Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cicor Annual Media and Analysts Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Vicky, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star, then zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Alexander Hagemann, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, and I wish all of you a very good afternoon. Yes, 2024, it's absolutely a pleasure to present to you the results and where we are standing. Like usual, this will be done together between Peter Neumann, our CFO, and myself. 2024, definitely a year of strategy, implementing growth and defining the way forward to 2028. At Cicor, we stay true to our strategy. We stay true to our market focus. Those of you who are following us for some time will find and will know the charts that I'm going to present, although they have been updated to the present state. Cicor continues to be the fastest-growing design and manufacturing partner for advanced electronics in Europe.
That is the result of a very disciplined execution of strategy, I have to say, in a very volatile environment, I think, as you are all aware. With proforma sales of above CHF 500 million and proforma EBITDA of above CHF 60 million, and Peter Neumann will comment on how we derived these figures, we have achieved, again, the best results in the history of the company. Today is also the result of an unchanged focus since 2017, a focus on those markets that are the most attractive, that are demanding, that are giving us pricing power and strong loyalty of our customers. You will hear in a minute about these markets, and they're becoming more and more even in size between healthcare technology, industrial, aerospace, and defense. Maybe more important is what we don't do. We don't do automotive.
We don't do consumer communication and computer, or at least only to a very small extent. Staying away from the commoditized markets allows us to grow also in a recession and allows us to deliver superior margins. Let's start with the aerospace and defense markets. Three acquisitions have helped us build that market on top of what we have developed in Germany and Switzerland over the years. Since 2024, Cicor is the European leader, a very clear leader. The acquisitions that we have made over the past few years have delivered excellent organic growth. Now, since a few weeks, we are living in a new reality. We are living in a situation where Europeans are forced and willing to invest into their own safety. The European Union, European Commission has mentioned the amount of EUR 800 billion of investment required for the rearmament of Europe.
At the same time, we have to become more independent from the U.S. Why do I mention this? Because the position of Cicor is absolutely unique to be the partner to rebuild the European supply chain for defense goods. Healthcare technology, absolutely important market for us. It is a market where Cicor has developed over the years very strong USP. The USP from two areas. Number one, core technologies that are complementary and make Cicor to a true one-stop shop, complementary technologies like hybrid substrates, miniaturized PCBs, micro-molded plastics, or chip-on-board technologies. The second, driven by acquisitions we have completed in 2024, creating together. We have quadrupled our product engineering resources through the acquisitions in Romania and in Sweden and are now a prime partner of our customers in the medical and the healthcare technology field.
I can tell you that already we see significant new product ramp-ups from such products that we have developed and co-created for our customers. Our third core market, industry. Industry is a very diverse market. It is a market with many niches, and we are picking those that are either most profitable or fastest growing. Over the long-term trend, despite the recent recession in the construction sector, we see that smart building technologies are important. Sensors are a fast-growth application for Cicor and semiconductor manufacturing equipment also. We are very focused on regional customers in the DACH region and U.K., and now also in Sweden, striving for regional market leadership. It is about leadership. It is about leading in defined markets and defined regions so that we can establish economies of scale and a strong partnership with our partners.
Number 10 European market position that we are holding in 2024 is a significant improvement. Cicor is the fastest improving as far as market position overall is concerned in Europe. We have mentioned already our number one position in aerospace defense, our number four position in healthcare technology, but also in those complementing core technologies, we are strong. Very clear market leadership in hybrid substrates, number one in Europe on par with the leading peers in the U.S. And in miniaturized PCBs, we are a very strong niche player. Number three worldwide, for example, for hearing aids with a very strong new business pipeline in healthcare technology. Now, let's move to the highlights of the year 2024. First of all, Cicor has gained significantly in market share. The overall market has been difficult.
The EMS market has been shrinking, according to the latest numbers, by 14% in Euro currency calculated year- over- year. The result being that after the supply chain crisis and inventory build-ups, that there was a strong inventory correction combined with weakness of automotive and also machinery sales, and especially automotive sales, Cicor is not active. With only - 1.6% organic sales reduction against the backdrop of the market with - 14%, Cicor has organically already gained significant market share. The four acquisitions that we have completed in the past year have been true value drivers. There have been value drivers through the integration process. A very disciplined integration that we are typically completing in only very few months has allowed significant cash returns and profitability increases. I will comment on that a little bit later. Peter will comment on the financial results.
Increased profit margins at all levels, and especially the earnings per share jumping, more than doubling to CHF 6.20, are making us proud because they show that the implementation of the strategy actually has worked. In operational excellence, a very strong focus was on inventory reduction, and that has supported an extremely strong free cash flow generation and very low debt leverage in the balance sheet. Peter will comment on that. Finally, as we have achieved so much over the past few years, strategy 2028, creating together, is defining our way forward for the next few years. Let me comment on the markets. We have seen growth in all of our core markets. However, most important has been the growth in aerospace defense, almost doubling in revenue. Also the other core markets, medical and industrial, have grown with a small to medium single-digit percentage growth.
I should also comment that other markets have grown significantly by roughly one-third, and that has been the result from our acquisitions, where some of the acquisitions had, for example, some business in automotive or consumer area. Looking at the regions where we are, strongest growth driven by M&A, of course, has been Europe outside Switzerland. In Switzerland itself, we have been seeing customers reducing their inventory levels. Therefore, for us, we saw a negative growth of 5%. Asia has grown high single digits, about 9%, and America has grown in the low double- digits. We have seen everywhere outside Switzerland, we have seen growth with a focus on Europe. Now, about the two divisions. In our EMS division, we have commented that we have truly achieved a breakthrough in the European market through significant growth, 26%, becoming a top 10 player in Europe.
We definitely do not want to end there, and a 31% increase in EBITDA. That has been against the backdrop of very adverse market influences. The market share gains that I had mentioned already were very real. We have done four strategically and financially significant acquisitions and integrated them. We have quadrupled our product development and, as mentioned before, successfully executed on our operational excellence initiatives. The Advanced Substrates division, although only less than 10% of group sales, continues to be very important strategically to deliver the technological uniqueness that is so important for some markets like medical. Both operations, printed circuit boards and hybrid circuits, performed very well. We have seen organic growth. Again, in a difficult market, we saw organic growth of 5% and a 13% increase in EBITDA, which shows that the actions to improve operational excellence, especially in our PCB manufacturing, are bearing fruits.
In hybrid substrates, we have made a first very important step in streamlining our operations by moving the production from the facility we acquired in the year 2023 from AFT microwave to other locations. We have announced and will be completing in the next few months the relocation of our own Germany-side Wangs in Switzerland. Now, strategy 2028, creating together, is paving the way for what we are going to do in the next few years. Why did we need a new strategy? Since 2017, sales were going up 150%. EBITDA has tripled. Net profit has quadrupled. We need to amend the strategy. Cicor has become a leader in our industry, and we need to define the way forward.
Our vision statement, although it's very short, I think it condenses very well what we want to achieve and what you are going to see in the next few years. If you are looking at the statement, number one, we are the leading and maybe the only pan-European player in our industry. Pan-European means that we are very local in the strong markets where we are active. So far, that is Switzerland, Germany, and Great Britain. We are adding a presence in Sweden. I will comment on that later. We are looking into options to branch out into the French markets. The second important element is that we are becoming a design and manufacturing partner. We are offering support for our customers from the cradle of the new product, from the beginning of the product.
That is creating the true strategic partnership that we want to have with our customers. We stay very true to our core markets, healthcare technology, aerospace defense, and industrial. We put a lot of emphasis on people matters, strengthening our position as an employer of choice, and absolutely committed and strengthening our activities to operate in a sustainable way. We have defined a total of 21 strategic actions that can be summarized under eight pillars. I will not go into detail of those because we have done that at our last investor capital market event in November in Zurich. As I mentioned, the focus on high-growth verticals is key. The transformation into a true creator of products, as I mentioned, being a strong design partner for our customers is important. We have developed a business excellence model, which is quite unique, which is capturing performance elements everywhere.
The synergies between our divisions are extremely important. Therefore, the Advanced Substrates division is a true high-tech differentiator also for our EMS business. We continue on M&A and will comment on that. We are strengthening our position as an employer of choice and as a sustainable company. Of course, and that is definitely not least, financial value creation is a focus where we have identified actions to drive financial performance. Let me again talk about M&A. We are still in a very fragmented market. Many of you know this. We are in a fragmented market, a market that is returning to growth with high-cost customer loyalty and strong economies of scale. This is a market that is designed for consolidation. We are maybe right now the biggest driver in Europe for consolidation.
That has been a successful strategy so far because we are selective, because we are disciplined, because we are engaging on all levels of management, and because we are very focused on disciplined integration. So far, our track record shows that we have acquired CHF 208 million of revenue since we started that strategy in the end of 2021, contributing CHF 25 million in EBITDA. We had cash outlays of roughly CHF 130 million to achieve that. This is, as you can see, roughly five times the EBITDA that we have acquired. More important is what you see in the lower half of the chart. Revenues post-acquisition have grown 15% of our targets. Profitability, almost 50%, and free cash flow generation has been so strong that more than 40% of our net cash outlay has already been earned back by the targets that we have acquired.
This is what we mean when we are saying that we are generating value through our M&A strategy. With that, I want to hand over to Peter, who is presenting the financial results.
Thanks a lot, Alexander. Let me dive a bit deeper into the financial results of 2024. First, a small reminder upfront. We had announced in June 2024 a change in accounting principles. We are now offsetting goodwill and equities versus amortizing goodwill. We transparently disclosed the impacts, and over the rest of the presentation and in all our reporting, we stated the past to make it on a comparable basis. Here, as the question came very often up, here is the long-term view on a restated basis across all key measures of the P&L. Now, let's dive into the long-term view of Cicor. As you can see, there are a couple of points that are very important.
First, we have been driving organic and inorganic growth in a combined way, making us the fastest-growing player in very highly attractive industries. Secondly, if you look back versus 2020, we have more than doubled in terms of revenue and tripled in terms of EBITDA. I think last but not least, as you see this on this chart, it has been a very consistent delivery of top-line and bottom-line progression and margin progression. Now, 2024 results. Overall, the financial highlights are excellent across all key areas. Our strategy really comes alive in the numbers. Revenue is up 23%. Organic growth is significant above market despite a decline of 1.6%. What I think is really nice to see is that organic growth has been picking up. In the fourth quarter, we already have been growing back 4% organically. Second half growth organically 1.2%.
We had a small impact of a negative FX and obviously a large impact of M&A. EBITDA and EBIT margin progression ahead of top-line as we're building scale. Net profit is significantly up as we do not have any more some of the negative one-time impacts we have seen in 2023 on tax and FX. Last but not least, free cash flow is an absolute new record. We have been delivering CHF 61 million of free cash flow, up 132% versus last year, as we have been really able to bring down operating net working capital to below 25%, so to our target levels. We are reporting two divisions, the EMS and the AS division. The EMS division is the vast majority of our business with 91%.
This is also where the last acquisition in 2024 was all completed, and this is also where we have seen the vast majority of our growth. In 2024, on the other hand, I want to highlight that our AS division had a very strong progression, both growing organically as well as recovering profitability. The AS division is small, but it's a critical division as it really gives us a technology advantage mainly to medical and A&D customers. Now, if we go into the P&L details, first, you can see material expenses remain the biggest cost block with 50%. This is also, as Alexander nicely showed, why our M&A strategy in this scale we're gaining is delivering significant EBITDA pickup because we are able, with our scale, to get synergies on these 50%. Now, I mentioned EBITDA and EBIT progression ahead of top-line as we're building scale.
Now, if you look down on net profit, this is where we had the biggest progression and the biggest jump. It is really from two reasons. The first one is that FX has normalized. We had, in the previous year, a hurt of CHF 4.1 million. This year, in 2024, we had a small help of CHF 1.4 million, so a real swing of more than CHF 5 million driving the financial results in terms of 2023 to 2024. Secondly, income tax normalized. Last year, we had significant one-time impacts as the U.K. tax rate, for example, was increasing. Overall, this is driving net profit, and also it's a more normalization of the structural P&L in this area. Looking at revenue and revenue contributions, you see here that we had significant benefits of more than CHF 100 million from the acquisitions.
We have closed in 2024, the biggest being the TT IoT Solutions acquisition, but followed also from STS Evolution, MedTech, and Nordics engineering partners. We continue to see the Swiss franc strengthening against most major European currencies and the US dollar. You see here the organic decline that we had in the EMS, partially offset by the top-line growth in the AS division. Now, if you look into it, and this is very typical for an M&A strategy, there are various one-time effects. Hence, we thought it is very important to give some proforma perspective. As you can see, EBITDA in 2024 was impacted really by a lot of one-timers, the first one being purchase price allocation effects that are really swings between the P&L and balance sheet. In a normal course of business, we would have seen higher profitability here.
Secondly, as you recall, we have some one-time costs because we had the OEP monetary offering and also some M&A projects that we abandoned. Hence, overall, this is one-time costs that are not structurally in our P&L. Last but not least, we also announced the closure of the Ulm site to optimize our footprint. Most of the acquisitions were coming over the course of a year. If you include all of these acquisitions' proforma as of 1 January, so the 12-month view, then we would have added another revenue of CHF 23.6 million and EBITDA of CHF 1.3 million. This would give us then our view of CHF 504 million revenue and EBITDA of CHF 62 million as for the closed acquisition 2024. We had also a significant subsequent event. We closed the acquisition of Profectus.
If you then take into account all acquisitions that we have made in 2024 and up to this point in time, we would be on a proforma basis at CHF 526.7 million revenue and EBITDA of CHF 64.1 million with a very attractive margin of 12.2%. This is also what we believe is very important because this is where we are structurally in terms of the size of the business at this point in time. Now, some more details on the balance sheet. Our balance sheet is very healthy with net debt remaining pretty much stable at CHF 44 million in 2024 versus 2023. As we have been basically growing, driving profitability, we managed to reduce our leverage to 0.74. We are really ready for continuation of our growth strategy and have available funding worth CHF 150 million to continue to grow via M&A.
Equity improved also due to the net earnings of CHF 27 million, but more when offset with goodwill that was booked in equity of CHF 24 million. Some words on the cash flow statement. It is obviously the free cash flow excluding acquisitions of CHF 61 million is a very, very strong performance. It's also fascinating to see that the CHF 61 million that we have as free cash flow excluding acquisitions is more than offsetting the cash outlay that we had for acquisitions of CHF 55 million. That's one. If you look into what the drivers, and this is important, you see here that half of it is coming from the changes in net working capital. We have really worked with the operations team on driving down net working capital. You see here a help of CHF 27 million.
If you look at it also, the CHF 61 million, if you strip out the net working capital, we are very nicely above our 50% conversion of EBITDA to free cash flow. That is the going levels of conversion we would expect. I mentioned the normalization of operating net working capital. We had a very favorable development. Marco Kechele, our Chief Operating Officer and his team have done an excellent job together with all our sites to normalize our net working capital below our target levels of 25%. It is clear that we will continue to optimize our operating net working capital, but the future improvements will clearly be more moderate versus what we've seen in 2024. CapEx, we are at 3%, and we will continue to remain in our target levels of 2.5%-3% moving forward as announced in our 2028 strategy and with our midterm goals. Return on invested capital.
We like this measure. It really brings our key elements and drivers of our business together. We are focused on one set on optimizing invested capital. Invested capital has been with CHF 255 million being pretty stable despite all the acquisitions, despite all the growth of the size of the business. That's one. At the second, we have stepped up, as you can see, EBIT from CHF 29 million to CHF 38 million, driven by, on one side, the absolute growth, and secondly, obviously, by the margin improvements that we see in EBIT. These together with magic of keeping invested capital stable and step-changing our EBIT drives when we step up in ROIC to close to 15%. We have also some perspective on the capital structure, number of shares and earnings per shares.
You can see here that the average number of outstanding shares remained pretty stable at 4.4 million shares, but we saw that with the conversion of the managed convertible bond by OEP, we simplified completely our share structure. You see only 113 outstanding managed convertible bonds and really our number of registered shares being now 4.3 million, outstanding registered shares being 4.3 million. Overall, a very clear simplification of our capital structure. You see here also nicely the earnings per share, 6.2 earnings per share, up 134% versus a year ago. Really, and I think this is when you go to the next level in terms of progression, you can see very nicely, next slide, you can see here very nicely the long-term trends. It is very clear that in M&A, the results always come time delayed.
You see now our growth strategy showing fruits and kicking in, but at time delayed, as mentioned. You see how we've been gradually from 1.4, 2.7, some dilution as we issued the convertible bond, but now we're getting into the fruits of gradually building up earnings per share as per the plan. We have completed four M&A acquisitions in 2024. Please note these four have been STS Defence, Evolution Medtec, IoT Solutions, and Nordic Engineering Partners. The net of these four acquisitions was a goodwill of CHF 24 million, as mentioned, that was offset in equity. We had a net cash outflow of CHF 55 million, and M&A added CHF 41 million to our net assets in the balance sheet. Please note that Profectus was a subsequent event, so none of our 2024 numbers includes any impact from the Profectus acquisition. That was a bit the highlights of 2024.
Overall, an excellent year with very strong financial performance across all measures. Now, coming back to our midterm targets, if you look in our midterm targets as shared in the Capital Markets Day, we want to, under the umbrella of establishing a pan-European leader, we have set out the goal to achieve an organic growth over the next four years for 7%-10% per year. We want to achieve above CHF 1 billion revenue with margins at current levels. As noted, this is also driven by some of the M&A, that's why we have a wide range, while at this point in time, we are already above the midpoint in terms of profitability.
Now, if I look into this in the perspective of the past four years' performance and the future four years' midterm objectives, we have been growing about 22.5%, organically 8.3, inorganic 16.7, and we had a negative FX over the last four years. This puts the objectives into perspective. As you can see, the future is in all areas slightly below what we have delivered in the past, but also gives us a very strong confidence in achieving this. The core pillars clearly will be that we will be a pan-European player, including design and manufacturing. We have a very strong financial foundation to do M&A, CHF 150 million of firepower. Really, overall, it's a continuation of the growth path and the strategies as we have already implemented in the last four years.
Thank you very much, Peter. As Peter has said, it has been an excellent year.
Of course, we're asking ourselves, where are we going? We are living in a volatile environment, as we all know. However, we should state that this is not only creating problems. These are also times of opportunities. Opportunities, specifically in the markets where Cicor is active. We all heard about the investments that have to be done into our safety, but also investments that have to be done into infrastructure. These are times of volatility, but also times of opportunity. We are seeing that after the slight organic decline in sales, we can expect a normalization in 2025.
We have already seen some very modest organic growth in the second half, as Peter has commented, and we expect the organic growth to continue in the year, not only in the aerospace and defense market, but also in markets where the bottom has been reached as far as the inventory cycle is concerned, for example, in medical devices. We will have, and that is the jump-off point that Peter has mentioned when he referred to our proforma sales 2024, consolidation of acquired companies will lead to an increase in sales of earnings because all these businesses will be included for a full 12 months. That is why we are seeing a guidance for the full year of CHF 520 million-CHF 560 million. Let me comment on that.
We are looking here at the jump-off point, which is a little bit above CHF 520 million, proforma 2024 sales. We are expecting further strengthening of the Swiss franc, and we are expecting low to mid-single-digit organic growth coming back. EBITDA margin, we expect to be very similar to what we have seen in the last year. Now, we have also issued a release this morning. That has been a timing coincidence on our offer to acquire certain businesses from Éolane France. The timing is driven by a court-administered process. The Paris court has opened on Monday the judicial reorganization proceedings for several of Éolane France's businesses. Who is Éolane France? Éolane France is one of the market leaders in the country and, very importantly, with most businesses in our core markets.
Éolan France is strong in aerospace, defense, and other regulated markets, markets that Cicor is really strong in. We have made an offer to acquire seven sites in total, five manufacturing sites in France and two in Morocco. These sites would add about CHF 125 million of profitable sales to Cicor. This is a public process and a non-exclusive process. Therefore, it is not guaranteed that this transaction will happen, but there is information in the public domain. This is why we're informing you and have informed everybody this morning. That is also why there is no contribution in sales and profits included in the 2025 guidance. The contribution, should we be successful in integrating Éolan and acquiring Éolan France assets, will be on top of the guidance that we have given.
With that, I want to thank you very much for your attention, and we open the podium for questions.
We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode, eventually to turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Dominik Feldges, NZZ. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. I hope you can hear me.
Yes, we hear you very well.
Good, thank you. My question would regard the defense business.
Could you maybe elaborate a bit on that, how you expected to develop? I think I understand that you have doubled the revenue most recently together, I understand, with aerospace, but maybe you can be a bit more specific about defense, how big this business is now in terms of revenue and how big it could really become within the next few years. One other question is then, I mean, you've mentioned this is, of course, an industry where loyalty by customers is high, where you have enjoyed pricing power. What are maybe the challenges also in defense? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your questions. Yes, the defense business is the large majority of what we are showing inside the aerospace and defense market. It is a business that is already well above CHF 100 million.
It is above 20% of Cicor Group revenues. It is a very diverse market. It is a business due to our market leadership where we are supporting most of the major European companies active in that field. As some of these companies are public companies, it is known what they are having in increase, especially in the order book. The growth in that market is due to the clear acknowledgment that Europe needs to become more independent in keeping Europe a safe place. That perception started in 2014 after the hybrid war that was started in Ukraine and has since evolved. The market is a very long-term market. All projects are taking extremely long. I would say that today we are at the beginning. We are only at the beginning of the growth that we are really seeing showing in revenue.
Now, what is the biggest challenge? The biggest challenge is to be able to do the growth. Of course, here Cicor is in a very unique position because we are having very significant capacity reserves in our factories in the U.K., in our factories in Germany to support that business. We have mentioned earlier that our overall capacity is now roughly at CHF 750 million for all of our business with roughly CHF 520 million utilized. How big could that business become is very difficult to say. I would, and it's too difficult to give a guidance, but I would not be surprised to see a business above CHF 200 million within a few years' time.
Thank you.
The next question is from Alexander Zienkowicz, mwb. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Very well, thank you.
Oh, thanks. Congratulations on the results.
I have three topics to cover. Perhaps firstly, could you shed some light on your view on U.S. tariffs and also maybe on global tariff policies in your markets? Secondly, maybe coming back to defense, do the defense opportunities maybe somehow translate into your M&A pipeline? If you could talk about perhaps some white spots, what you might want to cover? Thirdly, more for some housekeeping, looking at your tax rate, what to expect there going forward? That would be it.
Yes. Okay, thank you very much. Now, as far as U.S. tariffs and global tariffs are concerned, I'm clearly not smarter than any of you here in the room. I can only say that we are, let me say, we are long in Southeast Asia and we are short in China, if you wish to say so.
We have relatively small factories there and we have very large factories in Southeast Asia, which is a lesser risk as far as tariffs are concerned. Also, our nearshoring is quite successful with our operations in Romania and also in Northern Africa, Indonesia. Therefore, we are not immune. Nobody is immune against the detrimental effect of tariffs that we are going to see. We are, let us say, we are hedged in a way against these. On defense M&A, of course, we have a very deep understanding of the defense market in Europe for electronic assemblies in the meantime. That allows us to be a prime acquirer of businesses also in that field. Of course, you will not expect me to comment on our existing M&A pipeline. Let me only say it is very alive, this pipeline.
As I have mentioned, the activities around Éolane France, they are already also, of course, strongly rooted in the defense and aerospace area. Again, this is not a done deal. This is something which is in the process. On the tax rate, I would ask Peter to comment.
Yes, thanks for the question on the tax rate. The tax rate that you see in our 2024 results of 23% is really what I would say the normalized tax rate that you can also use going forward. Obviously, we continue to look for tax optimization, but in principle, this is a very good assumption moving forward. The 2023 rate that we had was rather driven by exceptional one-time effects, negative one-time effects. Please use the 23% effective tax rate moving forward as assumption.
Thank you very much.
The next question from Bernd Laux, ZKB. Please go ahead.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. My first question. Thank you. My first question is regarding your takeover bid for Éolane. Assuming you would be succeeding and getting the opportunity to acquire the business, do you view that opportunity similar to what you got with the TT Electronics transaction about a year ago? Is it a comparable case for a turnaround investment? The second question is regarding the net working capital. At 24.8% of revenues, you have reached your target level, but maybe you have a new target now, or can you give us an indication of what additional funds could be freed as a result of tighter working capital management? The last question, you had a very strong margin in the second half of 2024.
Is there any reason that this has been somewhat impacted by one-offs, or is it just a favorable mix and good execution that may also reoccur in coming years? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much, Mr. Laux. I will focus on the first questions and defer for the two other ones to Peter. Now, of course, the takeover bid for Éolan France, it is what it is. It is a takeover bid for now, and therefore it is a little bit early to comment in detail. This is part of a court-administered restructuring process. What we have seen is we have seen a business here that has very solid customers and that has good factories. We believe that we will be able to restructure the business in a positive way. That is why we commented that there will be a positive profit contribution from the beginning.
Now, will it be exactly like what we did in TT? Maybe not. I assume it will be taking longer to achieve the level of margins that we have. The cash outlays, of course, in relation also to what we are getting, of course, they're relatively low compared to the size of the business. What you will see, you will see a business that is profitable from the onset, but that will be somewhat elutive to overall margins, at least in the beginning, in the first one or two years, despite, again, contributing profitability.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thanks a lot for the question on operating networking capital.
We have not set out a new target, but I can reassure you that if you look how we operate, we are looking to continue to optimize further and especially maintain very stringent on operating networking capital that as we are growing back organically, that we are not seeing significant investment into it. We will continue to optimize, but I would expect a more gradual optimization and progression versus what we've seen in the last two years. On the EBITDA margin, it's a very good question because indeed, if you look into it, we had in the first half, we had an EBITDA margin of 10.7%. In the second half, we had an EBITDA margin of 13.5%. This is driven by mixed effects. I would not, I think the real normalized level is probably the average of the two. We are at the 12%.
That's why we have given also the guidance for 2025 in terms of a range at similar levels of margin. I would not recommend to use the second half margin as an indicator on the going levels of our business prof itability.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at the moment. I'm sorry, we just had a registration from Reto Huber Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Just again on the net working capital, could you maybe elaborate a little bit on what exactly the data, I mean, how much is this a structural break in the time series disimprovement?
If you look, thanks a lot for the question.
If you look into the longer-term perspective, we have been at these levels already in the past. The supply chain crisis, COVID and the supply chain crisis was driving enough, and we are back to these normalized levels. I really think that below 25%, we can operate our business. This is not a one-time level, but it's more of a going level. We will continue to gradually work on improvements on our operating networking capital, especially in the regulated markets that are growing faster. We usually have lower levels of operating networking capital, which also helps us structurally to improve our percentage moving forward.
Okay. That helps. Thank you.
You're welcome. Thank you for the question.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions at this time.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you for your interest in Cicor. Thank you for attending this conference. It has been an exciting year. The new year 2025 will absolutely not be less exciting, I think I can promise that to you. We already see it from the external factors that we have. We are doing our best to continue to grow the company along our strategy. Again, thank you very much for your interest. I wish you a very nice and sunny afternoon. Have a good day.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.