Good afternoon and welcome to Loomis Capital Markets Day, both of you here with us in London and those following online. It's great to have you with us here today. My name is Jenny Boström. I head the Investor Relations and Sustainability team at Loomis, and today I have the pleasure of being your moderator for the event. We have a strong lineup of presentations for you today from our CEO, our regional presidents, and our CFO, who will each share their different perspectives on how Loomis will deliver growth and value for the upcoming strategic period. I would also like to point out that we have our full group management team with us here on the first row, so please take the opportunity to mingle with them during the afternoon. The agenda for you is quite straightforward, and we will have five different blocks for you.
First, Aritz will join us here on stage and present an overview of the group and also what we have accomplished during the last three years. Thereafter, he will also give some context and color into our strategic priorities and our new financial and ESG targets, which I'm sure most of you have seen we have already announced this morning. We will end Aritz's presentation with a brief Q&A session of about 10 minutes. For those of you following online, please submit your questions in the online chat. After the Q&A session, we will have George and Björn up on stage sharing their perspectives onto their regions and how they are implementing the group's strategic priorities. Finally, Johan Wilsby will share our capital allocation priorities and how we will continue to deliver shareholder value.
Finally, we invite all of our presenters up on stage for a joint Q&A session before ending the event. It is now time to welcome Aritz Larrea up on stage, and as he wakes his way over, please enjoy this film about Loomis, our role in society, and how we support customer needs.
A decade ago, Loomis was known primarily for secure cash-in-transit services. But over the years, we've evolved, expanding beyond traditional boundaries into adjacent services and digital innovations. Today, Loomis is a company at the forefront of secure, efficient, and inclusive payment solutions, empowering businesses to focus on their growth. Our journey has been defined by adaptation, innovation, and the pursuit of excellence. The pandemic shook the world, and many predicted the end of cash, but cash showed its resilience and importance to society.
We opened a club here in Madrid, totally digital, only using card, but we had to step back and accept the cash again as a payment method because it was not working well.
Cash still plays an important role. Cash is crucial for contingency considerations and for financial inclusions.
By 2022, Loomis emerged stronger, proving that cash remains essential in today's payment ecosystem. Loomis navigated the storm with an agile organization and solid business model. Today, Loomis stands on tradition at the forefront of innovation. From cash-in-transit to automated solutions, we've built a comprehensive portfolio that empowers businesses of all sizes, from central banks and global corporations to local small businesses. Whether through ATMs, FX, SmartSafes, or physical and digital payments, our services streamline cash management, offering security and convenience in an increasingly complex world. As we grow, so too does our commitment to providing solutions that evolve with our customers' needs.
We've always maintained a great working relationship with Loomis, and they've always provided a reliable service.
Now with Loomis, the cash management is much easier, and we have everything under control.
We have been partners with Loomis since 2006. Since then, it's been definitely a great partnership.
As we look ahead, Loomis is driven by momentum, building on our strengths to create new opportunities for growth within current segments and expanding into new ones. Our focus on automation, digital integration, and efficient operations, in combination with a sustainable business model, ensures that we're ready to lead the industry into the future.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Capital Markets Day here in London. It's been an exciting journey for Loomis since our last Capital Markets Day. Back then, we were just emerging from the uncertainty of the COVID period. Today, we're in a much stronger position and ready to deliver greater value. I'll start by sharing our vision to set the stage for our future plans. After that, I will reflect on the progress that we've made these last three years in relation to the goals that we set and the business opportunities that we identified. And lastly, we will dive into the details of our strategic priorities for the following three years. How do we envision our path forward? It's a journey defined by strength, momentum, and value. We've proven to be resilient and our ability to adapt to any kind of environment.
We keep capturing market opportunities, scaling our operations, and driving significant growth. And we keep committed to maximizing return to our shareholders. But let's start by exploring how our company contributes to the world around us. Loomis has a crucial role by providing essential services in society, supporting economic stability, security, financial inclusion, and efficient functioning of businesses. We also have a fundamental role in supporting central banks to ensure that cash is available and that payment flows are functioning in society. We provide secure cash handling services like cash-in-transit, cash management processes, ATM services, supporting banks, retailers, and other institutions that rely on cash transactions. By efficiently managing cash flow and reducing the risks of cash-related losses, we allow our customers to be focused on their core businesses.
By welcoming all types of payments and facilitating access to financial services, we also help to build a more inclusive and resilient society. We have a complete service offering that supports all the customer needs. We can divide this product offering into three categories: core, adjacent, and digital. Our focus has always been historically in cash-in-transit and cash management processes. But when we acquired Viamat in 2014, we also integrated internationally into the core services. We've been investing these last years in our adjacent businesses like ATM services, automated solutions, foreign exchange, to the extent that these businesses today represent 41% of the group's total revenue. Lastly, with Loomis Pay, we have a solution that allows customers to handle all types of payments.
With a workforce of more than 25,000 people and presence in 27 countries, we're a global market leader with the ambition of being number one or number two in the regions where we are present. Our decentralized structure, embodied in the Loomis model, empowers our more than 400 branches to adapt to the unique characteristics of the local market. It also allows us to share best practices across all the organization.
On a rolling 12-month basis, Loomis has generated a revenue of close to SEK 30 billion, of which slightly more than half comes from the U.S. and roughly one-third comes from Western Europe. Looking at our results over the past years, we can see that we have consistently delivered a strong financial performance, except for the two years that were impacted by COVID. As you can see, we have a stable business that has proven to be resilient over time.
If we look at 2023, we achieved record revenues, strong year-over-year growth with stable margins. But looking at the 10-year period, we've had a revenue CAGR of close to 11%. Looking at 2024, as I mentioned before, on a rolling 12-month basis, our revenue is close to SEK 30 billion, and our operating margin is at 11.4%, getting closer to the lower part of the range that we committed to of 12%-14%. Now, let's take a look on how this success translates to value to our shareholders. As you can see, over time, we have consistently delivered an increasing return to our shareholders, ending up in 2024 with the highest dividend ever distributed. In 2021, we implemented the share buybacks to complement this dividend policy. As you can see, this year, combining both the dividend and the share buybacks, we will return close to SEK 1.7 billion to our shareholders.
We will continue to prioritize our capital allocation to deliver the highest value. Looking back at a previous Capital Markets Day in spring 2022, there was a general uncertainty that surrounded our industry, especially in the European region. Despite the difficulties that the pandemic brought forth, we were firmly convinced of the resilience, the strength of our business and organization. And our ambitious goals that we presented then, I think, reflect this optimism. So we presented four targets, two financial and two ESG-related. The two financial targets are an annual compounded growth of 5%-8%, an operating margin of 12%-14% at the end of the strategic period. And on the ESG side, we had a 15% reduction in CO2 emissions versus 2019 and a 15% reduction in workplace injury rates versus 2021.
At that time, the business opportunities that we identified led us to formulate a strategy based upon five core pillars. Basically, our goal here was to continue growing our core business, to leverage the physical and digital offerings that we had, to focus on the high-margin businesses that we had, all this while leading the initiatives in our industry, sustainability initiatives in our industry, and while developing and protecting the Loomis culture. In the following slides, I will highlight the key accomplishments that we achieved and provide concrete evidence of our successful execution. Over the past three years, our core business has experienced an impressive growth of more than 40%, primarily driven by the steady organic expansion of cash-in-transit and cash management services. This growth has been further accelerated by successful integration of strategic acquisitions that have expanded our capabilities and market reach.
If I had to highlight two key factors that have driven our growth, those would be our operational excellence, focus on operational excellence and scalability, and the high-quality services that we have been providing to our customers. Those have strengthened our market position and have deepened our customer relationships as well. Cash continues to play a crucial role in society, not just for payment redundancy reasons, but also from an inclusion perspective. This is something that the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and many central banks have already identified and are taking measures to address. Cash will continue to play a key role in society. As we will see in the following presentations, we as a market leader have a lot of opportunities to keep growing our core business. Another important priority strategy that we had was efficiently integrating, sorry, physical and digital capabilities.
I think the best example of this is the launch of Loomis Pay in early 2023. Spain is a big country, an important country for us, where cash is still a dominant payment method, but you do see digital transactions rising rapidly as well. With our Loomis Pay solution, I mean, we allow customers, we enable customers to handle all types of payments, staying ahead of the curve. This launch in Spain has been a major step of our digital expansion, of our strategy to digital, so expand, sorry, digitally our company globally. To accelerate this digital transformation, we also strategically acquired companies like Cima, Cefide, Hosteltáctil. These acquisitions bring R&D capabilities and cutting-edge technologies that strengthen our market position and expand our product offering. Our strategic focus on recurring revenue has also been a cornerstone of our success in the current strategic period.
The revenue generated by the ATM services and automated solutions has been instrumental to drive growth and financial stability. When we look at the recurring revenue, it has surged from 34% in 2021 to 39% nowadays. This is primarily thanks to the outstanding performance of automated solutions that has increased from 12% to 18% share of our total group's revenue. On a standalone basis, automated solutions have doubled their revenue in the last three years, primarily thanks to the outstanding job done by the U.S. team in this business line. ATM services have also grown above average. As we will see later on in Björn's and George's presentation, there are still a lot of opportunities that we can capture within this business line. Sustainability is not just an add-on. It's a core component of our strategy.
We have aligned our goals with the Science Based Targets initiative, showing our commitment to reducing our environmental footprint. We have reduced CO2 emissions while growing the business. We have invested in renewable energy. That means today represents more than 20% of the energy that we use. Additionally, we have issued SEK 4 billion in sustainability-linked financing, showing our financial commitment to sustainable practices as well. We had a main focus on health and safety of our employees, and we have been able to reduce our workplace injury rates by more than 20%. On the governance side, we have strengthened our governance framework by updating our code of conduct and supplier code. We have reinforced key areas like risk, compliance, financial crime prevention to ensure ethical and transparent business practices.
This leads us to the outcome of our targets, where we can see that these past three years, we've done significant progress. From a revenue perspective, we went way ahead of our expectations, ending up at an 11.9% on a rolling 12-month basis. Our operating margin at 11.4, year-to-date it's 11.6, is a bit below the 12%-14% range that we had committed to. That target is still within reach, as we commented during our third quarter review, but it's going to be challenging. On the ESG side, we made a significant progress. Our CO2 emissions, despite growing the business, reduced by more than 20%, and we reduced our workplace injuries by 22%, surpassing the 15% that we had committed to. So our journey continues. With a solid track record behind us, we are now entering the next phase of our evolution.
We're building on our achievements and entering a new strategic phase where we will keep growing in our established markets by expanding to other customer segments. We will improve our operations to be more efficient and scalable, pursue strategic acquisitions that can expand our size and product offering, and all this while still being the preferred business leader in sustainability in our industry. Our company has undergone a strong transformation, a significant transformation over the past 15-20 years, shifting from a pure transportation company to a sophisticated provider of digital and physical payments. Over the past years, we have been focused on meeting the complex needs of larger banks and larger retailers, building a robust infrastructure that enables us to support secure and efficient payment solutions. Smaller retailers were never under our radar. We were only focused on high density and high transaction volumes.
However, we see that we could adapt our infrastructure to these smaller businesses and cover their needs. As we will see in George and Björn's presentation, the addressable market of SMEs in both regions can amount up to close to three million locations. Moving forward, our approach is going to be focused on two key areas. The first one is to maximize growth in our existing customer segments, and the second one will be to expand to the SME segment. Starting with our current customers, we still see many of our customers seeking to outsource their processes, and we are well-positioned to support them there. We can streamline their processes, we can reduce their costs, and we can improve their efficiency as well. Our strategy here is driven by the challenges that they are facing every day. They need help in managing cash in an efficient way.
They have labor shortages, they have rising labor costs, while they need to optimize also the return on their investments, and they keep all the time focused on trying to reduce the risks associated with cash, such as theft and fraud. With the wide range of automated solutions that we have and the R&D expertise of our team, we can provide our customers with customized solutions that cover all these needs. At the same time that we keep growing with our current customer segments, we see that smaller businesses also want to have access to our high-quality services, and our goal is to offer tailor-made solutions to them to cover those needs. Looking at the SMEs today, they still have a dependency on cash. More than 40% of the in-person transactions are done in cash. The problem is the access to the banking infrastructure is getting more and more challenging.
Since 2008, we've seen that bank branches have closed in Europe and the U.S. 57% of the bank branches have closed in Europe and 23% have closed in the U.S. At the same time, another challenge that small and medium enterprises are facing is the rising of digital payments that have increased at a pace of 15% over the past five years. By offering tailor-made solutions and addressing these challenges, we can help these businesses make their cash management processes more efficient, reduce costs, and allow them to focus on their business. We need to tailor our automated solutions to the needs that these businesses have and just cover them with our all-in-one bundled solution, covering all the payments that they have to deal with. That way, again, we can let them focus on their core businesses.
The business landscape in our industry is changing, and it's driven by three major trends: increased consolidation, rapid digitalization, and a growing demand for customized solutions. Our growth strategy to leverage these trends is to strengthen our position in the countries where we're in by being active in industry consolidation, entering new markets, exploring high-growing markets and entering them, keep investing in our digital capabilities, and then, last but not least, focus on customizing solutions to cover the specific customer needs. Our M&A strategy is designed to drive growth, enhance synergies, and expand our product and service offering across all our three segments: core, adjacent, and digital. Regarding the core business, as I said, we're going to keep investing in the countries where we're present. I think we've proven to be really good at enhancing the synergies.
The last example we had is buying SecurePost in Switzerland, where just the first year, and that was 2023, we were capable to see a positive impact of 85% of the enterprise value that we paid for just the first year. LATAM is a great region to expand. They have great growing countries, and we're already present there with Argentina and Chile, but that's going to be our primary focus when expanding into high-growing markets. On the international business side, we're going to expand our product portfolio, mainly focusing on diamond and jewelry and the pharma businesses. On the adjacent side, starting with automated solutions, we're fully covered now with the acquisition we did in Cima. We do have some space there to bring a software integrator that can help us build those end-to-end solutions to the customers, but not much more that we want to do there.
When it comes to the ATM services, let's start by saying that we're not prioritizing buying machines and having to fund the money of those machines. We're just focused on ATM service companies, but if the opportunity comes, we will look into it, as we did with Automatia in Finland, which has proven to be a successful acquisition as well. On the digital side, as I said before, the plan is to expand globally, and there the focus will be on acquiring point-of-sale companies to get the software or either the teams whenever we launch in a new country. As we will see during Björn's and George's presentation, operational excellence is the foundation of our profitable and sustainable growth. We're building a robust and scalable infrastructure that enables us to adapt to changing market demands and seizing new opportunities.
This obviously includes common platforms, common processes across all organizations that empower them our local teams to scale efficiently. Our approach to operational excellence is focused on three areas: shared platforms, innovation, and automation. We are creating shared tools and systems to drive growth across all our countries. By adopting new technology, we're streamlining operations and enhancing our services, and finally, we are automating our workflows to speed up and to reduce manual work. By focusing on these three areas, we will be able to build a truly scalable and agile organization that can provide value to the customers and support sustainable growth. Lastly, the fourth pillar in our strategy is to be the leading sustainable business partner in the industry. We structure our sustainability commitments into three areas: environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and governance and compliance.
On the environmental side, we're committed to reducing the environmental footprint of the total cash cycle from production and processing to transportation and end of life. We've been really good at optimizing our transportation, shifting to electric vehicles, to more lighter vehicles as well. Björn will touch upon the U.S. fleet transition in his presentation. One of our main focuses in this strategic period is going to be the resource use and the waste reduction. We actually have a plan in Europe where we will refurbish the machines that we're using for automated solutions instead of replacing them for new ones. That way, we will reduce waste, save some money, and then pass along those savings to our customers as well. From a social perspective, the main target is still the health and safety of our employees.
But we're also going to put some focus due to the nature of our work in attracting and retaining talent as well. We are committed to building skills, promoting fairness, and creating an inclusive and diverse workplace to support people's well-being. Finally, on the governance and compliance side, we are a trusted partner of the central banks, commercial banks, and retailers, and we need to ensure that not only we are legally compliant, but also from a business ethics perspective as well. Our focus is not just on how committed we are on doing what we do, but it's also the people that work on our behalf have to be as committed as we are. So we're going to have a strong focus on responsible procurement during this strategic period as well. So we went through the strategic priorities and the key areas where we're going to focus.
So now it's time to see how we're going to measure that success. Sorry. By focusing on both financial and performance and sustainability, we will continue delivering value to our stakeholders while we ensure our company's long-term success at the same time. The focus on revenue growth and operating margin remains crucial for us in this strategic period. And our commitment to reducing CO2 emissions and reducing workplace injury rates also aligns with the broader sustainability goals. So our main targets for the 2025-2027 strategic period will be a compound annual growth rate of 5%-7%. Be careful when comparing this to our previous strategic period. At that time, it was 5%-8%, but we were exiting, we're coming out of the COVID period. So remember that at the beginning of those years, we're going to have a higher growth.
Our operating margin, we keep it at 12%-14%. We talked about being very challenging to reach 12%. We think that we want to keep during this entire strategic period within that range, and we have the aspiration to end at the mid-upper part by the end of the strategic period. The reduction of CO2 emissions by 34%, sorry, versus 2019 would be our third target. And the fourth one will remain on reducing the workplace injury rates by 10% versus 2024. And with this, I finalize with my presentation. We're now ready for Q&A. Thank you, Aritz. Very interesting to hear your thoughts on our strategic direction. A lot of hands up here, but we can start with the one there. Please wait until you have the microphone. And I said wrong name now. I meant Dan Yuan. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.
Thank you so much for taking my questions and for the first part of the presentation. Maybe I'll start with a margin target and perhaps a little bit on the building blocks there to take you towards the midpoint and perhaps a bit above that. Would you say that Europe is sort of the key in taking you there? I mean, USA is performing at quite high levels already, or is it sort of an even contribution between your two operational segments as you see it right now?
No, you're spot on. I mean, it's clearly Europe and LATAM. And the thing is, in this current strategic period, I mean, we had certain delays on the restructuring plans that we have been executing, and that probably has been what has not allowed us to clearly surpass that 12%. We're still within reach. I mean, we don't know what will happen, but definitely it's Europe, Europe and LATAM.
Okay. Thank you. And maybe if I can follow up a bit on that, you've done some refinements of the European business. How would you say the business looks today compared to where you want it to be? Is there more to do, or are you sort of in a good place where you can sort of harvest ahead now?
We always have more to do. I mean, this company is constantly adapting their structure to the new volume norm. So there's always going to be things to do. But I think we're on the right pace. I mean, once we end up executing the restructuring plans we have, we're going to be in the right place. There are still things to do in certain countries, but we will get there. And again, as you will see in George's presentation, part of the strategy is also going to be to look at the geographical footprint and where we could be profitable or not.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I'll steal it first. Karl-Johan Bonnevier, DNB Markets. If I then may ask on the revenue growth target of 5%-7%, obviously the last period, you were very much driven by the adjacent service. How do you see that mix coming up towards the end of the period? And is it the same kind of opportunity in all geographies there?
I would say the biggest opportunity will come from the adjacent services. Mainly could be ATM, the business. We are going to be also active on the digital side, but those acquisitions are going to be smaller. You're talking about smaller acquisitions to adapt to local markets. So I would say it's fair to say that it will come from the adjacent services. But we're still looking into growing the core as well.
Thank you.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Suhasini from Goldman Sachs. Just a couple from me, please. Loomis Pay, can you discuss your plans for investments, and do you have a timeline on when you want to reach break-even? The second one is on the focus on SMEs. It's clear that the addressable market is pretty large over here, but it probably can come with higher costs as well because the density can be a little bit lower. So how do you think about the margins versus the revenue opportunity in this segment?
Thank you. Okay. So I would say that both questions are related. The first one, starting with Loomis Pay, we're making a lot of progress, and the strategy we have today is not the strategy that we had when we presented the previous Capital Markets Day. So back then, it was more of a standalone business and try to grow it as much as possible. When I arrived to the CEO position, I changed that strategy there. And the beauty of our solution is when you combine cash and digital. That's what makes us different.
If you're only digital, I mean, anyone can compete with you. There's no competitive advantage. So our advantage is the cash. And that's why I'm talking about expanding in countries where cash is still strong. Right? That's one. And then back to the SMEs, we have the infrastructure already. We probably go with our truck past those locations. So the answer is no.
I mean, we were looking at, as I said before, high transaction volumes, high density. The density is going to be there because I'm sure that we pass along those stores every day. And then it's just about the two, three minutes you spend on picking up the money and taking it then. Then we've got all the machinery investment done and all that. So it's a win-win for us. Thank you.
[Joa] Kim from Citi. So my first question, when looking at your map, you're present in the U.S., you have Europe expanding in LATAM. I lived in Asia for 15 years close, and Japan is a cash country. So I'm just thinking, why haven't you expanded in Asia? In particular, like I said, Japan, South Korea, both very cash-heavy countries. So that's my first question.
If you would ask our board, they would say it's too far away, but we've looked into Asia as well. The problem is either the opportunities that we had there were not at the price that we were willing to pay. That is one, and then the future was also a bit uncertain in those countries. I'm not talking about volume-wise and how strong cash was there. It was more about legal requirements and what you need. You always needed to depend or rely on local partners. We're not very keen on doing, but we have been looking at Asia, but it's not on the priority of our expanding to new countries,
and then a follow-up question, completely unrelated, but if you look long-term, let's say 20, 30 years, how do you see the decrease of cash over time in society?
I joined this company 10 years ago. And 10 years ago, when I arrived to Sweden, that's where we have the headquarters, people tell me, "What are you doing? I mean, cash is disappearing." 10 years ago. And I just told you that in our presentation that the last 10 years, we had a revenue CAGR of close to 11%. Cash will not disappear, for sure. Now, what volumes of cash will we have in society? I don't know. Alejandro, which is now new to the team, always uses the same example, and I've used it several times.
And that is, I mean, long ago, we didn't have the elevators, and you had the stairs to go up to whatever floor you lived in. When the elevators came in, the stairs did not disappear. The stairs are still there. What happens when there's no power? You take the stairs. So this is going to be the same.
I mean, and we're seeing that. We're seeing that in countries that have taken the decision to try and go cashless, Sweden as the last example, they are backing up. And then I'm saying, "No, you know what? We need to rethink this again and all that." So I don't see the end of cash very near, to be honest.
So we have time for one final question here from the audience. Great. Thank you, Aritz. And you will be back on stage later as well for the joint Q&A session. Thank you. And with that, we can clap. And now it's time to welcome our President and CEO of the European and Latin American segment, George, up on stage. For those of you that have followed Loomis for a while, you'll know that he has been at every capital markets day since we were listed.
He actually joined Loomis through an, or what is now Loomis, through an acquisition back in 1991. So welcome, George.
Good afternoon, everyone. As Jenny mentioned before, I started in the business, in the company, close to 40 years ago. The business was totally different than today. We transformed our business many times. I participate in all Capital Markets Days. In our history of the company, we have some pictures of Buffalo Bill, and maybe I'm close to him. Yes. Last month, we announced some changes in the organization. 1st of January, I will be the global COO of the company. I will focus more on operations. I will focus more to put together or closer U.S. and Europe operations. In my current position as COO and president of Europe and LATAM, we will have Alejandro Corominas. Yes.
Alejandro is today the regional vice president of LATAM, Spain, and Turkey. Before, he was the country president of Spain when Aritz moved to the US. Today, we will talk about how we recover the core business, how we increase our adjacent business too, and how we will accelerate our SMEs expansion. First of all, I will show the map, all the countries we are working in Loomis and LATAM. Internally, we will say Björn is running US and running the rest of the company. We have three countries in LATAM. We have 15 countries in Europe, Turkey, and four hubs in Asia with Loomis International Transport. In our Loomis model, our strategy is to be the number one or number two in the countries. You have this position. You have a volume. Of course, for us, the more important is the margin.
But it's important if you want in our business to have a volume. On the other hand, if you have the first or the second position, you can lead the market, and you are close to the administration. It changes the laws. We have many countries like France, Spain, Switzerland. In the Nordics, we have a number one. In other countries, we have many countries. We have the second position. As you can see, we suffered. In 2021, we suffered the pandemic with the COVID. And our organization in Europe and LATAM is very large. We suffered the pandemic in different parts of the world at different times. Sometimes they have a lockdown in some countries. In other times, they open some countries. But you can see that after the pandemic, the business came back. And we continue growing. For example, this year, it's continued growing too. And what happened?
Society wanted to use cash. And you can see in our revenue per business line, our adjacent business is growing a lot. One-third of our business is in ATMs, in automatic solutions, and FAEs. Many countries, the governments, with the economic situation after COVID and with some conflicts in some areas like the Ukraine war, many governments decided to take care of the cash and to put close to the society, to the population, the cash. They created legislations to accept the cash in the stores. And now they are thinking in some countries to put the penalties if they don't accept. 42% in store payments are made by cash. The banks decided to focus on the core business. And they closed bank branch offices. And they don't manage the cash.
We need to manage the services of these retailers because the retailers, in many countries, they have in the same streets or very close. They have the banks to deposit the cash and to have coins and notes for starting the next day. Now they need solutions. We are offering different solutions for different types of customers. The demands of the SMEs are very high today. How we grow our core business. Many years ago, we have services in banks, for example, in bank branch offices only. After it, we have standalone ATMs. After the bank branch office, we have the ATMs and the other type of business. Now, for example, with the central bank, we are now the supplier of central banks in Europe and LATAM. We are more the partners.
We have the deposits of notes of the central bank in our premises. We have in some premises that we rent part of them of the premises to the central banks. And in some countries, we are having cash handlers, employees with Loomis uniform going to the central bank to process the bottleneck of the cash they have. With the up and down of interest rates and with the price of gold, our business international, our transport business of international and deposits growth a lot. We have in more places international transport. And we have storage of bank notes and precious metals like gold, silver, or, for example, palladium. And cash availability is not only the responsibility of the governments to take care of the cash, the industry. We need to do it too. How we manage it?
For example, in Loomis with the solution of Loomis Pay, with the global payments. And on the other hand, for example, we have ATMs. We have agreements with many villages in, for example, in France and in Belgium to have agreements to have Loomis ATMs. These villages didn't have bank branch offices. They closed. And we have agreements with the city halls to have Loomis ATMs 24 hours. For that, we contribute to the flow of the cash. We are crucial for this type of services. And you can see the adjacent business is growing exponentially in more automatic solutions and ATMs. Before the COVID, we have acquisitions in core business. For example, in France, we bought Prosegur. We bought, as Aritz mentioned, SecurePost in Switzerland. We bought Nokas in Sweden, G4S in Turkey. It was core business.
Of course, we have another acquisition like the FX business in France, CPOR, running 90% of the total FX. But after COVID, we have a strategic acquisition. We have two strategics like Cima and Cefide. Cima, Aritz mentioned before. Cima is a manufacturer and is offering solutions for big retailers, for all the different retailers. And Cefide is a financial services with a money license in Europe. Cefide is helping us in automatic solutions and in ATMs with the debit/credit, for example. And it's supporting our services in Loomis Pay. And another strategic acquisition is Automatia, Aritz mentioned before, in Finland. It's an ATM group of banks with a high level and having a total country in Finland. One important thing in this acquisition is it's a good business, but on the other hand, we bought knowledge.
Knowledge to have other types of acquisitions of this type and to develop and to offer for other customers. As Aritz mentioned before, in Europe and LATAM, we follow the sustainability strategy. We reduce the CO2 emissions. We are using biodiesel after the pilots we have in France. We are using in other countries. And we are focused on employee safety to try to reduce dangers and to offer good conditions in our premises, in our trucks to them. And now the more important part is the strategic period we have, three years. This is a big example. We are focused on customer. Customer now, as I mentioned before, the banks decided to close. And we need to offer different solutions for retailers with different sizes. We are focused on operation efficiency. As Aritz mentioned before, we need to transform the business, not to change the business, to transform.
We are focused on ATMs and automated solutions. For example, with Loomis Pay, we are offering the global services of SMEs. When I was mentioned to transform, in terms of operations, we need to have for the adjacent business new profile of employees, new profile for managers to attack this type of business. The banks decided to close the bank branch office and not to focus on cash. And before, when we have a tender, we depend on, in many countries, many years ago, on a few number of customers. When the bank decided to close and we offer the services for the retailers, we depend on many countries on thousands of customers. The plan with the SMEs is to depend on hundreds of thousands of customers in the present and future.
When we are in the last Capital Markets Day, we announced that we have a global organization in Europe and LATAM, and we were focusing on standards. For example, in this period, I remember we have 14 different operational tools, and now we have one in LATAM and two maximum we have in Europe. We were working on standards in terms of trucks, in terms of machines, in terms of many things in the company according to the different countries' legislation, currency, etc. As mentioned, Aritz, we are focused on our markets in LATAM and in Europe. We continue in these markets, and for example, Cima. Cima is working in other countries, and we have no domestic business. They are working together directly. In LATAM, they are working, of course, in our countries and Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, and Central America. They have in Panama and Mexico.
For that, we are analyzing the countries that they have cash. Their cash is king. On the other hand, we are analyzing the countries that have a big number of SMEs. And we invest in a new strategy in sales. After COVID, we created in Europe and LATAM a sales organization with different profiles of commercials. Now we have a hunter of commercials to attack the small retailers. On the other hand, we have an organization to have control and to have standards in terms of the proposal, the base of the proposals of customers. As you can see, in five years, the automated solutions market growth a lot. With Cima, we have the opportunity to offer different proposals for different customers in terms of size.
For example, with the number of employees they have, with the shift they have, and the idea is to take care of the risk of the store, the risk of the employees, of, of course, control of the business. ATMs. We started to manage the ATMs with withdrawal and delivering the ATMs, the standalone. After it, we started with the ATMs in bank branch office. When the COVID arrived, Loomis was the company that went to the bank branch office to manage the ATMs. And we continue having it. And after it, we have a business with the independent deployers too. We start with CIT and with cash management. After it, we increased the business with the first-line maintenance, second-line maintenance, with forecasting business. We have control of the machines. For that, we decide when we go to the ATMs. We have control.
Maybe we reduce the number of stops, but we reduce the CO2 or the emissions too at the same time. But we are not offering prices for a stop or for processing the cash. We are offering a package of this business. This is the key. On the other hand, we continue having ATMs for our customers. And we have like Automatia. We have a possibility to have a park of machines. In our strategy globally, it's not to buy iron, not to buy all the parks or park of the ATMs that have the banks. But it's clear that we can have some example like Automatia. We can have some park of ATMs in some countries strategically. You can see the banks in our markets. They have 300,000 ATMs. And the independent deployers, they have 50,000. We are managing 14% of the total of ATMs in Europe and LATAM.
Our plan, our strategy is to have a double. Double will be close to 100,000 ATMs with the two formulas. Having ATMs with Loomis brand, as I mentioned before, in the villas or in the airports. We have in the airports ATMs with the foreign currency. We have in the train stations. We have in big retailers. SME market. 23-25 million SMEs we have in our market, 50% of the European GDP. But we estimate to address 1 million of the SMEs. More important thing, 50% in store payment, I buy cash. We are adapting, as I mentioned before, our core business and offering to the SMEs. We are expanding our digital solution to new verticals. As mentioned before, Aritz, we want to cover the global pyramid. We have a possibility with local acquisitions or with integrating the third party in POS.
We want to offer a modular solution for the SMEs. They can decide a global package with automated solution, CIT and cash management only, and with the Loomis Pay payments. Today, nobody's thinking to buy a house without alarm. Now, today and in the future, any store will open without automated solution and Loomis services. We believe in our plan. We have a strong plan. We will grow in revenue and in margins. We have more opportunities in the core business and retailers that I said before. The banks continue having some cash centers. In LATAM, for example, many banks, they continue having trucks and cash handling companies. We have opportunities too. In Europe, in some countries, Switzerland or Austria, they have a cash center. You have opportunity too. We will prepare new modular offers for the SMEs. Remember, cash is here.
I will never disappear. Thank you very much.
Thank you, George. And you will, of course, be back here as well for the joint Q&A session. So for those of you following online, please do remember you can submit your questions throughout the event. It is now time for us to take a break here. Please be back here at 2:30 P.M. U.K. time. For those of you here in London and have not yet seen it, outside the venue here, we do have our innovation station where you can enjoy our SafePoint Compact, which is our smaller automated solutions. We also have an in-lane device, which is our front office solution from Cima. You can also display our Loomis Pay devices and our Hosteltáctil POS. Thank you.
Great to have you all back after the break. Let's take a look at the U.S. Being in the US now for two and a half years, I can tell you that we have seen great market recovery. Looking ahead, we see multiple high-level growth opportunities in front of us, and I see a bright future for Loomis US in the next strategical period. I will take you now on a little trip, a 20-minute trip, and I will show you how in the past we drove margin, how we achieved highest revenues, and how we leveled up Loomis US, and I will also show you how we plan to strengthen our positioning by capturing the upside market momentum in this very competitive world.
So let us take a dive now into Loomis US, where I will be walking you through the highlights of how we will grow core and adjacent in sustainable growth, how we will do M&A, and how M&A will play an important role looking forward, and how we plan to expand into the SME space in the U.S. But before this, let's take a brief look at the organization. Loomis US is offering cash handling and cash transportation all over the U.S. This means in all states, including Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. We operate 178 branches with 10,000 employees roughly, delivering SEK 16 billion every year. Outside the U.S., we have two branches, one in Toronto, Canada, and one in Israel, Tel Aviv. We are headquartered in Houston, Texas, same as CIMA US, which we got by acquisition lastly.
Let's look at some financial data as well. As mentioned in the opening, Loomis US, or the US market in general, has fully recovered after COVID. We are seeing record revenues and record EBITDA margins being generated. This is thanks to a great business mix that we have in between CMS, CIT as core, and on the other side between ATM and SafePoint. All this topped up by our international branches and our international business. Strongest growth we have seen in the past period in ATM and in SafePoint. A little bit more to that later on. Let's take a look at some industry trends that drive our business. So we have the right to cash movement, means the right to pay with cash in the US trending up, several states adopting the legislation.
We have cash discounting on one side, credit card surcharges on the other side, and privacy concerns with payers like everybody like us here, fueling CIT and cash usage in general. On the retailer side, we have labor markets still with issues finding these people that they need to have in their shops to attend customers. We have security concerns on their side, and we have high interest rates. All this drives these retailers to automation, meaning to our SafePoint solution. We have continued growth, outsourcing growth from banks, meaning bank branches and ATM, and also this driving our business in general. All this means delivering afterwards a healthy mix and strong increases in recurring revenues. We have a very solid base in SafePoint with a high renewal of contracts of existing clients, topped up with a lot of new customers coming in, as I just explained before.
So we have seen a 95% growth in the last period for SafePoint, just followed slightly behind with the ATM by 44%. Trends. Trends are important, but what does a trend mean to you if you do not identify them? You have to catch it. You have to catch the trend. You have to surf the wave afterwards. You have to bring the business home. You need to integrate the business in your operation, and you need to do that profitably. So early on in 2022, coming out of COVID, we saw that we need to kind of adapt the way we work and that we needed some efficiency programs. So we started with an efficiency program in CIT, which generated up to now benefits of 9% compared to previous levels.
Not even 12 months ago, kind of I think it was December last year, we started with the second efficiency program in CMS, our vaults. In only 11 months, we were able to increase processing speed and gaining processing general volume with 9% cost impact, negatively of course, meaning reducing. All this usually could mean that you kind of leverage on your quality, but this was not the case with us. Thanks to digging into these processes, we redefined a lot of these processes and actually increased service quality in the same period by astonishing 42%. This created a lot of capacity for us to take on new business, which we actually did very successfully. But not enough.
The new business was helping us with economies of scale effects, and we were even able to reduce our staffing, operational staffing at the same time by taking on more business by 7% less. Parallel to that, we continue to invest into our branches and in our machinery park, creating even more capacity to gain more business and to attract more customers. And last but not least, also to create a safer and better workspace for our employees. We also streamlined our international business, meaning integrated the last mile, the trucking mile into our domestic organization, found new ways of getting capacity in, and integrated also our last acquisition, AIB, successfully into our business. AIB is the company operating from Tel Aviv, which I showed before, to the U.S., mostly to New York in the diamonds and jewelry shipping.
In order to do all this successfully, we need a great fleet. We need a modern fleet, but not only does it have to be modern; now it also has to be clean. So we are investing heavily into EV trucks. By the end of 2025, we will be operating 170 EV trucks in the US, the largest EV fleet in the US in our industry. Not enough with that, we will also switch to biofuel wherever this is available in the US. On top of this, we will continue the ongoing fleet shifting from heavy-duty vehicles to light-duty vehicles. This will create a positive impact on our carbon footprint as it is reducing the amount of fuel that we need because these new vehicles are more fuel efficient.
Also, these newer vehicles come with modern technology and support our drivers, thus creating a better environment for them, and we will actually be counting on that we have less incidents, less accidents, and less injury time thanks to this as well. I brought you a short story, also real-life story from New York. We have our first EV fleet there in the streets. I think it's five trucks, and thanks to this commitment that we did to New York, to the Metropolitan of New York, they have granted us with an idling exemption. Idling exemption means that usually when you have a truck, a CIT truck sitting on the pavement waiting for the messenger to do the pickup or the delivery, the truck is running. It can be either hot or very cold in New York, and within this metal box, it's becoming even hotter or colder.
It is imperative that we keep the engine running and the AC running or the heating. But there was, or still is, a rule in New York that when you see a truck sitting outside of a business, you can actually film it with your cell phone. If you do that for an unbroken period of five minutes, hand in the video afterwards, we get penalized and you, as the transmitter of that little film, get the participation of the fine. So there was a kind of industry coming on in this. And we unfortunately saw, obviously we were a target. You see our trucks very easily with a lot of fines coming on.
So for us, a super successful story, how we first of all integrated sustainability to our business with the positive leverage on the P&L, and we created clean air for New York, for the citizens of New York. So very proud of this one, more to come in the future. Let's look forward now. Let's go to the next strategic period. In core, we want to gain market share by delivering high-quality service, and we want to do M&A when opportunity is given. We want to capture customer volume, as I mentioned before, with optimal staffing. We want to continue to invest in automation technologies to streamline processes, to create capacity, because as I mentioned, there is a lot of business still being outsourced from banks. There's a lot of business still in cash vaults being there that we would like to take over.
We talked about automated solution, mainly SafePoint. There was the question before if this growth will continue when Aritz was here on stage, and I can tell you, yes, it will. We foresee strong growth for the next period also in SafePoint. We believe it's going to be about 66% for the next three years. And with our approximate market share of 25% in the U.S., we believe to be fantastically positioned to take a lot of this. But we're not resting. We're also investing into our own future. So with Cima and Cima Power , we want to bring new machines to the market. We want to bring recyclers and front office solutions like an in-lane solution that you have seen outside here in the corridor. We want to enhance our digital capabilities with present and future partners.
We want to integrate deeper into the software processes of our clients and like this create a stronger bond with them. We want to strengthen our offer through acquisitions of software and/or service providers to create this unique one-stop shopping experience for our clients when they go with SafePoint. Whatever they need in future, they get it from us. Similar to our SafePoint strategy is also what we plan to do in ATM. In ATM, the market is about $1.8 billion of revenue opportunity, and there is presently 520,000 machines out there in the market, whereas we serve hundred thousands of these. The market is split 60-40 between independent merchants and financial institutions. The market is solid. We actually see and hear tendencies, proven tendencies that SafePoint, sorry, ATMs will increase again.
The large banks, U.S. banks have announced to increase not only ATM again, but also enlarge their footprint with bank branches. So here also, we would like to acquire a service provider, but this here is like a first or second line service provider and offering us the possibility again to bring a 360 offer to our clients. Everything they need comes from us, service-wise. Aritz talked about going into digital, and yes, we go into digital. I've been asked that many times. When is the U.S. going to this? But we have kind of been in digital, maybe not that much, but unlike Europe, we have already been in the M of the SME. So for us, it's more like drilling deeper and going into the S, into smaller segment as well. So what we want to do is in line with the global Loomis strategy.
So we want to combine digital and cash payments with our traditional services to support SME retailers. In the US, there's a lot of demand for a service like that. We want to avoid, obviously, that these retailers go only digital. So we want to uphold cash, giving them the opportunity to accept dual payment strategy with us. This we want to do with new Cima technology, new Cima machines. So again, combining not only CIT, CMS, but also SafePoint and enlarge the footprint with going digital and making our market bigger. We want to acquire early-stage POS companies in different verticals. We want to combine them on our platform and go through market with this. We have already acquired the first POS company, which is supposed to become our base software on which we would like to integrate all these future acquisitions.
There is an approximate market of 1.8 million out there, which we are going to address. This is the addressable market that we identified for this product that we are designing right now. So in a nutshell, let me conclude with four easy bullet points for you to take home, digest, and think about what we're going to do. So number one, we will deliver organic growth for core and automated solutions by continued market momentum capturing through high-quality service. We will add market share through M&A when opportunity is given. We want to increase our customer experience with ATM and SafePoint by topping up our service with maintenance providers. And we want to accelerate POS growth, combine platforms, provide integrated digital and cash offers for SMEs as they demand from us. With this, I finished the presentation for Loomis US, and I'll ask my colleague Johan up on stage.
Thanks, Björn. Hi everyone. Great to see all of you here in the room and online. I joined Loomis about a year back after more than 20 years in various tech companies, among them Microsoft and HP. I'm here to talk about how we run the business from a financial and governance perspective today, and maybe most importantly, how we drive shareholder value. My first 12 months with the company have certainly been exciting and providing me with a lot of insights, how we can grow top line in a very solid way, how resilient a lot of our businesses are, but also how we've been managing some of the headwinds in recent quarters, and I'm thinking about cyclical headwinds in international and a couple of challenging markets in Europe.
Despite these current headwinds, we have been gradually improving our performance during the year, and in my view, the main pillar of our strategy has been validated. We continue to plan, execute, and generate value in a dynamic environment, and that provides us with additional insights and also new opportunities. Today, I will explain our planning for the next few years, which is a journey about growth, increased profitability, value creation, and also solid total returns. I will start out with an overview of our performance and then share some key metrics for the past few years, then we shift gears into the drivers behind our outlook and how we see opportunities to expand. I will walk you through our targets and some guiding metrics, and then in the final section, share some more color about our capital allocation framework.
As you can see in the metrics behind me, we have a consistent track record of growth and resilience, even with macro impacts like COVID-19 and geopolitical uncertainties. Our growth in established markets has been solid and in many cases ahead of competition, and this is based on our diversified revenue base and our focus on service quality. We have achieved solid organic growth, and Aritz, Björn, and George talked to you about the strong market positions we have, which are behind that. On top of that, we've added nine acquisitions, and all in all, this has resulted in a strong 7% revenue CAGR for the last four years. Our profitability was obviously negatively impacted by COVID, but where countries kept societies open, our model showed resilience.
A beta CAGR of 6% is actually the combination of those COVID headwinds, but also how we transformed ourselves and how we drove efficiencies. We have proven that over the years. We have provided solid cash flow conversion at over 90%, and that provides us the opportunity to reinvest in organic growth, do M&A, and distribute capital to our shareholders. Earlier this spring, we made public our issued credit rating that we were assigned by Standard & Poor's in April. The outcome was a triple B flat with a stable outlook, and we have a strong balance sheet aligned to our ambition to have an investment-grade rating. In terms of ESG performance, the team has talked about the various activities and initiatives we have in that area. I want again to highlight our track record in terms of how we reduce our climate footprint.
We're actually our climate reduction ambitions, they're actually aligned to growth ambitions in this company. So even with strong revenue growth, we have succeeded in reducing our direct emissions from our own operations by 23% per kilometer driven. Now I intend to go a bit deeper into how we've been able to provide a solid recovery following COVID. Revenues have been up by more than 50% since COVID, when some of our stakeholders were questioning our ability to recover from lockdowns and changing consumer behavior during these years. Every year, we have managed to generate double-digit growth in our automated solutions business, which transitioned us into higher recurring revenue shares, but also more of a favorable margin mix.
When I joined the company, it was very clear to me that we have a strong culture around optimizing our operations and also being accountable for the contribution margin out in the markets. You've heard George and Björn talk about the examples of these activities to drive that efficiency, and I believe it has been even more present in the post-COVID period when we have had high levels of inflation and high interest levels. We have captured material efficiencies in areas like indirect staffing, route optimization, and effective staff planning. Within these efficiencies, we see evidence of scalability after we invest in processes and automation. All of this has led to our EBITDA growing by more than 70% post-COVID. Building scalable solutions, that's part of our strategy, and it's my plan as the CFO to drive scalability actively while being compliant to local regulations and focusing on local entrepreneurship.
This means continuing to develop and accelerate our optimization framework and invest in future scalability levers. I strongly believe this will move the needle in terms of margin expansion, and I think it is important to drive scalability while we transform. Our cash flow conversion has been strong, and our free cash flow is up 150% since COVID. This is a result of obviously our growing operating results, our working capital management, but also a well-established framework for managing our investments into the business. From a financial strategy perspective, we believe in balancing our strong balance sheet with moderate leverage over time, and this has allowed us to be active in the M&A space and provide attractive returns to the shareholders. All of these levers together have materially increased our shareholder distribution the last few years, in total 3.8 billion SEK to our shareholders.
We have not only been providing a solid cash payment yield, but our EPS have bounced back and grown with a very significant CAGR. And this means very solid and increasing total shareholder returns. Let me quickly address, you can go back one slide. Let me quickly address the current year, 2024. As we communicated in our Q3 report, we worked very hard to reach all our four targets for the current strategic period. We had a solid third quarter overall. Nevertheless, it will be challenging for us to reach the operating margin target of 12%-14% for this year. We don't plan to issue more guidance around that because it's still possible to reach the target, although being a challenge. Let's now shift gear to the coming three years and discuss our outlook.
When we are done and have completed our current review and restructuring efforts in the European market portfolio, we believe we have presence in attractive markets. We're both in established markets and some markets with higher growth, and in many of them, we have a market leadership position, and we're able to differentiate based on product offering, service quality, and also being compliant to local regulations. We see continued market opportunities in terms of automated solutions ahead of us, and by opening up a new customer segment opportunity, we can actually extend the addressable market for our existing assets in core, adjacent, and the digital space. In terms of execution, we continue to refine our decentralized model by driving even more of scalability going forward. We see continued opportunities in the larger markets, but also we see opportunities around more collaboration and standardization in our smaller and medium-sized markets.
In addition, we see opportunities to optimize and standardize our software platforms and hence drive even more scalability. Integrated into our execution framework, we have our ESG efforts where we are progressing well. The company is committed to be aligned to worldwide climate agreements and to assume a leadership position in this aspect as well. Our people are crucial in servicing our customers, and keeping them safe and healthy is a must, and both our enterprise risk management as well as our focused drive on reducing employee injuries contribute to this good trend. With our market positions, our decentralized operating model, we can optimize the business to drive stable cash flow conversions and solid returns. Now it's time to give you a summary of our internal value creation framework. That is that slide, right?
In addition to how we foresee organic growth to play out, we plan to drive growth through M&A, and in total, we aim for a solid single-digit revenue CAGR. Our increased focus on operational efficiencies and scalability will drive the margin profile in the right direction. And finally, our ability to convert our operating results into free cash flow provides the investment for the business, but also an attractive return. By working with our senior leaders towards a balanced execution within this framework, we actually secure alignment between strategy, execution, and shareholder interest. Let's review some of the drivers behind the value creation we foresee. In this visual, I've added a few of the key metrics behind our planned margin expansion. We recognize that macro environment changes can impact our estimates, and we've considered these as well as some industry-related ones that we could predict.
A key contributor of our planned margin increase is our focus on scalability and driving efficiencies, and this is coming from both our geography segments, as you heard from Björn and George, and you've listened to what they have in their plans already, and roughly half of the group's margin expansion will come from this aspect. As you heard this afternoon, one of our strategic priorities is to generate growth and product expansion through M&A, and this part of the plan will add meaningful accretive margins to the group. In addition, we see improved margins from our future expansion into the SME segment with our existing assets in core, adjacent, and the digital space, and this also includes Loomis Pay's journey towards break-even.
In the first section, Aritz talked about our strategic priorities: grow in established markets, generate growth and product expansion through M&A, drive operational excellence and scalability, and lead sustainability in our industry. We believe in maintaining that balance focus between financial performance and sustainability so we can create a positive impact for many stakeholders. Our strategic focus on growth and improving our margins remains important, obviously, and our commitment to climate reduction or reducing our emissions and also focusing on our employee well-being aligns with our broader sustainability goals. Except for the targets, I would like to share some additional guiding metrics to support your understanding of the targets and how they can be achieved in the coming years. At first, I want to share some color on what to expect in terms of our climate reduction targets.
You should expect that tons of CO2 equivalent emissions within our own operations to be consistently less than five per million SEK of revenue, and this will gradually trend down as we deliver on our trajectory of CO2 emission reductions. Our understanding is that this is a very solid number in the industry, and it also demonstrates our commitment to reduce the climate impact of our business and also be the leading sustainable business partner in the industry. In terms of CapEx levels, we see continued rationalization of these investments in relation to revenues, and that we started to see this earlier this year. This trend will continue to contribute to our cash flow conversion that should be solid over time and in line with our track record the past few years.
From a leverage perspective, it is our ambition to keep our investment grade rating and have a balanced leverage of up to two turns over time, and our dividend policy remains the same as today. Let's now move to my last section around capital allocation. Obviously, a very important topic for all of us, and my intention is to share some insights into our priorities for decision-making. Our strong cash flow conversion has given us the opportunity to invest for growth and differentiation through CapEx. This obviously holds both growth and maintenance CapEx, but also important areas like climate and security-related investments that are needed for us to actually bring our ESG ambitions coming true, basically. Our active M&A focus is instrumental for our growth ambitions on top of the organic growth that we foresee.
We have done quite a few acquisitions over the last decade, but there are more opportunities for Loomis. Our focus areas for M&A are in the core where we see bolt-ons and also larger opportunities in some of our existing markets, in the adjacent space where we want to enrich our automated offering to our customers, and in the digital space where we intend to grow inorganically, as Aritz has told us about how we go and expand the Loomis Pay offering and also increase our focus in SME. Our distribution to shareholders consists of a stable annual dividend of 40%-60% of net income, and we complement that with additional buybacks of own shares. Let me try to bring it all together for you.
I hope I've been able to share some insights around our proven track record of strong revenues and cash flow generation, how we manage execution, and how we focus on scaling the model. We have a plan that involves both growth and solid profitability. We focus on key growth enablers to build a resilient business and capture long-term opportunities. This execution is based on our focus on established markets and driving growth with new customers and new solutions organically and via M&A. As an industry leader with strong ESG ambitions, Loomis has a clear path for sustainable revenue growth and improved margins, and our capital allocation framework supports both our growth and also providing attractive total returns for our shareholders. So I think that is a resilient and cash-generative model that I'm describing. With that, I want to invite the team back on stage for the Q&A session.
So I'm sure everyone here has a lot of questions. Once again, I want to remind you to wait until you have the microphone. And for those of you that are joining online, that you can submit your questions via the online chat, and I can read them out on your behalf. Suzane, go ahead. Hi, good afternoon.
Thank you for taking my question. So, Suhasini from Goldman Sachs. Just a couple from me, please. In Europe and Latin America, what are your plans for countries where you are outside the top two in terms of market share? Do you want to do more M&A to get to number one, number two position? And if you're not able to do that, would you consider portfolio exits?
Okay. In terms of Latin America, with the COVID, we have in our pipelines many companies to have agreement, but with the COVID, they decided to stop. After COVID, they want to come back to have the same margin because Latin America countries, they have a high cash volume business, and they wanted to arrive to achieve the same result than they have before. But that now is the moment to have it. We are exploring some markets, like I mentioned in my presentation, like Cima was working in other countries, and we can have the same thing in domestic business.
In Europe also, I think you have a country that's outside the top two. So just wanted to get your plans there. I think it was Germany, wasn't it?
Yeah, but in the current countries we have today, we have opportunities. I mentioned there's an acquisition we have in core, like for example, SecurePost in Switzerland, one of the last. We have another SecurePost in other countries too. And we have another opportunity, not only family companies that you mentioned, Germany, Germany we have many. And we have an opportunity to buy part of ATMs in some countries, but on the other hand, we have cash centers for some banks. For that, we have huge opportunities too.
Thank you. My second question is on the margin target over the next three years. When you are talking about reaching the upper half of that range, should we expect the expansion over the next three years to be linear or maybe a little more back-end weighted?
Now, in general, I would say it's quite linear in terms of how we've modeled it. But we expect to be in the range all or the entire period, and as Aritz said, to end up in the upper half towards the end of the strategic period. Thank you.
Colleague from the DNB Markets, thank you very much for those extra capital allocation thoughts, Johan. And on it, when you start to look at that gearing target of staying below two times, if you then don't manage to complete those acquisitions and we see the cash flow coming through, how do you see playing share buybacks going forward? Is it a target that if you fall below one, fall below one and a half, then you will be very active, or how should we see it?
I think you should see it the same way as we're operating today. In terms of our capital allocation framework, we have a priority to invest in the business and obviously honor our dividend policy and then do M&A, and if we don't do M&A to the extent, we will do share buybacks, and that's what we will continue to do in the future as well.
Excellent, and Björn, I might ask you, coming over from Europe to the U.S., what do you feel that you have brought with you that could speed up the development in the U.S.? And if you now turned your focus back on Europe again, what would you bring back from the U.S. to Europe to improve the business model and what you used to do here, well, I mean, that's not for me to decide. That's to my colleagues to do.
But I think I brought my way of doing business to the U.S., and that's why you see these efficiencies that we brought in in the U.S. That's the plan that we had. That's the generate or the total to complete essence of what we did in the past with the acquisition of SecurePost, driving that in with the acquisition or actually integration of Loomis International into the Swiss operation before. I think that's all playing out now in the U.S. That's the experience I brought over, and that's what we drive home at the moment.
Thank you. Viktor Lindberg from Carnegie. Two questions. One on Loomis Pay and then on ESG. Summarizing Loomis Pay now, since the launch, I think you're up to about just shy of one billion of losses or investments, if you will. Aritz, you mentioned now by 2027, you will approach or reach break-even according to your plans. Can you talk a bit about the trajectory going there and thinking of rolling this out in new markets, potential costs for that, but also how we model incremental revenue and that margin impact? It's a bit of a black box for us where a lot of money has gone in, and I think the shareholders agree that the NPV at some point is quite distant currently.
First thing is that I would see that more of an investment, more than money that we've thrown away. What you also need to consider is that by implementing the digital component, we're also protecting cash, which is our main business. So that's important. Moving forward, as I said before, I mean, the plan is to invest in countries where cash is still strong because that's what makes us different. The speed of how we're going to launch in those countries will depend on where we start and what the size of the countries will be.
So I cannot give you a bit of flavor there. But we have seen significant progress in the business in Spain, and that's why we can more or less say that we will be at a break-even point at the end of the strategic period. Now, I cannot talk about the pace on how we will arrive there, but don't see this as a cost. See this as an investment because we're always protecting our core business.
Got it. On ESG then, Björn, you had a good example of how it actually can be accretive to profitability and society, of course, with the EV trucks. But just my five cents is the U.S. is not necessarily the most ESG-friendly country in the world, or at least perception-wise. But thinking about the business dynamic and opportunities to drive ESG forward in Europe and also in the U.S. and from the client perspective. So when you go into client discussions, could you get a differentiation of price or anything in the contract that actually would benefit you, obviously, as well as society? Or is the client not really there, neither in Europe or in the U.S.?
Well, thank you for that. I can respond to the U.S. part, probably. There's obviously differences, but in the U.S. as well. When you look at Texas where we are headquartered, yes, ESG is not a big thing, but looking at California, looking at big cities in New York and places like that, yes, ESG is a topic, and yes, it is required to deliver on this in order to be not only getting more money, maybe, but to be able to quote an offer and to be in the room to get business.
I think that's the first entry point that we have to overcome, and if there is a kind of, I don't know, ESG fee in future, it's too far to catch at the moment, but there's strong tendencies in California, legislation's going on reducing carbon footprint, reducing actually or getting into the EV business, EV trucks. They force us to do that. So we're front-runner, but we do so with conscious and knowing that we want to be the industry leader.
Thank you. And in Europe, Björn, how would you describe the situation?
In Europe, it's very important too. And we have many tenders, customer tenders that we need to invest in it. And it's not only important the prices and the quality is important, what is the plan you have in ESG, but that is now crucial for all the countries in Europe.
So we will now, sorry, Johan.
If I may add there, Viktor, which I think is very important. When we look at the U.S., it's also important how we are transitioning to lighter vehicles. That's going to be even more important than the electric trucks themselves. Every time we look into shifting to an electric truck, we make sure that it's at least cost-neutral for us.
That's really important, but moving to lighter vehicles, which is the biggest movement and transition that Björn is doing, that will continue the following years. When it comes to Europe, we haven't found a really cost-neutral solution yet, and what we see is that the solutions that we have access to are very, very, very expensive. Of course, the customers are asking us to invest in ESG and especially in our transportation, but sometimes from a cost point of view, it's not that easy.
so if we take a couple of questions that have come in online, they're from Johan Eliason at Kepler Cheuvreux. The first one is, you were basically at the low-end margin target in 2017-2019, then came COVID, and now revenues are back, but not yet to the margins. What is the main difference between the margin target in 2017-2019 and today?
I don't know if I understand really the question, but there's a big difference on how we do the business today and how we did the business in 2019. So just as an example, if we take a country like Spain, what you see is that you have more lower denomination notes than what we had in the past. So we invoice our customers for every EUR 10,000 that we process. Before, we used to process X amount of notes. Today, we need to process more amount of notes.
So the invoice is exactly the same or very similar, but our costs are much higher. So that has impacted in our margins. Now, going back to where we were and where we want to be, again, we are in the middle of certain restructuring plans in certain countries. We had a delay there. I mean, when we look at the U.S. margins, they are all-time high, and our intention is to bring the European markets back to where they were in 2019.
The second question is then, you mentioned expansion of digital payments into the U.S. Will this increase Loomis Pay losses from the current run rate?
Come again, will this?
Will this increase the Loomis Pay losses from the current level that we're currently seeing?
I can take it. Okay. We've already invested, as Björn was saying, in a POS company in the U.S. We have been testing how attractive that business was combined with our cash solutions in the U.S. That is already included in the results that we are showing. We don't foresee results to getting worse than what they are today because we're investing in the U.S.
Obviously, M&A is going to be very important, not just in the U.S., but in other countries where we launch. And we do expect gaining volumes for that business to be margin accretive.
I'll take a chance again then. Looking at, you mentioned getting Europe back to its historical highs. And looking at the mix for the moment with comparing to the U.S., the adjacent services is much smaller. If you could get Europe up to the U.S. penetration of adjacent services, would that basically close the gap, you feel, or?
It's going to be very difficult to get there. I mean, one important thing that we need to understand is that the two regions are completely different. So when cash outsourcing started in Europe, that was in the 1980s, and we did not have access to the technological solutions you have today.
Cash outsourcing is ongoing now in the U.S., and you have those technological solutions. So those customers in Europe are already my customers. It's about them understanding what benefits the automated solutions could bring. Now, once said that, we have seen a double-digit growth the last two quarters in Europe. So we are increasing. Is it going to be at the same pace as the U.S.? No, it's not going to be at that same pace. You saw that in the U.S. case, adjacent businesses represented like 45%, I think, of the total revenue. And in Europe, it's what, like 30-something was lower. Do we expect that to be 45%? Not in the next three years, if that answers your question.
And when you then look at the other dimension of that, I guess, is there a huge difference between what you make out of core services in the U.S. as it stands and what's happening, what you now deliver in Europe, so to say, in LATAM operation? And is there a gap to be closed there as well that is then going to be driving that story back to on the European margins?
We never talk about individual business lines, but let me give you an example. When you look at transportation in the U.S., margins are higher than what they are in Europe because in Europe, at least when I was running Spain, and I think it's still like that, the customers had, they were obsessed with the cost of the stop and were not so worried about the processing of the notes.
But when you look at the combination of all the core, not including international, just CIT and CMS in both regions, we're more or less there. Can you be more efficient in Europe than what you are today? Yes, and we will improve that. Is it going to reach the same level as in the US? There's still going to be a gap there. But there's no learnings. It's just how our customers negotiate the pricing of the services and what the real needs are.
That's all. Excellent. And Björn, you asked a question also on the fantastic growth opportunity you still have in the smart safes in the US, 25% market share. What is your market share in new placements? It used to be much higher, so that was really driving your market share back in the day, at least.
I think we're not going to comment on future market shares. That depends on what we're actually achieving. But yes, we're going to penetrate the market further with these new solutions from Cima. But I'm not in a position to answer this question right now, I would say. Future will show, but yes, it will be higher.
And when you look at the recycler opportunity in the US, do you feel that you can get full exposure to that?
Yes, absolutely. We have that already over there. First, pilots are running successfully. New lots will come in. We will be successful with that one, without a doubt.
Excellent. Thanks.
Hi, Simon from ABG. There are many moving parts on the margin, I think. But if you were to sort of expand in Latin America through acquisitions, for example, how would you see the margin being impacted from that?
I mean, it all depends on what segment you're talking about. I mean, it's completely different to talk about core, adjacent, or the digital side. If we're talking about core business, I mean, we normally look at valuations post synergies. And if we're present in that country, I think that we've proven to be really good at enhancing those synergies. When you look at the ATM services, I would say that the opportunity there to be margin accretive are higher than what they are in the core. And looking at digital, it's all about volumes. I think we're still in early stages there, but if we keep growing those volumes, we'll get to a moment where those will be margin accretive as well.
But overall, do you think LATAM will be accretive or slightly dilutive to a group margin?
LATAM, from a margin perspective, is always accretive because the risk that you're running in LATAM is much higher than what you're running in other countries. And that is part of the component of the price of the services. Great.
Thanks.
Thank you, Viktor from Carnegie. I'm following up on the margin questions here and on Europe. And also, I guess, from a geographical perspective now, if you grow faster in LATAM, that's margin accretive. But also from your ambitions in automated solutions, SafePoint ATM, I think you explicitly mentioned you have a higher profitability there. So if you grow those business lines faster in Europe, that should be driving profitability up, right? So I guess that's sort of an assumption we can play with. But also that maybe M&A, you have probably a good post-mortem experience from Cima by the integration now, being close to 20% margins. So maybe M&A can drive profitability too. So yeah, those two, just to get that confirmed. Cima integration plug and play so far so good, and also business mix changing to the better with automated solutions and.
You're spot on. The only thing is when you look at the LATAM business, sometimes it's also about the pace that those countries have in adopting new technologies. Sometimes you see a country where it's fairly easy, and you see that they are already looking into automated solutions. I mean, Cima is working there, as George was saying. In Mexico, they're working in Chile. So you've got countries where you can see that. But you've got other countries where they might still not be ready, or you just need to educate them and them to understand. But you're spot on on the two assumptions that you just did.
The margin with the cash is really low. For example, in Argentina, it's no easier to have automation because you have machines. Maybe you need to go four times per day, and you have a big bag and a low amount of notes. For that, it's difficult to have it.
Maybe then following up on that confirmation, looking at Europe now, year to date, your margin is up on a reported basis. If we were to look underlying then, business mix has changed to the better. Also excluding Cima, it seems margins are actually down quite substantially, 50 basis points, give or take, year to date compared to 2023. Can you tell us a bit more? Is this just waiting for this restructuring to play out, or is this something else we should be mindful of when modeling this going forward, given that, well, you have not yet harvested the fruits from that yet, just to understand the underlying dynamics there?
Yeah, I think part of it is the restructuring that you just brought up. There is another part, another component that is the cyclical headwind on international business, which is margin accretive, which you did not mention. You also need to add that. And on top of those things, I mean, you have got certain countries, as I just explained, where the way that we work is the same, but costs have increased, and we need to pass along those costs to our customers yet. So it is a combination of those three.
Another thing is that Europe in our region is not only Europe. It's the rest of the company. For that, it's compensated sometimes in different business and different countries.
Fair enough. Okay.
Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions from the room? Yes.
Sorry to be a pain, but coming back to Björn on growth in the US, you're quite forward-leaning on the opportunities. But just to see the driver in the past couple of years, I was just doing the high-level math. SafePoint has accounted for almost 50% of the organic growth the past five years. And now growth has slowed from the high teens to the low teens. So should we see or maybe expect an acceleration of this going forward to reach the target, or will you have different driving forces or elements or business lines to sort of accommodate the growth targeted for the strategy period?
Well, we are reaching targets, and at least ours. And there will be growth in, as I mentioned to your colleague before, in SafePoint. Will it be the same? Possibly not quite. But is there a lot of opportunity out there? Yeah, absolutely. And by adding new technology, new machines, as I presented in my speech, going into recycling, going into front office, we increase the market. So yes, we will deliver additionally new units, different models, and catch up with the rest that we maybe don't see there anymore.
Got it.
The install base is always higher as well, the comparable install base. But just as a reflection there, because sometimes we also get questions around numbering units and all that, one recycler is very similar as three SafePoints. So that's why we don't no longer talk about units. But as Björn was saying, I mean, now entering with Cima on that recycler business and front office business will bring a higher growth than what the SafePoint was bringing.
Got it.
Also on the U.S., following the election, two things difficult to quantify probably, but potentially the unbanked population in the U.S. has been a driver for cash business and also your fundamentals the past couple of years. Immigration has been running high. It's probably not going to run as high in the coming years. So maybe a bit of a headwind fundamentally. Then thinking about potential tax rate changes in the U.S., maybe a question for you, Johan. I think just shy of 70% of the operating earnings are coming from the U.S. And how may changes in the tax rate affect your business?
Go ahead. Well, we have had Mr. Trump as president before, and we did business very well during this period. I think you were there, right, and we will see how much of this election speech will actually be reality afterwards. There's a lot of talk that they do, obviously, during campaigns, and the reality is then showing differently. Last time, it was promised we will have a wall around the U.S., and it's a couple of hundred meters, so we will see if really the unbanked population will kind of be suffering or if there are going to be less of this.
I doubt it because we need these people, and we need workforce in the U.S., so I guess it's going to be a little bit less than that, and if you want to take the corporate tax, maybe.
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things around that. First of all, we, as I told you in the Q3 report, we have a one-time EV tax benefit now this year, which is not coming from Trump, but rather from the current administration, so obviously that might not be repeated. Let's see what kind of programs that will be put in place. On the other hand, should the corporate tax rate come down to the level that people speculate about, obviously we will benefit from that, so there's a couple of factors that I see.
And would you say you have just understand the financing part of things coming below the operating earnings, so would you say that it's a comparable basis when thinking about tax rate cuts and the effects mathematically there, or is it complicated?
It depends on where the corporate tax rate will end. But I think that without that, we're going to be slightly up in 2025 compared to 2024 because of the one-time effect. But we're still finding opportunities to have a good effective tax rate, even without our tax rate level, even without Trump lowering the tax rate. Okay.
So if we can take one question online before KJ. You haven't discussed the competitive situation today. Has it changed any significant degree in any locations?
No, we don't see any change versus the last strategic period. So no major changes there.
Coming back to the U.S. again, you mentioned Björn, 45% of vaults are still insourced, so to say, rather than outsourced. How do you see your ability to play that opportunity? It must be such a good opportunity compared to what you saw in Europe.
Absolutely. Well, yeah, we have capacity to onboard whenever these banks decide to outsource. I mean, obviously, we're kind of in talks always, but it doesn't depend on us. But we are ready to take on that business whenever they are to deliver.
So maybe you could allude a little. How does a sales pitch sound, and what is the hurdles for them to go along with it?
It's various, I would say. Sometimes it's traditional, I believe, that they want to have that insourced. But as people change, views change, and trends change, and that's obvious. So that's going to be driving, I guess, the future outsourcing and potentially accelerate when people go out, go in pension, new people come in, new views, new things to do. I think that's the best driver that we can see there.
Any sense of any Bank of America deal for you coming down the line?
Can't comment on that one, as much as I would love to, obviously.
And if one of those kind of big transactions comes along, you still feel you have the footprint to cater for it and maybe not go back to Johan and ask for more than those 5% in CapEx?
No, no, we're absolutely ready for that. We're absolutely ready for that. And that's also why we keep investing into our branch networks to upgrade. I mean, we have a fantastic growth rate. Volume is increasing. No problem with that.
Sounds good. Thanks.
Pleasure.
'So with that, we conclude our Q&A session. Thank you all for your questions, and thank you for your time here on stage. And now we'll hand over to Aritz for some closing remarks.
Thank you, Jenny. So thank you all for those good questions. Delivering on our next strategic phase, I just want to highlight three main drivers of the ambitious growth that we have. First one is we're built on strength. This means that we have a solid foundation of experience, expertise, and resilience. Second, we're driven by momentum. We are constantly innovating and adapting to stay ahead of the curve, and third, last and not least, but we are committed to delivering a competitive total return to our shareholders. These three elements combined create a powerful engine for growth and success. We're very excited about the near future, and I invite you all to join us on this journey. Thank you very much for coming today. Thank you.