Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this presentation session for our full-year results 2025, which I will present together with Nicolas Conne, our Chief Financial Officer. My name is François Fellay. I have been CEO of Romande Energie since September 1st, 2025. We have provided simultaneous interpretation into English for our English-speaking friends, and I would like to welcome all those who have connected with us online. We have a relatively heavy agenda. We will be speaking to you for about 40 minutes so as to leave enough time for your questions. By way of an introduction, I will say a few words about the seven months that I have spent with the group already to give you some observations about that. Then we will move on to our Vision 2040. We are in an infrastructure industry, and we also have the 2050 horizon.
We will also be saying something about our strategic priorities for the next five years. We will say something about the achievements of Romande Energie in 2025. I will hand over to Nicolas Conne to talk to you about the financial results for 2025. Back in 2003, I joined Romande Energie for the first time. That's why I have a rather emotional relationship with Romande Energie, because I've never really left the energy sector since then, in fact. The ambition that I have for Romande Energie is really to take Romande Energie forward faster than its environment. Our environment is changing a lot. It's changing fairly quickly at the level of infrastructure, which has been around for more than 130 years. If we want to remain in control and be instrumental in our destiny, we have to move forward faster than the surrounding market.
We have projected ourselves into the future together with my team, which I took over last September, which is a full team and which has a full skill set, and which enables us to project ourselves into the long-term future and to operationalize our strategy at the same time in the short term. Our main priority for the Romande Energie Group today is to increase our financial and non-financial performance. What motivated me to join this company is the assets that it has. It's a very high-performing company thanks to the expertise it has cultivated for more than a century, but also in the field of digitalization, as you will see later. We have a highly efficient team in the field of digitalization with more than 60 experts who have great skills in the field of IT and digitalization. I'll be saying more about that later.
We have also positioned ourselves favorably in the market. We are the leading supplier in Western Switzerland, and we are also financially sound. We are robust and agile, nimble. We have some considerable opportunities in a world which is becoming more and more electrified. I will say more about decarbonization later and what it implies for our country. It's not just Switzerland that's becoming more electrified, but also the whole world. This poses enormous challenges. We have new markets and new services, which I will be saying more about, and opportunities for development, the development of the business interests of the group, and also to provide added value in the field of energy for our customers. We are basing ourselves on our three pillars of societal, environmental, and business economic.
I won't be saying too much about the figures because Nicolas will be talking to you about them. If I had to illustrate the economic soundness of the group, I would refer you to our 10% profit on net earnings and a stable dividend of 3.3% calculated at the end of 2025. In addition to these fundamentals, we have powerful growth drivers. I've already mentioned digitalization, which is very important when it comes to creating value for the company and also value for the customers, development of infrastructure, in particular, thermal infrastructure. It's not just heat, but also cooling, which is very important today. Cooling in summer is very important, and if we can do centralized district heating, we can also do centralized district cooling. That will also be an important lever in the future. Finally, decarbonization of the building stock, the values there are quite significant.
I will be saying more about that in a moment. That's a point which is very important for the group's growth. We've already organized the group in such a way as to target that market, which is very important at the level of Switzerland as a whole, and particularly the level of French-speaking Switzerland. We'll move on now to Vision 2040. That's only about 15 years away. What do we see in the major global trends which serve as a background for the devising of our Vision 2040? First of all, we have enormous growth in the field of energy. The energy challenge is at the center of everything, and also at the center of conflict, and which have considerable impacts on households here in Western Switzerland. The global capacity of the grid has to double by 2040. We're talking about $700 billion of investment per year leading up until 2040.
If you relate this to the challenges of the Swiss electric equation, you know that we're in a rather special business, which is a physical business, and generation always has to correspond to consumption and vice versa. Now, what about the long term? At the moment, we're talking about electricity consumption of about 60 terawatt hours. The decarbonization, which is necessary due to climate change, implies electrification in the field of heating and transport fuels in general. Now, depending on how efficient we are, we will increase consumption to between 75 and 90 terawatts by 2040. An increase from 60 to 90 in the space of 15 years. Now, as regards today's production mix, the part in purple represents nuclear power, which we will have phased out by 2040 or 2050. Nuclear power is not relevant for the future.
Today's nuclear power will be retained for a while, but not beyond 2050. We will have to manage without nuclear power in our forecast. Now, you can see that the generation is increasing in the yellow segment, which is solar production, solar generation, but that's not the same as nuclear generation. It's decentralized and intermittent, and it has an impact on the grid, which is extremely significant. We are moving away from electric power stations and hydroelectric and nuclear power stations to a grid which supplies it to the final consumer. There, with solar power, it's the other way around. It's distributed all over the territory. The changes in this mix involves considerable challenges for us. Solar power is not a problem, it is part of the solution. Now, this diagram has been communicated internally in order to give people an idea of how to communicate our strategy.
The vision has to be seen in a context, the context that I have just briefly described to you. It sets a heading. Now, of course, the route that we will be following in 2038 and 2039 is not as clearly outlined as the beginning of the path. As you can see from the diagram, we already have a budget and activity for 2026, and then there is strategic planning for the next five years, and that covers one third of the way that we have to go between now and 2040. We have reworked the strategy and focused it on the 2040 objective while retaining the base. The aim of which is to make Western Switzerland the first carbon-free region of Switzerland. Now, I think that in investors' meetings, you rarely see a drawing like this. This is our representation of our vision.
Allow me to make a few comments on it. In this drawing, you can see there are three main thrusts: distribution, generation, and supply. Now, in 2040, in one way or another, the market will be liberalized. It will be deregulated. We will have generation and supply, which will be deregulated, and distribution will remain a regulated monopoly. Now, this means that in 2040, we, as a generator, are envisaging quite independently of our role as a supplier or distributor. We're talking about our own percentage of generation. We are looking at generation on its own. We want to significantly increase the energy which is generated under our management. That does not mean that we will own all the assets. We will increase our own generation, our own production of electricity, but we will achieve a threshold of 5 terawatt-hours of renewable and manageable energy under our management.
You can see the representation of the batteries. The purpose of this is to increase the degree of flexibility in the facilities that we will have. There are also many multiple flexibilities that customers have at their generation points. I'm talking about 2040, but it's already the case with solar panels on people's roofs and maybe batteries in the cellar or an electric vehicle, which can also serve as a storage of electric power. If by 2040 we can increase the flexibility of our centralized production facilities, if we combine that with management of decentralized generation, there we will create a maximum value, not only for us, but also for customers by optimizing their electricity bills. That is generation up to the final customer. Now, the generation facilities here have been depicted as a kind of a castle. Obviously, they are important facilities that need to be protected.
The electricity grid concentrates important investments, as I pointed out in my introduction. There is district heating and district cooling with quantitative targets, which I'll be mentioning later, which are ambitious in terms of heating and also in terms of cooling. Decarbonized production. As regards generation of electricity and production of services, there we are intending to increase our critical size. We are the leading producer in Western Switzerland, but we think we are too small to act on our own when the Swiss market is eventually totally deregulated. We are aiming at the critical size of 1 million customers. Now, under this bell, you have buildings, the building stock. The building stock has to be decarbonized, and that involves an enormous potential. There we will have to provide the final customer, not just with decarbonized housing, but also with flexible usage and generation of energy.
Obviously, in 2040, the tariffs for electricity will be dynamic. They will not be fixed as they are today. At the top, there is a cloud. What is this cloud in the drawing? It is a digital replica, a digital twin of all our generation, distribution, and supply activities. It also represents consumption. If we want to optimize all this quantity of data, which today is deployed in the grid, thanks to the smart meters, which have been deployed on a mass scale. In the past, we used to send out one statement a year. Now we will have four per hour. In order to lend maximum value to our assets and to give optimized value for the final customer, we need very high-level digital services.
Once we will have prepared this work in-house, we will package it and provide it to other actors in the market who will need it. That then is our vision. This then is our Vision 2040. In short, it represents the following points that you can see on the screen. We will not be doing this on our own. We will be engaging in strategic partnerships and in synergy with all the players involved in generation, distribution, and supply, including in the digital field, where we are making considerable breakthroughs, not just in our core business. Strategic partnerships will be key, because 5 terawatt hours per year of renewable electricity generation cannot be done only thanks to our own production, but under management.
280 GWh per year of heat and 50 GWh per year of cooling will be distributed, and they will be fully decarbonized. Obviously, we cannot increase our customer base from 300,000 to 1 million customers without improving the quality of our service and without decreasing the price of our electricity. This digital twin will enable us to offer products which we will commercialize with a different profit margin from that which we have in the electricity sector, and that will be one of our three pillars. We have already organized the company and mobilized resources in order to become, in 2040, the number one of decarbonization of the building stock in western Switzerland. Now, what will things look like in the next 5 years? Strategy 2030. The strategy is one which is not just academically good, but one which can be implemented and which is implemented.
It has to be structured in strategic initiatives. The objectives of everyone who worked for the company have to coincide with the implementation of this strategy. We have three columns here. Transformation on the left, that's very important. We cannot evolve quickly if we don't transform the company at the same time. In the center, infrastructure and flexibility. This is a major turning. It's important to mobilize our resources in this regard. Lastly, but also primarily, the solutions for customers. We have to respond to customers' needs, and in a deregulated environment, it's very important to be preferred. We have to provide value. We will provide that value by optimizing things and by enabling customers to optimize their electricity bills. The strategy here has not been completely changed. There are just three strategies or initiatives which have been reviewed and which have been recalibrated towards 2040.
There is no major upheaval. We are not announcing today a major reorganization of the company. We're not totally reinventing ourselves. We are just reorganizing ourselves. We have the digital arm, business support, and that's going to be separated from the digital growth levers. In other words, the commercialization of those products, which are going to create a major new source of income for the group. We are also emphasizing corporate culture. It's important to support the corporate culture and to provide the tools that employees need because it's they who set in motion this strategy. The strategic initiatives serve our vision. They are defined by clear principles. We want to have high-performing assets. All our assets have to perform very well. We have to prioritize our investments and focus on those that create the most value and withdraw from the least-performing assets.
To do that, we need synergy, we need partnerships in order to cement our business performance. That will profoundly transform the company and enable it to achieve its ambitions and objectives for 2040. We are structuring the company in order to allow us to achieve these objectives. The consultants of Houston Partners have told us that the potential for building renovation in Switzerland is CHF 228 billion. Now, if you relate this to Western Switzerland, if we want to be the leader in that business field, the potential is enormous. Instead of just renovating 1% of the building stock, we have to increase the figure to 3%. We have put in place what is necessary there. But what's difficult is to get the skills and to master the skills and to structure them.
We have structured them in the form of IDGO, which is a company in its own right in the energy field, and then RES, Romande Energie Services, which is a major part of our group for the industrial and commercial aspect. We aim to become the number one in building energy renovation by 2040, and we are going to implement and mobilize the resources to do so, and we are on track for this. I've mentioned real estate. I've mentioned growth in digital. That will account for a considerable amount of our growth between now and 2040. That's also connected with cybersecurity in our field and in the field of IoT, Internet of Things, and in the field of enhancing the value of data. Flexibility and storage are important.
That's how we will create the value, not just for us, but also for the final customers by offering them optimized bills. A few elements related to these markers. We are going to quantify efficiency and measures and productivity gains. We have to be able to measure it. We have already implemented an important plan for efficiency gains, and we have to become even more efficient in our activities. We are going to densify our thermal networks. That means increasing the number of customers who are connected to those thermal networks in order to give us a better return on investment. In the field of buildings and property, we want to achieve more than 20% of our revenue in this field by 2030. Then we want to increase our EBITDA by 50% between now and 2030 compared with 2024.
What do we do in 2025? The first thing we need to talk about is sustainability. We put the emphasis on sustainability again. I spoke about the economic side of things as important, but now I'd also like to discuss the environment. With 27% of savings in carbon emissions to clients, thanks to renewable energy and district heating. In social aspects, we have been certified Great Place to Work and Great Place to Start. We also have expertise in the labor market, and we want to be able to have this expertise in-house. Concerning our achievements this last year, we increased our generation. We are trying to get our targets, and there are three points that I would like to discuss before I hand over to Nicolas. We are two years ahead of schedule in our smart meter installation.
That's great perhaps, but what do we do with our head start? Okay. We have a two-year head start in our ability to offer digital services in connection with development of the hardware. The software will be available earlier because the hardware would have been developed. To do this, we need to have an IT basis which is solid. Our teams are working really hard, have worked so hard that they've closed the digital gap by 60% through robust resources to be able to address the digitalization revolution. Also the power-to-heat is something also we've focused on. We have a generation grid, we also have thermal networks, and we have developed a product which enables us to get the surplus solar energy and take it from the heat network into the grid.
That's a product that has gone from a pilot project to a scaled-up product in 2025. That's what I wanted to say as introduction concerning our business. Now I would like to go to the quantitative side of things with Nicolas. Thank you. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Lausanne, and if you're following us online, welcome. We'll go into the financial side of things now. You've seen that our 2025 results are solid and higher than what we said in February, about more than a month ago. EBITDA is adjusted. It's CHF 152 million, up 60% or CHF 21 million, thanks to two factors. The first factor is the gradual normalization of the energy supply margin, even though our own generation was down. Another factor is the initial effects of the efficiency drive that François Fellay just discussed.
That was perceptible in the second half of the year. EBIT, in adjusted terms, was CHF 48 million, more than double than the 2024 result, and that also reflects a significant improvement in operating performance. Our net profit was CHF 80 million. Thanks obviously to our good operating results, but also the significant contribution from Alpiq, CHF 27 million in associate income from Alpiq. We'll talk about that in a moment. We end up with CHF 80 million net profit. This is adjusted. Also under Swiss GAAP as well, you've probably seen that there has been some impairment charges as well and concerning those to do with district heating networks, but this was completely offset by impairment reversals in similar assets. Operating performance can also be seen in terms of our cash flow, which was CHF 154 million.
This cash flow from operations reflects extra cash generated by three out of the four business units. This supported our dividend policy because our dividend status is unchanged. Also this cash flow financed a part of our CapEx, which was CHF 191 million. A lot of this was to do with grid investments. We also have a new structure for business units. Since 1st of July 2025, you can see on the screen we have the Grids business unit, that scope or activity has not changed. The former Energy Solutions was subject to redistribution of business lines into Energy and Property. This also now houses thermal assets, which formerly came under energy services. Concerning operations, it is bringing different thermal units on stream. The fourth business unit is Property. François mentioned it, and it is spearheading our efforts to decarbonize the building stock.
As you can see, all of these results were adjusted. We adjusted our 2024 results to allow comparison for 2025. Now let's zoom in on each business unit, starting with energy. This business unit houses power generation and heat production, and thermal production units, including in France. The EBITDA was down slightly, but this was due to weather conditions, which had a mixed effect on the group. As you can see on the screen, in brackets, you can see the output of these various verticals. It was -24% for hydro. There was a small dip in France, stable in Switzerland, and solar production surged by 25%, and in thermal networks, it was 16% growth. As what influences these results, what influences lower EBITDA, this CHF 11 million less, the biggest influence was from hydro. This was due to mixed weather conditions.
There was lower rainfall last year, and all energy generators, power generators noticed that. Also, there was the shutdown of the Forces Motrices du Grand-Saint-Bernard, which was shut down in mid-2024 until November 2025. Thankfully, it has come back on stream again, partially, and there was better conditions in the last months of the year. To grow these businesses, we need to invest. We're talking about generation facilities. That's why CHF 73 million in CapEx was allocated to this domain in 2025, similar to the previous year. Obviously, a focus on thermics, but also almost 20% allocated to solar arrays. These are two pillars which are sources of value creation for the future. The markets business unit houses business lines linked with provision and energy supply for clients. This is the biggest growth in 2025.
EBITDA level didn't come from revenue, because revenue was down by CHF 71 million, and so these revenues depend on power tariffs, which were down. The energy component of the tariff was down last year. There was also a dip in the sales to eligible customers. What helped drive EBITDA growth was gross margin level, was the energy supply margin, which is what we can achieve in this business line. This was up for three main reasons. Even though the energy component in the tariffs was down, we were able to claw back some of the aggregated losses from 2024 of our tariff shortfall. Secondly, market conditions were more supportive than previously, especially when it concerns when we had to buy energy on the wholesale market when our own generation wasn't high enough.
Lastly, and this is quite important as well, we had lower balancing power costs, because we had better in-house forecasting models. You've seen in the past the high costs we had due to balancing power. In addition to this margin, we had efficiency gains at EBITDA level, thanks to optimization of costs, and we also saw a higher performance from Force Motrice d'Angrois-Lesmances power facility, which enabled us to go from 24 in the red to 10 positive in EBITDA level. In the grids business unit, it's the cornerstone of profitability for Romande Energie Group. Its EBITDA is almost unchanged, CHF 104 million. It's not due to tariffs. There was a tariff increase because of the clawback. As you know, the return or the WACC has a big effect on a WACC calculation, has a big effect on our profits in monopoly areas.
It was down, the WACC was down, but the negative effect of the lower WACC was fully offset by a higher asset base because of the extra CapEx, because that went up to CHF 93 million from CHF 83 million in 2024. Two factors. The first is that we reinforced the grid, and as François just explained, we reached the 81% level of deployment for smart meters with our customers. I should also mention a small dip in the contribution from customer connection costs, but also outside of the monopoly area, in liberalized areas for eligible customers, but also which are supplied to other power suppliers, but also the fiber business helped drive revenue by 14% in the area. Lastly, our newcomer, which is property, and this is made up of IDGO and Romande Energie Services, and addresses the energy retrofit market.
We can see in our results, because we saw CHF 150 in operating revenue last year. EBITDA grew in this business unit. This was thanks to a combination of the growth, the higher profitability in Vaud and Fribourg cantons. This was due to Romande Energie Services. Construction of district heating networks contributed. Romande Energie Services also is a contractor for the group in PV, in thermal, and also in energy retrofits. The first energy efficiency gains and synergies were seen, and this enabled EBITDA to move from -CHF 1 million to CHF 2 million in 2025. Last but not least, in 2025, we acquired a company in Central Valais, which is a specialist in HVAC. This company enabled us, as we wanted to offer all our range of services in all of Western Switzerland, including Valais canton.
Concerning net profit, I said just now, we had a significant contribution from Alpiq. We need to bear in mind that Romande Energie, through EOS Holding, has an indirect equity holding in 10% Alpiq and 30% of EOS NER, which are two strategic equity interests for the group. Financially speaking, they're important. This is CHF 37 million in 2025 from Alpiq, compared to CHF 3 million in the previous year. Last year was strange because there was accounting adjustments due to reinvestment of hybrid debt. This year, there was a strong impact on our profitability, but also we expect also higher dividends from EOS NER and Alpiq. These associates also stabilize our financial results. As you know, obviously things are very dangerous in the Middle East. Because Alpiq has businesses, it's able to take advantage of these market opportunities in the volatile context we see today.
Just to wrap up the financial aspect side of things, we need to give a concrete expression to Strategy 2023 with financial figures. We're looking at EBITDA as our KPI. Our goal is based on two pillars. We want to increase our return on investments by being very disciplined in how we allocate capital, optimizing our portfolio in terms of projects, also the assets we have in operation. Also, this has three fields: district heating networks, for which a pipeline of projects exists, the solar assets in Switzerland, and wind power, mainly in France. The other aspect is distributed renewable services for our clients, because these don't use up as much capital, and they represent a way we can get regular income streams in the future.
In the very short term, we spoke about energy renovation in buildings, but in the medium term, we're also looking to provide digital services. Consequently, for the first time, we've been very clear we are targeting adjusted EBITDA in 2030 between CHF 170 million-CHF 190 million, based on stable investments. An annual average between CHF 160 million-CHF 200 million over five years. We are not planning to tap the markets before 2027, but that will also be a very disciplined process, but determined by ratios. We can stay between, keep our gearing between 2.5x and 3x in gearing. Also, we're not giving specific guidance for 2026. I just said the geopolitical conditions in which we're part of, which changes almost every day or every hour, depending on the news flow, is resulting in a whole load of uncertainty in the short term.
This doesn't upset our long-term projections because we continue investing to renewable energy, and the purpose of that is to cushion the impact of fossil energy. Another factor which is also important is the quick change in regulations, because we can see today there are some amendments which are happening now and are going to come into force this year. Looking to 2030 and to 2040, the group is being managed and steered in the medium to long term. That's why we're focusing on our goals for 2030. Thank you, Nicolas. To sum up, you saw that our vision is ambitious, and it's ambitious because we want to keep control of our destiny. Things are changing, but we'll know how to make adjustments as we need to.
We will do this by giving ourselves an overhaul, by capitalizing on growth avenues, following a precise roadmap which will enable us to monitor our development. We're not going to do it on our own. We're going to get off our pedestal, and we're going to go and see business partners and see what kind of value we can contribute to each other so we can keep our fate in our own hands. That's why I want to say the foundations are now laid. Now we need to get to action, get to work, and most importantly, improve our business performance. That's my summary, but I cannot conclude without thanking René Lauckner, who has been part of the group for 26 years, who has been Head of Group Treasury and IRO. Thank you, René. Thank you for everything you've done this year or during these 26 years.
We'll also like to welcome our new IRO, who is Laurent Widmer. René is still head of group treasury, but the investor relations will now be handled by Laurent Widmer, and we're so glad he's able to join us. Thank you, René, and welcome, Laurent. Here's the financial calendar for this year. Thank you very much for attending. Thank you for your questions and comments. Thank you, Nicolas, for your participation. I look forward to seeing you for our half-yearly results presentation in September.