Now, 9:00 A.M. Good morning. Let me welcome you here in Dagmersellen, logistic-wise in the center of Switzerland. You know that this is a very good place for lorries to reach customers. We are active here since more than 23 years in this plant. At the beginning, this was a joint venture with a big customer of ours, and we did buy it some years ago. You will have the opportunity to see this plant today on a factory tour. It was June 2021. We had last the first market day, 2022, 2022. The targets, you know, we did reach them already a year earlier. Today, we are looking onwards another three, three and a half years to the end of 2028. Let's see what this will bring. I will do a short introduction first, would then hand over to Michael and to Martin for their parts of the presentation.
Let me remind you what this is. This is a capital markets day. This is not a trading update. This is not a speculation day. You will understand that we will not answer questions on how was April, how May will be. We did give a guidance with the year-end result, and this is valid. We will disclose these numbers then mid-year in the weeks then after the half-year closing. This is the first framing of the event, and the second is we do not comment on speculations. We just focus on this, what we can impact. There is a macroeconomical environment we are in, which is very lively. You experienced this over the last weeks and days, and most probably you will continue to do so. Let me start with this, what it was before and what it is now.
We have a clear focus on our core business. Our core business is bake-off. Everything which is bake-offed, warmed, toasted in the store, in the restaurant, this is our business, bakery, bake-off products. We have a simplified strategy. This was clearly a view we sharpened over the last years, and we streamlined the organization on this. We did onboard knowledge, expertise. The business we are in is a bit special, a bit an exotic business. It's not a branded business, for example. We have no brand helping us to keep the products in the shelf. We are a private label business. We are a servant of our customers. We clearly are a good and professional helper, supporter of our customer. This requires a certain thinking, an experience, a way to behave.
I think we did well with this knowledge increase onboard level and in the exco and in the local companies. Organic growth is back, mainly driven by innovation as well. The company became very innovative. This is key for us. This is not that visible all the time in the shelf. There are many tiny little things in the background being done, going towards a longer freshness of the product, a clean label appearance of the product, going into a shorter refreshing time, baking time in the store. You did see maybe this revolution, the quick-serve restaurant part. The burger bun generations clearly changed over the last two, two, three years. This is a different type of burger than we had before. More darker bread, more rustic, more handmade products, more seeded products, more healthy products. This is the innovation trend in our days.
Last but not least, the thing we like the most, we de-large the company. The balance sheet, you remember 2020, 2021. This is clearly different in our days, and we are generating profits and good value for shareholders. Good morning, Patrik. We already missed you. Did you get a coffee?
Not yet, but I'm fine to talk.
Great. Maybe we can organize one for Patrik to be. Premiumization is key into our core product ranges: breads, buns, rolls, pastries, laminated dough products. We had general assembly last week, and we did talk about laminated dough products. The questions then came back, what is laminated? What means laminated dough? You will see this today, what laminated dough means. It's a dough, a yeast dough, for example, with butter layers or margarine layers, which gives you a gipfel, a croissant at the end of the day, or a pastry or a snack, something like this. We are exclusively a B2B model. We have franchise partners with stores in Romania, but we are a B2B business. No own stores. We do not go directly with brands to the consumer. We are a B2B business, clearly oriented towards the aims of our customers.
In the bake-off segment, as I told you at the beginning, we have been active in the history of the company in fresh. I remember time when I joined the company, 1996, we had a fresh business in Switzerland. We had a fresh business in Poland. Over time, we just focused on the bake-off. This is a multi-local model in 27 countries, with organizations having a strong link to the locality of the business they are in. Bread is very local. There is no type of German bread. Bavarian bread is different from a northern German bread or an eastern German bread or a bread in Poland. These types of breads are different. We are very local, organized, with management, with the approach we did choose for the business. We have a stable and experienced management team. This is clearly visible all over the world.
These are good and experienced people helping us all over the place. This is key. Without the right people, the business is not working. Europe and the rest of the world is the hunting area we are in. The rest of the world is Asia and Australia and New Zealand, with a center of gravity at the moment in Europe. The route to market is being chosen via three models. It's a retail model. You know, the big retailers are our good customers for bake-off, quick-serve restaurants. You know the protagonists in this business. And food service. Food service like caters for canteens like here, hotels, restaurants, big events. This is our business. ESG is an event for us. Big football games like yesterday evening are events for us. This is good. If people are on the road, being active, moving, this is our business.
Out-of-home consumption or fresh consumption at home. The turnaround has been delivered a year earlier than planned. You can see the orange part, the middle part there with the targets, 2022 to 2025, with the revenue growth with an average of 4.2%. We did achieve over this year revenue clearly being north of EUR 2.2 billion now. EBITDA margin 14.6% closed the year 2024. CapEx, this is fluctuating from year to year, but the range was defined, 3.5%-4%. So we ended up somewhere with 4%. Can be higher in one year, the next year a bit lower. The ROIC up to 13.4%. This is a consequence out of this, and the leverage is south of 2.8. So the Damocles word we had at the beginning with the heavy leverage and the equity being small is not gone, but clearly in a much better place.
As I told, there is a strong focus on premiumization, higher valued products. Today, about 40% of our assortment in 2024. Strong activity is clearly there to get away from commodities. There will always be a share of commodity products in our range, but we clearly focus towards higher value-added products, as you can see here on the right side of the slide. We have investments on the way. You know this 3.5%-4% CapEx. There is a new lamination line now doing its work in Malaysia. You will see another one being up and running here in Switzerland, doing pastries, filled pastries, croissants, snacks, these types of products.
We have a new artisan line which will go online second half of the year 2025 in Germany for seeded breads, rolls, handcrafted type of products, darker products with pre-dough with sponge in, which is a liquid pre-dough, which is being prepared and fermented over 24, 48 hours, depends on product which this liquid sponge then is being used. An innovation center in Germany went online beginning of this year. We can invite customers there for product tastings, tests. All our businesses have access to this to do their jobs on small lines. Once these tests would have been successful, we can bring then the tests on the big lines. There is a project now on the way in Poland for a new lamination line. Poland is a very good and very favorable place for manufacturing with the liberal law, with the stable environment, with good educated people.
Poland is a coming upcoming hub for us for this group-wide production. There is something new in our world we try to leverage as well. I did explain this last week at the General Assembly. The productivity increase in the industry we did see over the last 25 years was mainly technical-driven and from technology point of view driven. Bigger lines, faster lines. We have lines today in place being able to produce 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 rolls an hour with two or three people. This is somehow finding a bit a ceiling. There is a technology helping us to understand numbers, patterns better, and to learn out of this. Demand management is something, for example. We have customers. They have data. They deliver data. We have institutes delivering us data from the market.
We try to understand this data, to take our conclusions out of this data, and to bring these conclusions in a better, in a more efficient way on our lines. This is one example, demand management. What is the actuality in the market? What is the seasonality? What is the customer doing? What is the promotion? What was the last year? Understanding this and doing a better planning on our lines. A line never gets tired. A line can work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is the target. This is the 100% capacity we are going after. There will always be a loss of this capacity due to product changes, change from product A to product E. Maybe there is a technical disturbance the way we did see last week with this power issue in Spain that affected us as well.
We believe that maybe 10%-12% of the ideal usage will be invested in product changes, technical maintenance, downtimes, but the rest of the capacity really should be productive. There are other examples we are using in quality check, for example. Quality check 10 years ago has been done by four people and eight hands. Quality check today is camera dimensions. We can check color, spot, size, weight, and we can let this thing learn. We can tell this thing, "Okay, this color is still okay. Be more tolerant." This quality check device is learning. We can tell him, "Could you apply this learning not only for this product? Can you do this for all the others as well?" There are devices, quality check machines being able to measure density of product. The density of product is linked with water content.
There are today prototypes you can tell, not type, not program. You can tell, "Please decrease density." And this thing understands what needs to be done out of this. Increase, for example, water content. Once this is done, you test, and then you can tell the thing, "Okay, you will find now all other recipes, all other products being produced on the same line with a 90% match of the recipe. And with this product, you apply the same rationale with the density." This is doable today. This is a learning process. We did create a technology committee on the board level, which is clearly going after all these opportunities and new technologies. This is not just, this is not bringing us in a new world.
This is always linked and combined with data accuracy, with a database you have, with the technology, with the machinery which is there, with a linked machinery to get online data, and then you can start to manufacture, to work with this data. Artificial intelligence is a good helper for the industry. It's, I think, the or a potential game changer over the next 10-15 years. It will go for a better capacity usage, hopefully for a lower need for investments, and continuous improvement will be supported by this. We will continue to maintain profitable revenue growth. A good and strong cash generation is key. We have a strong eye on this. We will talk later a bit about potential dividends or share buybacks or the way how to give money back to shareholders. This is only possible and doable with a strong cash generation.
This is the real truth of a business. We have a good eye on this. We are, after a good investment degree in order to refinance the company in a good way, there are still hybrids outstanding there. This financing instrument we all like or do not like. A good core equity ratio is on our target list as well. This was a bit thin over the last years. We are improving on this. It needs time, but we clearly feed every year this core equity in a healthy way. As I told, we target to give money back to our shareholders. This would be first time, I think, since many, many years. There are still hybrids out there. There are different options for doing this with dividend, with share buyback. Depends then a bit on constellation.
Need to be seen then what the share price is, what the constellation is, but this is clearly on our target to give shareholders money back. This is our gold standard. This is the frame where we are behaving in. We are the gold standard. Aryza is the gold standard of the protagonists in the markets. We are together with customers. We develop our business, our model. We sharpen the positioning of our customer. For a retail customer, our product is key. It is a footfall driver. For a food service customer, for a hotel, our product is key. Booking behavior in hotels is different than five years ago, 10 years ago. You will know it by yourself.
If you have a weekend, you try to spend with friends or with family somewhere, you are maybe doing two or three bookings, and you hope that in one of these locations, the weather is nice. You go after this one and you skip the other two. If you take this view from the hotel side, the hotel does not know today what the occupancy rate will be at the weekend. How can he plan his resources with this, how can he hire people with this. We have a solution for this. We have products which are surviving this week or next week in the freezer, being ready to be baked off within 20 minutes to serve customers, whatever need they have. Innovation category now, as I told, channel solutions.
A product, a roll, a pastry is different in a food service channel, in a retail channel, or in a quick-serve restaurant channel. The products have to deliver different value propositions. Did you ever ask yourself why in a quick-serve restaurant you do not get Gipfels? What is the thinking why you do not get a Gipfel in the big golden arch or very limited? Because the takeaway share is quite big. Would you ever eat a Gipfel in your car? How your car looks after a Gipfel? You do not like this. The behavior of a product you eat most probably in your car is different than one you eat for breakfast in the hotel. If you eat a flaky Gipfel in the car, you need a good vacuum cleaner after this. You do it once and then you stop it. Products are different from channel to channel.
Quality and efficiency. We know all we did have a discussion about another thing we did not like with another protagonist. Quality, efficiency, food safety is key. We need to be a reliable safety-focused partner for our customers. Product safety, hygiene, product reliability is key. I would now hand over to Michael Schai for market dynamics and strategic targets.
Thank you very much, Urs. I will be a little bit more formal. It is my first presentation to all of you today, which is, I think, a good opportunity after four months. And so I will present from here and stay a little bit on script because it is clearly very important what we share today with you, how our goals are and how we see the market over the coming three-year period.
Just if we take a macro view and you look at the pure size, absolute and relative, of bakery goods around the world, you just see visually it is one of the largest markets. No need to go into the single detail, but what is also interesting is a large market that is literally present in every geography of the world with very different maturity phases. One characteristic of baked goods is it is a very local, a very unconsolidated market, which I think is attractive for us as a global baked goods operator. If we look at also Asia in China, per capita consumption would be in the low single digits. If you go to Germany, it is closer to 80, but every shopper and every consumer, no matter where they live, they will eat bakery products. I am very confident that this market is continuing to grow.
It grows about 1% globally year-on-year on 500-odd billion. You can see there is a lot of headroom for all of us in the industry. This is probably one of the key slides, and Urs mentioned it. We have made the strategic decision again four years ago to operate in the most attractive subsegment of baked goods, which is bake-off, freshly baked on site in front of the noses and the eyes of our shoppers. Last time we presented to you here three years ago, the bake-off was 25% in the red, and we predicted it to go to 28% by 2025. You can see here on the left side, it already has achieved the 28% share and is on par with a package long life.
Over the next planned period, we expect that this subsegment in the first, actually, time of human history is the largest segment. There is only one way up. We will see afterwards what drives bake-off, but we expect that bake-off continues to outgrow the total market and will be the dominant subsegment in 2028. We will talk a little bit about the details, what the drivers are, and why we are so confident that this will be the case. This is probably the chart why I decided to come back to Switzerland and work again for Aryza. I truly believe in today's disruptive world. To be in bake-off is absolutely future-proof and a very attractive market to be in because we do not rely just on one or two key drivers. There are three distinctive drivers that will further accelerate the growth of the bake-off market across the world.
On the left side, you see consumer trends. I stopped this morning. I was a bit early. I stopped at Curly Canard. For the ones that are not from here, there is a Migrolino, there is a Burger King, and there is a Mövenpick. All three of them had at 6:30 A.M. freshly baked products, and you had croissants, pastries, muffins in the morning. Guess what? I bought one together with a coffee. That freshly baked, available everywhere you go from 5:00 A.M. till a baguette in a convenience store at 10:00 A.M. is what consumers want and want more as we go forward. It is having a frozen product. You will see it afterwards here in Dagmersellen. There is nothing nasty that goes into a frozen product. We form it, we prove it, we freeze it at minus 18 degrees Celsius.
We can ship it all around Switzerland or the world, and the hotel or the restaurant or the supermarket decides in the moment they need more croissants or more bread rolls when they want to bake it. It smells, it looks fresh. From a consumer demand, I have absolutely no doubt that this subsegment will grow further, and probably 30% is on the conservative side. On the other hand, we also see customer shifts. The customers that operated in-store bakeries, in the good old days, supermarkets had 100 sq m bakeries with ovens, provers, six or seven staff. 8:00 in the morning, they all went to bed. In the afternoon, the shelves and the bake-off was empty. That has completely changed. First of all, there are no more bakers, unfortunately, to operate those scratch bakeries, whether it is in Australia, in Switzerland, or in Norway.
That really has changed. Space has gotten much more expensive in those stores. Why would you allocate 100 or 150 sq m for a product that's baked at night and then everybody disappears? Everything goes our way also from a customer and from how they're structured. Yes, we'll talk a bit afterwards. There are customers that insource, but that is not what happens in the market. Most customers outsource to companies like us that centrally produce high-quality frozen products, and then they bake it all day long very efficiently at a high quality in-store. The third one is industry consolidation. Again, unfortunately, I say I'm not a baker by trade, but I do love the trade. Small bakeries have continued their decline. A small cornerstone artisan bakery is a difficult business to operate, and that will unfortunately continue.
What it also did is every bakery that will close, you will still buy a baguette or croissant the next or the same day. You just buy it in a supermarket, in a petrol station, in a convenience store. That will help also the industry. If you look at quality development in frozen, even over the last five or eight years, the efficiency has increased, but also the quality has increased. You cannot sell a normal standard industrial baguette anymore today. If you go in a market, they are all sourdough, artisanal, rustic, seeded, long fermentation. That shift really helped the industry to also become higher quality and more efficient. Here again, the business model, Urs already explained it. I think I only want to go on the two sides. On the left is we see ourselves as a strategic partner. We are not a brand.
I would proudly say that in markets where we team up with our customers, we are seen as a B2B brand and reliable partner. There it's all about how do we grow with our customers? What can we provide them from a product, but also service perspective so they outgrow the market and succeed? Quality and efficiency is what I mentioned before with the baguette. There has been a revolution. Also, when you look at our investments, they are yes into efficiency, but they're a lot about innovation, quality, and making a more customer-relevant and artisanal product. On the right side, I'll show you in a minute a couple of pictures from my first 100 days traveling our markets, how that looks like. It is innovation, and you already tasted some of the products outside this morning.
They're all from the new line, and most of them are really new products. Innovation is at the core. What we do every day, we get out of bed and into one of our bakeries. Channel solutions, we have to anticipate what do consumers want in retail in two or three years' time. By understanding what shoppers want, we can go back to our customers and present them product concepts and service concepts that help them to succeed over the longer term. The other reason why I show this is I had a few questions. Now that you come back in, will there be a complete different Aryza strategy? No, there won't. Yes, the market will change and will adapt and evolve as required.
This strategy has proven and allowed for the turnaround, so there is no need to radically change the way we operated for the last couple of years. I will also talk around sustainability in a minute. Here, I'll keep it a bit short because I wanted to show you a couple of visuals how that looks like because those levers of growth apply probably to most customers. The one I think is different, Urs mentioned at the beginning that baked goods is a very local business. Even here in Dagmersellen, probably almost 100% of what we produce here is sold in Switzerland. Yes, that is a bit of the Swiss market, but same in Holland, the same in New Zealand. It is typically a more local business.
What I like is with Aryza, we are local in all the markets we are with local production, local distribution, local people, local services. What differentiates us from local competitors is that we can also offer global or regional partners a global or regional reach. We can grow with the likes of a QSR literally around the world. For us, that is focused on our two main geographic areas, but we can play in these both fields. Product technologies we have already discussed. The market is playing for us. The subsegment is growing. I think the one thing that I would like you to take home is it is not dependent just on one trend. It is consumer trend, it is customer changes, and it is industry consolidation. These together, in my view, guarantee the growth of this subsegment for time to come. Transformation, Urs mentioned with the technology board.
What is also attractive for us is we have quite an easy model to replicate. A good example would be South Korea. We opened a sales office, employed two salespeople. All the support came from our organizations in Japan and Malaysia. Within, I'd say, 10 or 12 weeks, we can access a new market, test it out, deliver products into that market, and then if successful, we can start to build an old local entity. We are quite flexible in this regard. We will talk also about we want to be in control of our own future. For me, that means continue to grow profitably, be a solid company in the market, and then we can decide how we participate in the consolidation that is going on in the market. Now here, a little bit easier, more pictures, less text.
I have five examples to just show you how those four strategic pillars, how we apply them in the markets. On the left side, you see this is Malaysia with a bit of an odd shape because we got that two islands. This is the new line we talked about, the laminated dough line in Malaysia, up and running since October. What is beautiful here is you can see we bring European croissant expertise. We produce a French croissant with French branded butter, Isigny butter, but we do it in Malaysia, locally manufactured, fully halal, close to the markets. We mix this European know-how with local expertise. At the bottom right, you see a new range, how we adapt a product, a pastry that is a little bit more European with very locally relevant tastes. Red bean, for example, is the preferred filling.
It tastes a little bit like chestnut in Japan. What is the chocolate croissant in Switzerland is the red bean croissant in Japan. We can really play, but always have this expertise and bakery expertise. If we then move to where we are today, you can see we have inaugurated the line a couple of weeks ago. That is Martin and myself with the Swiss team there cutting the ribbon. We really talk about the croissant revolution. You can see the attributes that consumers tell us, how they judge the quality of a croissant. In preparation of the line, we understood what consumers want. We specced the line, we tested it now, and 70% of all shoppers in blind tasting confirmed that our croissant is the best croissant in the Swiss market.
Hopefully, you could convince yourself this morning all the products we had there are made here locally. Moving on to Germany, this will go live sort of in the second half of the year, but these are actual products and the actual installation of the oven. This is a stone-plated oven where you can do very rustic and artisanal products. It was a bit of a feat to get that into the bakery. It is 125 tons, that double deck oven. On the bottom right left, this is not a Google picture. These are exactly the products that we have developed over the last 12 months. The first product of this has run the whole length of the line on the 10th of April.
We're still in trial phasing, but we know exactly what product lines they've been tested with shoppers, and that will be sold in the market. I talked a little bit about we have good products, but there's so much more than products. If you look at customer development, I think our Irish colleagues do a really good job with a brand that is quite well known in Ireland, Cuisine de France, to not only supply them a frozen product to the freezer, but also place the oven, program the oven, train their staff that are not trained bakers, have POS material to make it attractive. This is how a convenience store or a SPAR or a Musgrave would look like in Ireland. These are pictures I've taken a couple of weeks ago. Again, that's a reality.
The last one is one that I'm not 100% sure whether everybody appreciates how important innovation is in the quick-serve restaurant. Yes, a regular burger, a quarter pounder, and a Big Mac is the bread and butter, so to speak, also for these customers. You can see here buns, a bit small on the top, colored buns, seeded buns, healthier buns, sourdough buns. This is also how we can help a channel and a customer to develop and stay relevant with changing customer or shopper demands, healthier products, a bit more attractive products. This is also, I guess, where we can differentiate ourselves. We are not just a bun supplier. We are a strategic partner for these large global customers we have. Innovation, very important for us. We've invested EUR 100 million over the last three years into more innovative products.
This can be new products, new lines, but also sometimes capability upgrades online where we put in a new element where we can have roasted seeds, for example, again, to provide shoppers a more attractive product. Importantly, and you will see in Martin's presentation, innovation is also one of the building blocks of our margin improvement. If you have a new product that everybody wants, it allows you to demand a different price and differentiate yourself in the market. We talked about our state-of-the-art innovation center in Eisleben in the northeast of Germany. Here you can see our current footprint. It will be a little bit easier in the end of the year. By the end of the year, it will be 27 lines in 27 markets. Today, it is 26 lines.
You can see at the bottom right, we are building another bakery in Perth, WA, Western Australia, that will go online towards the end of the year. I think what it is that what I find attractive is that we have an attractive geographic footprint. We are quite happy that we are not in the U.S. at the moment, and that will be a topic a bit later on as well, our exposure. In that Europe and rest of the world or wider APAC, we are a very strong player. Also, if we look at how we are set from a product group, a channel revenue split, I think we are very well positioned to act quite flexible in an ever more dynamic world to react.
Whether a shopper is in a five-star hotel or tomorrow in a McDonald's or in a QSR, we have access to those customers through shoppers, through our customers. I think that is the beauty of the business model of Aryza. Here you can see the three channels. I will not go through all the bullet points. It is probably a bit more the picture. Switzerland, for example, if we deliver to restaurants, we would have products that we produce here in Dagmersellen. We would buy in some products from outside to offer them everything they need in the bakery world. We would have our field bakers there to help them program and train the staff, and we would deliver two or three times a week with our own trucks to every single store. That is a food solutions offer. We offer them everything out of one hand.
The next one would be bakeries. This is more a manufacturing capability that we have. If someone says, even for example, a big retailer, we have 12 DCs, central warehouses. These are the 12 products we would like. We manufacture them at the highest quality and highest efficiency and deliver them in full trucks into their warehouses. From there, they are in control on distribution and how it is presented within the stores. Quite unique to us, there are only three large bakeries that have a quick-serve restaurants business, and you know that is an important channel for us. There we basically follow on one hand these large organizations, but also innovate and help to develop the channel of QSR. Again, this is for me the way to address the full potential.
Here are a couple of market data, and I'm just going through to make sure I don't miss everything here. The addressable market is the countries we are in, what we see as bake-offs. This is TIRA data and our own assessment. For the first time now in a while, last year, we had about EUR 2.2 billion revenue. The addressable market is at EUR 22 billion-EUR 23 billion. We have in the markets we are in a 10% market share, which I think is a really good position. It gives us relative size and economies of scale, but it also shows the headroom for the years to come. There is much more to go after, and that market is also growing. Three years ago, that market was EUR 18 billion. Now it's EUR 20.3 billion.
If that continues to grow at 2.4% year-on-year, you can see the market's growing and we are growing our relative share in this market. All channels are growing. The one that's growing the fastest in, sorry, product groups is savory and morning goods with bread, which is the largest segment, bread and bread rolls, slightly slower, but all product segments are growing over the next planned period. The same for channels. We believe QSR will outgrow. For me, there are two main reasons. On one hand, value-based offers. In a market that became a little bit more expensive, cost of living, a QSR offers an attractive and cost-effective meal for a family in particular.
I think also when it comes to digitalization, if you look at the apps and investment into apps from those large QSRs, that really drives shopper loyalty and footfall also going forward. You can see food service and retail are predicted to grow as well at around that 2%. There is a lot of consolidation going on in the market. I mentioned in March when I was here, there was about 12 acquisitions over the last couple of weeks. There were not a few. There were about 20 transactions since 2020, half of them in North America, half of them in Europe. You can see multiple ranges in that mid 10, slightly different between the US and the value was between EUR 200 million and EUR 2 billion. This is a simplified overview of how we see the competitive landscape.
On the horizontal line, you can see on the right side is high bake-off share, so close to where we are with frozen products baked. On the left side would be fully packaged, sometimes even branded products. North or upwards would be a full assortment, and south would be a smaller assortment or focused on a couple of lines. What you see here is, yes, there are five companies in that top right corner, meaning focusing more and more on bake-off and offering everything out of one hand, with Aryza still holding a number one position with the acquisition or merger between Fundamental and Delifrance taking place now. They'll have a similar size, sort of that EUR 2 billion-ish than us, probably some overlaps in some channels or markets.
If you look at the assortment they're in, the channels they're serving, and the geographic reach, we are not that much overlapping, but it's clear where the music plays. We are proud to say that we still hold a market leader position and continue to outperform in this market. That leads me to probably the chart you've waited for and read it in this morning's ad hoc. The revenue growth, we've decided to go with an above market. If you look at macroeconomics, certain disruptions, it is quite difficult to predict quarter-by-quarter market growth. We gave the guidance you could see before. We foresee the market to grow at 2.4% over the three years. I'm very confident that this will happen. How this happens, short term, mid term, a bit longer term, I think there could be some ups and downs in different areas of the world.
Our ambition, and we are very confident that we are able, with the way we are set up, to outgrow the market and gain share over this time period. Our ambition is obviously the big profitability improvements we have done. The next steps will be a bit more incremental. The ambition is to deliver a north of 15% EBITDA by 2020, which translates into an above 19% EBIT margin over the planned period. We continue to invest in the same range we have done over the last three years, 3.5%-4.5%. We target our net debt leverage band between 1.5-2. Martin will elaborate a little bit more on why that range. That provides us the flexibility on one hand for capital returns, but also to be in charge of our own destiny over the years to come.
In Martin's section, we will also show, obviously, we will deliver improved cash, ROIC, and EPS growth over the planned period. Martin will talk about the details. Last, but definitely not least, is our sustainability strategy. I summarized it in two slides, mainly also to show you we have a very clear sustainability agenda that is very well organized, good oversight for the board, regular updates, very clear and measurable outcomes. You see at the top, it is sourcing and innovation, which we have in our own hands. You can see at the bottom right, people and communities, which are obviously very important. On the left side is environmental efficiency.
On the left side, you can see probably the one I want to call out is the biggest. If you look at a carbon footprint, the biggest impact is our raw materials and bought-in goods. That accounts for about 86% of our total footprint. In the annual report that we've just published, you can see these three pillars. They have 13 very clear and precise goals that we track quarterly, publish regularly. While we have different levels of progress, we are clear that the targets we have set for 2028 will be achieved. We update regularly as we go along on any wins, where we are ahead, and what we do on the ones that we still have a way to go until the year 2028. On my last chart, the key takeaways, do not forget, it is a very large market.
If you look at the bar on page one, I think sometimes people underestimate how big baked goods are and how global these products are. We are in the right segment, bake-off. We predict it grows from 25% to 28%. We are already ahead. We predict it goes to 30% and will be the biggest subsegment. It has these three drivers: consumer-driven, customer-driven, industry-driven. In today's tumultuous world, even if one or two would slightly change due to short-term disruptions, the others are all valid. That gives me a really good confidence that we are in the right sector. Industry consolidation will go on. We have a seat at the table, but we are very prudent how we address it. We have a focus strategy.
We have no exposure to the U.S. besides a couple of exports into smaller outlets, which at the moment probably helps us a little bit to focus on the markets we are at. We are servicing all channels. For me, the word there I want to leave you with is we can really go after the full addressable market. No matter where those shoppers are, no matter in the geography, we can reach them and we can grow Aryza's success story over the next three years. With this, I pass on to Martin.
Thank you, Michael. Good morning. Over the period of the last midterm plan, we have delivered an average annual volume mix growth rate of 4.2%. If you consider the recently confirmed guidance for 2025, this average annual volume mix growth rate from 2022 to 2025 is in the range of 3.5%-4.5%.
Remember, it's not organic growth, it's volume mix. As Michael has outlined in his presentation, we are present in an attractive and profitable market. This market is growing annually, volume-wise, 2.4%. Where we are present, we have well-established market positions in the categories and geographies. For the new midterm plan, 2025 to 2028, our growth building blocks are the following: fully capitalizing on the market momentum and leveraging our favorable channel mix. As you have seen, we're over-indexing in the faster growing QSR channel. Consistent customer development, counting on our deep category know-how and insight to fulfill customer and channel needs. Focus on innovation and premiumization, leveraging the food trends and the customer expectations, and also increasing our geographical footprint by establishing new sales offices like the one in Korea, for example, that Michael has mentioned.
With this, we are confident that we will be able to generate a volume mixed growth above the market momentum that we have that we're playing in. Our organic growth fueled business model and the disciplined cost management will continuously help us to improve profitability. We expect to improve our profitability over the midterm plan on an EBITDA level from 14.6% to over 15%. In the same period, we expect to increase our EBIT level to over 9%. We are changing our profitability focus to EBIT or operating profit as a key measure. Why is that? We have significant investment in growth projects as well as our IT roadmap. We need the management to focus on a more comprehensive measure of profitability. Rest assured, we're not losing sight of EBITDA. That continues to be a focus.
The key building blocks for our margin progression will be the continued focus on margin-enhancing innovation, consistent management of our factory and distribution cost, full deployment of our above-market procurement organization, and leveraging our centers of competence and centers of scale to drive organizational alignment. Over the next couple of slides, I will give details on our margin building blocks and tell you and explain to you what the main actions are that we will take. Our margin building blocks, in summary, are focused on operations, procurement, and structural cost. Structural cost is a definition. These are fixed costs in factory, in distribution, and SG&A. With these three blocks, we expect to deliver over the midterm plan, 2025 to 2028, cross-cost optimizations of EUR 40 million-EUR 60 million. This will help us for two things.
On one side, to drive margin progression and deliver the above 15% EBITDA and above 9% EBIT margin on one side. On the other side, help us to finance incremental operating costs of EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million over the period of the midterm plan for our IT roadmap, as well as the rollout of our AI journey. The first building block of the margin progression or the margin-enhancing elements is operations. Here we have four key focus areas. First of all, continuous improvement. Continuous improvement is the cornerstone of how we manage manufacturing performance. Over the last couple of years, we have clearly supported the margin progression of the group with this area. We expect to continue to do that.
In order to strengthen the capability, we have actually recently hired a specialist in that who helped us to bring the continuous improvement program at Aryza to a next level. The second part is the building and setting up of technology clusters to drive capacity utilization and improve efficiency and conversion costs. The first technology cluster we are building and we are focusing on is for lamination technology. How do you have to imagine that? We'll make an inventory of all our lamination lines that we have in our group. What is the technology of these lamination lines? What is the product portfolio that is run and planned on these lines? We do an internal benchmarking on all these lines based on full capacity calculation. We identify efficiency opportunities and improvement on how we plan the production on these lines. Just a simple example.
In our first phase of the study, we have identified, for example, in one factory that the very same product is run on lamination line one and lamination line two, 75 on one, 25 on two. By improving the overall planning of the factory and concentrating that product on the faster and more efficient running line, we have identified just with one product $500,000 of cost optimization in our plant. The third one is our own waste. We have made good progress on this. We have contributed to our results on one side. On the other side, we also have made good strides towards our 2028 ESG target. We expect over the midterm plan to continue delivering here, and we expect to reduce further our manufacturing-generated waste by 20% by the end of 2028. The third one is related to AI.
We have in one of our factories a machine learning pilot. With this machine learning pilot, we are driving the automation of the process control on one side and on the other side, also optimize the line staffing. Based on the learning of this, we intend to build an AI use case, which we then can start rolling out to other factories. Over the period 2022 to 2024, we have delivered significant improvement. We have reduced our conversion cost to index 93 versus 2022. We have reduced the waste to index 92 versus when we started in 2022. We have run a target costing initiative in five factories. The insights that we gained from that and the potential that we have identified makes us confident to deliver over the midterm plan, 2025 to 2028, incremental cost optimization of EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million.
The next part of our building blocks is procurement. In procurement, we are consolidating our above-market procurement organization. In June 2024, we have started the first step, and we expect to finalize the above-market procurement organization implementation in 2026. This together with the digitization of our procurement processes. The focus area of these initiatives is as follows. By 2026, with a fully leveraged procurement organization, we expect to cover over 85% of the addressable procurement spend in direct and indirect materials. Second, in order to support the efficiency and effectiveness of our procurement processes, we are implementing a source-to-contract system support that, together with the business service center in Poland, where we drive process efficiency as well as improved data consistency, will help to drive the impact of procurement to the organization.
Further, the step-by-step rollout of S/4 into our organization will enable procurement with access to this S/4 embedded AI to further improve their effectiveness on how to address our spend buckets. Simplex, this has been a program. That's our program to standardize and simplify our recipes without impacting the quality of the product. We will continue with that. We'll continue to optimize our recipe. We will have a particular focus on redesigning recipes to improve or mitigate the creation of waste in our production. In the period 2022 to 2024, we have delivered through procurement and Simplex over EUR 36 million of cost optimization. We have increased the procurement coverage from 60% to over 75%. We have taken already first steps, as I mentioned, in the rollout of our above-market procurement organization.
Therefore, we are confident that over the period 2025-2026, we'll be delivering an incremental EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million cost optimization to the business. The third and last point of our cost on margin building blocks is structural cost. Through this, we expect to drive margin enhancement through operational leverage. In order to achieve this, we are focusing on the following. First of all, let's say Aryza has made good progress in standardizing and simplifying its transactional finance processes. By the end of 2024, businesses representing 60% of our revenue are already serviced by the business service center in Poland. We are continuing to onboard additional transactional services from other functions like procurement and IT, but are also planning on adding analytical services that can be performed above market.
The business service center that we have established and set up in Poland also is a key enabler of the rollout of our IT roadmap. With the team there, we are helping the businesses that are onboarding to a new SAP platform to streamline and standardize their processes and then simplify the switch over to the new system. The next business actually that's coming online with SAP S/4HANA is Fornetti. Second is the leveraging of our group competence center. We consider above-market procurement, the competence center and the centers of scale, which is the business service center in Poland, will help us align the retained organization in the businesses.
For example, for procurement and finance, we have established organizational archetypes based on the complexity of the business that help us to streamline the processes, what we are doing in the businesses, to reduce the structural cost with that in the businesses and to increase speed to market. We intend to extend that to all non-customer-facing functions in the group and with us drive cost optimization over the period of time. The third last one is the factories. Also there in the factory or indirect factory cost of factory organization with our factory of the future model and our factory manufacturing operating model, we are addressing factory overheads, streamlining them, standardizing them, making sure they're efficiently organized. Through this, we are also driving cost optimization.
Over the period of the midterm plan, we expect to optimize cost in the structural cost area in the vicinity of EUR 15-20 million. As I mentioned in the beginning, this gross cost optimization will help us finance our journey to digital maturity. This is important for Aryza because this will help to harness the efficiencies that we gain in the area of operations and our structural cost. We therefore plan to invest for this digital maturity journey EUR 20-30 million incremental operating cost to achieve that. Where are the focus of this? On one side, our customer landscape is evolving and the increasing expectation, and there is an increasing expectation to transact digitally. Food service customers and retail convenience customers have the need to do web-based selling and ordering.
Our big retailers and wholesale channels, they are increasingly using EDI and require an integration of their customer portals. All of that requires us to address this through a comprehensive omnichannel strategy. This will help us to improve customer experience, improve our e-com ability on one side, and complement with this our traditional route to market through our sales force as well as through our call center infrastructure. Second, with the business service center, we are standardizing our end-to-end processes and further progress on master data management. This will ensure us to help us to fully leverage the power of data for analytics, process optimization, and speed to market. From a risk and efficiency point of view, we will focus on IT and OT operations technology infrastructure standardization.
Important areas here are identity and access management, OT security governance and operations management, as well as data security and zero trust strategy adaptation. Our journey to digital maturity is, let's say, off to a good start. Already about 60% of our revenue or businesses representing about 60% of our revenue are SAP-based. We have taken already first experience of leveraging the power of data through our data lake that we have established. Over the last couple of years, we have made significant improvement of the risk resilience of Aryza in the area of IT. With this step, we will also enable the rollout of the AI journey that Urs has presented in his part of the section. Moving now to cash.
Our cash generation capability over the period of midterm plan will be supported by the improving operating performance supported by the growth and margin building blocks together with the continued drive for working capital efficiency. You see that we have made good progress over the last three years, both on the cash generation as well as on the management of our working capital. We target for the period of the midterm plan a free cash flow conversion of over 40% of EBITDA. This includes the consideration of a CapEx envelope of 3.5%-4.5% of revenue over the period of the midterm plan on one side, and also higher cash taxes given the increased profitability of our businesses in the markets on one side and the continued reduction or elimination of losses carried forward.
We will also consider during the period of the midterm plan, this is however not, let's say, considered yet in that above 40% free cash flow conversion rate, a potential optimization of our securitization facility if that makes sense from a financing cost point of view. If we would decide to do so, this would bring that conversion rate down below 40%. In terms of capital structure, with our strong cash generation supported by the operating performance, we expect to obviously pay back our last outstanding hybrid and optimize the debt stack and further strengthen the balance sheet. This will be done step by step. As we have mentioned in previous meetings with you, we will have an eye on our equity ratio. We'll target around 40%. Please bear in mind, listen, this is around 40% and it's not a hard target.
This is something we use as a benchmark, not as a hard target, okay? We expect with this to achieve then by 2028 a leverage ratio of not less than 1.5x-2x EBITDA. This gives us enough flexibility to return capital to the shareholders and also consider an optimization of our securitization facility. In terms of capital efficiency, we also expect to further improve our capital efficiency to 14%-15% by the end of 2028. This will be supported by the improved operational performance, our disciplined management of the CapEx with the CapEx envelope of 3.5%-4.5%, and further optimization of the capacity through the implementation of our technology clusters that I mentioned before, and as well as a strict management of make or buy decisions in terms of our product portfolio.
Priority for capital allocation over the next four years is as follows. First, obviously, is the support of our growth efficiency and ESG initiatives through this CapEx envelope of the 3.5%-4.5%. This will also enable us to achieve a ROIC of 14%-15%. Second, is the continued strong cash generation will further help us to strengthen the balance sheet, eliminate the legacy financing, and provide access to competitive financing through investment-grade bond issuing, for example. Once an appropriate core equity ratio is achieved and the last remaining hybrid is paid out, bless you, is paid out, we define and communicate the shareholder return policy, which we expect to do in the course of 2026. As we have successfully completed our turnaround plan and have put Aryza back into a strong position, we will also look at potential bolt-on acquisition over the period of the midterm plan.
Rest assured, the board will scrutinize potential targets on very strictly defined strategic, financial, and organizational criteria to ensure that the business, the potential business target, is in the core of our activity and is margin accretive to our business. In summary, our new midterm plan will continue to build on the successful business model that we have implemented over the past few years. Operational performance will be rooted in an organic growth-driven business model supported by us capturing the full market momentum and complementing it with margin-enhancing innovation and premiumization, a continuous improvement mindset, and our cost discipline measures to drive margin, deliver consistent cash flow, and further improve capital efficiency. Let's say, evolve towards investment grade and optimize further our financing cost and recommence the return of capital to shareholders. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Martin.
Maybe you have the microphone.
We would, with this, finish the presentation and would go to the Q&A and would try to answer your questions. Patrik. Patrik, 21 seconds.
Thank you. Urs, I have a question regarding the dividend policy. It will be decided in 2026 or so next year. Does this mean a dividend for the financial year 2025 or not yet? Or is this still open? That's my first question. And then you have mentioned you have different options between dividend and share buybacks. What does this mean? You could also just do a buyback and do not pay any dividend, or would you say at least some sort of a payout ratio? And then finally, a question regarding current trading. Do you also expect an EBITDA margin improvement for the current year despite this additional IT costs and maybe a tougher environment? Thank you.
Let me start first with the dividend. As Martin told, there is still a hybrid there. This is the next approach I think we take. Once this is done, we will decide in the board about dividend stroke, share buyback. Could be this, could be dividend, could be share buyback, or could be both in one year. It depends then a bit on the actuality we are in. This is up to a board decision, and this board decision could be taken at any time. Martin, the last part of the question. The EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million incremental operating cost, this is over the period of 2025-2028. We make sure that we time that adequately. That is still to have an EBITDA margin for the improvement for the current year? We have not changed our guidance for 2025, no.
Coming back to your answer, Urs, I'm still not, so it's still open if you pay a dividend for 2025?
Did I get that right? Everything open. It's still open that you also could decide just to do share buybacks in a given year? Yes. Why is that? Because we didn't take a decision and we are approaching the challenge step by step. Remember, we have a balance sheet. There is still a hybrid on. We are having a current year. We are having projects being managed, decisions being taken. We will address this question the moment we know all components having an impact. All open. I think it goes in line with what we have always communicated. It's a step-by-step approach.
We drive operating performance, create the cash, address then adequately these, let's say, the last remaining and outstanding hybrid, and have this core equity ratio of around 30%, which we have said. As I said, it's not a covenant, it's not a hard target, but it's a framework. It's a midterm plan 2025 to 2028. And the statement we did that we will give money to shareholders back. 2025 to 2028 is the frame.
I completely understand this. I'm just a little bit surprised that I would think that some investors at least would think it would be a good idea to pay at least some sort of a dividend, right?
Yes, could be a good idea, yes.
But your answer was it could be also just share buybacks, yeah?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you.
That was first. Your first step?
Yes.
Could you talk us through a little bit on the procurement side, how you think about energy procurement in some of your geographies where energy prices may or may not vary substantially?
Overall, energy purchases is not only from a procurement point of view an important element, it is also from an ESG point of view an important element. We have a target to optimize our greenhouse gas footprint, and therefore we are very cognizant that this is an important lever. We are actually preparing an assessment how to enter into power purchase agreements in order to benefit the business, but also deliver the targeted greenhouse gas optimization. This is part of it. We have time until 2028 to do that. Obviously, you know by yourself, once we switch on a PPA, it immediately takes the effect.
We have entered into smaller PPAs, local PPAs, but certainly we are now looking at bigger ones for our large European footprints. Is that answering your question?
John Cox. Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Just so I understand correctly, the 2.4% you're talking about, that's volume mix?
Volume, that's the volume growth of the market when you refer to that.
Okay, so pure volume, you will be above 2.4% on average over this period.
Volume, and we said this is a volume mix view. It doesn't, let's say it's at constant pricing. Yeah, what I'm trying to work out is 2.4% is volume and mix, and then on top we're going to get a bit of price. Whatever the pricing will be.
Sure, but I'm just worried, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this 2.4, what exactly that will be, just given the fact that you haven't done 2.4 for the last five quarters or so in terms of volume plus mix. We have done over the period 2022 to 2024, and on average, a 4.2% volume mix growth. And we intend for the period 2025 to 2028 to be above that 2.4% volume, pure volume growth of the market we're playing in. So volume is what you're aiming for, this 2.4? Volume and mix, yes. And mix, okay. Which is obviously above what you did in Q1. I wonder what, it's obviously got a bit of a slower year. I wonder if you could just sort of give us a bit of a breakdown in terms of what you think the price component could be.
I'm not going to speculate about pricing. We have gone through, when we look at the last three years, we have gone through a very drastic situation. I don't know in the current volatile and the biggest situation what pricing is going to do. Okay. If you look at your... What I can confirm to you is what we have already done, let's say, or reconfirmed to you is our guidance for 2025, and this is an organic growth guidance, low to mid single digit.
Okay, and then you gave this sort of forecast for QSR to grow 4, and then the other two categories to grow 2, 2.4, which is clearly above the 2.4. So I'm just wondering this, then do you include price in that forecast on QSR growing 4% CAGR over the next year?
These are all, when you do that, when you do the mix, you have, this is the market growth of QSR, and when you see what QSR percentage in the market is, it's not our, let's say you have to weigh that with the market share of QSR. The channel mix in the market is different from the channel mix that we have. When you apply the channel mix that we have on the slide, you get to that 2.4%. When you would apply the channel mix that we have, that's why I mentioned that, we are over-indexing on QSR, so we have a favorable impact of channel mix on the overall.
Okay, and then back to this 2.4, I'm just wondering the split on volume and mix, given the fact you want to improve your margin through mix, should we think it will be like a point and a half volume and then a point mix or something like that?
I think I would, let's say, I think I would, as Urs said in the beginning, I would stick to the big numbers, what we have said. We will fully, let's say we aim at fully capturing the market momentum. We aim at leveraging our favorable exposure in terms of the mix, and we aim at complementing that with our premiumization and innovation strategy focusing on the food trends. And some of the products you might have missed because you came late, but you will see, you will see them created in the factory tour.
Okay, thank you. Nick, you have a question.
Thanks, Jørn from UBS. Three questions from my side, if I would take them one by one. The first one is please on your innovation pace. I think in the meanwhile, you have 40% of your revenues are premiumized products, which I think is defined per margins. What is the roadmap for the next three years here? I mean, you mentioned, I think these four new lines coming on stream, EUR 1 million revenue prospect. Is there anything other planned on top? In terms of innovations going forward, is it more happening in PrET? Is it more happening in sub-areas? Because I think most of the innovation products you spoke about, I think PrET and Rhodes, not so much in sub-areas, despite it's a faster growing category. Maybe how does the premiumization portfolio look like in three years here? Is it 50% of revenues, for example?
I mean, we've increased the revenue share of innovation from 14% to 18% year-on-year. The definition is three years. The moment a product is within the assortment, after three years, it falls into base. We constantly are forced to reinvent. That's the way we look at innovation. Premiumization is more how it differentiates in the market and obviously also from a price premium. If I would have sent out the signal that we innovate more in bread rolls, that's not correct. We really innovate in every segment we are in and consistently through our strategy process every year, understand what are the underlying consumer trends and then how do we fulfill them in savory, in viennoiserie or pastries or in bread rolls.
Probably what we showed is because we have the new artisan bread line and it's visually something nice to show. That's why we've probably overemphasized a bit. Back to your question, every single year in our strategy process with every business unit, they look at their market, its size, price, and then where to play and then how to win. We work with every single market on what are their innovation pipeline over the next 24 months based on underlying consumer trends. They are different. You've seen Malaysia with more that sort of fusion kitchen, European pastries with localized Japanese or Malaysian flavors. That would be then in sweet. We do the same in savory.
For example, vegan savory snacks have been quite big over the last two years that we offered into convenience channels, but it is literally across the whole segment, always based on understanding what shoppers want today and tomorrow.
This ratio of 15%-20% of new innovative products being introduced in the last three years, this is remaining on track for the next three years also?
Yes.
Okay. Okay. The second...
Jørn, maybe I can add, you did see on the slide there the investments we are doing. You did see everything. You did see a burger bun line in Western Australia, lamination lines in Malaysia and Switzerland, one coming in Poland, and you did see a bread and roll line. It goes everywhere.
The way we explain innovation is not only new product, it can be a more efficient product with a shorter baking time in the store of a customer. It goes everywhere in all product categories in all regions. This is the way we do. The share of this commoditized product is always a bit depending on the view, what is commodity or what will become commodity over years and whatnot. I can remember ourselves the moment we did build this bakery here, this joint venture in 2002, laminated dough and croissant was not a commodity, which became a commodity over time. This is a, how shall I say, a floating platform for a view, but it is clear that the effort goes beside into efficiency, beside into productivity, into innovation, differentiating ourselves in the market.
Maybe the next quick two questions. I mean, I think one of the most important slides, at least for me, was these EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million IT investments you are planning.
It's operating cost. It's not investment, to be very clear. It's cloud-based. When you look at the accounting norm, this has changed. That's mainly operating cost, cloud-based investments. So it's not a CapEx, to be clear.
Yeah, I understand this, but I wanted to, thanks for this, but to get a little bit the read-through, what are you planning for pricing? I mean, this can bring down prices, competitiveness materially, when you do this right, these cloud-based IT investments, AI investments. Are you preparing for a tougher pricing environment for the next five years? And you need these investments to cope with it, to maintain margins, expand margins. This is a read-through?
We are focusing on ensuring that Aryza is efficient and effective and is future-ready and is future-proof. That is why we are addressing this. What we do with structural optimization, we do that shared service center. It is fantastic what we can do with that. It is fantastic the visibility we get with that. That means also we need to then optimize the processes in the businesses where, let's say, where the people remain. I want them to focus on driving value. I want them to increase their capability of decision-making. That helps us on one side to reduce the number of people we need, but on the other side, we need to give them tools and processes that they can work much more efficiently. These are investments that help us to improve our way of working, to reduce costs, to be effective and efficient.
That is the prime focus. It is not a topic of decisions on pricing. It is a topic of making sure we have a lean and effective structure that can be acting as the right business partner to the organization in the business and accelerate business decision-making. That is it. We cannot on one side reduce structure and on the other side leave them with paper and pen. This is why we need that. We need to harness that. We need to make sure that what we reduce works afterwards better oiled and more effective.
In the industry, it was always price-sensitive. The price pressure never went away. There was a bit of a different dynamic in COVID times with disturbed supply chain, but the pricing element never went away. It is here today, it was here yesterday, and it will be here tomorrow. This is a thing in the industry, clearly. We are always on this since we are here.
It's the last question, if I may, just so I understand. I think it's good that you give a prudent guidance, down-to-earth guidance, but if you add the net savings, it's around one percentage point on margins already from 14.6% to 15.6%. You want to grow volumes 2%-4% or 2.5%-4%. There's operating leverage drop-through, so it seems more that the EBITDA margins should trend towards 16%-17%. Just to understand, is this above 15%? Does it mean it's more in the 15%-16% corridor? It's prudent to see unforeseen things, or is it something where you really think we need to consider other things coming up that really the 15-16% corridor is more realistic?
I think it's all, I think what we have done over the past few years, we have worked on consistently delivering results. We expect to continue to do so. There is a factor of prudence in there, and we will be above 15% by 2028, yes.
Thanks.
Andreas.
Yeah, I also have three questions. First one's page 37 on the presentation. These targets, are these continuous? I mean, from 2025 to 2028, or is there potentially included, I don't know, some consumer-related global recession in 2026, 2027, or is this more like the cash flow should steadily increase towards these targets you have mentioned, which are specifically only for 2028?
We certainly expect to have a continuation, and I think I mentioned that, a continuous improvement of our results. If I would be capable of foreseeing in 2027 a consumer recession...
What's not like that you deliberately did not show at 2026 and at 2027 and only at 2025 and at 2028?
We expect to do a continuation of the improvement journey we have, as we always said. Once we have fulfilled the turnaround plan, the improvement journey will continue at a more moderate pace.
On the capital allocation, which I would like to understand a bit better. I mean, in the press release in the morning, I think you spoke about 30% equity ratio, right? I mean, if I look at my model, when you pay back the hybrid, that actually could take some time until you get to that 30%. I mean, does that mean the dividend could actually be postponed more than the 2026 we mentioned before? That would be the first question.
You want to reach that 30% level, and if that's only in 2027, there will be no dividend until then. That's the first question. Second question, if I understand you correctly during the presentation, you have a preference for the optimization of the securitization, so that's a reversal of what you did in the past, which will cost money over dividend, which would be an alternative. Could you maybe elaborate? Also, that should lead you to the investment grade, which should lead to lower financial costs. Why, from your perspective, is that financially preferable? I mean, obviously, you have long thought about it. Why? Maybe you could give some numbers on why the one and not the other.
First of all, I think the equity ratio, as I said, it is not a hard target. It is a range. Second of all, I said we might consider to address the securitization or optimize our securitization facility if it makes financially sense. When you compare our financing costs today versus what you can get for an investment grade, you will certainly see that there is a favorable arbitrage in terms of financing costs, clearly.
Okay, last question. I mean, in the presentation, you showed that all these transaction multiples are double-digit on EBITDA. I mean, the listed stock is high single digit at best. Again, here, two sub-questions. I mean, why not put Aryza up for sale? I mean, obviously, shareholders would immediately get significant upside if a transaction could take place at these double-digit multiples you mentioned. And then related to that, on your bolt-ons, I mean, are you willing to pay these double digits for your acquisitions, or do you think where you are trading is actually where you would like to buy? I mean, or maybe a bit differently. I mean, if you do an acquisition, I mean, what's the type of ROIC level that should come with that investment?
Thank you. Let me ask the, or let me try to reply on the first question. I think this decision to have sold the company was taken 1997 with the going public. We are a listed company. People can buy or sell shares every day. This is not in our influenceable area anymore. We focus on this, what we can do by our own.
You are right on the second question, enormous multiples being paid over the last two years for acquisitions. We did a bit wonder as well how these models then are turning out. If you see what we can manage with an own investment in an own line, this is much more favorable. If we invest EUR 20 million-EUR 40 million in a new line, getting EUR 25 million-EUR 35 million on top sales, you know the margins, you can assume that the fixed cost base is more the same than an increased one, even with a new line. You understand that an own investment, the way we show it, is clearly in the target. Now, would we be willing to pay a high multiple for an investment? Let me maybe describe what a bolt-on could be. The bolt-on is not a EUR 300 million-EUR 500 million company.
This would be small acquisitions to close landscapes and to create an added value out for us. Having somewhere a new footprint for EUR 100 million or whatever it is, and to leverage on this existing footprint, what we have already with the entire product range for cookies, laminated dough, specialties we have, burger buns we have, to use this bolt-on on a broader scale, this would be the plan. Again, the multiples we did see in the industry just in the last 12 months are enormous. The fact that we did not participate in this should give the answer. Andreas, are you willing or not? Did I answer with this question?
Somehow. No, but I mean, if the organic growth opportunities in terms of return on invested capital are so attractive, why then only spend 3.5%-4.5% when you obviously have the CapEx cash? I mean, is it then really you saying the industry does not allow for more growth? I mean, you would have the money, what you spend delivers attractive organic growth, but you limit yourself to market growth. Is that the message we should take away?
That if you would go more, then obviously that would not be beneficial for the shareholders. We did not limit ourselves to market growth. We told that we will beat the market, and this leaves the range open. The investments we are doing today are significant and massive. You understand that we take year by year two new lines online to the moment. This is the pace. Every line brings EUR 25 million-EUR 35 million incremental sales. I think we are there already on a high speed. We have an efficiency increase today in the system.
750,000 tons, more or less, is the output we can manage under ideal circumstances. With these technology initiatives, we are clearly targeting a much better usage of this. I think we are already on a kind of a fast track in this aspect. You are right. I fully agree. The own growth, the own investment in a healthy organic growth is by far the most profitable way for everybody participating in our company. I think from an operational point of view, it is also take the example here. You see the new line here. We have a very experienced, very stable team in Switzerland. If they invest EUR 20 million or EUR 25 million into a new laminated line and still run a day-to-day business, it absorbs quite a large part of the organization to spec it, to build it, to transition it, and to focus it.
I think for me, it is also to have that right balance of having the management and the teams' eyes on the ball for the day-to-day business to bring that organic growth, and then, yes, have growth cutbacks quite selectively, but also not overload the organization and all of a sudden end back again having the majority of the teams working on new shiny projects, but then forgetting the day-to-day of running a successful, profitable business. Maybe allow me one comment that is slightly linked on pricing. For me, those multiples were quite interesting as well. I've been in the industry a long time. Probably the one positive thing that I take personally out, I'm not sure what the, is it will favor rational pricing behavior.
If you pay a 12 or 14 or 15% multiple, some of those larger companies, their financial leverage has changed as well. I would expect quite reasonable pricing behavior in the market to make those investments basically that deliver good return rather than putting capacities on the market. That would be my personal, I guess, view on these high values.
A question on this capacity assessment. What would you say at the moment? Where is the industry? Because I remember during the COVID or post-COVID time, it seems that investments were not possible in the industry, and now we have acquisitions, and I assume also your competitors have done some capacity increases. I was wondering if you can give an idea of what you think. Are we already in an overcapacity situation, or is that still, let's say, manageable?
On the pricing, I see that there is not a big willingness to give a bit of an outlook on the pricing. The question I would probably make is, what are the major drivers which could influence your pricing? Is it more the input cost, or is it more the market dynamics from pricing of your competitors which you are actually seeing? I mean, we did see this inflation on commodities over the last three years. I remember, and Heinrich will remember this quite well, in the mid-1990s, we paid for a ton of flour EUR 210-EUR 220, correct? We are today two times, two and a half times higher. A kilogram of butter these days was EUR 2, EUR 2.10, and we are now on 7 something. EUR 7.20. Yeah, north of 7.
With the energy is happening, you know what labor does, you can read in the newspaper, mainly in Germany. We have other regions where minimum salaries have been tripled over the last years, and the money costs money as well again. Let's see what the money costs will happen now in these days. Maybe the trend is reversing. The driver of pricing are clearly these costs. The capacity in the industry became much more balanced over the last years. Mainly in Germany, there have been capacities built by subsidies. The subsidies are going now into other things. They call it a different way. They've even created a new word for this in Germany, Sondervermögen. It's a conflict per se doing this. The money goes elsewhere. The risk consciousness in the business became bigger.
The capacities are, I believe, balanced, and the industry will continue to behave like this. I'll just bring one point that we had when we met in March. It was also with this technology board where we said we operate about 100 lines. Imagine if you get 1% efficiency out through AI or general business process improvements, that corresponds with one line. I think there is also higher capacity utilization out of the existing asset base that will help us to outgrow the market without necessarily only putting new lines into the ground. Again, on 100 lines, every 1% efficiency gain or optimization we get out of the existing asset base corresponds with one line at relatively low costs. I think that will also allow Bake-Off to grow on existing footprint. You can also do the math.
We said our addressable market is EUR 23 billion, growing at volume, mixed 2.4%. That growth corresponds to about EUR 500 million a year. It was mentioned a new line delivers anywhere between EUR 25 million and EUR 35 million. Just statistically, you can see just to accommodate for the growth, that addressable market needs about 12-16 new lines a year. That would be the dimensions. We're opening now three or four. I clearly believe we do participate in the mix of new investments, but also efficiencies out of current asset base that allows us to outgrow the market and increase our relative share.
Maybe still a question on competitive forces. Where would you assess your situation now in terms of production costs compared to local competitors? Do you have any advantage being larger?
A little bit on one of your competitors, Europastry, we know that the margins were higher. We know that they are more local focused. I was wondering, is the main operating leverage driven probably by how the network of your regional sales are, or is it more on the production side that you can leverage across, let's say, countries and maybe bring the products a little bit more far away? A little bit on this topic, because you are the biggest one, so I would assume that you should have at least some advantages on the cost side compared to maybe just local ones, but maybe with other factors which are more important. A little bit to understand that. There is a study from Rabobank being done 2012 or 2014 and the title is size matters. Okay? This is still valid.
We are living in a competitive environment. Productivity is clearly key. Local producers or local bakeries, the burden from energy, from labor, from rent is clearly higher there than with the big protagonists. Nevertheless, we have to compete with every one of them everywhere. There are good other protagonists out there. We are not alone in this world, and they understand artificial intelligence and productivity and efficiency increase as well. This is a big battlefield. I'm not able to comment on other individuals in the market. Just let's understand what business they do and in what region they are. We are covering European landscape everywhere with big markets, with very price competitive markets, like for example, Germany. Germany is clearly the most advanced part of our battlefield we are in. We are having the rest of the world business.
The footprint we have, the organization, the efficiency we have, the size we have clearly helps us to be very competitive in the environment we are in. Everybody hungry. Like at the General Assembly, everybody was looking for the next coffee with something to eat, which would be good, Patrik, for our business, by the way. Yes. Patrik Schwendimann . Patrik first, and then I will come to Patrik. Yes. Patrik Schwendimann, ZKB . You've mentioned higher cash taxes in the future. What does this mean? What cash tax rate do you expect? What are your expectations for the reported tax rate? That's my first question. Second question, do you see a risk that there will be more boycotts from consumers against American QSRs? What is the current situation here? Thank you. I will leave Martin with the cash number.
He can think then and let me do the boycotting. It would mainly target the big Americans, and we know whom. We do not see this at the moment really on big scale. We did see it with this Gaza war. At the moment, we do not see a boycott going against these big Americans. We believe that it is more difficult to explain to your kid why you do not go there than in other aspects. We did see these advertisements, "Why Nike if you have Adidas?" or something like this. We do not see this at the moment. These protagonists are doing well. There is still this impact we have in some Muslim countries, but this is becoming less as well.
Thank you. Martin. If you take the weighted income tax rate of all the countries we are present, it is unfortunately closer to 25% than to 20%.
Certainly, as I said, we're improving profits. We're consuming, let's say, accumulated and losses carried forward. So these get lower and lower. Let's say that's a good problem to have. That doesn't mean we will not be looking at how we can, let's say, obviously optimize our way of managing the tax load. When you compare to what the tax rate was in the previous years, which was benefited by, let's say, all of these, let's say, historical losses, they get lower and lower. That's why we have to expect to see an increase in cash taxes. That doesn't mean we will not be working to optimize further. Okay. Perfect. Maybe final question, what are you paying now on this securitization program? What could be the savings?
For our current financing costs, it is still an adequate way of financing when I look at the overall financing cost. What I mean, the overall amount is approximately how much you're paying now? At the end, look, we have, and I think what I said that we have at the end of 2024, we had around EUR 130 million in that program. You know what our overall average financing cost is. So that's what you can apply.
Okay. Thank you. I would also have a question on the margin. I mean, you gave this guidance of above 15%, and you mentioned several times now that the industry has always been price sensitive and competitive. Can you also give a bit of your view on where you see an upper end of a potential margin?
I mean, your customers would probably not be willing to accept if you make, I don't know, 25% or plus. So can you give us a bit of a gut feeling on where you see an upper end of a potential margin? 115. I apologize for this. You're right. We are a listed company, so customers see our margin. There is a dynamic and a rationale in this market. These trees are not growing too high in the sky, but this is the way we see the development. Andreas. Yeah, maybe just taking the opportunity to learn a bit more about the rate stuff. If I just look at your food, we talked about margin profiles of pockets. If I just look at your food service business in Europe, you have a big business in France, and I assume a good business in Switzerland historically.
I don't know whether you count into that the Hungarian business in food service. Where else do you have pockets where you have better distribution costs or significantly more market share? Is there, like in Berlin, you are the player to go? Is there any cities, regions in food service where you would say, I mean, to make it a bit, where you would have a similar position, let's say, as Europastry has, I don't know, in Barcelona and on the Spanish islands? Do you have somewhere clear or what is big within there? Thank you. Soline? I think in general terms, we will communicate profitability by region, Europe, and rest of the world, but we do not communicate profitability neither by channel nor by countries.
Certainly, what we have said in previous conversations is that, let's say, you have food service and QSR at the higher end of the profitability and, let's say, retail, which is at the lower end. You have a country mix, you have a channel mix, which we are managing. Then, let's say, we try to influence that as well with our innovation premiumization strategy. I think that's... Certainly, when you say, are there other interesting areas to address? When we talk geographical expansion, I think the reason why we stepped into Korea is because we saw not only revenue potential, but also, let's say, margin potential. Our French business is their day-to-day work. We are attending 35,000 customers, and we are obviously understanding where our opportunities to profitably grow and further expand that. I think that's a day-to-day work. Now, I was wondering about that.
Let's say if there's something happening in Paris, all right? I mean, the investor base kind of understands that we have a high exposure there. Is there any other market in food service in Europe that is as exposed? Let's say if something happens in Berlin or in Vienna, I mean, is that comparable or is it really that one big pocket and the rest is widespread? I would say even if it is in Paris, obviously, we serve the whole of France and not Paris alone. Yes, it would have a slightly higher proportion. I think what you're also after is where are we strong, for example, in food service outside of the obvious that you counted?
I mean, whenever you travel in APAC, the chances if you stay in any Marriott, Shangri-La, Hilton, W, anywhere in Asia, even in the countries we are not present with our own organizations, the likelihood that you eat a freshly baked croissant out of our Malaysian plant or one of our European plants for the small bread rolls is probably 50-60%. I recall, and often there it is a French pastry chef, a German chef, they travel around and you follow them through the hotel chains. I'd say while the market obviously is smaller, if you look at this premium end of hospitality all over APAC, we would also have a very high penetration in the food service through our products.
Else, I think you've pretty much listed the ones where I guess we have a higher share and established ourselves as a strong food service partner. That question also came up maybe a little bit linked to Patrik's in relation to American QSRs. I think, again, coming back to we offer or we can serve the whole addressable market in QSR. I recall when we took over the McDonald's business back in the days, which was probably one of the attractive acquisitions looking back, is I think it was Urs as head of Europe presenting to say, "We really have a risk mitigation within our assortment.
If something major happens and people do not travel or there is a bit of a recession and people do not go as much to five-star hotels and they go more to a QSR chain, we cover that calorie no matter where it ends up. During COVID, we could see that food service was literally falling off a cliff, but retail and home deliveries went up. Again, our breads and our rolls were there. I generally believe it is not only addressing the full potential, but it also risk mitigates some of our exposures. We are not just in food service or like an airline business. If there is a global travel ban, your whole business model is gone.
As long as people eat and they eat in good times to celebrate and they eat in difficult times sometimes to sort of get over a difficult position, we are there with our products geographically in the two main regions. Again, at the moment, not in the U.S. I think that is sort of a bit of a future proof and does not expose us to one single event that then for two years, all of a sudden, our business model could be a bit under pressure.
The last comment just in relation to the U.S., what we see is that in certain Asian markets in particular that were delivered out of North America, there's all of a sudden more conversations around, "Well, could we have an alternative or contingency plan should things not ease?" Maybe sort of across Pacific transport or business models are maybe not that attractive. That again puts us with assets in the region, but also out of Europe. All of a sudden, there are conversations that are quite interesting from that perspective. Bakery products never will go away with no diet, with no vaccination, with nothing. You can replace meat, you can replace dairy, you can replace vegetable, alcohol, whatever it is, try to do this with bakery products. Not possible. It's just not possible.
The consumption stays high, and as Michael told, you buy it in a quick-serve restaurant or in a hotel or in a bakery or wherever it is, but you will buy it. In more difficult consumer environments, maybe even more the way to the bread shelf in difficult times becomes even shorter. This is what we see. We report quarter by quarter, yes. This can be fluctuating with up and down. We had this discussion several times, but in a mid and long-term run, bakery volume will grow with the world population and bake-off is outgrowing. There is no other indicator against this. Not visible. We are at 11:00 A.M. Can I take the last question maybe? I take the opportunity, but if there's somebody else, otherwise. There are some else. Okay. Let me take the last three questions. And Mr. Huber, John, and you first. Thanks.
Just shortly, Germany. Why is it such a difficult market margin-wise? Is it structure? Is it consumers? Is it clients? Germany is a retail and discount-driven market, which is the bad part of the news. The good part of the news is Germany is big. Germany has a bread culture. If you are looking for a bakery investment, there is no way around Germany. Germany is big, has a bread culture, and that is why it is challenging, but it is good to be there. If you do it in Germany, you do it everywhere. Mr. Huber. Yes. On U.S., you mentioned that you are not in the U.S. Is U.S. gone forever or could it be that at one stage you talk about U.S. in the future? Europe, rest of the world is the focus we are in. We are investing here.
There is a Swiss saying, "Wenn es den Leuten zu wohl ist, gehen sie aufs Eis." Oder war das mit der Kuda? You're not doing that. No. We are in Europe, in rest of the world. There is a lot of opportunity to go after. A lot. This is our focus. Very happy about this. I thought so. I think there was John. John, huh?
Yeah, just a last one from me. On the U.K. market, you're pretty under-penetrated there. You talked about how consolidation amongst factory bakeries will help you guys. Clearly now we've got Allied Bakeries talking to Hovis about a big merger there. I wonder what your thoughts are on the U.K. market overall, and maybe this could benefit you. Thank you.
We have a nice business in the U.K., mainly being done out of Ireland, food service, retail. We have good development there, and this is the way we continue to do. Always remember, somebody selling a factory to somebody else is not creating capacity. This is just another owner in the background. We are on a good path there with the good Irish team, with the good focus. This is the way we do in the U.K. Okay. We would have a short break, a coffee up there, and then we would go on factory tour. Remember, this is a rather small factory we have. This is more or less a 50,000-ton output factory out of 750 we can do. This is tailor-made here, designed for the Swiss market. In Switzerland, everything is a bit smaller, a bit more regulated. Most of the volume we are selling in Switzerland is produced in Switzerland.
The beauty of this is you can see more or less the entire product assortment from specialty bread, bread rolls, bread, laminated dough, snacks, Kajer Gipfel, everything there. Let's have a coffee first, and then we move on. Thank you.
Thank you.