electric, so on that level as well, and of course, safety is really a core tenet in all the products that we provide. We believe we're well positioned for the trends that we have discussed today. On the one hand, electrification, notably the electric trucks in Germany, infrastructure investment, notably the investment programs in the U.S. and shared asset models, which is a growing theme in our market, so that would be equipment as a service solutions, sustainable transport discussed by Lars.
We are poised for growth, we believe, in our markets, in the U.S., strong market with growth potential. And in Germany, we have struggled with the turnaround, but we have taken measures and we believe we're now in a much better position to see improvements and to capture a recovery when that comes. And again, on top of that, you would have network improvements and bolting on new products and brands onto our existing platform that complement our current product portfolio.
We are open for strategic M&A when the time is right and most important when the opportunity is right and it fits all the criteria that we have discussed here today. And we have an experienced management that we believe are able to execute this strategy. So with that, I think we can move to final Q&A for which we have at least 12 minutes. So I would invite my colleagues to the stage and be very happy. Thank you, Julia, to take questions both from the audience here and online.
AB Volvo makes tons of money and possibly also your other suppliers. Ferronordic does not. As an outside observer, one can suspect that the pricing between AB Volvo and you rself is a bit unfair. Is that something that can be rectified?
Well, I think we're in a good position with Volvo. I mean, they're not treating us in that respect any different than any other. We obviously agree that we think that we should have more. There is no question about it. But it's a give and take. And I mean, of course, we have a dialogue on how to deal with the pricing in a market that goes up and down with the pricing. So it's something that we talk about all the time, obviously. And particularly, I mean, the last, as far as we all know, the last examples are what's happening in the German market, where you would then have had a situation where you had a much, much higher demand than supply was.
That creates a certain situation. And then you come to a situation where it's the opposite, and then you need to adapt to that and create another situation. So that's our industry. That's how it works. We just need to be very, very good at the conditions that are there. And again, frankly speaking, it's in the service and parts business and the relationships with the customers where we make money. And we should be able to do that, even in Germany.
Yeah, a couple of questions on the targets and then perhaps a general one as well. First of all, looking at the segment level, what are sort of the underlying assumptions for the different segments to arrive at a group margin of 6%?
Thank you. I was expecting that question, Adrian, but as often is the case, we don't provide sort of the detailed forecast for the respective segments. I think, I mean, we had a question also online with regards to the relative profitability. And I think as much I can give you that we do expect profitability improvements in both segments. And by both, I mean U.S. and Germany in this case. We expect so in Kazakhstan as well. But these are the main segments. And the question online was, do we expect Germany to reach U.S. levels of profitability? And the answer is no. It's a different market. So Germany, we do expect to improve over this horizon.
We do expect improvements in the U.S. as well. But again, we don't give the full specifics of what we expect there. I understand. I was expecting that answer as well. And then on the organic growth target, I mean, obviously that also includes opening up new workshops. Are you able to say anything about what kind of like-for-like growth in existing workshops you can see? And then how much on top of that is opening up new workshops? I would say there that this is based, I would say purely organically, on what we have at the moment.
So I think you will end up this being a little bit of a gray area at the end of the day. If we open something, how far is it from, as I said, adjacent to our area? So if it's in immediate connection, that would also be included. But the way we have built our model and looked at the different scenarios, this is based on basically a footprint we have now. So being able to further elaborate on the footprint we have now could add some extra potential. Henrik, I mean, presented some additions to the US that we would like. That is to a large extent considered in the forecast that we provided.
Okay, understood. Or the targets that we have provided. Yeah. And a final one, more general question. There wasn't a lot of talk today about establishing a contracting services model in the US or in Germany or in Kazakhstan for that matter. Is there any update you can give us on that?
I think when we talk about contracting services, the concept is the same as we talked about when we say sustainable transport services, is that we actually take one additional step down or up, whatever you see, the value chain and actually perform services that normally our customers would do. So I think the concept is the same, and it's just in a different form and shape, trying to actually and with a different proposition probably to the market, but where we're doing it more to understand ourselves what's happening and to trying to fill a gap that our customers actually are not prepared to do. So it's a similar way. It's just different, we just call it differently.
Understood. Thank you.
My name is Marcus. I'm a private investor. If you look back for the German journey, would you have been doing anything different? It's easy now, but do you regret some things you've been doing? Like what would you do different?
I have a saying to all my staff, and I always say, I love mistakes. Because if we don't make any mistakes, we're not learning anything. And of course, we made mistakes in Germany. Of course, we made mistakes in Russia. I'm making mistakes every day. So yes, we could have done things differently, of course, for sure. But I don't think we actually very much regret something. We had a, I mean, we couldn't help COVID. That was something else.
We couldn't help this guy invading Ukraine, unfortunately. So there were things that were out of our control that we hadn't planned with when we did it. So I think in terms of what we have done, I think we've done the right things. They've just taken too long time to execute simply. And I think we could have done things differently, but overall, the strategy we had is still valid. And I said, it still stands. We just need to implement it, and it needs to get foothold and a position, and then we're there in Germany. It's not too far away, actually.
Thank you. Second one regarding, you can see like a glitch on the performance in Germany, like there was, this might be an underinvested market, or is it more like a boom and bust, which is nowadays more neutral when it comes to trucks?
You mean the slide with sales.
Yeah, you saw like during COVID, there were three bad years in the German market. We usually say that Germany is a very stable market, actually. No, I think it's a very. It's more like a general question. Is it underinvested or is it perfectly fine at this point?
The truck population and the fleets, depending on the activities in, I mean, in the economy in general and what we see and then how big part they are going to take over the international transport, etc., but it's the biggest market in Europe. I couldn't say if it's over or underinvested, but clearly our customers, they buy if they think they need to buy, and they buy additionally if they want to expand, and if they go bankrupt, they will probably not buy, so market is a market.
I don't think, I mean, 2021, 2022, if those are, this is what I'm talking about, it's COVID. There was not enough supply to supply the demand in the market. You see three years of this, and then that demand overhang obviously creates an effect on the total market when finally those hurdles disappeared in 2020, end of 2022, 2023, so this is COVID. In general, as you can see, usually it's quite stable, really.
Any more questions in the audience? We have a question online asking us to comment on the competitive picture in the U.S. in our sales area. Maybe something competition, brands, other players. The competition in the U.S. is of course also very tough. It's the home market of Caterpillar, which is unfortunately the largest construction equipment manufacturer in the world, followed by John Deere, which is also a strong competitor also from the U.S. But despite of this, we are doing well with Volvo. Another question, I think you can take Henrik. It relates to Vic's answer asking, he provided his view on things that they've done differently since we took over. In terms of initiative changes that we have brought to Rudd, anything you would comment on there as a new owner, things we have tweaked or changed?
I talked a bit about current projects that we are working on with the automatic lead generator and introducing and developing digital tools. I think overall, maybe a bit more scrutiny on the efficiency of usage of assets and inventory turnaround, receivable turnaround, and just for Rudd to be part of a public environment where our numbers are scrutinized in a much larger detail than they are used to. So that's a change for them. But yeah. A question on the potential for equipment as a service in the US, contracting services, and we touched on it on sustainable transport services in.
I think what we're doing with developing the rental fleet, I mean, it's very much driven by the equipment as a service trend. And I think we will offer customers even more flexible solutions as part of the rental business in the future. And I don't exclude that we would move ahead of that and actually provide services ourselves at some point in the future. I mean, at the end of the day, nobody wants a drill. Everybody wants a hole, right? So that's the solution.
Yes. On that note, I'll take one question also on the rental model itself in terms of how it impacts the numbers. So a bit more technical one. But the rental fleet in the US goes into PPE, property, plant and equipment. So it is CapEx when we buy the vehicles. They go into property, plant and equipment. We depreciate them over the time. And when we sell them, there is a difference to the book value that we have left. The net book value, of course, less the depreciation. And the item goes off balance sheets once it's sold. So that's, yes, what we had.
And we have a question on Volvo and Renault relationship and pricing, but I think we covered that one as well. I think we covered most of the items, and I see also that we hit our time, one minute past. I would probably just give one more chance, both online and to the audience here, if there are any more questions. One more there. Two more. Thanks.
I'll take a quick question. Just on kind of in the tractor market, where the aftermarket potential is maybe a bit less than in rigid trucks. I mean, I assume you've been focusing on getting a better mix here. Could you elaborate a bit on that, exactly what that is, and kind of split out kind of the electric vehicle part of that and the other part of getting a better mix? Do you mean mix between rigids and tractors? In tractors, how you're working to get a better mix there over time? Okay.
No, I mean, I think what you mean is how we try to increase the rigids. So you would have a tractor which is driving on the highways. You would have very bluntly long haul. You would have a rigid that is more local, that is forestry type of trucks driving sand, gravel, demolition, refuse trucks, recycling, etc., etc. And that's you want to keep.
So I mean, we are just employing people and focusing on going to customers that are in those segments where we have not been able to be successful before. And the competitors are there, and that's what we do. Volvo and Renault have good trucks in those segments also. It's just that we haven't really focused on getting there, getting in there. That's about it. And it's not so much that the potential per year is bigger, but to just stay longer in our network in the aftermarket, you see what I mean? And the older they get, the higher the potential. So that's how the calculation goes. So that's why we want to get more rigids in. And also we want, because they are local, they don't go to a dealer in Poland when they're out traveling. They go to us.
So that's why we really want to have that local population. So basically more targeted and more awareness around the. Yeah. And also training our own sales team and own people to talk about these rigid trucks, because it's a different type of customers. I mean, at the end of the day, what our trucks are doing is making money for our customers. And then we need to understand how are they making money for the customers, and we need to understand how can we perform differently to make more money for the customers. That's what we talked about in the beginning. And that's how we sell. We sell a product. We sell something that is vital for the customer's profitability. Now, how can we make more profit for the customer?
These are the sales guys that are going to tell that to these customers, and they need to understand what they're talking about. So preferably, we would like to attract salespeople who are already working in that segment and in that sector and who knows how these are operating. Because it can be small things that are making a huge difference for the customer. Sorry for a long answer to that, but I'm quite passionate about it. Passionate about it.
Just a comment on the rental business. I used to follow Atlas Copco for many years. At some points in time, they decided to go into the rental business. And sure enough, they had all kinds of problems with that market. So it's obvious that it's a special skill to operate rental markets.
Yeah, it is. Absolutely. The same way as it's a special skill to do contracting services or to any of those services that we do. You just need to be best at it, then you don't do that. If you know what you're doing, then you don't do. And also particularly in the U.S., and one thing that Rudd has not done, they haven't really been in that business in the way that other dealers have, even Volvo dealers, or not to mention the competitors that Henrik unfortunately mentioned here before. But so yes, of course, it can go wrong, but it can also go very well.
That's any business.
But you need to know what you're doing, and you need to have good contact with the customers, which is key again, knowing your customer and understanding what's going on at his place, and taking that machine back if you see that something is not happening well, and putting another one in when you see that, oh, he's doing very well. He needs another one, which is the key.
Thank you very much. Any more questions? One more here.
Yes, thank you for your presentation. It was really interesting. Regarding M&A, is it any area in the United States that is more interesting geographically if you would continue to expand?
I mean, I think it goes for geographic expansion in general. We are not categorically against anything, and we will look at anything in an opportunistic way. But the focus is to grow where we stand and to grow based on what we have and to see how we can leverage what we have in the best possible way.
Okay, so it's not like, for example, some geographics in the United States have different climate or different types of mining resources that could be of interest when considering expansion.
No, I mean, the ideal case would be to find something where we as best as good as possible can utilize the resources we have today to professionalize the business we acquire and to maximize the utilization of the resources we have.
Okay, thank you.
Any more questions? Maybe last question. And I'll see. Just refresh here. No. No new questions online either. In that case, I thank you very much for coming here today, both of those of you that came here and those that are online. Again, thank you very much for your interest in Ferronordic. If you do have follow-up questions, you can reach out to me at ir@ferronordic.com. Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you.