Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Rieter's Capital Market Day. Thank you all for joining us today. My name is Relindis Wieser. I'm the Head of Group Communication and Marketing. Today, we have two presentations lined up for you. Thomas Oetterli, our CEO, will present thriving on textile megatrends. After that, Oliver Streuli, our CFO, will talk about financial ambition and key figures. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A session. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing. As always, the speeches are recorded. Let's dive into the first presentation. Thomas, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Relindis. Ladies and gentlemen, also from my side, welcome to the Capital Market Day. Over the past months, we have worked very hard to sharpen our overall strategy for the Rieter Group. Today, I will present an overview. Let me start with our markets. Slide number three shows the five key mega trends that are shaping our industry. The first one, of course, is sustainability. The textile industry is under pressure to become more sustainable, and our technology and know-how have a lead role to play in putting the industry on a better path. The second is labor shortage. Like many industries, spinning mills, too, are hard hit by labor shortages. Automation presents a compelling answer to this challenge. We see soaring demand for automation, even in markets that traditionally counted on manual labor. The third one is digitization. The whole world is becoming increasingly connected.
Our customers want to have full control over their spinning process, from fiber to yarn, in real time. Our answer is to have smart and connected production systems, and of course, our Digital Spinning Suite helps to preserve the know-how of the mill employees. The fourth big mega trend is man-made fiber. There is a rising demand for man-made fibers in closing, technical textiles, and alternative fibers. And last but not least, the global economy is undergoing a process of decoupling. We are adapting to these changes by moving closer to our customers and localizing our supply chains. This will make us even more resilient in the face of this massive transformation. Now, let's have a look at the global textile landscape and the value chain on slide number four. Here you see on the left side the raw material, which is used in the whole textile industry.
This amounts to about one hundred ten million tons of raw material per year. This is split into 60 million tons of staple fibers and about 50 million tons of filament. When we deep dive into the figures for staple fibers, we see that roughly one third, or a little bit more than one third, comes from cotton and one third from polyester. These are filaments which are cut afterwards into fibers and then spun into yarn with our machines. The rest is made up of viscose and other products. The total of 110 million tons are used to produce yarn, and we measure how many spindles we have worldwide. Production capacity for producing yarn from staple fibers is measured in spindle equivalents. In total, we have 272 million spindle equivalents.
Spindle equivalents refers to ring spinning, but also to rotor spinning and to air- jet spinning. On the lower right-hand side, you see the distribution of those 272 million spindle equivalents. Still, the biggest market in terms of spindle equivalents is China, with roughly 35%, followed by India as a single country with 23%, the rest of Asia with 27%, then Turkey, again, as a single country, with 5%, and the rest of the world is just 10%. In summary, more than 80% of the installed spindles are in Asia Pacific. Now, let's tackle the global fiber market growth on slide number five. We will also take now a closer look at how the fiber market has developed in the past and how it will develop in the future.
We also distinguish between different staple fibers, such as cotton, polyester, viscose, and filament. This filament is represented by the dark blue part of the bars. Between 2010 and 2023, the global fiber market grew from 78 million to 110 million tons. And if we fast-forward into 2030, we see there will be a growth up to 136 million tons. The major share of this growth will come from filament, but all other segments are expected to grow as well. Slide number six shows the market segmentation. There is an economy segment, where price is the absolute first priority. The standard segment is where price is important, but quality, productivity, energy consumption, and efficiency matter, too. And then there is a premium segment. Historically, Rieter has been mainly present in the premium segment.
This will remain a particularly important segment for us, where we will defend our leading position. These are cotton and cotton blends applications. This is also where mechanical recycling comes in. We have an absolute leading position in that segment, and we want and will defend it. The standard segment has seen steady growth over the last couple of years. We want to increase our market share there. We want to further attack the market to increase our share in man-made fiber applications, but also with certain components in the filament applications. We will take an opportunistic approach in the economy segment, which is, as I said, purely price-driven. We will not push too hard here. We take a case-by-case approach and seize opportunities when they present themselves.
This will happen whenever we can convince a customer that he or she can have a better conversion cost with us than with our competitors. Slide number seven shows the market volume and the players in the market. The Machines & Systems market was roughly CHF 3.9 billion in 2023, based on sales and deliveries. Rieter is by far the number one in the market, and you see here number two, three, four, through to number 15. You also see that we have mentioned or we have noted our competitors without their names. But what we can easily say is that Rieter, in this area of Machines & Systems, was almost as big as the number two and three put together. On the right side, you see the component market. The component market is roughly CHF 1.8 billion in 2023.
Also here, we have a major market position. What is obvious is that this market is much more fragmented. There are many, many small players, and Rieter is probably bigger than the number two to number six combined. The third market is the After Sales market, where we talk about spare parts, services, repairs, and engineered solutions. It is difficult to calculate the size of this market. Therefore, we were focusing on Machines & Systems and Components. In the middle, you see the total industry, where Rieter makes up between roughly a quarter and 30% of the total market in the world. This means a clear number one position. And this raises the questions for us: Why is our position so strong? What do we have to do to defend that strong position? What else can we even do to increase our market position?
Which brings me to the next topic. What is it, our unique selling proposition? Let us have a look at Rieter at a glance on page number nine. We have a history of nearly 230 years, and we were founded in 1795 . By the way, this was just after the French Revolution, and it was just before Napoleon Bonaparte took over the leadership in France and campaigned all over Europe. It is a very old company, and we have generations of employees and managers who have done a fantastic job. Otherwise, the company would not exist anymore. Our task as an Executive Committee, as a leadership team, but also as an employee at Rieter, is to honor all these achievements of the past.
In particular, what do we need to do today to make sure that our successes will one day look back and say, "Wow, this team has done a great job of future-proofing our business, and we are now prepared for the next 100 years" We are present in 14 countries. We have 23 locations. We employ a workforce of around 4,800 people, and we operate the whole organization through three divisions, or as we call them, Business Groups. One is Machines & Systems. This is the new equipment and system business. One is Components. These are very specific, precise textile components. And then there is the After Sales business. So let's have a look on our business model on page number 10.
We at Rieter, we are the experts from fiber to yarn, because we cover the complete process, from fiber preparation through to all four end spinning technologies in spinning mills. Here you see on the left side, the fiber, whether this is cotton or man-made fiber, linen, viscose, and then you have to prepare the fiber. In fact, what you are doing is you are cleaning the fiber. You take out all the third-party elements. You remove some dirt and dust, so that you have a clean and aligned fiber at the end. After this fiber preparation, so when you have clean fibers, you move on to spinning preparation. Spinning preparation means you take the fibers that are the most suitable ones to spin afterwards.
Out of this raw material, you create the sliver or a sliver or a roving, which allows you to do a proper spinning at the end. This brings you to the end spinning and winding process, where either you make a yarn with ring or compact spinning, or you make a raw yarn with rotor spinning or with air-jet spinning. Below, you see the whole value creation process. We offer our customers specific textile components via our Business Group Components. Our brands are Accotex, Bräcker, Graf, Novibra, SSM, Suessen, and Temco. On top of this, we offer also to our customers after-sale services, parts, and repairs to maintain or to increase the lifetime of all those machines they have bought from us. Slide number 11 shows that we are the only ones who offer the whole value creation process to our customers.
This is what makes us unique. Only Rieter offers all types of machines, from the blowroom at the beginning through to the final step of winding the yarn. All other competitors lack some parts of this value creation process or are specialized for certain individual machines within this value creation process. Nobody else offers the comprehensive system approach. I will come back to this later. This system approach demonstrates what makes Rieter unique and how we are positioned in the market. And now, let's have a look on our strategic direction. Let me deep dive on our Strategy House on slide number 13. Over the last couple of months, we have been fully focused on these topics. What do we really stand for? What is our vision? What is our mission? Where can we win? How can we win, and with whom can we win?
What do we really want to achieve in the midterm across different elements of our company? The good thing at the beginning, the vision remains unchanged. Rieter is in every spinning mill. The vision applies to Machines & S ystems, After Sales, or our Components business. I can proudly say to all of you that each piece of clothing you wear was in touch with a Rieter machine or a Rieter component. Everything you are wearing has a connection to this company, and we want to keep this also in the future. What we really do is summed up under Rieter provides leading technology for fiber processing. We are the experts from fiber to yarn, and the question is where we can win against our competitors. This is the critical point. We want to remain technology leader in this part of the textile value chain.
We want to be the best in class in terms of customer service. We want to work hard in automation and digitization, and we want to offer to our customers the best financing packages. This is the reason we can say that we can really win with innovative solutions in terms of technology, customer service, automation, digitization, and financing. This puts the focus on the customer's view and shall make our customers more competitive. Internally, we want to be a professional partner. We want to further professionalize the way we do business, and this will also answer how we really can win. On one side, this is Sales Excellence. Where do we have the markets? We can still increase our market share. Where can we tap into market segments with certain new products? Which brings us to the second box: competitive products.
We will not be cost leader, but we want to be technology leader at competitive cost. We want to offer our customers the best relation between the money they pay and the value they get. And of course, we want to be a reliable partner. We are a partner that delivers on time, at high quality, at the best customer service as well. Therefore, supply excellence is very important for us. And then last but not least, as we are in a very cyclical market, we have to be agile. Agility means we have to have our cost base in overhead functions under control. We have to be able to shift responsibilities from one place to another, because we always want to be close to our customers. This extends to all those processes and organizations which are close to customers or where customer centricity is particularly important.
This we only can achieve when we have committed employees. Our employees have tough years behind them, and still this year is a tough year, and maybe next year will be tough as well. What do we need to do to have committed employees? Above all, we need to have the DNA. We put customers first. They pay our bills. They pay our salary. They are the queens, and they are the kings. We have to do everything at any time to satisfy and to exceed the expectations of our customers. Another element is quality. As I said, we are not price leaders or cost leaders, but we are technology leaders. We therefore must ensure that this technology comes at the highest quality possible for us. As a company with Swiss roots, everybody expects the highest quality standards. We need to meet and exceed these expectations.
This also needs to be in the DNA of our people. And last but not least, we spend a lot of time at work. We have so many interactions with our customers, colleagues, with other stakeholders. It is so important that everybody perceives us as passionate. We want to have fun. We want to be proud. Not arrogant, but proud. We want to have confidence. Passionate employees will by far deliver the best results. Which brings me to the last point of this strategic house. How do we ultimately measure that we are delivering on our promises? If our customers say we are good, then they will give us a top rating. So we want to achieve a net promoter score that is above 50. If you want to have passionate, happy, dedicated employees, our employees should say that Rieter is a great company.
Here we want to achieve even higher scores than our customers. We want to achieve an employee net promoter score above 60. Happy customers, happy employees. We also want happy shareholders. When we announced our Next Level program, we said about the business cycle that we always want to achieve positive EBIT margins. In tough years, the margin should reach between 0%- 4%. In mid-level scenarios, between 4%- 8%, and in booming years, it has to be double-digit. On average, this mid-scenario amounts to an EBIT between 4%- 8%. One way of achieving this is by increasing the share of our After Sales and Components business. We aim to achieve a business mix over time, which is made up of 50% new Machines & Systems and 50% After Sales and Components business.
And finally, and maybe I should have mentioned that as a first point, we also want to contribute to a better world. We want to be a good citizen. We do not only want to follow all the laws and regulations, we want to do everything in our power for ourselves, for our suppliers, and for our customers, so that we can play our part in making this world become greener. We have therefore committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2040. Slide 14 gives an overview of where we want to win. What are the enablers that can really create added value for our customers and ensure that we really differentiate from our competitors? Technology leadership is key. We are the ones who have the best know-how of how to convert fibers into yarn.
For this, we have an extensive technology portfolio, and we have to manage this portfolio actively. We cannot invest everywhere. We cannot tie up too many resources. We have to be selective. Where can we add the highest benefit for our customers? This is where we have to develop innovations that are really aligned with those requirements. Customer service. Customer service means to be close to our customers. Today, we are not physically present in all countries where the customer base is. We need a well-established after-sales network. Our field service engineers, therefore, need to be where our customers are. People who do service, people who do installations, people who do repairs, and people who do upgrades of machines. We also need our salespeople, of course, to be closer to our customers. They should not be based here at the headquarters.
But it also means that we have to establish more decentralized warehouses in those countries where we have a big customer base, because speed of delivery is super important for a customer. Imagine a machine is not running, and therefore a whole production line cannot run. The cost of not producing is much higher than the cost for the spare parts. So the closer we are to customers, the faster we deliver parts and services to our customers, the less price sensitive are our customers when it comes to spare part pricing and service pricing. Automation and digitization, this is one of the mega trends. Our customers struggle finding people. For example, mill utilization in Turkey currently is roughly 60%. In the past, it has been 90%+ .
Half of the difference to 100% is because the markets are not so good at the moment, because consumer sentiment here in the European Union, which is an important export market for Turkey, is particularly low. The other half of the gap is because our customers cannot find people to run the machines. In theory, they could produce much more. Their demand would not be 60%, but instead maybe 80%. They cannot fulfill that because they cannot find people who are running the machines. The only solution for this is the automation and digitization of processes, and this is one of our key focus areas in the future. Last but not least, I come to financing. Our financing support for customers is also a key differentiating factor because investments in a spinning mill are expensive.
If we can offer good terms, good conditions, good interest rates with our financing packages, then it becomes more affordable for our customers, and this is also a differentiator. This takes me to the final topic. What makes Rieter's value proposition so attractive for customers? The appeal of our value proposition is demonstrated on slide 15. The left bar shows the system of a customer, which, with his revenues and also his different cost blocks. The cost for the raw material make up 65% of the spinner's cost in his profit and loss statement. Another 15% comes from energy, and another 10% from labor, and then there are operating costs, including the amortization, depreciation of their machines, but also service costs. So there is only a small spinner's margin left.
Now, with our value proposition as a technology leader, having automation and digitization, a great customer service, and good financing packages. We are able to reduce the conversion cost of our customers. Conversion cost means the conversion cost from fiber to yarn. If you use our machines, you have lower total conversion costs. The cost per 1 kg yarn is lower if you use our machines than other machines. Why? Because you have lower raw material costs, higher productivity, higher efficiency, as well as less waste. You have lower energy costs because our machines are much more energy efficient than anybody else's. And you have lower labor costs because we are pushing automation and digitization. As a consequence, you need fewer people to run our machines than those of our competitors. And because of our technology leadership, we also promise that the end product has a better yarn quality.
This allows our customers to achieve higher prices when they sell their yarns downstream. We create customer value by enabling higher yarn quality and higher prices at lower conversion cost. Yes, thank God, our machines are a little bit more expensive. Our services are a little bit more expensive. But given the total cost, you will make much more money using our technology than anyone else's. Now, let's take a closer look at our customers on slide number 16. We have around 3,000 customers worldwide. The structure below shows that most of them are rather small. Most of them are family-owned and are just present locally. You can see that our top 10 customers only have a minor share of our total sales volume. When you look at these customers, family-owned businesses that are quite small, they increasingly struggle to achieve economies of scale.
Most of those spinning mills of today are between 30-50 years old. The owners are still the founders. They are now at an age of maybe 70, 75 years. The next generation is set to take over, and this is a unique opportunity for us because this next generation is familiar with digital products and with automation. They are much more interested to buy cotton and to sell yarn. They are not so much interested in mill manufacturing or managing all those machines. They are happy to ask, "Hey, Rieter, can you take over this task? I just want to buy and sell. Can you also help us to manage those mills?" We will enter into this area in the future. Now to slide 17. When I look at the priorities of our three different Business Groups, let me start with the strategic priorities of Machines & Systems.
I mentioned before that it is super important that we defend our leading market position in this premium market, which is mainly cotton and cotton blend applications. We will attack more in the man-made fibers and blend applications. Of course, if we want to stay the number one or even attack number ones in new market segments, we have to be cost competitive. Not always cost leaders, because we want to be technology leader, but we have to be cost competitive. Internally, we have to apply this best cost country approach, and more than 90% of all the components and parts are in the future locally purchased. We cannot purchase around the tower of the church here in Winterthur, where everything is super expensive. In Components, as you can see on slide 18, the strategic priorities are quite similar. Technology leadership is also here super important.
You will see it afterwards in the breakout sessions. We want to increase our market share in the area of filaments with the support of our Business Group Components. And for this reason, we are also open to one or the other bolt-on acquisition, as we have done it in the past. We want to create very selectively a family of specialized component manufacturers in the different range of applications. We will pursue also here selective opportunities with M&A growth. Slide number 19 shows the strategic priority in the Business Group After Sales. Oh, my God! This presents a great opportunity for us. The chart shows our key markets, and you see again the distribution of the spindle equivalents of the total market, not only for Rieter installations, but for really the total market.
In China, for example, you see that roughly 60% of this market is ring and compact spinning. Then you have maybe one third that is rotor spinning, and maybe 10% is air-jet spinning. And this distribution you see also for the other Asian countries. You see it for India, for the rest of the world, and for Turkey. And interestingly enough, not every country has the same distribution of end spinning technology. For example, in India, the share of ring and compact spinning is much bigger than in China. And you see that rotor spinning in the rest of the world or in Turkey is very important. But in Turkey, you also see that compact spinning is particularly important because this is where you create the highest quality ring spinning yarn.
So every country is a little bit different, and of course, in the different countries with this different baseline, we are also selling different types of systems. India is a dominant ring spinning market, which is why we have our ring spinning manufacturing in India. And you have a big rotor market in China and in the rest of the world, and this is why our rotor manufacturing is in China and in Europe. Different countries have a different installed base. The question is: What is the potential we could create with After Sales services, repairs, upgrades, and spare parts? If you take that as 100%, because you know, this part you have to replace every two weeks, and this part you have to replace every three years, you can calculate what is the potential, the market potential of this installed base in a certain country.
And this brings me to these blue bars. You see here how much of the potential we are already realizing in these different markets, and it's nowhere 100%. On the right side, you see China and Asia Pacific. Here, we do not really realize all of the potential we have. On the left side, you see India, the rest of the world, which is Europe, Americas, and also Africa, and where we currently stand, maybe close to 50%. And also in Turkey, we are still quite low. If we realize our potential more effectively, we should be able to grow our After Sales and Component business dramatically in the future. And this is super important and brings me back to our strategic house, where we said we aim for a balanced mix between new Machines & Systems and After Sales and Components.
I will come back to the last point now of the presentation, which brings me to sustainability. In sustainability, we have a clear statement. We want to become carbon neutral by 2040. We also know that the reporting requirements have dramatically increased, so we will comply with all these different legal frameworks here in Switzerland, but also in the European Union, and I, I am sure there will be more and more regulations in the future. Now, we have set ourselves a short-term target, which is in 2030, mainly focused on scope 1 and scope 2, where we want to have everything either produced or bought with renewable energy. We still have a couple of years' time, but and we have clear plans where we can install further photovoltaic installations on our production sites and where we can buy green energy. Scope 3, of course, is much tougher.
That brings us to our long-term goal, which is to become carbon neutral in 2040. Scope 3 deals with the whole life cycle of our product, so going backwards into our supply chain and going forward to the usage of our products for our customers. What have we done so far this year? We have agreed that we are participating in the Science-Based Targets Initiative, the SBTi. Over the coming months, we are developing the roadmap to net zero in twenty forty. I do not have all solutions yet, but we are working on this now. First, we have to make an in-depth analysis of our scope emissions, so we can then develop the right action plans in order to become carbon neutral in 2040 . This is the overview of our overall strategy. We are fully committed to it, to this.
I even would say we are excited about it. We have presented this strategy to our leadership team, to our employees, and all of them understand our strategic direction. Our Board of Directors has approved it, so today you will have three deep dive sessions on this first line of the Strategy House, where to win with our innovative solutions. There will be a technology leadership session, which covers mainly Machines & Systems and Components. We will show our customer service, what we really plan to do there, which is our After Sales business, covering Components and the After Sales division, and then along all the three Business Groups, of course, we will show you automation and digitization and how we are driving this initiative in the near future.
Thank you very much for your attention, and with this, I would like to hand over to Oliver, Oliver Streuli, for the financial ambition and key figures. Oliver?
Thank you, Thomas. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Winterthur at our brand-new technology campus. It is a great pleasure for us to host this Capital Markets Day. Ahead of the deep dive sessions later on, I am now going to present to you our financial ambition for the coming years. Let me start with a look in the rear-view mirror on slide 23. We operate in a cyclical industry, where sales tend to fluctuate heavily from year to year. However, regardless of the sales environment, we have been unable to deliver a sufficient level of profitability in the past. In difficult markets, we have generated substantial operating losses, while in good markets, our profitability lagged behind expectations, especially in the last five years. I had the opportunity to meet my three predecessors personally, and without exception, they all mentioned our cyclicality first when characterizing Rieter.
Apart from the ups and downs of the cycles, Rieter has an attractive business model, especially also from a financial point- of- view. Firstly, the price level of our Machines & Systems is healthy, as evidenced by solid gross margins that we can achieve. I have seen other industries with significantly lower gross margins on new machinery business, so the base is, I'm convinced, healthy. Secondly, our After Sales and Components business is an important source of profitability, yet underdeveloped when measured as a percentage of Group sales. We have a significant growth opportunity at hand, not only from a sales perspective, but also from a profitability mix perspective, from After Sales and Components. Finally, we operate an asset-light business model. We receive down payments for Machines & Systems, and partly even for After Sales and Components.
Since we are a system integrator, the CapEx needs of our business are limited compared with other industries. These financial features, together with the industry mega trends, as outlined by Thomas earlier, convinced me that our equity story is attractive, and our target is now to persuade you of this, too, in the coming hours. Let's start on page 24. To keep return on net operating assets above the cost of capital is what I call the absolute golden rule for value creation, and thus, of any good equity story. Over the past decade, the Rieter share price had almost perfectly traded in line with order intake, upwards and unfortunately, also downwards, and most recently, mostly sideways. What we want to do is we want to generate long-term value add and long-term attractive returns on net operating assets.
When we deliver on this ambition, our share price should, to some extent, decouple from the pure momentum spurred by order intake and appreciate also over the longer term. Many of the textbook drivers of return on assets are addressed by our new strategy, and we kickstarted also a lot of them by Next Level last summer. Now, over the following slides, I would like to give you more details on the key value drivers from an operational, but also from a financial point of view. As you can see on slide 25, our end market demand is very cyclical, a given to which we must adapt. Historical sales numbers show that our Machines & Systems business can oscillate within a 30% range. We do not expect this to change in the future.
In comparison, our Components business fluctuates roughly 15%, and After Sales is less cyclical, fluctuates roughly 10%. So firstly, we need to cope better with the strong cyclicality of our Machines & Systems business. Secondly, it becomes evident that if we increase the relative share of After Sales and Components in our business mix, the Group overall will become less cyclical, which further underpins the importance of our growth strategy in those areas. Now, what does that mean specifically? As we can see on slide 26, the absolute sales increases from the past trough to boom years were mainly driven by Machines & Systems. After Sales and Components also increased, but less significantly, as evidenced when you compare the years 2019-2020 and 2022-2023 on the chart on the left-hand side.
This led to various challenges, especially with regards to order, execution, and supply chain issues, but also regarding margin mix, since our margins are lower in Machines & Systems compared to After Sales and Components. So what do we want to change? Most importantly, we will adjust our capacity in the Machines & Systems business downwards. The market does not pay for overcapacity. This means we will adjust our base capacity to a mid-level sales scenario. And this also means that in the event of a market boom, we will need to act more conservatively and find alternative solutions with our customers instead of accepting all orders, regardless of capacity constraints. Specifically, we will need to be selective and either increase pricing and prioritize production slots or extend lead times to ensure that we can deliver on time, cost, and quality.
What we also aim for is a dedicated growth strategy in Components and After Sales, as you can hear later on then, to exploit the significant market potential that we have there, most importantly, with our own installed base. This altogether is intended to lead to a more balanced business mix, as mentioned by Thomas earlier, between Machines & Systems on the one hand, and After Sales and Components on the other hand. Specifically, a 50/50 split in a low scenario and a 60/40 split in a high scenario at max. Now to slide 27. Our ability to successfully cope with the high cyclicality of our Machines & Systems business will be a key success factor of our strategy. As illustrated in this chart, we distinguish between the fixed, which is the bar, and the variable direct cost, which is the coil. Together, this is the cost of goods sold.
We have R&D and SG&A, our overhead costs. Now, flexing capacity is a common word, especially these days, and it's a key skill that most manufacturers of industrial goods need to master. However, it's not possible to flex the entire cost base, as can be seen with this bar, with the fixed direct cost. Now, what we did on the Next Nevel is we immediately cut overhead costs, since these measures had the fastest impact on our income statement. Now, in the next phase, what we will do is we will adjust our fixed production capacity, the bar, to reduce our overcapacity and to bring it in line with a more conservative base market scenario for the Machines & Systems business. This will then put us in a position to reliably deliver a positive EBIT margin, even in a low scenario.
Consequently, then, we will have a high capacity utilization in a mid-level scenario, which is not the case today, and we will benefit from economies of scale in a high scenario with the support of a temporary workforce and extended external workbench, workbenches, up to some point. Now, so far, we have made great progress in improving our cost base. As we presented with our half-year financials, we cut overhead costs by CHF 42 million in the first half year, 2024, compared to the prior year. This is roughly one quarter. However, we are also working hard on our direct costs under the so-called Continuous Cost Leadership program. As you can see on slide 28, we call this CCL. CCL initially started as an initiative on the Next Level and is now a fully integrated organizational program within Rieter, addressing all three divisions.
The target is clear: We want to cut our material costs by 5% every year. Furthermore, we also target our logistics and other indirect production costs, and next up, we will also start to work on the entire indirect spend for the Group, which is to date, still organized essentially. What you do? In the first phase, the key savings driver is price renegotiations. We have done supplier campaigns, and we have addressed more than 300 individual suppliers in negotiations to bring prices down again after the heavy increases, especially during the last years... Another important potential is the internationalization of our supply chain. We still procure a lot of material and components in Western Europe, while our markets and main production facilities are located in Asia, a region which also offers highly competitive local suppliers for our products.
Lastly, we also see a significant design to cost potential, which we will start to unlock. In general, we look at every design which does not directly impact machine performance or reliability and optimize it for costs. In most cases, simplification and standardization can lead to cost savings without our customers even noticing. As you can see on slide 29, all these measures are targeted to lead to a new steady state in a still cyclical and challenging market, delivering profits in any scenario. In a low scenario, with roughly CHF 1 billion sales, up to 4% EBIT. In a mid scenario of roughly CHF 1.3 billion sales, 4%-8% EBIT. And in a high market scenario, with roughly CHF 1.6 billion, an EBIT margin of 8%-12%.
To sum it up, we have an ambition which stands also in contrast to the past, as can be seen on slide 30. We aim to grow After Sales and Components to improve the business mix, to balance cyclicality, and to increase the margin mix, to cut overcapacity, to improve our direct cost base, and to optimize our overall cost structure, not only in overhead, but also in direct product and production costs. We are convinced that this is possible because we have a solid plan, and we have dedicated measures on how to achieve this plan. So what's in it for you, dear investors, you might ask? I would like to give you a perspective on capital return on slide 31. In the first half year, 2024, we had net operating asset of roughly CHF 770 million, a proxy of investor capital.
Thereof, around one quarter is goodwill, for the records. To illustrate the capital return perspective, let's assume a constant asset base, because in the event of a market recovery, we plan to balance an increase in receivables with payables, and an increase in inventories should largely be financed by advance payments. And now let's assume a WACC of around 9%. We need to deliver roughly CHF 70 million in EBIT to cover our capital costs. Now, if you recap our margin ambition in a mid-level scenario, we plan to generate sales of roughly CHF 1.3 billion at 4%-8% EBIT margin, the midpoint of which is around about CHF 80 million. This translates into a return on operating assets of more than 10% in this very simple calculation example, including goodwill.
As you can see, a positive return on capital, as mentioned in my previous slide or in my first slide, is already forecast in our base case scenario. I think this is an attractive prospect. Now to slide 32. Speaking of goodwill and assets, we want to pursue a selective M&A strategy, as most companies do. Our focus is on return on capital accretion and bolt-on acquisitions. We want to specifically support our growth strategy in Components and After Sales, and we want to especially complement our expertise in fiber processing. And as you have seen before, the still fragmented market, especially in Components, offers attractive opportunities to grow inorganically. I would like to conclude with our midterm financial guidance on slide 33 . This is nothing new compared with our Next Level communication, so no revolution, but it is summarized in a compact manner.
We expect a base case sales in a mid-market scenario of CHF 1.3 billion and a consequent EBIT margin of 4%-8% in such a scenario. We aim to become an attractive return on capital story, with subsequent dividend payouts of roughly 40% of net income. Obviously, both our equity ratio and also our net debt levels are not yet where we want them to be. We want to reduce net debt over time, and we want to increase our equity ratio to at least 35%. With that, I conclude my presentation, and I hand back to you, Relindis, this for the Q&A. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Oliver. Ladies and gentlemen, we will start the sessions here in the room and then move to the questions from our webcast audience, and finally, we will open the floor for those on the telephone line. As usual, the Q&A session will be recorded. I kindly ask all participants here in the room to wait for the microphone and to introduce yourself with your name and company before asking your question. The floor is open now for your questions. Who wants to start? Over there, Lucia, please?
Walter Bamert from Zürcher Kantonalbank. You highlighted the importance and the growth perspectives of the man-made fiber. As Oerlikon disclosed that they want to get rid of that business, could you share with us how good that would fit into your ambitions?
Thank you for the question. You can be sure we also are a reader of the announcements of potential other competitors, but of course, we don't do any comment from our side. In general, we believe there are different ways how you can participate in this filament business. The strategy we have is mainly that we are focusing on component companies who are, let's say, a supplier to this big OEM competitors in the man-made fiber business. That's one side, and the other side is usually man-made fiber is, especially in the clothing industry, is very often a blend between man-made fiber with cotton, and this raw material has some other reactions than a pure cotton or a pure man-made fiber raw material.
Very often customers are mixing that, and they create the blend. And so we are focusing ourselves that our existing machinery park becomes also better and better in these blend applications. Half answered? Good. Other questions in the room, here in the front?
Christian Arnold from Stifel. Coming back to your guidance, you adjusted with half year figures, this CHF 900 million sales you are expecting, that's actually below the low scenario, and you still are very confident to reach the 2%-4%. So do you have to reduce your low scenario? That's one question. And then, I mean, the 2%-4%, you already guided with a sales expectations of CHF 900 million to CHF 1 billion. So do we have to now think more about the 2% and before maybe more about the 4%? Or what's different this year that you can still reach a profitable result with clearly lower sales than the CHF 1 billion you have in your low scenario?
Maybe I pick that up. You know, this low, mid, and high scenario is of course based, first of all, on certain historical trends. That's point number one, and I would say a normal environment. Now, we do have sometimes years where this normal environment just doesn't work. We had it in 2020 when we had the COVID pandemic, and this year, I think we have a lot of geopolitical turbulences combined with macroeconomic turbulences over the last 24 months. We had not foreseen that impact in our scenario topics. And then secondly, if you look ahead, and we always said, you know, looking ahead, we have this low, mid, and high.
If you listen what we have presented now and what you also will see afterwards in these breakout sessions, we do have growth opportunities, especially in After Sales and Components, that in the future, this lower than low scenario still brings us to CHF 1 billion. Because today we are still very much depending on the cyclicity of the new Machines & the System business. So I think the CHF 1 billion, CHF 1.3 billion, CHF 1.6 billion is still valid midterm and minimum. Now, the reality is, we were expecting that in the second half of 2024, the market is already starting to recover, and it is true, we have seen that China is quite stable, and you have seen in the news that we made the one or the other success, and India also is coming back.
There, for example, mill utilization is above 90%, which shows you it's a very healthy market now. But due to high interest rates, and still some tension on the consumer side, you know, they are still, still almost reluctant sometimes to buy. They don't dare to invest already now. Now, for that reason, we had to say, "Okay, we thought, it is at the beginning of the year, the CHF 1 billion, then it was CHF 900 million to CHF 1 billion," because we always had in mind, the second half will be much better than the first half, and the second half will be better than the first half, but not as much as we thought. Now, I cannot change the market, or we cannot change the market, but of course, we have to change somehow our attitude.
If times are tough, you have to demonstrate a tough love towards yourself. So you have to push the cost break even more, and this is what we have done. In all different areas where we have this possibility, we are just extremely cautious at the moment to spend any unnecessary cost, yeah? And so the guidance, we were able to keep it in the same area, and the guidance is the guidance. You are responsible for where in those this guidance you want to place your assumptions. We state the 2%-4%. In absolute terms, it's not so much, let's be honest. But of course, structural under absorption, what Oliver mentioned before, does not help when your top line is even going further down.
Then you have to act immediately, and this is something we are doing.
If I just follow up so this press release or press we have seen last week about additional layoffs that is linked to that.
Only partially. It is, in fact, you know, we always said on the Next Level, and now with our Strategy House, with this block customer service, we want to have customer-centric functions where the customers are. I don't need too many back office functions here in Winterthur. I don't have customers here in Winterthur. The reality is that, in our assumption we had when we started with Next Level, that we somehow over time, you know, will move and shift, you know, step by step, and it's true. Now, we had to accelerate that because the environment is asking us to be fast and agile, and so we were somehow condensing some of our planned over the time initiatives, in a faster manner.
That's the cost side. And then on the sales side, I mean, this CHF 900 million, I mean, we had, I think, CHF 167 million, something like that, in the third quarter. Coming from below CHF 600 million to CHF 900 million, I mean, you have to have a Q4 being double as good as Q3 in terms of sales. How much is visibility and how much is hope that you actually get there?
I mean, of course, you have one part of the business, especially After Sales, which is more transactional and which also follows a certain cyclicality or a certain, I would say, business momentum. But then the machinery business, this is all in the books. These are all orders that we have now, which are even in productions in summer. So we know exactly what we will deliver and to whom we will deliver. So there, it did not surprise us that the Q4 will be so strong. Now, what the key uncertainty, of course, always is, is whether we get the final payment, the final financing over the line, if the customer really wants the machine now in December or whether he wants it in January, but this is normal in project business.
So from a workload, and also execution perspective, a double as high fourth quarter versus a third quarter is not unusual. Also, last year, the fourth quarter was super strong, and I would say the large majority of the sales planned in Q4 is with a high visibility at the moment.
Thank you very much.
Other questions here in the room?
Sebastian Vogel from UBS. Hey. Quick one with regard to the service organization and the build-up there, how should we think about any potential costs that are being associated to that sort of build-up? That would be the first question. The second question, I would just put them both together in that sense. If I understood you correctly, that there would be some ambition over time in the future to potentially help your customers, to facilitate the textile mills or to work with textile mills. Can you elaborate a little bit further on that, what you meant by those comments?
Point number one, there is no substantial cost increase foreseen for the build-up of our After Sales organization. For what reason? Point number one, some certain functions today are based here in Switzerland. We also want to benefit from a certain labor arbitrage. This will help us to reduce the cost of the existing organization, and part of that we will use to finance a certain build-up of new organizations. In these markets, we are already present. We are just not present with our own people. We are working mainly with agents. Agents, in my opinion, is good if you are more in a project business, but in a transactional business, day to day, you should do it by yourself. This is the most profitable business model we have, is After Sales business.
So if you are an agent, and very often those agents, they are selling for us, you know, a new spinning mill for CHF 15- CHF 20 million. They get a fantastic fee for that, and besides this, we ask them to do the nitty-gritty, small transactional stuff. They are not interested in that. So only if we do it by ourself, we will be able to create more density and penetration in this market. And yes, it will cost a little bit, but it is compensated by less agent fee cost on one side. It is reduced by the labor arbitrage we are doing from high-cost countries to lower-cost countries. And then, honestly, of course, I believe we should create very quick certain top-line revenues with a very good margin, who then will overcompensate the remaining additional costs. So we are convinced-...
that this business model, in a midterm scenario, really adds not only top line, but also a lot of bottom line.
Yes, Marc Possa, VV AG. You mentioned basically three things that I thought were interesting. First, automation because of labor scarcity, then the high complexity, i.e., blended filaments, and then the other word, third, the mill management. Can you allude a bit on that? I mean, how far would you go, you know, wanting to become a mill manager-
No.
-or a mill owner?
No.
Where are the limitations?
It also goes into the second question of your predecessor, a little bit. So, today, when you look at the spinning mill, and you look on the people who really work in the mill, you have fifty degrees. It's very dusty, it's very noisy, and some of the tasks are rather repetitive, let's call it like that. If you bring that all together, it's just not interesting. It's just not interesting. And it's not only a question in a country like here in Europe or in the U.S. Even in India or in Turkey or in China, our customers have more and more the problem to find people who want to work in a spinning mill. Now, when you look on those people, I would say they are like two different type of persons.
There is really the low, low skill work, what I mentioned before, and there are maintenance people, who are, you know, very knowledgeable about, all those type of machines, such a spinning mill has. Now, you don't find the guys anymore who want to do the low-skill work because they don't want to do it anymore, and we don't develop anymore in those countries, the high-skilled maintenance people. So over the next 10 years, those spinning mills will not only have not enough people, but also not enough skilled people. And this is where we can jump in. And you will see in one of the breakout sessions that we, are working on so-called service level agreements. So service contracts, which you can build up in a modular way.
This does almost not exist today, because those family companies, they want to do everything by themselves, but the new generation doesn't want to do that. So there are areas you can step in. Do we want to have, you know, everything run by ourselves? I think that's then really very far away, huh? But yes, you can have, you know, a transactional-based or incident-based maintenance. Something does not work, and then you go. But then you can go more into a preventive maintenance model, into an interval maintenance model. This will be new for the industry. And then maybe, you know, somewhere at the horizon, you will come to a performance-based maintenance model, where you are almost, you know, where you run mill as a service. I think that's really still in the future.
I have learned, let's focus on the things we have under control. Let's now do step one, and let's do step two. I think that's already a potential, and we can learn, and also our customers can learn that this works, and I think that's enough, huh? Now, you need for this, automation and digitization, because with the digital monitoring, you can give the service hints to your people. Our guy doesn't have to do, you know, all the checks from here to here, to here to here, but he already gets all the symptoms, all the tips and tricks. "Hey, deep dive here and do this and this and this." You will see afterwards that we have that, and all the more we automate, of course, the fewer resources we need ourselves to offer those services to our customers.
So it's in fact three things: automation, reducing the number of labor required. Digitization, being faster and more clever. And having own service contracts to replace the workforce of our customers, because it's probably more interesting as a maintenance guy to work for our company, to go here, to go there, to go there, do this and that, and that you can do a career path. At the customer side, with 200 people, you are once the maintenance guy with 35, and that's your job for the next 30 years. So we believe those three elements really can create the transformation with in the relationship with our customers. It takes time. It takes time. It does not come from today to tomorrow. Other questions here in the room?
My name is Urs Diethelm from BLKB, and the first question is regarding your cycle on page 29. I just wonder, what is the free cash flow in a low and free cash flow in a mid and the free cash flow in a high market scenario in absolute numbers? And the second question is: What is the war chest for M&A?
Well, it's a lot about money. I will give those two questions to my CFO.
It's actually a very good question. I would also like to know the free cash flow in those different scenarios. No, just joking. We do not guide on free cash flow depending on the market scenarios, but what I can give is perhaps a bit of a hint that you can bridge from EBIT into cash flow. So first of all, we do not expect to expand our CapEx. CapEx numbers you have seen in the past of something of a mid double-digit figure, something like that, without giving a guidance now, but this can help as an indication. And then on net working capital, we are working heavy to improve our net working capital. What we do is we extend payment terms quite substantially now, again, to pre-COVID levels.
So there we expect a higher number of payables in the event of a next ramp. Inventory levels, we are working on reducing it, also in the hope that in the next boom phase, we could keep a certain level for as long as possible. Key in inventories is that you only store basically the fast-turning parts, especially in your After Sales business and in the machine business or Machines & Systems. It's important that you get it quickly in and then out again. So on net working capital, I would not expect a significant spike in case of a next boom. CapEx levels, as evidenced in the past, also no expansion planned, and this should help you in getting an EBIT to free cash flow bridge.
Now, with regards to M&A, as I mentioned before, our key priority is to drive our return on assets. So we will look very carefully at every target, not just from a strategic point- of- view, but also from a profitability and asset intensity point- of- view. What we also want to do is we want to focus on bolt-on acquisitions, because then the integration effort is also easier than if you do large-scale M&A.
And maybe just to add on that, if you want to spend money, you first have to earn money. So, we are focusing on profitability improvement, and the profitability improvement will improve our net debt position, and it will improve what we have available as cash to really do M&A.
But coming back to the free cash flow, in the low scenario, you are burning cash. Is that correct?
This is. I would say. Well, it depends. What do you mean with burning cash?
Free cash flow negatives.
This very much depends. As I mentioned, we do not give a free cash flow guidance. You have certain elements which hurt you in the case of, of a down market scenario or in a low market scenario. Especially, unfortunately, and this was evidenced in 2023, if your advance payments decrease, because then like for like, you have less advance payments and you execute orders, and then you don't get cash in, for sales that you generate. This is something that hurts. Now, for this year, we are relatively confident that we can compensate some of those effects, and you can rest assured that cash flow generation is very high up on our agenda.
We can even say it is as important like EBIT.
We do not want, and we cannot afford to burn cash, not from an existence point- of- view, but it's just, it's not an option for us to do losses anymore, and it's also not an option for us to be cash flow negative, direction-wise. The team has learnt that, I think, over the last couple of months now.
Here on the right side, there is Mr. Bamert, I think, also has one more question.
There was just a discussion on the bolt-on acquisitions. Can you make a few comments on the recent Prosino acquisition? Is there a figure that it adds to the top line, or is that margin addition only? And is there a lot of bycatch you get rid of?
So Prosino was already a participation of us. We had so far 49% of the equity. And in such a situation, where it's family-owned, so the other 51% belongs to a family, and there was a there is a long-term relationship between the family and ourselves, and there was an agreement that over a couple of years, you know, the family would like to step out. So that was the rationale why we said, "Okay, now is the time." And we do it step by step. Also, to keep the existing managers motivated, I'm a big fan of not buying everything at one shot, but to have, like, an earn-out model over two, three, four years. So every stake becomes more expensive, okay, but because the company becomes more successful.
It is an important also supplier of us to our Components company, Bräcker, and they are acting also under their name in the market. You can add, you know, some additional third-party income from next year onwards, which is a high single-digit million number, because the rest will then be intercompany revenue towards ourselves.
Sales, yeah?
Sales.
Not income-
Yeah, sales
Sales.
And it has been a profitable company over all the years, so the company will not dilute our profitability.
Dominic Feldges from Neue Zürcher Zeitung. You have, if I understood you correctly, so far focused most on bringing down overhead costs. Now, what do you need to achieve in terms of in the field of the production? I think, where I understand you also have to reduce overcapacities. What will have to happen there still? First question. And the second question, the textile industry as a whole, you know, or the especially with regard to retailing, where do we stand there at the moment, and for how much longer could this downturn last? I mean, it's been now going on for quite some time. What's your expectation there? What maybe needs to happen that the consumer comes back?
Okay. So, super good questions. I have to admit, not easily to answer. We said that we want to go, you know, in our capacities in the manufacturing to meet or maybe a little bit slightly below a meet scenario. Now, this also means that today, you know, we have more than 50% overcapacity. And when you talk about overcapacity, you have people who are in the shop floor. This you can somehow balance with temporary people quite easily. But then you have a fixed cost element in your costs of manufactured good. The building, the machinery you keep to produce once much higher volumes. You have certain overhead functions, indirect people in the factories, and in all fairness, no customer pays me for that. Why should I have that?
For the one year in 5-7 years, where maybe we come close to that peak, and then the other six years, I have unused resources and capacities who nobody wants to pay for. So we came to the conclusion that we have somehow to reduce our technical capacity, what we can produce, and if once, hopefully soon, the super boom year comes, in the meantime, you have to work much better with your supplier base, that you can also use so-called extended workbench with your suppliers to flexibilize your overall capacity. That's one element, and then the other element is, okay, you always have the chance, you know, to add, for a certain period of time, a fourth shift, to really go into the peak.
And then last but not least, if I have the possibility to sell 10% more or to sell the actual offers at a 10% higher price, I will sell at a 10% higher price, because this go directly to my bottom line. And this is a lot of discipline you need, and maybe it is not black or white, it is somewhere between. But I would say that's, for us, really important that we do not, you know, have everything for the best of the best of the best years, because out of 5-7 years, there is only one best year. And I rather prefer that we have seven good years and not one good year and then six bad years, maybe partially like in the past. Now, when does the market come back, and what has to happen?
Especially clothes are a luxury good. Why? You have three different type of people. You have the very poor people, they just buy one shirt to cover the body. Then you have the very rich people, they pay for very little of textile, a lot of money. That doesn't help us, we need a lot of textile. So you have to concentrate on the middle- class. The middle- class, in fact, is the one who really has the highest demand in terms of volume. So we made an analysis, where will the middle- class come from, the increase of middle- class come from over the next couple of years until 2030? Until 2030, the middle-class population in the world will grow nearly by 1 billion, and more than 700 million will come from India and China.
So this whole growth will come from those two countries. In China, because more people of the existing population will move to the middle- class, and in India, because the... anyway, the population is growing, and also the share of middle- class is growing. And the rest of the world is maybe a 100 million, 150 million, so peanuts. Now, that's the increase, but what happens with the installed, if I may say, middle- class? As for us, in this middle- class, buying clothes is somehow a luxury activity because, in all fairness, we don't have to buy clothes for the next two years, and nobody of us has a problem that we are not proper dressed, huh?... So it's a luxury spending. And when do you cut luxury spending? When you have uncertainty.
Uncertainty even comes from the economy, inflation, you know, low GDP growth. You are scared to lose the job on one side, and on the other side, there are geopolitical topics, and very often they are connected, they are interconnected with each other. I'm sure that if some of the conflicts we have here around Europe will disappear, also consumer confidence will come back. But if this confidence is not there, then the whole textile value chain will not be fueled up. So one is additional growth from additional middle-class people, and the other one is the existing middle-class. There is just... Give us peace, give us a little bit more normal, stable environment, and then I'm sure everybody of you will be happy to buy much more clothes.
Here in the front. Yeah?
Susak, JMS Invest. You mentioned the installed base, which is predominantly owned by the family-owned businesses, and which you said was often between 30 and 50 years old. If you look at the installed base, can you make any like inferential or predictions about the replacement cycles for the next 5-10 years?
We do have that information, and it is also part of our Sales Excellence strategy. Normally, you can say that such a machine is running for 15- 20 years. If you do some upgrades, then it can go until 25 years. Of course, we know from our machines exactly the year when it was produced and put in operation. And we use that data to calculate two elements. One is, when is the right time to offer new machines to replace? And we also use it to calculate the so-called market potential for the After Sales and Component business. We know pretty precise when the right moment is to offer this and/or to offer that. But this, of course, goes country by country, even city by city.
It really depends on what kind of an installed base you have at the moment there. So we know it for ourselves. We have indications for the non-Rieter machines, but it is definitely not as precise like for our own installed base.
Can you share it with us?
No.
The next 5-10 years.
No. Well, I can share that in our assumption, so the market growth in replacing machines. When you look, you know, the number of cotton filament and so, the growth will be 2%-3% per year. This will be eaten up by higher productivity of machines. So the number of machines over the cycle to be sold will remain the same. It will not grow, because the higher demand will be absorbed by more efficient and productive machines. So that's the reason why we are much more interested to create new businesses, which today are generated within those spinning mills, like maintenance, like spare parts and so-called engineered solutions. These are upgrades of machines, as we mentioned that with automation.
This is a typical initiative you do not only use for new machines, but you can also use it for existing machines. And in one of the three, breakout sessions, you will see just one product and what kind of an incredible potential this has. So growth will have to come from After Sales and Components business, and growth will come very specifically from the new equipment and system business, where we were not so strong in the past. But the major share of growth will come from After Sales and Components, and for me, this is good news.
Alessandro Foletti, Octavian. Thank you for taking my question. Just on this subject of the After Sales growth, sorry to say this bluntly, but also your predecessors recognized the fact that After Sales and Components grow faster than Machines. And if you dig a little bit into the numbers, you go back in the year, there are, from the textile machinery industry, very good statistics. You can see that. So what will happen? Why didn't it really go that way so far? I mean, I personally, at least, I don't see this boost from growth. So what is new now?
You will allow that I will, I will not now make a performance assessment of our predecessors.
No, no, do it.
This is not my task. I'm just dealing with the things which is in our hand, and thanks God, I do have a certain experience in After Sales business from my personal history. I know what really counts, that you can do more. Because today, After Sales, when you look at that, there are three different really streams. One is that you have spare parts. That's the major part today of our After Sales business. So what is the most important element when you want to sell spare parts? Availability and speed of delivery. And in all fairness, we are not good in that. We are just not good enough. Now, someone will sell that part because the customer needs the part. They just don't buy it with us, they buy it with someone else.
So you grab market share from usually smaller competitors who are very close by setting up your own local organization, and this we have not done in the past. We always remained very headquarter-centric, and with this initiative to go out to the markets, I believe, yes, this is a game changer to grow that part of the business: spare parts and repairs. The second topic of growth is service level agreements. This industry did not have that or to a very little extent, and I think we have now the support of this demographic change, not only of the owner structure, but also of the employee structure, and this will help us, and if I may say, we do have the right people who are able to develop such modular service contracts.
It does not come, you know, from one day to the other because it's also a certain education task you have to do in the industry. And the third element, I think, is the most promising one. This is the topic of engineered solutions. Because you have thousands and hundreds of thousands of machines out there in the market, and, especially in times like today, you know, if you have to buy a new machine, sometimes you're struggling to do this big investment, huh? Because those new machines are also replacement of existing machines, and you have to make for yourself the payback calculation. Do I want to replace the complete machine, or is there a way to upgrade the existing machine to a higher performance?
The one who has good upgrade packages will be able to grab more market share because it becomes more affordable for the customer. If you combine that, and that's the reason why the strategic house is so important for us, with certain mega trends, certain customer pains, which at the moment is, I don't have people to run the machines. If you can combine that, you will just generate more business. We see that now with the ROBOspin, the number of offers we have in the market in Turkey is absolutely incredible. It is going, you know, over proportionally up. It takes some time until everything comes to an order, but I think we will have the highest order intake in this ROBOspin area, which is now already five, six years old, we ever had.
Can you share some potential targets for the growth in the service and After Sale, after you have said with this strategy?
Yeah. I think we can say what the ideal split would be in our After Sales and Components, because Components, a lot has also to do with After Sales business.
Yes, I mean, I referred to that on page 26, where you basically see a split that we plan to achieve in a mid, in a low, and in a high scenario. And obviously, if you take, for instance, the mid scenario, there you see that the CHF 600 million After Sales and Components is not where we stand today, and certainly also not the high scenario of the CHF 700 million. This is also not where we stand today, so we need to deliver growth on there. This is including M&A.
To understand this chart, if I look, for example, take the mid scenario, CHF 1.3 billion, and compare it with 2022, which more or less is also CHF 1.3 billion, we see the After Sales and Components going from CHF 400 million to CHF 600 million, say, five years, 50%, like maybe 10% or something like that per year. But the other part going down, meaning is just because of a cycle or because of what you said before, being kind of more selecting, adjusting capacity.
It, yeah.
And not running for everything and so on. How should I?
This is a very, very crucial question, very important question. The market does not pay for overcapacity. And what we will do is we will cut our capacity, and we will align our capacity more with a, with a mid or with a slightly below mid-market scenario. And this implies, of course, that in the next, upcycle, we will not participate for each and every last, dollar of volume. So we will restrict ourselves. Now, how that restriction will then look like in detail remains to be seen, obviously, but this comes, of course, at a certain cost, because what we cannot do is adjust our capacity to CHF 1.8 billion or 1-- including now the growth, that you, just calculate, CHF 1.8 billion, CHF 1.9 billion , then down again to CHF 1 billion , then up again and down again.
This is not possible, so we have to choose how big we want to be, and in Machines & Systems, we want to be smaller in the future, capacity-wise.
And even with a reduced capacity, we still can go close to a high scenario in the new Machines & Systems business.
Because our existing capacity is much higher than what we have in a high scenario.
Does this not have an effect on market share?
No. No, no, does not. Easily said, no. Good! Any other question here from the room? Otherwise... Yeah, here on the, in the front, there is one.
Yes, Christian Arnold from Stifel again. On the spinning mills capacity utilization, I mean, you mentioned the 90% in India. Where do we stand right now on a global base and maybe in terms of, yeah, China, and the rest of the world?
Global base, mainly based on China, overall, we are above 70% at the moment, so it has come up slightly over time. We also expect that this slow trend will continue. We talk about the healthy market when it is above 80%.
And we were partially in some quarters, we were in the mid-60s, huh? So now we are slightly above 70. This now also on a confirmed stay stable case. And it is quite good in India, right? It's above 90%. It's not so bad in the Americas, especially in the Latin American part. It's still a little bit more sluggish in the in the U.S. It's around 60% in Turkey. Huh? And in China, it's sometimes a little bit more difficult because when you look on this almost 100 million spindle equivalents, you know, they, they put into that figure everything, but they also have spinning mills who are not running at all anymore, since years, huh? So in China, we have seen that it went up slightly 3 - 5 points over the last 10 months.
The trend is your friend, I would have to say, huh? The trend goes into the right direction, but it does not go with high speed.
So still at around 55%, what we had already-
Yeah, slightly up. Slightly up.
Okay.
It goes slightly up. Goes slightly up.
I see.
Good. I think that's it. If there are no more questions, then Relindis?
Yeah, there are no questions on the webcast and no question on the telephone line, so we can close the Q&A session.