Very warm welcome to all of you in the room for coming here to our Capital Markets Day 2017, very welcome to all visiting or looking at us at the web. Today, I'd like that you bring three messages with you back home when you travel back, that is that Loomis has had a strong historical performance. It's actually the third time we're hitting our targets. We like to take a big leap into our value creation, we're setting new financial targets for the period to come. We like to transform the cash ecosystem by adding new services and new products. This is the agenda of today. First of all, I'll talk for about 30 minutes, then we're going to have a presentation from Lars around U.S. and the possibilities there.
We're going to talk about Europe, then we're going to have a Q&A just focusing on Europe and U.S. Lars has to leave because of family reasons, he will leave after that part. We're going to have a break, then we're going to talk about Loomis International, we're going to talk about M&A. We are here, the presenters on the screen, to answer all questions you have, I also have the management team here with me today to support me. We have Anders Haker, who is the CFO. We have Mårten Lundberg, who is the HR director. We have Martti Ojanen, who is head of risk. We have Kenneth Högman, who's responsible for U.K., this market, actually. We have Patrik Högberg, who is the regional president for Northern and Eastern Europe.
Let's start looking at what we call our core business today, because I think it's quite important to understand what are the building blocks of the business we have today. First of all, we have cash-in-transit, CIT. It's actually when we're taking money from point A to point B. That's the bread and butter of our industry. That's what we started off as a company. Then we have developed into cash management services, CMS. It's actually we take the cash into branch, we count the money, we put them into the customer's accounts, and take out fake bills, for instance. Looking at the figures, quite impressive. We're handling $700 billion every year in our branches. I think at least that's quite impressive. We have Loomis SafePoint as the third leg, that is what you saw in the film.
It's actually a retail solution for handling cash in store. Last but not least, we have international, which is either valuables in transit, VIT, or valuables in storage, VIS, as we call it. Here we handle $280 billion of value each and every year. When we talk, or I talk later about our core business, this is what I refer to, these four areas. Who are we then? We are Loomis in 22 countries. We have 400 branch offices. We have 24,000 employees all across the globe. We had a revenue last year of SEK 16.8 billion. What's quite interesting, what I think at least from this picture, is that we've been able to adapt or take the Loomis model from one country to the other.
I'll talk much more about the Loomis model later, but that has been, at least as I see it, the key to the success to be able to come into other countries. This is the third time we're hitting our targets. At least we're on our way. On this slide, you see the targets we have until the end of this year. It's a revenue of SEK 17 billion. It's the EBITDA margin of 10%-12%, and it's also the net gearing and dividend. Let me just talk about two of them. First of all, the revenue. We have been very successful in growing the company organically. Actually, I think that's a big strength. We have been able to change the mix towards more high valuable services. We have gained market share. We have been gaining contracts.
Actually, when we look back, we have been growing the top line organically faster than we expected. When it comes to M&A, we haven't been that successful. The intention is, of course, to change that going forward. Also the margin. We are now on a rolling 12-month basis on an 11.9% margin. I think that is really strong, and it's internal efficiencies, of course, but it's also, to be honest, a bit of lack of bigger acquisition that is supporting the margin to 11.9%. You can also look at the performance in a different way. On this graph, you see the rolling 12-month EBITDA FX adjusted. You take out the currency effects. As you can see, and as Lars talked about in the film, we actually have been growing the EBITDA in absolute terms by 153% over the years.
When you look at that slide on the curve, you see it's been very steady and actually accelerating during the last couple of years. That's all good and nice. What's next? We have now set new financial targets and updated the strategy for the next four years to come. We have decided to stick to, or actually extend to four years because I think we need some more time to develop some of the services, some of the products we're going to present today, but also to be able to be successful when it comes to M&A. These are the new financial targets. Let me go through them more in detail. When it comes to revenue, the new target is SEK 24 billion by the end of 2021. Here we see a 50/50 split between organic growth and growth through M&A.
When we look at the different segments as we report them, we expect to have a growth in the U.S. between 5% and 10% if nothing big will occur, so a big outsourcing contract. The run rate will be between 5% and 10%. In Europe, the run rate will be between 1% and 3% going forward. When it comes to Loomis International, which is a more volatile market as many of you know, the aim is to have a growth between 5% and 10%. When it comes to M&A, I think today we have a better and stronger pipeline of targets. We actually have SEK 10 billion in our pipeline today, and Johannes is going to talk much more about that as we go forward.
When it comes to the margin, we have set a range between 12%-14%, but I like to be really specific and clear on this point, that if we don't do any major acquisitions that will be margin diluting, we will be at 14% at the end of this period. Dividend is at the same level as we have had the last strategy period, so 40%-60% of net income will be handed over to shareholders. We have actually included a new target, and that has to do with sustainability and CSR, if you like. That has to do with the fact that we think that we are a major player when it comes to the infrastructure of a society, and we like to take a very active role in that society. We have added three new targets within the area of sustainability.
There is one target missing from the previous period, and that's the gearing and the net debt to EBITDA. We have taken that out because we don't think that it's so relevant anymore as it was. Our expectations is that if we hit the targets we have on M&A, we will not be above two times net debt to EBITDA. That's the reason why. These are the targets. How about the world around us? How does that look like? I think there are many trends that is supporting our strategy and our targets. First of all, there had never, ever been so much cash in society as we have today. Never, ever.
If you look at the two most important currencies we have, or we're dealing with, is EUR of course, and US dollars, you can see on the graphs that that's been increasing over many years. We estimate that 70%-80% of all transactions that are made below $30 are made in cash on a global scale. We estimate that cash usage will grow 1%-2% as we go forward. That has to do with, of course, the growth of the economy. People are buying more, and that's going to help us. That's cash in circulation. If we then talk about CIT, CMS, just CIT, CMS, nothing else. We expect to have a growth, or the market will grow 4%-5% over the coming four, five years. The market for CIT, CMS will be worth around $20 billion US dollars in 2021.
There is a slightly lower growth rate when it comes to Europe and U.S. I think that U.S. is a bit underestimated, to be honest. We should keep in mind that in these countries, the demand for more advanced solutions and services is much higher. Keep that in mind, please. You can talk a lot about trends and what's happening around us. Let me just talk about a couple of key trends which is actually supporting our strategy, which we have discussed a lot during the last couple of months. First of all, it's continued outsourcing. Of course, as the market grows, there's going to be more outsourcing and the pace of that outsourcing, it's depending of the market maturity, how much is outsourced and so on. As you saw from the film, that will happen.
Actually 32% of group sales is really coming from CMS. One third of the turnover. Also more demand for integrated and more advanced solution. 5% of our group sales is today coming from SafePoint. M&A, we think that this market or this industry will be more consolidated as we go forward. We estimate there are 500 local players out there, and there are banks, there are family-owned companies, which will be in one way or the other, consolidated into a different, bigger company, which is focused on cash management. We have actually put down our strategy into five pillars, which I'd like to just go through with you. These are the five pillars. It's about accelerate the core business I talked about. It's about launch adjacent new services. It's to move up the value chain, combining physical and digital capabilities.
It's about strengthening our geographic and technology footprint, and it's also to protect and build the Loomis ways of working. That's all going to help us to lead a transformation of the cash ecosystem. Let's start with the first one, accelerate the core business. On this slide, you see quite an important graph that we have also discussed a lot. On the Y-axis, you have the market maturity. That is the development, if you like, in terms of how advanced services they use in the market and the level of outsourcing, if you want. High on that axis, you have countries in the Nordics, you have Spain, for instance, and so on. On the X-axis, you have the EBITDA margin. The more advanced products and services, the higher margin as you go to the right.
Here we have products like CIT, VIT, valuables in transit, which are giving 10% margin. We have CMS which having 20% margin and SafePoint around 20+. These services are very crucial for us going forward. There is so much more to be done here. Let me be clear on that. What can we do? First of all, we are working on new methods to convince our customers to speed up the outsourcing. Lars will talk a bit about that. We like to accelerate the outsourcing, and I think that we're in a good position to take that on. We like to accelerate the SafePoint concept in Europe and U.S. We now have new figures from U.S., which is indicating a bigger market, and we have raised the ambitions. When it comes to Loomis International, we like to find the synergies with the local businesses.
That is Loomis International taking care of much more of the customer management and the sales job while the local Loomis country is taking care of the transportation, storage, and HR and things like that. We really get the best synergies out. Last but not least, we are going to reorganize Europe. We are going to create one Europe. Today we have three regions in Europe, and that's going to be one to get bigger synergies out of purchasing, IT, and best practice. We also are going to install two new center of excellence and one innovation center. We're going to have one center of excellence when it comes to CIT and CMS in Madrid, which is going to support the group with best practice and best solutions.
We're going to have one center of excellence in Houston, Texas, when it comes to retail solutions, SafePoint and other things. We're going to set up an innovation center in Stockholm to work and develop new concept, new ideas that can be rolled out in the group. Let me talk a bit about what kind of new services and ideas we have in pipeline for this new innovation center. The next step is to launch adjacent new services which are quite close to the core of the business today. What is that? What we did is that we looked across Loomis and we found a lot of really, really good ideas and concepts which were out there that we're now trying or will be developing and launching across the group. One part is what we call FX. Foreign exchange, foreign currency.
What kind of market is that? If you look at that market, we are now active in the Nordic countries and in the U.K. There are two parts of this market. One part is the wholesale market where we take care of foreign currency and sell to embassies, to ferry lines, to air companies, but also to exchange offices around these countries. That's the wholesale part of the market. It's worth about $80 million in those countries, and we used to have a 10% market share of that. That's a huge opportunity to do more in the Nordic countries and U.K., but actually roll out those initiatives to other countries in the group. There are also the retail market, the retail market selling directly to consumers. That market is huge, $500 million, and we have nothing of that market.
We are doing some experiments of testing different solutions. Now we decided to put out 30 ATMs in Norway, for instance, to try out to connect directly to our consumers. We're also going to launch planning and forecasting services. What is that? Instead of just going to an ATM or to a retailer to pick up money or hand in money, we're taking care of the total planning. When a retailer is stocking up in the morning, we can tell them exactly how much money they need, in which currencies and denominations. The bank doesn't have to tell us when to go to an ATM to change and put new money in. We can do that ourselves. We're taking over quite a big part of the value chain that is now still remaining with the retailers and the banks.
We like to take a big step into the diamonds and jewelry market when it comes to Loomis International. We're number 2 when it comes to notes and bullion, and we're not active in this market, and many of our competitors are. We have decided now to launch an initiative into this market segment. We have also many ideas when it comes to new solutions and new concepts for SafePoint and other retail solutions, but that we'll talk a bit more about at the later stage. That's pillar number 2. We come to pillar number 3, which we call move up the value chain, combining physical and digital capabilities. Here, just to give you a couple of examples. As we move northeast in this model, of course, the services are more advanced, but also the reward in terms of margin is higher.
A couple of things we're trying to do here or want to do here is to build more ATM services. Not just forecasting and CIT, but also doing first-line, second-line maintenance and actually maybe in the end owning our own ATMs. We have today also made an acquisition, which we're going to talk a bit more about later, which is going into the back and front office part of the retailers. It sounds a bit difficult to understand, but you will hear more about it at a later stage. Also, some of our customers are coming to us and saying, "Why don't you take care of more payments?" Today we're doing checks, we're doing cash, but in the future, we're looking at different possibilities to take care of other payment methods for our customers.
That's a bit more into the future, of course, and we need to do some work on that. Let me just be clear. We're not going to be a fintech company, but there is a role for us to play in the broader perspective of payments. M&A is very important. We have actually two priorities when it comes to M&A. The first priority is to do M&A within the core, CIT, CMS. We are quite clear on that are huge opportunities in the existing markets. The first priority to do M&A in U.S., Europe, and in the markets we are present. Secondly, we are now starting to look much more into the technology for the reason that we need it. To be able to move up this value chain and take a bigger part, we need new technology.
There are actually a lot of new players which are coming into the business from the software side, which are very interesting for us. As I said, we made a first acquisition, a company called Intermarketing, which is exactly in this spot. Those are the two priorities when it comes to M&A. One thing I'd like to mention as well is that when doing an M&A in Europe or U.S.A., it's easier to take the customers on this value journey. It's easier to sell these concepts and ideas to customers in these markets because they are prepared to pay for it, they're prepared to outsource. Instead of just buying another standalone CIT company with lower margins in a new country. Then protect and build our way of working, the Loomis Model. I've talked a lot about the Loomis Model. What is the Loomis Model?
The Loomis Model is, as I see it, the key to the success we have had. It's actually the gold standard, I would say, in the industry when it comes to operational excellence. What do we mean by operational excellence? It's Quality, that we pick up the money at the right time, that when the customers open their bank account, that's the right amount in the bank account. It's about efficiency, internal efficiency. It's about obsession with details, and so on and so forth. There are more examples. That's one element of the Loomis Model. It's also about decentralized decision-making. We are letting our branch managers and other managers decide. We are actually trying to take the decision at the lowest possible level, and I think that has been a big strength and a key to our success.
I was a bit surprised, actually, when I came into the company, because many people are talking about how decentralized they are. In reality, when you scratch the surface, the companies run from the top. That's not the case when it comes to Loomis. We are really living the decentralized model. Another element is the follow-up. Follow-up and reward. We are following all 400 branches every month and rank them from number 1 to 400 or 420. I get those lists. At the same time, we support the branches to perform even better, and we reward them every year with bonuses or trips or whatever. Also the branch manager, as a consequence, is very key to our success and is a key person in our company. That's all good and fine, but we need to add new skills and competencies to the company.
I think the journey we're on, we need to add competence like innovation management to be able to develop new services and to roll them out into the company. We need to be able to work across borders in a different way than we have done before to make a success from the innovation center and the center of excellence. Also that we need to be better at acquiring IT and software skills and technology. This is something we will, of course, focus even more on in the future. Now, as a consequence of this strategy, but also as a consequence of normal succession, there are a couple of things which will change when it comes to people and organization. As I said, we're going from three regions today.
We have the region U.K., we have the Southern Europe region, we have the Northern and Eastern Europe region. We're going to combine that into one region, and Georges Lopez, which you will see later on stage, is going to take care of that, head that region effective from October 1st, 2017. We are also establishing the innovation center and the recruitment of that person who's going to lead that has started. That position is going to report to me and be part of group management. Thirdly, Lars Blecko has decided to retire, unfortunately, and he is now appointed non-executive chairman of Loomis U.S. I guess this is Lars' last CMD, at least in this role. He has had a very long and successful career in Loomis, so we're very grateful for the job you have done.
You're still in the company and be around for some more time. I'm equally happy to announce that the successor of Lars, it's Aritz Larrea, who is now the country president-- maybe you want to stand up, who is the present country president in Spain, and he's now appointed Regional President of the U.S. All these changes in U.S. are effective from June 1st, 2018. Let me just summarize the main points from our strategy and our targets for the coming strategy period. The revenue will be SEK 24 billion by 2021. It's going to be split between M&A and organic growth. I would be surprised and disappointed if we don't make SEK 1 billion from new services. That is pillar number 2 and pillar number 3 in my presentation by the end of strategy period.
We put a lot of emphasis on developing these and actually roll them out in the organization. EBITDA margin will be between 12% and 14%, and as I said, I repeat that if we don't make any major, bigger acquisition, which will dilute the margin, we'll be at 14% by the end of the strategy period. The dividend is unchanged, 40%-60% of net income will be handed out to the shareholders. As I said, we have now introduced a fourth target when it comes to sustainability. As I said in the beginning, we have a very strong historical performance. We have delivered on the promises and on the targets. We have a new plan which I think is very exciting and good, and we like to be really the leader in this industry transforming the cash ecosystem by adding new products and services.
Thank you very much. Now I hand over to Lars to talk more about U.S.
Well, thank you, Patrik. Thank you for that introduction and those kind words. Appreciate that very much. For you who have perhaps been here 4 years ago when we had our last Capital Market Day, you might recognize some of the themes from my presentation today, which is going to be about outsourcing CMS, it's going to be about SafePoint, and it's going to be about growth in the U.S. Some people might think that that is a lack of imagination and creativity from the Loomis U.S. I don't see it that way. This is a strength. We put the path forward here 4 years ago, and we will continue along that path also for the coming 4 years. Why do we decide to do that?
Well, first of all, I need to share with you then our performance during the past 4 years to show you that we've really been doing the right things during this period of time. Secondly, also share with you about the quality, the reason why we've been successful and why we've been taking market share and outnumbering almost all of our competitors, or I would say all of our competitors in the marketplace in the U.S. Of course, we need to talk about what is the future then. What are we going to do differently in the coming 4 years when it comes to CMS and the outsourcing of CMS and on SafePoint here? Let's start from the beginning and talk a little bit about the marketplace here. In the U.S., Loomis is number 1.
From a revenue perspective, we have the highest revenue, we have the highest profit, we have the most employees when it comes to cash handling companies. Even more importantly, we also have the largest footprint there. That is something which is incredibly important because that is how we best can service the major client in the U.S. We are in Hawaii, we are in Alaska, we are even in Puerto Rico. Just a couple of what's called the flyover states where we don't or anyone else has a presence. Otherwise, we are to be found everywhere in the U.S. Talking about growth then because that's one of the themes here for the presentation. This slide here shows you the organic growth from 2009 up to 2017.
You can see there the first years between 2009 to 2013, there was, well, we know the market conditions at that time. That was the financial crisis. The bank branches were closing. The banks were merging. Retailer was reducing stocks because interest rates were low, et cetera. That was the time for reforming the company. That was the time for looking upon efficiency, restructuring, reorganizing, and so on. Then, I talked to you about that in 2014 at the Capital Market Day, we set a new program, how we could grow in the U.S. Coming from a negative organic growth and how could we really put growth into the organization, into the marketplace there. As we saw from Patrik's slide here, he estimated the growth in the U.S. to be about 1.6%. We have since 2014 been between 4%-15% each quarter.
That's a significant difference versus the rest of the market there. Our expectations is actually that we will be able to continue at least in the 5%-10% organic growth range. Probably initially for between 6% and 8%, that's what I estimate for the coming quarters, then as we put more and more efforts into the sales and marketing, we will see that coming closer to the 10%. Growth is one thing. Organic growth is one thing. It's also about pricing because we all know one way to getting growth is to lower price. What have you gained by that? Nothing. That has been one of the issues with this industry in the U.S. over many years. If I just show you this slide. I'm not going to show you this. There we go.
If I show you that slide, you can see that this is the inflation-adjusted, the dotted line there is the inflation-adjusted price curve for a bank pickup. This is our data. I know there is a blend of a lot of data there, but still, it gives you a hint that we have in the years from 2003 for 10 years, we had almost a 20% drop in real pricing. Since 2013, we have actually increased prices year-over-year. That has been a clear success. It has been also a must because when you consider that our industry is 50% of the sales is related to wages and to salaries. We all know what happens with that. Everyone likes to see those go up year by year, even if it's in an economy which is in a recession. You still like to see those raises.
I would say that that change which we did back then in 2013, 2014, has been crucial for the success of Loomis. Of course, if you put that together, good organic growth together with price increases. You get a very healthy profitability curve. This is the operating profit from 2009 till 2017, almost mirroring the slide which Patrik showed for the rest of the group or for the whole group. As you can see, good news here is that we have over this almost 10-year period, four times we have increased our operating profit. We have certainly, during the last three, four years, almost doubled it. Just like for the rest of the group, and maybe that's because the group is like that, is that it's been steeper and steeper the curve in the later years here.
We really have a good story to tell. We really think that we have a good concept, that's why I could be brave enough here initially and say that we know what we're doing, we know what the success story is, we know how to create the success going forward, we will continue to do that. Final slide about growth here. You can see here, again, numbers, from 2013 to the rolling 12, 2017, we're up 30% in organic growth. That has been driven by two products. By cash management, CMS, outsourcing of CMS, and by SafePoint. Cash management is up to 33% of the revenue from the 27%. You can see that we're actually on par or even better than what the total group is.
That was pretty unheard of when we did the IPO back in 2008, that U.S. would be at that stage. Of course, with the SafePoint, we actually have, since this last CMD, we actually doubled the sales in SafePoint. Those two products is really the one who's been driving both the profitability, but also the sales growth in the U.S. Let's talk a little bit more about those products and what are we going to do going forward here. First of all, let's talk about CMS and the outsourcing. The total market is, we estimate it to be around $2 billion. It's a very difficult estimate to do because of how do we measure the insource and what is the potential when that becomes outsourced. We estimate it to be about $2.2 billion.
Out of that today, there is about a little bit less than half, which is outsourced. That number four years ago was about $700 million, $0.7 billion. I did the math there. If we continue with the same speed, or if the U.S. market continue in the same speed of outsourcing, it's going to take us another 20 years before it's fully outsourced. That is, it sounds like a scary thing. Oh, that's slow, you think. That is a little bit what we have seen in the European countries as well. We have seen that it takes maybe 10 to 15, maybe 20 years, then you can imagine with such a huge market as U.S., that it might even take a bit longer. The other thing which I think is also peculiar is that it's not going to be a linear development.
These things happen, outsourcing happens. I think every one of the banks have a strategic vision that they will be outsourcing cash at a certain stage. The key is to do it vault by vault. It's very rare that we see a bank who takes a strategic decision to get all their vaults outsourced. What is going to happen is that it's going to be based upon local initiatives. When one of the banks have an issue with additional CapEx, additional investments, training of staff, security issues, or what have you. That's the time when they will be outsourcing. What can we do then? Let me also say that, which it says here in the heading. Out of the last year's development and vaults that have become outsourced, I definitely feel that we have taken the majority of those.
What can we do then to make it easier for the banks to make that decision and, of course then, to choose Loomis as the provider of outsourced CMS? I think as I said here, the reasons for taking that decision to outsource a vault is very often related to things like fixed assets, training, staff, investments in security, and so on. What we have done now is we set aside funds to help the banks to go around those obstacles. Maybe the book value for a facility, maybe taking care of the staff in the vault. We have also put together in the first years, in 2009 to 2013, we built a lot of our own vaults. We have now started look upon, can we utilize some of the existing vaults from the banks?
They are normally not optimal from a CIT perspective, although they are good for CMS, but how can we utilize that? How can we make that work? We have start to get into that from a more construction point of view. As I said also, of course, we will be willing and we also have programs to train staff to get them on board and to work according to the Loomis model here. That is one thing. Funds set aside. We have been gearing in the organization to take care of those obstacles. The other thing is obviously we need to provide a cost-efficient way of doing CMS versus when the banks does it internally.
That sounds like an obvious thing because, of course, if you put together 50 banks' inventories into one vault, our vault, that economy of scale says immediately, that must be cheaper, for each individual banknote processed. Sometimes it's difficult to make the right calculations. Sometimes only the variable cost is considered, not the fixed assets cost, et cetera. We need to be better on education and explaining the bank's cost model and to compare that. We compare apples to apple here. The most important thing when it comes to this is the quality. What do I mean by quality? In this case, it's to make sure that we do the things right the first time. When we process the cash, it needs to be the right amount. It needs to go to the right bank account. Sounds obvious, but things happen.
It needs to be there on the right day. If it should be processed and put into the bank account the same day, it needs to be there the same day, et cetera. Those are the quality criteria. Those are so important, because when we take over a vault from a bank, we are actually taking over some of their brand. They still have the relationship with the retailers sending the cash into that vault. They expect, of course, to have at least as good service from us as when they were doing it themselves. There is one, just to give an example of the challenges which we have here. In the U.S., we are still requested to maintain separate inventories for every bank which we process. That could be in a huge vault like Los Angeles, which we saw here.
We can have up to 50, 60, 70 different inventories from the banks. That, of course, every time you change this processing between the banks, there is a chance or a risk for errors. While the bank, they just run one inventory. We need to be so much better from a quality perspective than what the banks themselves are in order to match that and for them to feel certain and secure to outsource these vaults to us. I think we also have to face it, that in the U.S., not like in Europe, in the U.S., we have been considered to be a transport company from the past who's trying to transform into becoming a process company. That's also a journey which we need to do.
When I emphasize so much on quality, let me talk a few words about what we mean by quality. I have defined it now, but how do we actually work with it? Because everyone talks about quality. I don't have a single type of this presentation without someone talking about quality. Let me try to explain that what do we do and how it's really into our genes, into our organization. We have our vehicle for doing this internally. It's called Go Green. Some people might think that's an environmental initiative. It's not. This is just a score which you are supposed to achieve. What we do is that we take all the scorecards from all the major banks, 30, 40, 50 major banks of our clients.
They provide us with a scorecard every month of our performance by district, by branch, but even down to individual teller, we can track that and trace that. We take all that data. We put in some of our own data, which we collect centrally, no one can manipulate the data. We put that into a ginormous database, which we run once a month. Based upon that, we rank, again, by district. We also rank all the 200 branches which we have in the U.S., 180 branches in the U.S. In the branch, we actually rank all the tellers as well. You better have a green. If you don't have a green, you have a problem. That's the reason for Go Green and the name for it.
If you are on the top, you probably just like Patrik said, four branches, you probably get an award, you get a bonus, you have the recognition. If you are at the bottom, in the best case, you get a coaching. If that doesn't work, then we have a solution for that as well. I think to show you how serious we take this is we have also put into place since two years ago that every manager from branch manager upwards, including myself, has 25% of their bonus directly related to this Go Green program. If someone doesn't meet the criteria, 25% of the bonus will be cut. That's a pretty strong incentive to do things right. It's also put a lot of requests in terms of the data.
The key is to get the data right, because otherwise we spend more time arguing data than we are about what we should do about it. The good news, I think, is we have done this for CMS now for four years, and we are from the 1st of January 2018, we're also launching the same system, the same database, but now for CIT. It has been much more difficult to get that in place, but we will be launching that from 1st of January 2018 to again, to drive quality even further. Enough said about CMS and the importance of quality there. Let's talk about SafePoint. There is one change for the individuals here who maybe have been here for the last Capital Market Day. We talked at that time about 300,000 safes or opportunities out there.
Today, we think that that is at least 400,000 based upon a new study which we've done together with ATMIA, which is the ATM or association in the U.S. It's not that the numbers of retailers have become more, it's just that the way we have evaluated the opportunity has changed somewhat. The more we learn about the product, the more we learn about the market, the more optimistic we feel about the opportunity here. Maybe just a few words, if for individuals not familiar with SafePoint. SafePoint is a service. It's not a safe. The safe is a part of it. We take that safe, and we put it into a retailer's, whether that's a gas station or a quick service restaurant or something like that. We put the safe in there.
Every time they get a note, they put it into the safe, immediately there is a signal going to our branch, we take that signal and put it into their bank account. Almost at the same time as the note hits the floor of the safe, still in the shop, it is in their bank account. That note is then owned by the bank, by the retailer's bank. We are responsible for security of it, the retailer has no problem whatsoever with managing that cash anymore. It's already in his bank account. Back to the opportunities here. You can see here that we think that there is, out of the one and a half million retailers in the U.S., we say at least 400,000 should benefit from having a SafePoint. That is, as I said, up from 300,000.
Another good news for us is that we almost half of the ones, of the 50,000 which are there today, is actually from Loomis. I dare also here to say that the absolute majority of the safes placed during this year and also probably last year has been sold by us and to our client. To further drive that home, you can see this is the curve. Of course, the last time we met here, we were somewhere below 10,000, around 10,000 safes. We are now estimated to be, by the end of the year, about 24,000 safes. That is a significant improvement in numbers of safes out there, services out there. That makes us even more optimistic about the market size, but also what we can do going forward.
We actually think that during this period of time, we will be able to hit one year with an annual sales of 10,000. That is how optimistic we feel about the opportunity with the safes. Let me just also, because this service, SafePoint, maybe that could be considered as a me-too product or so, but also here, the quality is so important. The uptime of the safe, the quality of the reporting, et cetera. We have, for instance, here, this is Border Foods, which is a Taco Bell franchisee, almost 200 restaurants. They had another provider. They wasn't happy. They came in contact with us. We provided a much better service. Now almost all of them, or soon all of them, will be with Loomis.
That is if they're already experienced with what is called smart safes, which is the generic term for SafePoint and our competitors' safes. There is obviously the reason for and the benefits for having that safe. Normally starts with security. Security for your staff, robbery, injury, what have you there. That is the first point of USP, you can say, USP. The other one is, of course, the reduced cost. You get more time to do other things in the shop, and you also reduce your shrinkage. The note goes straight from the hand into the safe. There is a huge opportunity for SafePoint. We're not standing still. We think that we are ahead of all of our competitors. Also, the way that we are deploying and selling safes tells us that.
We need to stay ahead of our competitors, and we need to develop more and more things. Again, like to emphasize, SafePoint is not the box. It's not the safe. That's just a box. The key is the software around it. It's the service around it. That is what differentiates us from our competitors. Just when I say that, of course, we are launching a new box as we speak here. We have developed now a new, together with the safe provider, a new smaller safe, compact safe. Which will be geared more to smaller, well, the clients are not smaller, but the amount of cash which they process is less. We are going into another segment of the market, actually. Otherwise, all of the things which we develop right now is in terms of providing a better service.
It is everything from we have the app, as you can see here, from the palm of your hand. You can manage your whole inventory of safes in the whole footprint, which a franchisee might have from his iPhone. We have a very good support. We don't have to go to the safe anymore. We can do everything remote. We're also installing, actually, SafePoint service. We have in three or four of our branches now developed our own service staff. There's a one-stop shop. If you order a safe from Loomis, it will be installed, it will be serviced, and it will be repaired by Loomis staff. You can hold us totally accountable. There is also another things which we are evaluating, which has a smaller market, and that is recyclers. That is when you locally recycle cash in the store.
You need to have really big volumes of cash. The market is, we are evaluating that. Some people are very optimistic about it. We're a little bit more cautious around that. We will have some kind of a solution here by the end of the year. The development here is, and that is just like Patrik talked about, we are setting up a center of excellence in Houston. We call it for retail service. It's going to be focused initially around SafePoint, but of course, for the future, there will be other things, maybe recyclers, maybe other things around the point of sale, et cetera. Of course, there is to spread all the knowledge which we have around SafePoint, which experience which we made in U.S. to the rest of the group.
It's also to make sure that we have enough resources to continue to develop, continue to stay ahead, continue to improve the customer experience from using SafePoint. To finish off, and which I hope you will walk away with in your mind here, the performance from Loomis U.S. has been phenomenal the last four years. We have a path forward, which we think has worked excellent the past four years, and we will continue along those lines. Key in that is the quality. Of course, the growth in the U.S. will continue to come out of outsourcing of CMS as well as the SafePoint. Thank you very much. With those words, I would like to introduce my dear friend, European colleague, Georges Lopez here.
Lars. Good afternoon, everyone. Yes, now is my time. I have time to show you the strategy for the next years in Europe. As Patrik mentioned before, we will reorganize Europe from three to one unit, and we will move up the value chains. We are prepared for new step. Our objective for the next four years is to increase efficiency and to focus on growth. We reorganize Europe. We put standard procedures. We create a platform to growth. We increase the speed of automation and develops a new services and technologies. Of course, Patrik mentioned in his presentation, we will create two center of excellence and one innovation center. One center of excellence will be in USA with SafePoint, and the next one is in Europe. I will explain more later. We have a successful Europe. We are prepared for the next step.
We are the leaders of Europe. We have a strong management with a lot of knowledge. We manage. We are the president of the European Security Transport Association in Europe. We have four chairs. In Europe, we work in three regions: Southern Europe, my region, Northern and Eastern Europe, and the U.K. You can see Argentina is in my region, maybe because we don't know anything about geography. We manage Argentina from the Iberian countries. We create a strong platform for the next step. One Europe. You can see we have 50% of the total revenue of Loomis, more than USA. Sorry, Lars. Last year, we had good results and solid results with a good margin, better than USA. Sorry, Lars. We work in Europe in 15 countries with different languages, different currencies, different steps in terms of outsourcing.
The plan is to work without borders, to play together. You can see the results. The official result for this year, half year, is good and solid. The trend from the last years is very good. We introduced the Loomis model in all the countries. We were focused on quality and to reduce the risk. We grew in cash management every year. We have a lot of experience in Europe. We have many initiatives in Europe in standardization to serve a practice, to have one regional management and common systems. In standardization, we have many examples. We are working to have a prototype of three or four armored trucks in total Europe. Before we had four or five per country. We have machines. We have two suppliers of machines to process cash, to process notes and coins for Europe.
We have only one machine in SafePoint for all the countries in Europe too. We have an example of one tender in bags, for example. We reduce the number of bags from 50 to 15. We reduce the cost, we have better quality, and we have storage of it. We have the same example in coins wrapping. We finished the tender now with a success. We have an example in uniform in a region before in Southern Europe. We had the same uniform in all the countries. The idea is to extend these things for the rest of Europe. To share best practices. We have countries with a lot of knowledge in cash-in-transit and in ATMs. Others in cash management, others in new services, in Loomis International business. The idea is to share this practice, to share this information together.
We will create a regional management, very small management. You know, the company, Loomis, is a decentralized organization. In the headquarters in Sweden, they are working no more than 20 people. In our model, the branch manager is the king. We are working for the branch manager because they produce the business. Our plan in the region, in Europe, is to work with the countries. The countries are our clients. We are here to offer support. We are here to have investments, to offer tools, not to put problems. I remember when I was country president many years ago. I went to the headquarters with one problem and I came back with three. This is not the plan in Europe for the future. We will put in place common systems. In operational tools, we have in Europe more than 10 operational tools.
The plan is to reduce to maximum two or three tools. We have one example, secure cash. The market don't offer integral tool for our business. We develop inside secure cash. We manage all the business, cash-in-transit, ATMs, cash management, forecasting, payrolls. We control the production, everything. We develop in SafePoint a software this year. To monitor in the SafePoint and to have a web for our customer to know what is the status they have these machines. We test this machine this summer in Sweden, now we are putting in the rest of the countries. With this initiative, we will reduce our cost and we will increase our efficiency. Imagine 0.1% of our cost is SEK 10 million. For that, we have a lot of opportunities. We will continue expanding the margin with the new services, and we will put in place the plug-and-play system.
It's our model, it's our toolbox. In the new acquisition, in the new countries and in the branches with the less performance, we will put our tool with the tools, with the standards, with everything. We have a new opportunities to growth. When we start with the business, I remember when I started 32 years ago, we start with transport. The profile of our employees, they are focused in logistic. Now change. The profile of our manager, the profile of our employees totally change. They are more focused in other things, in ATMs, in machines. It's total different. Our core business before was transport and cash management. We have some countries with a lot of experience in cash management. For example, Spain. We started in Spain 35 years ago with cash management. 50% of our revenue is cash management. Imagine.
In Europe, we have from 35%-40% of cash management. It's not outsourced 100% in total Europe. We will continue developing SafePoint as last or as before. SafePoint is not only a safe. We offer a service, a global service. For that, we continue developing. New services for our customer. Our customer, they are our partner. We are working together with them. Our customer, they are focused in the core business. The banks, they change now. The banks, they have now bank branch office without employees. We are managing this bank branch office. We manage these machines. In retailers, they are changing too. Some retailers in some countries, they sell food, and at the same time, they cannot touch money. For that, they have machines, and we are working with it. We have some examples in services, in new services with banks and retailers.
Today is not our core business. The plan is to, next year, to have a big percentage in this new business. For example, with the forecasting. This tool in some years, we manage everything. The plan is to have a long contract with our customer. To win-win. With forecasting, for example, we can have a long contract in it. We know when we need to go to pick up, and the customer don't have surprises. We have other services. In retail, we offer the services of back office in connection with the front office. We are offering cashier with Loomis uniform in the retailers. Patrik spoke before about foreign currency. Not only we process cash, foreign currency, we have a services, we have a desk in the Nordic country to buy and to sell foreign currency.
We work with the central banks. We are offering new services for the central banks. As you know, in the Eurozone, the country we are there, we have a license to recycling cash. We receive audits from them. We have other services with the central bank. We are working in some countries when they have a bottleneck. We go to the central bank to process their cash. We have a services transport, international transport with the central banks. We are speaking in some countries to have a storage of coins of the central bank. SafePoint. With external and internal sources, we have a potential approximately 200,000 in the market we are working today. We have approximately 3,000 Smart SafePoint. We have others, dummy SafePoint. We have other types of services with machines we need to put together. We increase the resources in Europe.
We increase the sales force with the same marketing, the same brochure, the same proposal. Of course, always according with the local legislation. We decide to solve the provisional credit. Before, we use some banks. Now we offer it services for our customer. Of course, we can have the best practice with our colleagues in USA. Always his last one. If not, we need to wait when arrive at it. As Patrik talked before, we create a center of excellence in Madrid. Madrid is one of the biggest branches in the Loomis world. Maybe in the market, the total market, with more than 8,000 sq m, 550 employees working 24 hours, 365 days. We don't want to have the Madrid branch like a zoo to visit animals. We want to have a branch to develop. We have a good management in this branch.
Every year, they are changing some things in the process. In my previous region, we have five managers of this branch. We use it to put the same system and the same procedure speed in other branches, like Vienna, Paris, Barcelona, Zurich, et cetera. We want to develop the new tools. We want to test everything. We will transfer this knowledge to the rest of the countries. Now the race start. We will increase our efficiency. We are focused on growth. We have confidence in our strategy because we have the better managers. We know the operation. We have a good cocktail. We have managers, they are born in the business, managers, they came from university. They came from other business. Now it's our cocktail. We change the profile. Remember, we organize Europe. We create a platform to growth.
We increase the speed of automation with the new services and new technology. Of course, we will start with the cash center, the center of excellence in Madrid. Thank you very much. Now. Q&A we have. Yes.
We'll now open for questions from the U.S. and Europe. We'll be inviting questions from the floor and also from the webcast followers. Before you ask a question, could you just wait for the roving mic and state your name and institution?
Michael Holm, Danske Bank. First question about the outlook for organic growth in Europe. You've only talked about the range of 0%-2%. Now you're talking about 1%-3%. Is that something we will see immediately in the coming year or so? Or is it more long-term when this new service is starting to contribute?
We started now with the new services. It's not new for us. The plan started there, we will increase 1%-3%. It's a number solid for us.
What was the reason for the change compared to the historical interval of 0%-2%, where you basically have been since the IPO?
Now we're more focused in terms of new services and new technology, and we are working together in all of Europe with the knowledge we have.
Don't you think that the Nordic markets will show a decline during this period?
We have here the responsible of the Nordic countries. Patrik can to answer it.
We see in the Nordic market that still there are a lot of opportunities and, despite the fact that the markets are declining, really. I, as being responsible for the Nordic area, is looking positive for the future, even in the Nordic area. We can also share some best practice from the Nordic area towards the rest of Europe, which is part of the idea with the new Europe region.
Okay. Just the final answer. It is based on the Nordic markets making a turnaround of the current declining trend and being flat or slightly increasing going forward.
No. The trend in Europe, in the Nordic markets is the same. There is a volume decline of a couple of percentage points. That will continue. We have other opportunities in Europe in terms of countries. We have better growth in Argentina. We have Turkey. We have other countries which are growing. At the same time, we'll increase the pace when it comes to new products, which will be launched across Europe, also including the Nordic region. All that taken together, it is giving 1%-3% growth.
Stefan Hantson. Sorry for repeating this because I probably didn't understand the split you did, Patrik, there before. The numbers you said, 5%-10%, 1%-3%, 5%-10%. Was that total growth or was that organic growth? I think it was relating to a target of SEK 24 million, and that would be 8% growth per year. I'm trying to get these numbers together.
Question is, can we take that at the end?
Yep.
Yeah. I'll come back to all that question.
Okay, good.
If we just focus on U.S. and Europe for the time being, I'll come back to all the questions later.
Okay, good. U.S., Lars. I happened to look at the U.S. Department of Labor in the U.S., their statistics, and salaries in the industry has been rather flat for many, many years, falling or around zero. I'm just surprised to see the last few months of very high salary increase. We're looking at 20%. I think it was 10% in the beginning of the year, but last month, 18%-20%. Of course, minimum wage are going up, so more an issue for Securitas. I'm just trying to ask if you could put that into perspective with the 6%-7% growth expected for the next few quarters. The impact of your margin, how you handled it.
Well, it's clear that unemployment rate in the U.S. is, as you correctly pointed out, is historically low. Particularly when you look upon on the transport side, that has been a sector which been significantly impacted by this low labor. That combined with the minimum wage, which we have now, we have seen it implemented in Seattle, in California, New York. I think Washington is also, which has been implemented. There's a lot of others announced, but not yet implemented. That is putting a lot of pressure on wages in the U.S. because we need to stay ahead of the race. If the minimum wage move up and our wage just doesn't move up, that creates a problem for us. We start to recruit from another pool of individuals then, which is normally not that good. Yes, it is a challenge.
What we've done is that we have implemented since, I think the first one was actually Seattle, which is about eight months ago. We have a minimum wage surcharge just for clients in those regions or in districts or cities or whatever it is, which is reflecting then the same increase which we see it in minimum wage.
We also have added as a surcharge. That is something which is pretty common. Obviously, we're going to be driving inflation, but that's our ways to mitigate this and stay ahead of the race.
Lars, Karl-Johan Bonnevier, DNB Markets. Going back to the Capital Markets Day in 2014, obviously, you were in the early ramp-up of the Bank of America contract. I guess looking at the KPIs you have delivered since then, you must have done a good job on it, if you put it like that. It'll be good to learn. Is it all Go Green on that one? Are you a little disappointed that this hasn't created more circles, so to say, with others going some of the more aggressive ways, so to say, for outsourcing?
I think that, of course, that was one of these, which I said in my presentation. It was the strategic decision. We should be all outsourced, we shouldn't deal with cash, all our vaults should get outsourced. When the biggest bank in the U.S. say that's of course a very powerful tool. Not only us benefiting from it, but it's the market overall. Yeah, you could say that you could be disappointed about it. I know that since then, we have gained vaults from, I would say, all major banks, 10 major banks in the U.S. It's not haven't been one of these strategic decisions, put it that way. Again, I think that every one of the banks has the long term or long term strategy to outsource their cash activities, just like we've seen in Europe.
I don't know how long time it took in Spain. 15 years or something between it started until it takes a long time.
More than 15 years.
More than 15 years, yeah. Disappointed? Maybe. Realistic? Yeah. I think it's the realistic. That's how we're going to see it happen.
Yes. Thanks. Daniel Thorsson from ABG. I think this question relates mostly to Europe. With the new initiatives, do you expect to face new type of competition? Do you see your closest competitors doing the same steps as you do?
We have Johan?
You want to start?
No, you. I think that honestly, that we can see a bit more competition from other players, like ATM providers. We have software providers, as I talked about, coming into our industry. You see a different specter of competitors. Yes, we will see that. I think that we have the power to be the integrators to bundle all of that and go to the customer. Yes, we'll see other competitors there. Do you have?
Oh, sorry. Okay, just a second one on U.S. Do you expect to keep the same contract types that you have had for the SafePoint with contract length and prices or do you see any changes there?
That's also something which we are evaluating. We have been extremely strict on contract length and conditions. What we see now is we see bigger players being interested, bigger contracts. I think we will be more customizing contracts just like we do in the CIT arena, not just one standard contract. We look upon it. That doesn't mean that we will take on more risk or something like that, but there might be specifics set up. They might not want to rent or lease the safe. They might want to buy it straight out. There's a lot of things which still we will facilitate in order to make ourselves a bit more attractive, particularly for the real big deals. Yes, I guess is the straight answer to your question. We'll be more flexible going forward.
We've got time for one more question from the back, please. Thank you.
Hi, can I just ask on the U.S. competitive situation again as well. Have you seen any noticeable changes from Brink's? They obviously had a big deal and change in strategy there, reinvestment in trucks and service and all sorts of other things, big focus on trying to drive their own SmartSafe product, et cetera, as well. Have you seen any noticeable impact from that as yet?
No. I think that's a short, sweet answer. I could elaborate a lot on that. We obviously focus on our stuff. I haven't seen that much, no.
We'll now take a break, and if everybody could be back here at 14:45, 2:45, that would be great. Thank you.
Welcome back from the break, and welcome to all the viewers on the web. Now it's time for the next speaker, and happy to introduce Urs Röösli, who's heading the international part of the business. Welcome on the stage.
Thank you, Patrik, and I'm very happy to present you our growth plan in the global valuable logistic markets. Before we go and present the details, let's quickly define what is actually valuables. What do we understand for valuables? First of all, it's global banknote business. Second, it's precious metal or bullion, and for this, it's gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. Of course, diamond and jewelries, high valuable watches, and fine art. One common factor of all these commodities or valuables is that they are traded globally, and that's our role as international. We combine the demand and the supply on this global market. To do this, we have a clear ambition to grow our market share and to improve our profitability in this market. For this, we defined three main initiatives.
First of all, we're going to continue to build our strong global footprint with strong global presence. Today, we are servicing more than 100 countries already. In the last three years, we actually managed to double our own Loomis International footprint on a global level. I'll give you some more details afterwards. We found as well a way to combine the strong CIT footprints of the Loomis countries to the global network. The second is we have a clear ambition to be number 1 as a one-stop service solution provider for the global demands. We have teams in all the financial markets which are very strongly connected. They have one IT solution on a global level. You heard it before, plug-and-play. We have one contract to the client. The client has one insurance solutions, and at the end of the day, he gets one invoice.
One face to the client on a global level. That's number 3. Our clear ambition is as well to expand now across the value chain. That is taking advantage of the done investments of the network. Let me give you some details. If you look at Loomis International, we are clearly number 2 when it comes to bullion or precious metal markets on a global level, and the whole banknote wholesale market. We represent about 7% of the global sales of Loomis. We did have a reduction from 2016 to 2015 due to the sale of the Challen Cargo business by about 20%. In the same time, we actually increased our margin by more than 10%. We invested in our network over the last three years materially, and we did that in three ways.
Point 1, if you look at the numbers of our own platforms in this chart, you see that in 2014, we actually started with nine own Loomis International platforms. Today, we have 18. We invested as a first step, together with our Loomis countries in the stronghold of our markets, that's Europe and U.S. Second was to expand our capabilities in Middle East and in Hong Kong. Give you an example here of Middle East. Three years back, we had our own team in Dubai, but we were still depending on transport and storage for local partners. Today, we've got a state-of-the-art high security vault site right at the airport. We have our own trucks in Dubai, so we have a full service provider company in Dubai, which enabled us to grow on a yearly basis by 40% the last two years. The 3rd one is actually connecting new markets.
If you here look at red dots, you see definitely very big markets such as India, China, Singapore, Canada, and Latin America. To build up such a network in a country like China takes time. We started that already in 2015, it took us several months to go through the bureaucratic jungle, finally, by early this year, we have now a fully set up all licensed international forwarding company, we are able to serve mainland China in all the major cities. All these investments over the last three years give us now the base for the further growth. The 2nd important role of international is actually combining the strong footprints you just heard about U.S. and Europe in the CIT market with our global network.
If we have a banknote shipment from London to Birmingham, that's a standard service which we do 100 times, 1,000 times a day. If that banknote shipment needs to go to Shanghai, that's another game. Loomis International comes into play. We will take care about the customs clearance from origin, transport it to the destination market, do all the needed customs declarations at the destination, and make sure that the goods are timely and safely delivered to the client. You could say the banknote market is a very local market, but the banknote manufacturing markets, that's actually a very global market. There are only a few players left which do produce banknote paper or do the printing for the banknotes. Loomis International provides to these clients the global services to pick up the finished banknotes, transport them to the central banks of the different countries.
Then it comes into the circulation of our CIT companies. If you look at the bullion or precious metal side, a very good example here, every refinery and every mint comes out every year with its new releases. They want to sell them on a global level. All we serve there, we pick up the goods at the manufacturing site. Refinery can be in Asia, U.S., can be in Switzerland. Transport them to all our valuable platforms on a global level, Asia, Middle East, Europe, USA again, and make them ready for the local sales according to local customs regulations. The client himself, he can concentrate on the sale. We take care of the logistic in the background.
Coming to the Loomis growth model, you see here the development from the international, from, as Patrik said, a VIT company, valuable in transport company, to a full service integrated logistic provider. What does this mean? This means that we need to build up our own valuable platforms in the main financial centers. We started doing that over the last 3 years, and we will continue to do that, such as Shanghai, Singapore, Dubai, Toronto, et cetera. Step 1 is to build a dedicated team, expert teams in forward ing, expert teams in customs clearance to make sure that this really works. Today, we are about 400 of these experts on a global level with quite a nice rate of increasing.
Then we add high security vault capacities right at the international airports and connect them with the global transport to make sure that we have as well the local delivery. Having now all these platforms, that's one thing. To combine them on the same IT network so that a client, whether he has his goods in Canada, Hong Kong, Switzerland or London or Frankfurt, he has it on online on his desk, what goods are transported with us and what goods are stored with us directly on online screen. Having that ambition or having that capability, doing this now on a global level, that brings us to the next step. We want to become the one-stop solution service provider for all the valuables. This means we need to expand and want to expand our service portfolio.
Our trends and our ambition is to offer new services for other valuables. This brings us more volumes on the existing platforms, and with this as well, we can increase our margins. Where do we actually see our growth potential? If we look at the growth potential in the international business, then it is definitely that we want to continue investing into new facilities and building up these platforms. I give you one example here. One very characteristic part of the international business is the volatility of the business. We build up new platforms in India. India has implemented, in June, their new goods and sales taxes, so the GST. That took two, three, four weeks until all the clients could actually know what really happened. Within these four weeks, the market was just dead. Did we lose markets? Did we lose clients? No.
There was simply no business over this period. We need to be able to be present in these main markets, in these growth markets in Asia, in the Middle East, and in Latin America, really to develop and to provide these services. When it comes to expanding our product portfolio, we want to go on two ways. We want to grow into new valuables. Patrik already mentioned it at the beginning. If we look at the D&J market, which is around $600 million, $500 million, $600 million US dollar logistic market, and if we look at our market share in this market, that is on a very low single percentage. There is definitely room for us to grow in the valuable business, but we had to establish first our own platforms to be able to control, to manage, and really to be the service provider for the clients.
The second area where we are investing as well heavily is providing new services for existing goods. Most of you definitely know about new digital currencies. Some of these currencies are actually backed up with physical storage of gold. Since the last two years, when this market came actually into play, we are already providing a decent storage, or we have some of these platforms as our clients, and we do the storage for these clients. That is a nice example of combining the digitalization of the financial market, but still having the physical ability to support it. We go the same way like we have seen from Lars and Georges, investment into technology. For us, this is less investing into a platform for the SafePoint.
This is much more investing into online portals for order taking, have a global online tracking system so that the client gets on his system directly the status of his goods, or it is transported or stored. Investing into interfaces to client. I gave you the example for the mint or the refineries when they sell their goods, the new releases. We already today connected with their trading systems that they have an online status on a daily basis, what they actually have on stock, and they can do an online reordering so that they always have enough goods at the different levels. Here we want to invest in all of these three areas. Summary, we have three major initiatives.
Point one is really build, continue to invest in our own global presence, to be the first choice as a complete integrated full service provider for the global demands, and taking the advantage of the done investments over the last three years to expand our portfolio across the value chain. Thank you. Now I would like to hand over to Johannes to give us some more information about M&A.
Last but not least, M&A. I have to say, you look really excited. Full of anticipation, I think. Let me show you, I'm really looking forward to this. This is going to be a great journey with Loomis for the next couple of years. No pressure whatsoever. I have three messages for you today. Loomis has a lot of growth potential using M&A. We in Loomis knows how to create value out of M&A, and we will use M&A to expand across the value chain. Growth. Ambitious targets supported by a very robust pipeline I'll speak about value, how we create value in our M&A activities, and expansion, how M&A will support our ambitions to expand across the value chain. Growth, value, expansion. Let's start with growth. This chart shows the global competitive situation for armored transport or CIT/CMS.
You can see there's a lot of room for growth just in our core business. Loomis is the market leader in Europe. We're the market leader in the U.S., and we have a strong position in Americas. Looking at this graph, you should really focus on how much room there is to grow and how much of this that is made up by smaller or medium-sized businesses. Many of these are privately held. Other are non-core parts of banks or other security businesses. It's made up by hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses, and that fact alone gives us a lot of room to grow our top line and our revenue on a global basis. When we look at these companies, we apply strict financial discipline, and we thoroughly screen both the companies and the markets.
We want to make sure we don't spread ourselves to unaffected markets or overpay in transactions that we are looking. The risks in our business are also such that caution is warranted. We actually do turn down sellers and decline to enter markets from time to time. Still, there are many opportunities for Loomis to grow the top line step by step for many years to come, and M&A will be an integral part of growing Loomis' top line. When we look at acquisition opportunities, we also apply a strict filter, a selection mechanism. That's very important. That's a very important step in value creation in M&A. First of all, the first priority area is acquiring in existing markets. We really like that a lot, and I will show you why in a minute.
We also carefully screen new markets where we see an emerging need for outsourcing or where we can see an underlying high growth rate and a decent degree of outsourcing at least. We are quite picky when we go to new markets, and we don't mind if we do take a little bit of time to carefully screen each individual market. Finally, we'll also acquire businesses that expand our offer and services in mature markets, and I'll give you an example of what type of technology could be interesting for us. Today, we have a pipeline of about 10 billion SEK in revenue that we're working with. All types of different cases, of course, that we see is actionable within the foreseeable future. Back in 2014, our previous capital market day, we introduced the acquisition of VIA MAT at the time. That has now become Loomis International under Urs.
Part of that deal was also acquiring VIA MAT's local Swiss CIT and CMS business, and we combined it with our existing Loomis Switzerland business at the time. I would like to use that merger as an example how we create value for our shareholders. I have to admit, this is a bit bragging about my Loomis colleagues, of course, but we have the best team in the industry. And we use that to overcome the eternal M&A issue, and that is actually delivering on your assumptions. Careful target selection is, of course, very important. Financial discipline in the transaction is important, but value tends to be lost or created in the integration phase of a deal. No deal is actually done until about two years after the ink is dry on the paper.
I'm sure you know about 70% of all acquisitions do not reach the targets they set up for themselves initially. But in Loomis, we work as a team from the beginning, which means that we typically realize about 90% of assumed savings. And in many cases, I have seen my colleagues deliver more than they assumed from the beginning. That's pretty unique, I think. Switzerland is a mature market with low growth prospects and a pretty well-run CIT/CMS business. At the time of this acquisition, Loomis turnover was about SEK 70 million, as on the chart here. And the acquired business was SEK 50 million. And the combined EBIT of the two was SEK 4 million, around 6%. Let me tell you first of all what we didn't do. We did not raise the prices.
It's not just because we love our customers, but partly also because we don't want to kill our own business. Normally in any M&A deal, you can always save a couple of percent by getting rid of a bit of overhead, et cetera. But in this case, the team, the Loomis team, took the EBITDA from 6% to 18% over three years. Now, how is that possible? There are two dominant factors at play here. First of all, the Loomis model and how we do business by decentralization. That's a really powerful factor. We push the responsibility down to the branch managers. So they are actually incentivize themselves by the results they make in their branch. So they want to cut down on overheads and make sure that the business is very efficient and performing well because it's tied to their reward.
You also have the effect of efficiently combining two customer portfolios. You can close a number of overlapping branch offices. You combine CIT routes, so you get more customers on each route. Then of course, we can add Loomis purchasing power and apply that to indirect costs. In this case, we tripled the EBITDA. If you apply a reasonable multiple to that saving, you can be pretty sure that we created a lot of value for the Loomis shareholders. Now going to new markets where we can't combine two customer portfolios, we do have fewer synergies, of course. We found that the Loomis model works really well in far-flung, diverse geographies. Of course, we have the Loomis purchasing power that we can apply to indirect costs in new countries as well.
We have, in fact, seen EBITDA increase in all our new countries except a few over the last three years. The Loomis team knows how to create value. This knowledge is well spread within the group. The M&A team can rely on our operational and management team to deliver the outcome they promise. That is the true basis for value creation in M&A. Finally, apart from growing the top line and adding value, we also want to use M&A to expand across the value chain to fulfill our ambition to reshape the cash ecosystem. I think you've seen this before. This is the Loomis growth model. You've seen the correlation between the maturity of the market and the EBITDA. That certainly holds up in our CIT CMS business, and it holds up higher up in the value chain as well.
I think the explanation is pretty straightforward. The right combination of digital solutions and hardware, machines yield high productivity, and customers are really willing to pay for that. The cost for us as a provider is also attractive. A couple of years ago, we started noticing a company, an IT solution company called Intermarketing in Finland. They were really focused on back office cash solutions, and they were beating out all the other competitors in the market. We started working with them. We tried to figure out a way initially to collaborate, but it's pretty hard to figure out how to split the margins if we go to the customer with a total offer combining CIT, CMS, and back office solutions.
Over time, it became increasingly clear to us that we needed their competence, and they also needed our customer relationship, our CIT CMS platform, and our international presence. We started talking about acquiring the company, and we are very pleased that we can announce this transaction today. I will explain to you what Intermarketing solutions that exist today can add to Loomis' future offer. This is a busy slide, but what we can do with the solutions we now have in Loomis is that we can extend our offer another step so customers can also outsource their back-office cash recycling to us. Customers can first recycle the cash locally in their shop or in their bank, and Loomis will still pick up excess cash and deliver change when necessary as before. It's a good fit with what we do today.
This is how it works in many supermarkets today. Every till at the start of the shift needs a float. The cashiers go to the cash back office, they pick up the cash float, they go to their till, start working. At the end of the shift, you go back to the cash office and take out the excess cash. To make this work, you need a couple of people in the back office. They have to count all the cash that comes back. They have to prepare the till initially, and they have to count everything that comes back, right? You need a couple of people. When all this is done, the CIT will come around to pick up the excess cash, deliver change, et cetera.
This entire procedure is time-consuming and costly for the supermarket. It's not really their core business either. Is there a way to minimize shrinkage as well as cost of the cash back office? What Loomis now can offer is a solution that starts the day by giving out the float from a machine. The cashier logs in with their ID. The machine gives out the float from the beginning of the day. At the end of the shift, you empty out your till. The machine then counts the cash, talks to the ERP, to the tills, et cetera, and balances everything. Less back office work, less cost, less shrinkage. Customers are willing to pay. From a large position in Scandinavia, we experienced firsthand a really tremendous pull from customers to introduce these type of cost-saving solutions.
They can free up labor in the back office to work in the front of the store or in the bank instead of counting cash. Customers save time and money. Loomis will become more efficient and gain margin. The business model we want to offer a solution as a service means that customers' cash handling costs becomes a monthly fixed fee. Very much like renting an office machine with a full service package. You get peace of mind, predictable cost, while generating better margins for Loomis. We will now have close to 1,000 recycling installations and an experienced development team, of course, to take this offer to other markets where we already have a customer base and a customer need for even more efficient outsourced cash handling solutions. To summarize, we have growth potential, that's for sure.
We have a team that knows how to create value with M&A. We will use M&A to change and expand our offer to our customers. M&A is a really natural extension of what we already do today. M&A will play a crucial part in delivering our new strategy. Thank you.
We'll now continue with questions for international growth and group strategy.
We're going to stay.
We're also taking questions from the web as well at this point.
Okay.
Should we start with your question? You didn't get any answer to your question?
Okay. Oh, yeah. It was the question, your comment on one to three and five to ten, if that was organic or total. I guess it's organic, but.
Yes. It is.
Karl-Johan Bonnevier, DNB again then. SEK 10 billion in pipeline. That sounds very punchy. You talk about 500 kind of targets, potential targets out there. Could you elaborate a little? Is there potential to outsource Urs' business in this respect as well?
Sorry, outsource.
Is it possible to upgrade, say, Urs' share of wallet in the company, if you put it like that, also in this respect?
Can I just comment? The pipeline that we have is not the 500 companies. We have made a selection based on our acquisition criteria. Our pipeline is the targets we like to acquire and that we know will become are for sale or will become for sale in the near future. That's a number of companies. The universe, the acquisition universe is much, much larger, of course. That may come into play later on. Urs, I don't know if you want to comment.
In terms of international acquisitions, for us, it's always very difficult as we don't have the contracts in place. It's more of really building up the expertise and getting the teams. Otherwise, we will buy a company, and the contract would it's very hard to validate the part. Our part here is really developing it ourself and have a more organic growth. If there's any potential around, we're definitely looking into it as well on the international.
A quick follow on to that. Obviously, Brink's and G4S are substantially larger than you within the international area. Is there a huge size advantage in this business that you are lacking, so to say, compared to them?
It is an advantage in terms of, as I tried to explain, in terms of the platforms. We have concentrated the last few years on two major parts of the valuable total cake, which is banknote and precious metals. Another big cake is definitely the diamond and jewelry watch market and fine art as well. Compared to Brink's, which has a much wider platform solutions, yes, we're still behind, but we are fast catching up now.
Thanks. Daniel Thorsson from ABG again. Are your new initiatives less capital-intense than historically for you to also improve return on invested capital for the group?
I think we hand over to Anders to answer that question.
It's a very good question. I don't think that when we're setting up, for instance, all the new centers of excellence and the innovation centers, they do not require a lot of capital. All we do is we need the right people and the right knowledge and skills. Off we go. Realistically, what we need to do in order to get to the 24 billion of sales in 2021 would require more or less the same type of capital expenditures as we have today.
Okay. In other words, the capital expenditures to sales ratios should remain the same, basically?
Yes.
Okay. A final one on acquisitions. You state in the press release that you will prioritize existing geographies. Do you see Latin America and Argentina as an existing geography here?
Yes. Yes, we do. Yes.
The whole of Latin America?
Yes.
Question at the back.
Mikael Holm, Danske. Just looking back, I think three years ago, you were talking about a similar pipeline as you do today. Since then, as you stated initially, maybe slightly, organic growth has been stronger while contribution from M&A has been so it's less than expected. What has been the reasons for that, looking back the latest three years, and what would be the reasons for you being so much more successful the coming years?
Shall I take that?
You take that.
Yeah. No, I think the cycle times in this business are fairly long, typically. There's a lot of privately held companies, family-owned companies, and when you first approach them, they have no idea what you're talking about. It takes some time to get cases through the pipeline. Yeah, the pipeline size might be roughly the same as before, but the weight and the different stages is different today than it was a couple of years ago. We have been very busy getting things into the pipeline and through the pipeline.
Thank you. Henrik Nilsson, Nordea. A couple of questions, if I may. How scalable is the Intermarketing offering across geographies? Do you need local modifications, or can you roll it out regionally and globally easily?
I would say our initial focus will be the Nordic markets, where we see a tremendous pull for this type of solution. There is nothing to say that it can't be that type of solution can be used in other markets as well. If you remember the growth model, the relationship between maturity and EBITDA, and the further out you go, et cetera, we want to start in the most mature markets with this type of solution, and that is clearly the Nordics. We'll start there.
There's not very much modification. The software is-
No
usable as it is right now.
What you need to do is basically, specifically go to customer site. They might add a few tweaks, et cetera, how they incorporate their cash-back office into the tills and their ERP system, et cetera. Once you map that out, you can start to go. The core of the business, the core software and the machines are pretty much the same.
You mentioned that it's a subscription-based model, if I heard you correctly there. Can you talk about how long are the contracts?
Can I?
Yes, you can.
Five-year contracts. They're five-year contracts, so that you will then subscribe or pay a monthly fee over five years.
Yeah. Thank you.
Everything included.
Thank you. Patrik, earlier during this presentation, you mentioned some concern on cash recycling units, but this seems to be basically half of a cash recycler almost. Am I misunderstanding that?
What we're buying now?
Yeah, the back office is
Usually, when you talk about cash recyclers, it's the machine, the hardware that goes into the store, and that's what some of our competitors have been selling. This software here is on top of that. Intermarketing is nothing about hardware, it's just about software. It's a different solution. What they do, Intermarketing, is that they go and combine all of this hardware and put the software on top.
Okay. It's still dependent on a cash recycler being installed, or?
Yes. There needs to be some kind of hardware for this software to work. Yes.
Okay. Coming back then to your previous concerns on the cash recyclers and how you're going to act on that, can you elaborate on what those concerns are?
No. First of all, I think that what we have concentrated on is SafePoint. We think the potential for SafePoint is much bigger than recyclers. That's number 1. We have spent a lot of time and effort, and you see the potential. It's more about priorities. Second, as now we're starting to look into it could be a possibility for us also in the future. That's still sort of an idea, a plan, something we are looking into, there's no decisions made yet. I would say that the potential for SafePoint is huge. We've spent our energy and time on that first.
Okay, thank you. One last to Johannes. Some of your competitors in the industry, they have strong balance sheets and are all obviously also looking for M&A globally. Have you seen any shifts or trends in the competition for targets and multiples as a result?
There's a little bit more competition than three years ago, for sure. I think there's plenty of room for everybody out there.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Viktor Lindeblad from Carnegie. A question for you, Patrik, on the margin. If we look at the 14% level that you target, assuming limited acquisitions, should we, in light of the new investments maybe needing to be taken now for these new growth initiatives, should it be a backend loaded margin, or should we look at this in a more linear way, you think? Can you help us out then?
Yeah. I think you should look at it on a linear way, that we're following the same trend step by step going forward. You can argue that it should be sort of take off at the end of the period, I think that what we get now in the beginning is more efficiency out of Europe, which would help, purchasing effects, IT effects and so on. I would see it as quite balanced, if you understand what I mean.
Yep. Okay. Thank you. A question on M&A. I think you've been acquiring close to 2% of top line the past five years or so, and now you think you can speed this up and just to understand, can you maybe put a number on, let's say, a hit ratio of success, in the negotiations that you have had the past couple of years? For instance, when we look at this SEK 10 billion target, in the number of negotiations, how many have actually turned out to be something accretive, would you say?
I think the issue for us is more the cycle time in the pipeline actually. These deals typically take longer time than perhaps in many other businesses. It's not like we've been negotiating and failed. Actually, it's just the cases are just moving kind of slowly through the pipeline. I think the reason for it is, first of all, this is a pretty complicated business to do M&A in. There's a lot more risk than in many other sectors. Secondly, also the ownership structure, a lot of family-owned businesses, et cetera. It just takes a little bit of time, that's all.
All right. Also on M&A, you comment now that margins might be diluted from acquisitions, but could it be that it also is accretive depending on what you find? Will it always be dilutive initially? Also maybe alluding to that, do you intend to acquire lower margin companies and then bring up profitability and create value that way? Is that the way we should see it, or will it maybe be a combination of-
I can start on that one. If you buy in the high northeast in the model, if you look at this company Intermarketing Oy, much higher margins than we have.
Yeah.
In that sense, when you have. They are quite small, so in a way it doesn't affect. As soon as you move up northeast, the margins are much, much better.
Yeah.
I absolutely think we can buy companies making losses. There are a couple of companies not making any profit or actually losses. You should say, "Okay, that's not helping our margin, shouldn't buy that." I think that we can create value by buying those companies, applying our technology and thinking in the Loomis model and actually bring them up. Yes, we are looking at a couple of companies which are actually making a loss. That's what we discussed a bit before. Some of the banks, they say they're not developing that part of the business and it's not part of the core, and it's not very profitable. Some of these will come out, and we're interested.
Yeah. Thanks. Quite clear. Thank you.
To Andrew Lynch from Schroders. To come back on the margin sort of development, in the European presentation, there was a suggestion that cost savings of up to 20% on some purchasing can come from the integration of Europe. That begs the question, what happens if you start integrating globally? Is there an opportunity to join, bring the U.S. into a purchasing platform for some convenience, and is there more cost reduction potential from that?
That's a very good question. I think that we look up on it at in two steps. First of all, we try to consolidate Europe and get the best out of that. Then we look at U.S. It's a bit in terms of sort of legislation, in terms of what kind of vehicles you use, the risk profile and things that there are differences, which will make it a bit more difficult. In the long run, there are some elements that should be able to combine from Europe to U.S. Now, right now, the biggest focus is on combined purchasing in Europe.
Then for the international business.
In a sense, who's responsible for getting that integration with the CIT, CMS businesses? Is it your international team sales force that is out there trying to reach customers of the existing CMS business? Is it the CMS team's responsibility to say, "Oh, by the way, we've got this international service that could be interesting." Who's kind of responsible for plugging you and your services into the existing customer base that Loomis has?
It's a joint approach. Both of the national sales force and the international sales force. What we have built up over the last years is in the countries where Loomis has a strong footprint that actually the sales team starts to work together. To explain what we can do internationally, connecting them to our network, on the other side, what actually their sales force can bring to their clients as additional services.
If you sell to a retail store, let's say bullion business, that's very difficult. If you have a big client as a bank, and the bank definitely has some valuable business as well as bullion or precious metals, it's very good that they have a joint visit at that client, and then have the expert on-site to give him as well the solution.
We've got one question here from the web. Why have you lowered your normalized indebtedness ratio from three times net debt EBITDA down to two times?
We have not lowered it. What we have said is that we will actually take away the old target of, we said that the maximum debt gearing should not be higher than three. What we have indicated here is that assuming that we will realize the plans, the debt gearing will not be above two. It's no longer a target in that sense. It's an indication what the balance sheet or the debt levels in the group would look like, assuming we make the acquisition that we intend to do.
One question at the back.
David Robinson, Dalton. I have a question about SafePoint, please. Your installed base in the US is about eight times that of Europe. You see the gap in terms of potential narrowing to maybe half that of the US. Can you just explain the sort of difference in the size of the potential? Is the fact that Europe is so much smaller today, is that due to maybe less focus, or is there more complexity in terms of the market in Europe?
Do you want to start with that?
Yeah. It has really to do with the timing that the concept of SafePoint was launched in the US already back in 2006, 2007. In Europe, it's a much younger concept, and we really started to focus on it maybe two or three years ago. I think it's more of a timing issue that Europe is still behind, but everything being equal, that pace will increase as well.
One thing more is the difference with the USA, with the Europe, all the services in SafePoint in USA are new customer. In Europe, we transfer many SafePoint from the current customer today with the same services. This is the big difference we have Europe with USA.
They're already CIT customers in Europe, and then they move up to being a SafePoint customer. The revenue-wise, it's not a big step, but from an EBITDA, from a margin point, it's quite different.
Thanks. Daniel from ABG again. Related to the SafePoint installation target of 10,000 per year during the strategy period. Is that an average number or is it effective already from 2018?
No, what Lars. Now he's left. What Lars said is during that period, this strategy period, by the end of the strategy period, the annual target is up to 10,000. We'll gradually move it up. By the end of the strategy period, the annual target will be, on a running level, be 10,000. The target will not be 5,000 anymore, it will be 10,000 per year. Is that clear?
Okay. Yeah. That's fine. Related to U.S. again, do you expect the U.S. business to reach a higher margin than Europe in 2021, given the lower level of outsourcing, higher expected organic growth and larger share of SafePoints?
I think it will take longer than four years for U.S. to get ahead of Europe. We see the same type of developments when it comes to margins in Europe as we see in the U.S. over this four-year period.
A short final one, M&A. Can you say something on the geographical split of the SEK 10 billion acquisition pipeline? Is it Europe or U.S. heavy or emerging markets?
I can't say anything.
I must ask also a little about this European footprint of SafePoint. 3,000, is that good momentum in that number? Because I think last time I heard about SafePoint in Europe was just a couple of hundred units.
Oh, that is what we are trying to say is that it sounds, when we talk, that we are doing nothing. It is all of a struggle and we are building up and so on, but we are actually selling. We are selling in France, we are selling in Spain quite well.
Yeah.
It is not a very big number, but still, we wanted to just get out with that number to see that there is actually things happening. Now, many want to say, "Why don't you have a target for SafePoint in Europe?" We are not there yet. Still some work to be done, but maybe sometime we can have a target in Europe as well. Right now we don't. I still think that it gives you an indication that we are doing some things in Europe when it comes to SafePoint.
When you look at, say, rather converting clients than bringing new clients in, do you think that could imply that the European penetration could go quicker than the U.S.?
Maybe you can, Aritz. I think that sometimes it is quite a tricky conversation because they are quite happy with the CIT service, and all of a sudden they should have a machine, and they have a very good relationship with Loomis. The quality of the service they have with CIT is quite good, and the CMS. It is not always that easy to convert a customer like that to SafePoint. It is a bit of a different process.
Final, is this a number you will start communicating now also on a quarterly basis as you do with the U.S. space?
No.
Is that for the future?
No, that's for the future. We need to get some more stability. We need to get so we'd stand on a bit more on a safe ground before we communicate.
Viktor Lindeblad from Carnegie. Looking at Loomis from a top-down perspective, you mentioned initially, Patrik, on most of the cash transactions are less than SEK 30 or so. I think that's maybe supportive when we look at this from an online migration perspective as a threat for retail clients of yours.
Maybe the $30 are spent in a retail store or so anyway. Can you provide some numbers on your exposure to, let's say, apparel retail or that kind of retail clients that are very much affected by online migration? In the U.S., 100% of retail growth is online now, so it's actually declining. Just to understand what your clients are facing and you ultimately.
We discussed that quite a lot. As you read in the newspapers, some of the retailers having a bit of an issue in the U.S., but we haven't seen that, to be honest. We haven't seen that. Could be that or I think one explanation is that we have a different type of. We have the fast food restaurants, we don't have the where you buy the clothes and stuff. A different profile of stores, which you cannot buy hamburgers online. You go to the shop. I think that has helped us a lot that we have that kind of a profile. We have car washing dealers or companies, and again, it's quite physical in its nature. We haven't actually seen anything of that affecting us in the U.S., for instance.
Okay. That's very encouraging to hear. A question for you, Georges, I was actually not permitted to ask in the short Q&A before. Now looking at the biggest market in Europe for you being France, one of your competitors, a smaller one, fairly recently as well, struggled with the trends in France. Would you say that they are inferior in terms of market position? That's the reason, or is this something that you have seen as well for your business that France is maybe slowing down and turning negative?
France is our second-largest country in Loomis.
Okay.
We are very strong in this country. Of course, we are the second player, we are reducing the number of the players in this country, too. We are growing a lot in terms of SafePoint, we started recycling with the banks, we have good results in France, we will continue the same trend.
It may be the market position that you have that is beneficiary for you. My second question relating to that is Argentina-
Yes
which has been a very good growth contributor for you in the European division. I think I calculated it stands for almost 50% of the organic growth in that division. You are very small in Argentina, in a very consolidated market.
Yes.
How should we think about that going forward, given the more mature trends we see in France? Will you be able to strive and survive in the same context?
Yes, Argentina is a small business we have. It's growing very fast. The good thing is, in Argentina now we are today like 25 years ago in Spain or Portugal. We are growing every quarter in cash management. We are opening new branches, too, and we have other opportunities of the small companies. For that, we are thinking we have a good future in this country too.
You don't face any major difficulties, you say, when it comes to pricing relative to your bigger competitors that have scale, for instance?
If we compare with them, we are smaller. They have more risk than us. For that, in our business, the important is to have a knowledge and to growth. We have the knowledge of the Iberian countries. For that, we are growing faster. Now we are putting the SafePoint in Argentina, nobody have. For that, I'm sure we have a many opportunity.
All right. Thank you.
Sylvia Barker from Deutsche Bank. Two questions, please. Firstly, on SafePoints in Europe, do you have plans or are you piloting SafePoint in the U.K.? Secondly, on the M&A, just wondering whether you can indicate what the largest size of deal is within the pipeline or what is roughly the spread by size. Thank you.
I think we hand over to Kenneth. Kenneth is heading up U.K. He can answer that, the first one.
Yes, we are building up capabilities in the U.K., we just actually done that. We are also part of trade shows now in October for a couple of retail trade shows. This is a real kickoff for U.K. from now on. Yes. The answer is yes.
How many banks, if you may specify, how many banks do you have Provisional credit agreements with?
No, that's another thing we just started. Like I said, we built up the platform. We spent some time now to do that before we started to sell. We want it in place first.
Thank you.
The provisional credit, maybe should answer that.
Sure.
Yeah. You do that.
It's something we haven't been able to work out with the banks to offer provisional credit. What we've done is to do that internally within Loomis to set up a structure where we can offer that to the retailers. That is actually very new. We launched that in the U.K. as well.
You are basically funding their working capital in a way?
Correct.
They have to pay for that, of course.
Okay. Thank you.
Did you get an answer to your second question?
On the M&A, no.
Yeah, look, the targets we have in our pipeline are from about SEK 100 million turnover up to SEK 1 billion plus.
Okay, thanks very much.
There's a further question at the back.
Just to follow up on M&A, given that, the strong cash flows you currently are generating and the debt is coming down, EBITDA is growing. If you not be successful in finding targets within the coming 12 months, would you consider extra dividends or buybacks in that scenario?
The intention is to realize these plans. It's never been on the agenda to pay extra dividends or any type of share buybacks, that's a totally different scenario. The intention, of course, is to realize basically what we're presenting today.
It's not on the agenda.
It's not on the top of the agenda at all. No.
Is there a floor in terms of net debt to EBITDA where you want to be above considering a reasonable cost of capital?
I think that the board doesn't even want to discuss this. We're not allowed to think about that, even. It's about realizing this plan, to be honest. That's the way it is. M&A is very digital. Even for a short period, if the debt level comes down, it may quickly go up again when you do make the deals.
Are there any further questions? One from the front.
Thanks. Final housekeeping question from my side. Viktor Lindeblad from Carnegie. Looking at SafePoint U.S. 10,000 units, this is a net number, right?
Yeah. The same measurement as we've done before. Net installations, yes.
All right. Looking at recent events in the U.S., now Lars has left, but maybe you can elaborate. The hurricane season has been quite severe, both for Texas, where you have the corporate headquarters, but also Puerto Rico, where you have some presence. Can you comment on if this will affect you and if so, in any way, here in maybe this quarter and I guess also the coming one?
Yeah. That's a good question. It has affected us because what's happening is that the flooding has destroyed some of the SafePoints. We have to change that. Exactly how many and how fast, we don't know really yet. It's unfortunate or fortunately, however you like, it's not counted in the number. It's not a net new installation. That is affecting us. How severe, we don't know. We'll come back to that in the next quarter to see, we have a better grip of what it means. Yeah.
All right. Thanks.
Are there any further questions? If not, I will then thank the gentleman and ask Patrik to summarize his last words.
Thank you for all the questions, really good questions, and I just want to say a couple of final words. I think that what we have presented today is that we have delivered on our targets. I think we have a very ambitious plan and targets, and hopefully, we have been able to convince you that we have the right tools in place. I think we have the team and the strategy now in place to make this happen. I'm really looking forward to the four next years. Hopefully, you will join us on that journey. Thank you very much. Now there is some refreshments and something to eat outside for everybody. Thank you very much also on the web. Thank you.