All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Bombardier's 2024 Investor Day. My name is Francis Richer de la Flèche. I'm Vice President of Investor Relations and Financial Planning. On behalf of the entire Bombardier organization, I'd like to thank you for joining us today, whether it's online or here in person at our newly built Aircraft Assembly Center in Toronto. We've got a very exciting day for you planned today. Just before we start, however, for those in the room, I'd like to go over a few safety protocols. If there is an emergency, please remain seated and wait for instructions. If we do have to evacuate, you'll find emergency exits around the perimeter of the building, and you can follow the green emergency exit signs. Once outside, look for the assembly points, signs, and they're located about 100 feet from the building.
If you need immediate attention, please do not hesitate to reach out to one of our security staff who are working the event. In today's presentation, you'll hear from our Chief Executive Officer, Éric Martel, as well as our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Bart Demosky, who together will take you through our strategic and financial outlook. Before we start, I'd like to draw your attention to slides three and four of our presentation. During the course of today's events, we will make projections and forward-looking statements regarding the future financial performance and future events of the corporation. There are risks that actual events differ materially. I'm making this comment on behalf of every person who will be speaking here today. With that, we are ready to begin.
Good morning to you all, and thanks for joining us today here in our new facility at the Pearson Airport, which we are very happy to have you guys here today and have a chance to visit it. Our employees are so proud to have started the operations here. You've seen it's full of airplanes. We have all the operations here now. So it's an amazing day. It was a good day, also good way to start the day with a major and significant announcement today. This is on disclosing the, you know, press release we had in December with NetJets, you know, buying, coming back to the 3500 and buying 12 airplanes, but options for 232 over the next few years.
So that's quite an achievement, you know, and I'll talk a bit later about fleet operator, how important they are part of our strategy. It was an historical moment last week when we launched our new brand, our new identity. And as a good engineer, our project was, you know, very meticulously run and thought of. We talked to a lot of customers. We talked to a lot of employees, and, you know, the feedback, the project is based on their feedback, and the result is based on their feedback. I think one thing we heard across the board is that Bombardier has a unique relationship. Our customers say that-- are saying that every day.
We are not being seen as a corporation, we are seen as being a family, and we celebrate the people, we celebrate their excellence, and, you know, this is like a major change in picturing ourselves also. Internally, also, we provide a workplace where heart meets mastery. And, you know, as it was mentioned in the video, our longtime purpose is to be at their altitude. Being at the altitude of our customer, which have unique demand, and being at the altitude of our employees also, who are doing something extremely unique. You've heard me saying very often that there's only a few country in the world that can design, build an airplane, and we are one of them, via Bombardier. So, you know, there's an inspiration that comes with the logo called the Mach....
You know, it takes into account our innovative heritage. You know, I think every business we've been in since 1942, we've been transforming these businesses. Whatever, if it's the snowmobile, the train business, the airplane business, you know, with the CRJs, I think we've always been making significant changes. And today, as a purely private aviation company, we are extremely proud, you know, to present, you know, this new brand that shows, you know, inspired from the Global 8000 that flew, you know, above Mach 1, as you know, and the design is a design of finesse, also elegance. So we're extremely pleased with the logo and, you know, the more I look at it every day, the more I'm liking it. So that's great.
We know the business—you know, we know business aviation better than anyone because I think that's our 100% time dedicated to that environment. We've been the number one OEM in the last 3 years of all in, in the category we are, of course, competing. Our product are always leading their categories, and we have focused, as you know, on the large and the medium segment, which I'm gonna come back to. We have—you know, we're adopters of new technology. We adapted, you know, the Passport engine, the Pearl engines. We have the first aircraft four zones in our industry, and first, you know, we, we have the first redesigned, class seat, you know, when we flew. We're gonna be flying our airplane at 0.94 Mach with the Global 8000 coming very, very soon.
So let me talk for a few minutes also about, you know, what we're doing as a pioneer team, you know, on sustainable and business aviation in a few second. But I think one distinction that we have at Bombardier is the, we are recognized as being focused, agile, you know, engaged, and responsive to our customer all the time. The one thing that I hear the most out there when I talk to customer, and I heard the same thing two weeks ago, I was in Washington, that we are fresh air. We bring new solution, new idea, new ways. As an example, on the defense business, "Well, you guys deliver on time, you guys deliver on budget, you're different, and you come up with solution, not problem." So that's the DNA of our, of our company.
The word impossible doesn't exist in Bombardier. We always figure out a way, you know? What about the 5,000 airplanes out there? We'll talk about it later, how precious this is. Because the installed base allows us to offer a platform, of course, to the defense business, but it's a big, significant services business we can tap in and pre-owned business also. So all this to say that, you know, we're excited about, you know, what we've achieved in the last couple of years, but also the journey ahead of us, and we'll talk about it in more detail. So we made a significant commitment as an industry, and Bombardier is leading that path, about being net zero carbon emission by 2050, and we know that it's possible. Our dedication to sustainability and business aviation runs deep.
We, first of all, champion the widespread adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, you know, within our industry, and we walk the talk. We were the first OEM to announce that we are flying all our demo flight and our flight tests, you know, using sustainable aviation fuel up to 30% per airplane. We are transparent about our product environmental footprint, and we are the only OEM also that is publishing the EDPs. We have our greenhouse gas emission reduction target. You know that we said in 2021 that we were gonna reduce, as a company, despite our growth, the emission by 25%, and we are right on plan to achieve that milestone by 2025. So our goal, collectively, is to achieve zero emission, zero carbon emission, neutral emission by 2050.
We have game changer project, as you know, the EcoJet. Actually, Stephen will be around today, our chief engineer, to show you, you know, the smaller version of the EcoJet, which has flown before. Today, we're flying a bigger version, but that project alone, you know, is a technology development project, but we are aiming to reduce by around 20% the emission just by modifying the shape of the airplane. But what about the result, and what about the impressive turnaround that we've delivered in the last few years? You remember we started the journey in 2020. That's when I was back. Right in the middle of COVID, at the beginning of COVID, we had that year, you know, 114 deliveries. We delivered close to $200 million of EBITDA, with $5.6 billion of revenue.
But what a turnaround if you look just at last year, you know, those are real results. We've achieved an $8 billion business. We grew our aftermarket by 77% over those years. You know, we grew our backlog significantly, but, you know, our profitability was a total change. We went from $200 million of EBITDA in 2020 to more than $1.2 billion last year, so six times more EBITDA. But I think, you know, what was an issue is now gonna turn into an opportunity. We are generating cash. We generated $1.1 billion of cash in the last three years, and our net leverage went from 41.5 to 7.7, 4.6, and we finished the year at 3.3.
You know, behind all of our achievement lies a committed skilled force and very engaged workforce. We've improved significantly the engagement of our people, and I'm not saying it was easy because they went through a lot of things over the last decade, but I'm telling you, the people at Bombardier, they have the company at heart, and they're gonna make the extra mile to make sure we are successful in all fields, in operations, in engineering, across the board. We also have the industry best management team, and I really believe it, and I may sound, you know... I don't know if it's arrogant, but I really mean it. Well, I have the team that is more knowledgeable about this industry than anybody else. We have several major operational accomplishments, you know, since 2020. Employee engagement has soared, as I said.
You know, we've made also, and I like the term, smart investment. It doesn't mean in aviation that you need to spend $4 billion every time you make an investment. We've made investment in the hundreds of millions. Think about the 3,500, which, you know, was a smart investment in a sense that we've doubled basically our deliveries on the airplane, and we have now the Global 8000 that's going to come up very, very soon. We have grown our sales team, you know, quite a bit in terms of, you know, services. We have structured also the industry on the defense side, and we today have 17 aircraft subscribed on the Smart Services platform. So a lot of achievement. You know, we also grew our services business, as you know.
I mentioned it, but we had it more than 1 million sq ft of services, and we've grown the services business from about $1 to 2 billion in just a few years, and there is more to come. But I know what you're interested in today is to hear about what else we're gonna do. So the first thing that I have to say today is we have a very clear line of sight for our 2025 objectives. You remember we set objectives back in 2021.
In March 2021, we came out right out of the gate after we restructure and said, "Here's what we're gonna do in 2025." I know there was a lot of skeptical people at the time, but by the way, we came out two years later and said, "Hey, we're gonna do better." And today, we still feel good about doing and achieving these number in 2025. Meeting these these objective is just the beginning because we now have a much better line of sight on what's gonna happen between 2026 and 2030, and we have many levers at our disposal. Think about our CPO business, think about our defense business, and think about our, of our services business.
All in these revenue streams, we see, and I'll share a number and details with you, a clear growth potential on every one of them, like a significant one, and those could be further enhanced through M&A or partnership. But you will see today, I hope you, you will be convinced that just by organic growth, this company can grow significantly up to 2030, and on top of it, we're gonna have, you know, cash liquidity available to make, if they are attractive, some acquisition through M&A. So I think overall, we can say that we have a very compelling proposal. Our transformation has led to a remarkable improvement in our financial position. Our performance in 2025 is in line with leading companies, whether in our industry or even across all sectors.
Our debt metrics are nearing investment grade, our margins are very strong, and we have high-quality earnings. $900 million in free cash flow provides capital allocation optionality for us in the future. $12 billion, that's something we don't talk about very often, but we also have $12 billion in tax attributes, which will keep our cash conversion strong for decades to come. We are strategically positioned, repositioning the company for long-term value creation through strong growth, value accretive capital allocation, potential for multiple re-rating as we continue to perform. We've got ahead of us right now a very strong multi-year backlog to execute our plan. Our backlog is strong in a sense that, you know, we've barely seen cancellation in the last couple of years. People buy the airplane, they want the airplane, and our backlog has grown by 39% since 2020.
This was our first strategy I discussed with the team. I said, "Guys, we can no longer run this company with being unpredictable." But the backlog allows us to be predictable. That was day one conversation for those of you that were around on my team. So it offers an excellent visibility on our future. It is diversified across customer type and product. Our deliveries have grown with our backlog, and since 2020, you know, we have met our delivery guidance, and I'm very proud of that, without exception. And by the way, we're the only OEM that achieved that. So we have capacity to do more than 150. We will continue to win in the market, but you'll see later, we're not planning our business despite significant growth, just on, you know, increasing the delivery profile.
So we feel that we can achieve significant growth, actually delivering probably 150-ish airplanes even in the next five years. Of course, if there's potential, we'll tap into it, but, you know, our plan, maybe as a bit of conservative—we are being conservative in our plan, in a sense that, you know, we're not banking on this right now. So we're saying, "Let's keep it at a reasonable level, and let's grow the services business, let's grow the defense business, and let's grow the CPO business quite extensively, and maybe make M&A acquisitions in those fields." If I'm looking ahead also, clearly the industry backdrop continues to be resilient and robust. And the word resilient is important here.
I have always heard, as many years as I've been in this industry, that, you know, it's a very fluctuating industry, you know, we're gonna. But the reality right now is we are shaping up a company with a bigger stake, and Bart will cover that later, with a bigger stake in services, a bigger proportion of our revenue coming from defense to be a much more resilient organization. And the second thing that I have to say about this, that resilience, is the fact that the two market we decided to be in, which is the medium and large business, the large business especially, have shown a lot of resilience over the years.
You know, I, I said the other day to someone, I was around in 2008 and 2009, when in 2009, despite everything going on, we delivered 20% more global the following year. So, and we'll talk about our unique customer that we have in that industry, but it makes our company more resilient to the fact that we are in the larger business, but also to the fact that a bigger stream of our revenue will come from our services business, CPO business, and defense business. What you see also here is the count of ultra-high-net-worth individual. The definition of this guy is somebody that has $50 million and more of liquidity, basically. It's been increasing by a CAGR of 6% a year.
You know, there was 340,000 people considered ultra-high-net-worth individual in 2019. There's now 425,000. So it's a 6% CAGR growth on basically the customer base we're tapping in, and it keeps growing. Look at the fleet hours also, the flight hours. Our airplane, the 5,000 airplane out there that I was talking about, they used to fly 260,000 hours in 2019. Today, they're flying 293,000. It's almost 50% more, 40-ish% more. So not only the airplane are, you know, we're selling more, there's a bigger pool of customer, but at the same time, airplanes are flying a lot, and that keeps going. You know, the Bombardier airplane in Q1 flew 6% more hours than a year ago in Q1 2023. So that's important.
So that backdrop is there, and in our view, this is gonna continue to go up. We have a very, very strong product lineup. We have delivered more than 170 now Global 7500. And our competitor, main competitor, is just coming out now, 5 years later, with an airplane. Between us, it falls short a bit as a response because it actually doesn't achieve the type of performance we've been achieving for the last 5 years. And on top of it, you know, Steven is working hard with the team. We're gonna come up with the Global 8000 next year, which is going to surpass our own performance and will remain the flagship of the industry. Our customer love the Global 6500 and the 5500. You know, this airplane has been refreshed. We have new engine on.
The interior cabin gives you the comfort, that same comfort you have if you're at home or at the office, connectivity, et cetera. And our Challenger 650 remains a customer favorite. You know, with deliveries increasing in the past few years, the 650 is still an airplane that our customer base love. And our Challenger 3500 is unique. Has been a commercial success since the beginning, and of course, you know, it's the category best seller, an example of a smart investment choice we've made as a company. As I said earlier, we almost doubled the deliveries on that airplane for an investment that was modest investment, you know, not a significant investment, but a good investment. But clearly, we see the result of that.
We have the right product line to compete and win in the medium and large segment. And this where all the revenue growth is coming from, you know, over the next—if you look at the next few years, the medium and large category will be growing by 2.8% per year. If you look at the light category that we've exit, that category is gonna reduce by 0.5% per year. So clearly, the medium and large is taking a bigger space. And I'm telling you, our customers are saying, "I want a larger airplane." So the cabin size of the, the Challenger, the cabin size of what the Global, is offering, are what they're looking for. So the medium and large segment represents more than 85% of the industry revenue.
So meaning that Bombardier is tapping, and investing, and building, and focusing on what generates anyway 85% of all revenue in the industry. So we believe that by 2030, the industry revenue will be about $25.7 billion, almost $26 billion, and, you know, the majority of that, $22.3 billion, will be related to medium and large. So another fast-growing segment of the industry are the fleet customer. If you look at the fleet customer, they are... You know, the fleet operator have become a great entry point for customer into business aviation over the last couple of years. They have experienced remarkable growth in their business, and that is reflected by the flight hours of our aircraft in that segment. Look at the flight hours. Overall, everybody else grew by 35%, which is significant.
The fleet operator, if I look at the Bombardier airplane flying with the fleet operator today, they are flying 57% more than they were in 2019. That's a significant growth. You remember I explained that story that in 2020, when commercial airline were grounded around the world, especially in the US at start, people were looking for ways to move around. The people that could afford a first-class seat started to look at, "Hey, can I buy hours or a share of an airplane, you know, from one of the fleet operator?" They did. There was a massive shift of people that used to fly first-class seat towards flying private. You leave on time, you don't have to go through the airport like we know it's been challenging over the last couple of years.
So it's a completely different experience. And people are realizing also that it's, yeah, it's maybe a bit more expensive, but it's not significantly that much more expensive. So the fleet operator have been, you know, benefiting of that, and of course, by ricochet, we did, too. Because the fleet operator, when I'm telling you, in 2020, from being very nervous to today, looking at, you know, more and more airplanes and growing their fleet significantly. You've seen the order we announced this morning. You know, this is a Berkshire company, you know, endorsing Bombardier again, not for the first time, but, you know, these guys are already flying a couple of hundred of our airplanes, and now they wanna buy more 3500, which is the, you know, airplane out there renowned as being the best airplane in the super midsize category.
So this is quite an endorsement. At the same time, this is the best way also for us, guys, you realize, to showcase our product. Because people start by flying and buying shares of the airplane, they love the airplane, and then when they have the money or they want to do their own, then they do their own, and guess who they're coming to see? So that's another way to see it. And what I love about us delivering around 20% of our deliveries to the fleet operator, it's what it's creating in the installed base. A normal customer will fly 250 hours a year. These guys fly over 1,000 hours a year, then generating more parts, more services.
So this is important in our plan and our strategy to deliver the fleet operator because it's creating also growth, but you'll see the evolution of our installed base later. I'll talk about this. You know, capturing also a greater portion of the pre-owned market is important. This is, again, tapping in our installed base. We have a strong growth opportunity in the pre-owned aircraft market. For our own pre-owned airplane, you know, there are about 250 medium, large transactions on a yearly basis. We see the market growing by about 5% per year between now and 2030.
We launched in 2021, as you know, the certified pre-owned program, in conjunction with other product offering, and we have the potential to grow that business somewhere between $500 million and potentially, and we feel good about it, to $1 billion of revenue per year, a new stream that we didn't have before. And capturing also new customer with the Bombardier ecosystem in the process, also coming our way to do maintenance, potentially. Let me talk about the customer and the services business for a minute. This is an amazing story, guys, for us. Think about this for a minute. It's not just about the number of airplane you have in your installed base. You know, the installed base was roughly, is roughly around 5,000 airplanes now. It's actually...
We're delivering 150 a year, but we are also retiring about 50. So the installed base grow by about 100 airplane, but the mix is different. What we are taking out mainly is Learjet. And what we're adding, the 150, are all Challenger and Global. I'm sure you realize that between a Global and a Learjet, there's a lot more maintenance costs on a Global. So the pattern, the, you know, the installed base image is changing. It's shifting from being, you know, traditionally a lot of smaller airplane, which requires maintenance too, but less expensive package. So the number grows by 100 a year, but the mix is richer for us in terms of what we're tapping into, and that's a very important thing. So today, you know, we've grown our segment.
You know, you can see that, you know, we think that the number of airplane will grow by another 4%. But what is also important is our market share. By adding 1 million sq ft, by having an installed base that grows, you know, with a different, you know, mix of product, we see significant growth in the next few years, just organically. And on top of it, you know, you've seen that. You see on this graph here, in 2020, we had about $1 billion of revenue, and we were about 36% of the market share. In the last couple of years, we went to $1.7 billion last year. We're gonna do $2 billion this year. So we will have doubled that business in about four years.
That is quite significant, and it's a nice, reliable, you know, revenue stream that is always there, quarter after quarter. You know, this year I was looking at the cash flow coming out of that business. You know, we said $2 billion this year, it's roughly perfectly $500 million per quarter. So it's a predictable revenue stream and cash flow stream for us. But the size of our aftermarket is expected to grow to $5.6 billion. So today, we were tapping in $2.7 billion a few years ago. Think that in the last ten years, that market size will double. More airplane, a richer mix, more large airplane, less light airplane. And if we increase on top of it, you know, our market share, because we're not done with increasing our market share, we're at 46% now from 31%. We've increased by 15.
You can imagine this year it's gonna be higher. Moving forward, if you think of 50%, that would mean $2.8 billion business, but we think we can grow it to 70%, potentially. So there's room there, but... This is no acquisition guy. This is just basically organic growth of what we have today. We'll probably have to add space, we'll probably have to add a few things, but imagine on top of it, if we do, you know, acquisition, we can potentially do even better. But let's talk also about the other market we're gonna be focusing on, which is the defense market, the robust demand. And we talked, you know, last year about the potential of our defense business in the second half of the decade.
We've already made progress, I have to admit, against that objective, and we will be well on our way by 2025. So this is getting a lot of traction. I just said at the beginning, I was in Washington two weeks, three weeks ago, two weeks ago now, and, you know, the appetite for our solution is enormous. You know, we signed the HADES program in December. It was just one airplane. Nobody really noticed that, but that airplane, they're gonna need a lot more. They're already talking about quite a few for the US Army, and by the way, they're gonna - they're already talking to the I-Lite also for that program. So this is gonna be something growing, and what we do is we bring new solution to their issue, new capabilities that they didn't have before.
So, you know, we expect a demand for approximately 375 aircraft, which is representing $25 to 40 billion in spending, including modification over the next 10 years. So that's a huge market, $25 to 40 billion defense, profitable market to tap in for us, and we believe we're gonna be successful capturing a lot of that market. So we see potential for that business to reach $1.5 billion, you know, for us by 2030. And again, this is purely organic right now. So in 2021, we launched a plan focused on the things that we most control. We have executed and are in a position to generate substantial earnings and cash in the future. Throughout our turnaround, we've also focused on positioning ourselves for the future: defense, you know, services and CPO.
That's what we've done in parallel to turning around this company. Now we have multiple growth levers through 2030 that will clearly propel this business to next level of performance and returns. In turn, this is going to continue to drive strong earning and cash generation with capital allocation optionality to come. Let me talk about capital deployment. We are deploying a capital allocation framework that is based on return on invested capital. That's what we're gonna be focusing on, and we are already using that model, and Bart will share some example with you later. There are multiple allocation opportunities that are available to us. Our base operational plan is for approximately $300 million of capital allocation per year. This is just to run the business, modifications, small improvement on product, adapting to new regulation.
But the excess capital, available liquidity, which we said will be roughly around $900 million, can be deployed in our capital structure to support inorganic growth or to enhance our product lineup. Our focus and actions are aimed at creating shareholder value and ensuring the company's long-term success. So on this, I will turn over to Bart, which will give you a bit more detail. I hope I set up a bit the foundation of what the thinking is behind our plan, and of course, later, after Bart's presentation, we will be answering your question. Thank you.
All right. Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me okay? All right. I did notice that we had a few people who came in a bit late, so if there's anyone who wanted to come forward and take a seat, now is a great time to do it. If not, standing at the back is fine as well. First thing I would say is, clearly, we are at an airport.
Lots of air traffic happening, which is good, and for us, that, that is good as well, because obviously, when we finish these aircraft, they're taking off from this very same runway and heading either to our finishing centers in Montreal or to our center in Wichita, our defense center, where we can take aircraft and put them through modifications work, which is becoming a bigger part of our business as well. Let me start then just by kind of going back a little bit in history, and then I'll, I'll give you some numbers to help you understand what all of the elements of growth and potential that Éric just outlined in his comments.
But if we go back to 2021, you know, we structured our, our strategic plan at that time to really create a business that was resilient in any kind of market environment. That was important because, we were starting out as a turnaround story. We needed to, to get our company to a place where even in low volumes of deliveries of aircraft, we were going to be not only very profitable, but producing free cash flow. And we would be able to then be successful, whatever the markets brought us, and that's the path we're on today, and we've already got a lot of that, behind us, but more, accomplishments to come. To do that, you know, we had to focus on the things we control.
The great thing about our story is, and Éric explained it to me very well when we first met, we did not need to rely on the market delivering more volume to us for us to be successful. Our path and our destiny was within our control. And so we set about the task of really working on those things that we controlled the most, taking out cost, delivering on the full value of our Global 7500 program, growing our aftermarket, and paying down debt. And we've accomplished all of those things in the past number of years. We're now approaching the end of our first five-year plan, and it's time to start laying out the groundwork and the bricks and mortar for the next five, six years and beyond.
Today, the actions we've taken to date allow us to generate more than $1 billion of incremental EBITDA per year at low aircraft delivery volumes than where we started the journey at when we were only making about $200 million per year. We also have the benefit going forward, in all environments and for years to come, of much lower interest expense. You know, we've already reduced our annual interest expense by $330 million a year. We were able to reduce our debt this year by another $100 million already, and so we're well on our way to achieving our ultimate goal, and I'll share those numbers with you in just a few moments. All of the growth we've delivered to date, as Éric highlighted, has been organic.
That was one of the other big levers for us. We did not have to make significant investments, and we did not have a headwind of CapEx to be able to accomplish what we're doing. And it's important, and I'll probably state it a few times, so my apologies, but it's important to say that all of the growth that Éric just outlined as well, that potential that's there for us, is also all organic in nature. We're going to use the footprint of assets and the people that we have and the competencies and skill sets and our ability to get out into the world, to our markets and our customers, to continue to grow at a very high rate, once we've achieved our first set of accomplishments.
So the foundation is now in place for a much more resilient company and consistent core financial performance. Right. So what does all this mean? Éric provided some numbers for each of the businesses that are going to be the growth drivers for our company. Our next planning phase, we're actually, from a conservative point of view, assuming that aircraft deliveries are going to level off in the coming years after a number of years of very strong growth. As Éric highlighted, if there's more demand in the marketplace, we will certainly be there to meet it. As you can tell with our brand-new, beautiful facility that we have here and our Challenger manufacturing facility that we have in the Montreal area, we have more capacity to grow and meet incremental demand without having to invest further dollars.
So that's an exciting part of, of our story as well. If I take the growth opportunities that Éric highlighted, and I take a low end of the range and add them up, and I look at the potential, that's there as well, you know, we're looking at aftermarket defense and pre-owned businesses combined that could be $4.5 to 6.5 billion of revenues annually on their own. And combined, these are businesses that will produce greater than 20% EBITDA margins, so they are accretive to our overall profile, margin profile, and that's by 2030. So if we compare that to where we ended 2023, those businesses contributed $2.5 billion of revenue. So we're looking at $2 to 4 billion of incremental revenue, over a 5-year period at good margins.
That's a very strong, growth profile for our company on a continued basis, and it's super, super exciting. You know, as this growth materializes, it will diversify our revenues further, making us even a more resilient company. And we've highlighted here that by 2030, there is definitely the opportunity for those businesses to become fully 50%, of the revenues and profitability that we generate as a company. So another material shift in the way our business not only operates, but the way it can perform in, all market environments. And that's before we consider any inorganic growth, whatsoever. That's 50% in total of revenues coming from those businesses.
So if there's a message I want to leave with you here today, it's we have very strong growth ahead of us, not only for the next 18 months, but for many, many years to come, and it does not rely on higher deliveries to achieve it. Those would be incremental, just like the plan we set out in 2021, when the base plan was 120 deliveries, with only modest delivery growth over the coming 5 years. All of this growth is organic. It's all within the footprint that we already have. We've built out the facilities and capabilities. We just need to take advantage of that market as it comes to us and as we go get it.
The last message I would leave is, we will continue to not only grow our business profitably, but diversify in a way that makes us a better company and one that's just that much more formidable. A little bit on financials. I think our company today, and what does all this mean, I guess? You know, we've been on a very significant trajectory of growth and profitability, but there's clearly unrecognized value, I think, in our share price today and a lot of unrecognized potential. We're only just starting to lay out what the path can look like going forward. You know, we today are a market leader, if not the market leader in business aviation. Éric mentioned our installed base. It's growing rapidly.
We've got greater than 5,100 aircraft in the installed base today, and with a 4% CAGR over the next 5-6 years, you know, we're growing closer to the 6,000-level mark versus the 5,000-level mark. That's a lot of incremental services, deliveries, activities for our customers, hours flown. It'll be a natural tailwind for our company moving forward. There's already 32% of our $2.5 billion in revenues that are or $2.5 billion of revenues that are coming from businesses other than new aircraft sales to traditional customers, and that is also going to grow.
We have strong margins and meaningful free cash flow generation already, and our balance sheet is nearing complete repair, and we do expect ratings for our bonds to continue to rise in the coming years. I've talked about this in the past, you know, our focus there is on getting our credit metrics to around investment grade. Credit rating agencies tend to be a lagging indicator, but that's our goal, and we're well on the way to achieving it. We will have significant free cash flow that we can deploy to benefit shareholders, benefit all stakeholders, and to potentially grow our company even faster if we can find the right investments to invest in. So investment profile.
Éric mentioned that ROIC is going to be the focus for our company and and the way we allocate capital. The message I would leave with you here today is that's already the framework that's in place for Bombardier. We have made a number of very material and significant investments for our company while we've been in turnaround. It may not seem obvious to everyone, but when I look at the cost it takes to refresh an aircraft, to bring forward the Global 8000 from the genesis of the 7500, to bring forward the 3500 from the, the Challenger 350, these are investments that are in the $100+ million or so range, quite small. The returns, however, are very, very significant.
If I carry that over to how we've built out our aftermarket business with a lease-to-own model, very, very low CapEx, very high returns. And as well, Bombardier Defense taking advantage of the manufacturing, engineering, design, and modifications capabilities that we already have in place and have for many, many years, very small investment, very high return. We don't give guidance on exact amounts, but I can tell you that all of these are well above 20%, and it's those kinds of investments that we want to continue making in our business as we move forward. So that's the approach, ROIC-based. We've talked about $900 million or more of free cash flow in 2025 and beyond. That's going to give us a lot of other opportunities that we'll look to deploy that cash into as well.
So looking at what those choices might be, first and foremost, you know, we do need to sit down with our board. We have a couple of our board members here today. Tony and Belinda, thank you for joining us. Welcome. Later this year, typically around the November timeframe, we go through our strategic plan with the board. This is going to be the year where we'll bring forward recommendations and have a good dialogue with them about how we want to deploy cash. But certainly, we've heard from them already, and we believe it, and we've heard from investors, that some form of return of cash to investors is probably a good thing.
We need to figure out what that looks like, and the board obviously has to approve it, but more to come. But at the same time, we will continue to maintain, sustain, and perhaps even further improve our balance sheet with some of that cash. At a minimum, when you have 7.5% debt, paying off that debt is a good investment. So that's another area that we'll, we'll look towards as well. From a inorganic growth opportunities point of view, everything we do to invest in our own business is highly accretive. That is going to be the standard for additional investments, being able to achieve at least the same accretion profile, and we do think there are opportunities like that, out there in the world. Of course, we will stay within the boundaries of what business aviation is.
This is what we are as a company. It's what we do. As Éric said, we believe we are the best at it in the industry, the best overall performing OEM. The data would support that. If you look at our deliveries and what our teams have been able to accomplish in the last few years relative to our peers who've, you know, had delivery misses kind of in the order of about 20%, but for each one of the OEMs, we've been right on, and I think that's just a testament to the quality and capabilities of our team. And again, I'd be remiss without mentioning, yet again, the significant tax attributes that we have as a company. They've been built up over many years of investment, as a company in the past.
We've been able to carry those forward, even when we divested of some of our other businesses, we kept those attributes. Most of them are in Canada and the United States. So basically, earnings growth for us is going to translate into almost 100% conversion into free cash flow as we move forward. And that's not just for years, but perhaps decades to come. So it's a very, very compelling story, I believe, on that front. We've been on a journey now for a few years. We're coming towards 2025. I won't belabor this point, but I think the message is super important. As we look ahead, our first goal is to finish what we started. We set out on a journey.
We've increased the numbers in terms of what we believe we could accomplish by the end of 2025, and our sole task right now is to deliver on that commitment. Finish repairing the balance sheet, achieve the growth profile that we made commitments on, and that is what we are going to be focused on. So I'm just going to take a few minutes to walk you through what does that look like in terms of numbers. So growth in revenues for the next little while, the next 18 months, is going to come mainly from incremental deliveries. There's growth in other parts of our business as well, but we've had a very good growth profile on deliveries for our company, both traditional and now additive with defense customers. We'll continue to grow our aftermarket.
Éric mentioned we expect to achieve $2 billion in revenues this year. That's a full year ahead of plan, so we still have 2025 to achieve more growth there, and that's clearly in line of sight. You know, our facilities are full. The bring your customers home strategy is working even better than we had hoped or had planned, and we see a lot of tailwind in the future. So it's growing exceptionally well and poised to do more. And of course, our other businesses, defense and certified pre-owned, are going to contribute as well to the revenue growth over the next 18 months. On the EBITDA front, I mentioned we do expect strong margin conversion on incremental revenues, and that's across all business segments.
Aircraft pricing net of inflation, we get this question a lot. We expect it to be a net tailwind, and it has been this year. It will continue to be this year. It will be next year as well. And with 18 to to 24 months of backlog pre-sold, we know the pricing, we know what our, bill of materials inflation looks like because we, you know, we sign up for our supply chain, you know, 12 to 18 months in advance of, of needing to use it. So we know we've got a net tailwind there, coming to us. It tells you something about the strength of the market out there, the demand for new aircraft right now, very much supported by, a tight, used market.
And so even though inventory in the used space or pre-owned space has come up some, it's still very, very tight by historic numbers, and that is very supportive of new aircraft sales and a strong pricing environment. And lastly, we will continue to make investments to support this growth. In a turnaround, we need to set ourselves up for full success in the future, so we're making investments in R&D. We're making investments in our operations, and as well, in our own digital transformation. This is something that you'll hear us talk more about in the future. A lot of investment and exciting opportunities that'll be coming out of that as we move forward.
So all of this gives us the confidence that we're going to reach our 1.625 adjusted EBITDA by 2025. And lastly, on free cash flow, we really don't have much to announce here other than consistency, which I think is a good thing. We expect our operational CapEx envelope is going to remain at around $300 million per year, both for this year and for next year, maybe a bit lower this year. Cash interest is going to continue to come down as we repay more debt. We'll end 2025 in the $300 to 400 million range, which is in line with our ongoing deleveraging opportunities. Again, no significant tax payments.
For those who look closely at our financials, you'd notice it's a usually single-digit number in terms of millions of income tax. Finally, we are planning for a more neutral working capital environment in 2025. We all know that 2023 and 2024, we've got a lot of variability in our working capital as we've been ramping up production to meet higher deliveries, and we've had to play catch-up after the Q4 each year because, as David Murray, our head of manufacturing, is right here, reminds us, once we've delivered the last aircraft, usually on around December twenty-ninth or thirtieth, there's no planes left in the facility. So we have to build inventory back up, and to keep delivering aircraft for customers.
Being the CFO, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about the balance sheet and debt. You know, net leverage obviously has decreased significantly. It will continue to decrease. I mentioned we completed the $100 million purchase of bonds that we announced towards the end of March. We completed that earlier this month. Our liquidity target is going to remain at about $1 to 1.5 billion. We found through very high working capital usage periods, that's more than enough to cover ourselves and give us adequate liquidity inter-quarter to operate our business appropriately and give us some downside protection. But we do want to optimize our liquidity position further. Last year, sorry, the year prior, we took cash on hand and paid down $400 million of debt.
We replaced that partially with a $300 million revolver. Okay, those are interesting activities, but the unique thing about that is when you're taking cash off your balance sheet, and paying down 7.5 coupon debt, and you've got a standby facility with tens of basis points of cost, that's a big spread that we can pick up. So we do want to optimize that, continue to pay down debt directly, and reduce our annual interest expense by another $30 to 70 million over the next 18 months. Now, we have been working to actively reduce our leverage. We're down $4.6 billion of gross debt since 2020. I mentioned our $330 million of interest expense, annualized interest expense reduction to date.
We'll obviously continue to focus on a few other things. One is maintaining an adequate runway for debt maturities. Today, we're sitting at about 24 months. Our next maturity isn't until mid-2026, and we have an opportunity, probably in the not-too-distant future, actually, to clear that remaining debt stack off. So we want to have manageable amounts of debt going forward, debt maturities in each year. As we improve our credit ratings, 750 feels about right. We might be able to grow that in the future, but for an annual maturity amount. But what that allows us to do is have absolute confidence that we can refinance our company at any time in almost any kind of market condition, and that's the goal. And we're well on our way to that.
The other thing is, from an optionality point of view, we do embed call features in all of our bonds, so we can call at times when rates have perhaps come down, and we can take advantage of a beneficial rate environment and bring our interest costs down even more quickly. So that's it in a nutshell. We will obviously continue to be opportunistic as we move forward. I just... Oh, that means we must be out of time, and it's time to get on with the Q&A. So thank you for listening to our presentation. We are obviously, as Bombardier and as a company, extremely well-positioned to be successful in the business aviation space, our 100% center of focus.
Whether you look at our products, our financial performance, and our growth opportunities and ability to allocate capital successfully going forward, the future is certainly bright, and it will be at your altitude. So thank you so much. We're now. I think, I'll bring Francis back up on stage, and we'll get into Q&A, and then we've got some very interesting opportunity for you to meet with our executives, share some time, ask questions, and then take a tour through one of our green aircraft. So, Francis, over to you. Thank you, everyone.
All right. We're going to start the Q&A. We have a couple of standing mics in the room. We'd ask you to go to the mic to ask a question, and please identify yourself and your firm if you do ask a question for the benefit of everybody participating. Before we start, we also have a question queue online, so I'll let the operator give instructions to ask a question online, and we will be taking some as we go along as well. So operator?
... Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question on the phone, please press star one on your telephone keypad.
Okay, thank you. So with that, I see Fadi. Please, make your way to the mic, to get things started. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for the presentation. Very helpful today. So a couple of points on the kind you laid out. You kind of ruled out the clean sheet or a new aircraft investment. Over the last five, six years, you have gained market share in the large segment. You have maintained your position in the mid segment, but there's more competition coming from the 10X and a bunch of Gulfstream aircraft. Can you elaborate on your confidence in being able to sustain that position, that, that market share position you have today going into 2030? Because that's kind of the implication of some of the forecasts you gave. The second kind of follow-up is on the defense M&A. It sounds like M&A will be focused on the defense. What exact capabilities are you looking for?
What kind of scope of transaction should we be thinking about? And you mentioned partnership, and I didn't understand quite sure what you meant by partnerships.
So Fadi, thanks for the question. I may go, and you may complete, Martin. So your first question is an important one. I can reassure you that this management team understand that we're not a short-term play, okay? In order to be to have our result and the growth sustainable, we need an installed base, you know, if we want to grow services. So we look at the next 15 years, okay, even 20 years sometimes, to make sure that, you know, we're still gonna be having the portfolio that enable that installed base to grow. When I look at it now, today, the view that we have is, and I said it, our product portfolio competes extremely well across the board.
I would say pretty much all the OEM right now have played their cards in terms of what product they will be offering in the next few years, but I know that there's things they're working on, as we do, that are longer term. It is clear also that, you know, the customer base, what they're asking today, if it's not performance, it's all about the cabin, you know, connectivity, comfort, things like that, and we do quite a bit there. And that's why we're talking about derivative more than a new clean sheet design, because we need to stay on top of the game here, as we are today, offering, you know, new possibility within the cabin environment. The performance, we've played our card, too. I think the 8000 is clearly, you know, gonna be the flagship for a while, and we know that other customer...
You know, you talk about the Tenax are coming up and, and offering something new, but we feel very, very strong about what we have today. The third thing that can trigger a clean sheet is new technology. As of today, as of today, I don't see any new technology game changer coming in that will justify me to go out there, talk to the board and justify a new clean sheet. So I don't see it, and the team doesn't see it. So you need something that will be really a revolution. It doesn't mean that there will not be, you know, improvement, incremental improvement. But today, to say, you know, we start with a white sheet of paper, and we design a brand-new airplane, we don't see that, okay?
Maybe in 3 years, 4 years, we'll say, "Hey, there's something coming up," but you know, by the time we assess it. So that's why, you know, within the next 5 years, I see some interesting, derivative and improvement clearly, coming up. To your other question, I hope I answered your question, but clearly, I think what I see between now and 30 is derivatives. It, they could be significant derivative, but there will be derivative. I don't see a clean sheet, but there will be something that either guarantee our success long term or something that really the customer is demanding also. So that's how we're thinking about this. The other question that you have, which is an important one, is: What could be a partnership? So there is different things that can happen out there.
It doesn't mean we always have to own everything 100% ourselves, but there could be partnership possible in maintenance, as an example, or in defense, which are gonna be the two areas of focus, maybe with the certified pre-owned. So we could, you know, enjoy a partner. I'm not talking a partner at the Bombardier Inc. level. I'm talking more creating a joint venture with someone, you know, to enable and trigger more volume in services, more volume in defense. So they will be strategic, and, so, you know, there, there's things we're thinking of, but, you know, I'm not ready to talk about it now. But there's things that will be JVs type of structure, but always with the mindset of enabling either more airplane deliveries or greater services or offering a better offering in defense also.
That's how we're thinking about it. Fadi, you had a third question. What was it?
Defense.
On the M&A defense, yeah. I think you need to... I think, you know, there's a lot of possibilities out there. I think we like the aspect that we can bring new solution to the table. I think our relationship with what I call the mission house is important, and I can tell you, we're not gonna become a mission house. It doesn't make sense. Sometime today, I have, like, three mission house competing, all selecting the Global 6500, as an example. So they're competing. They're offering to a country a solution which is different, but they all take our airplane. So why would I go, you know, pick up and become a mission house, and then, you know, have the other guys, you know, competing with me? So it doesn't really make sense.
But what we do see, though, is maybe there's things I think we can do better than what the mission house are doing today. So we can probably vertically integrate, you know, some of the... You know, think about the shapes of the airplane, things like that, that we have all the data and the science, you know, in our engineering team to make modification on the shape of the airplane. Nobody's better positioned than us. You know, some other people are doing it today, why would we not engage in doing that, which is something we know exactly how to do it, you know, because it's our product, and we have thousands of hours of flight test and data. So all this to say that we will be meticulous.
We're not gonna do anything that I think will surprise any of you, but we'll do leverage our capabilities, and I think that's how we've been thinking about restructuring that business in the last four years. We are leveraging our capabilities, you know, of growing services. We are leveraging our capabilities, whatever, if it's engineering or production, on leveraging, you know, our capabilities in defense also, so that's how we're gonna be thinking about that.
If I could just add one comment to Éric's comments, competitiveness in the defense market using our aircraft, we know there's significant demand out there. We see it today. We're in many campaigns, as we speak, where our aircraft is either going to be the only one, as Éric highlighted, that's in the competition or we're very well-positioned. Our Global 6500, as an example, you know, we've had it in different US defense departments now for more than a decade-
Right
... both in test environments and in, you know, full use environments in the field. It's the preferred aircraft. It has the greatest reliability of probably, and we've heard this directly from the US Air Force, of any aircraft in their entire, of all the aircraft that they fly. And reliability and capability and known capability is very, very important, to them when they're, when they're building their campaigns and deciding which aircrafts to choose. And when we look at our competition out there, if they're looking for large cabin, as an example, to use for their various missions, out in the field, there really only is one proven aircraft now, and it's ours. The G700, it is only just gotten FAA certification. It does not have the flight hours. It is not proven.
It will have limitations, flight limitations, probably for years, till Gulfstream is able to work through all of them. The 800 is down the road. Well, who knows when that aircraft will come to market, and it's really never been part of their business model to, you know, work their aircraft into the defense space. So from a competitiveness point of view and how we have planned to approach that market, and we've got our executives here, they can answer more direct questions when you get some time with them on this, we think it positions us extremely well to continue to fully participate, if not grow and take advantage of that part of the large, the large cabin market.
Thank you. Thanks for your question, Fadi.
Hi, Bart. Hi, Éric, and thank you very much for hosting this event today and a very articulated strategy. My first question is on the EBITDA margin. You've done a good job of improving the EBITDA margin over the years. There's been a few drivers to explain that. You're on your way to achieve 18%, but when we look by 2030, I understand that you don't want to put a guidance out there yet, but when we look at the driver, the increase mix toward defense CPO, but also the fact that when we look at aftermarket, some of your fleet operators have beefed up their MRO capabilities. So it looks like that parts could outpace labor/service over the years, and we know that parts are more profitable.
Could you maybe walk us through more color about where we might see margins down the road in terms of EBITDA? The second question, if you could provide more color about criteria in terms of M&A and kind of the ROIC threshold that you're thinking about, Bart. Thanks.
So, I may get started.
Please, yeah
... you know, so I think what we're telling you, Benoit, this morning, and thanks for the question and for being here, is, you know, the businesses that we're thinking of growing are generating incremental profitability and are not dilutive of the margin we're targeting at 18%. They actually, the two businesses, and we said it before, that are better than 20%. So what we're telling you today is the two businesses that are defense and services, that are, you know, they're the one that we're gonna be growing, basically, through the installed base, through, you know, growing our defense business. So I think, you know, then you should see, and Bart showed a slide where 50% of our revenue could come from these two businesses, which are incremental in terms of profitability, and clearly not dilutive, but incremental.
I think that's how you need to think about that, and maybe I'll let you answer the question now.
Yeah. Thanks, Éric, and just a little bit of other insight. When it comes to margins in, I'll use aftermarket as an example. You know, we've had a very large build-out of new facilities. Most of them came on stream at the end of 2022. They were filling up last year. We've been adding resources to be able to do all the incremental work that's coming in. As we gain stability in our aftermarket facilities, as an example, and they're more full, that gives us opportunity to have gains on productivity as well. Historically, I think the turning of wrenches, the hourly work has not been a significant margin contributor.
It hasn't really been a margin contributor at all, so that's an opportunity for margin expansion, potentially, in the aftermarket business, and then capturing more of the overall market at the high margins that Éric was talking about is the other opportunity there. Defense, we know because of the part of the defense space that we participate in, not the mission house work, which tends to be a lower margin, but in with the aircraft and then modifications in engineering, we really like the... It's a very compelling profile, and as we grow that business, that will be additive.
So I think there's, Benoit, 2030 is a long way out, but what I would say is, if we're able to take advantage of all the potential that Éric highlighted, and we're able to make that next shift from, you know, 30%-50% of those other businesses, you know, there could be opportunity to grow the overall margin profile of the business. But we have some work to do, and we need to figure all of that out.
When it comes to new investments, your follow-on question, I did mention earlier that because of the nature of the type of internal investments we can make, and they tend to be low cost but high return, I think probably the direction we'll go and look to is use that as our benchmark or our bar for looking at other, you know, external kind of M&A opportunities. Not everything, as you know, fits into a perfect package and whatnot. Sometimes you need to invest to grow down the road as well. And but we'll be keeping that in mind. So that's kind of the framework that we're thinking of right now.
Maybe if I may, just a quick one on the tax loss carry forward. Obviously, this is valuable for Bombardier for the coming years. Is it something that you could leverage in terms of M&A going forward, and do you see opportunities to leverage this kind of value down the road?
Yeah, Benoit, that's definitely something we've considered and are going to look at more, for sure. Certainly, as the owner of these attributes, we have a logical position to be able to use them. Basically, anything we add, so long as the revenues and profits are coming within the jurisdictions where we have the attributes, Canada and the US, which is where most of our profit will be generated from, in the future, yes, we can, we can use that to shelter, and it will be part of our decision-making because, it'll allow us to grow but converting, basically all, all new, EBITDA growth, directly into cash flow as well. So that, that will be part of the evaluation process. Yeah.
Sure.
Thank you, Benoit.
Merci, Benoit.
Kevin from CIBC. Thanks for the invitation.
Hi, Kevin.
Hey, how are you doing, Bart? Maybe just two quick ones for me. One, just on the revenue diversification, just wondering how you think that might impact the seasonality of working capital. It sounds like some of that revenue might be, might be more equally weighted through the year versus, you know, new aircraft sales, which are very Q4, Q4 heavy. And then just in terms of CapEx, I appreciate the color. Sounds like we're running about $300 million kind of normal operations, but there are opportunities to kind of use that excess liquidity. Is there a way to think of the goalpost of capital intensity? You know, do, do you... Could that $300 million be, in some years, $500 million if you if, if you think you need to invest in a derivative aircraft?
Do you think of it as a percentage of revenue? Just any goalpost in terms of how that CapEx might fluctuate over the next five years here. Thank you.
Yeah. So, I'll maybe start with that part of the question. CapEx for us is made up of, you know, about $100 million of PP&E, and then the rest is usually investment in our business, and it can be investment in product, it can be investment in engineering projects that will allow us to de-bottleneck on our manufacturing floor, for instance, to continue to manage our costs per aircraft, and we have a long history of being able to do that very, very successfully. For probably the better part of a decade leading up to COVID, we were able to use that type of methodology to absorb almost 100% of the inflation that came at us from the marketplace.
So our unit cost per aircraft didn't go up in those 10 years. So that's the kind of thing we make other investments in. Those are very productive, and they're accretive to us as well because if we're in an environment where we have some momentum on pricing on new aircraft, we can, you know, continuously have a bit of a tailwind. So that's important. In terms of are we gonna target, like, a percentage of... We haven't landed on that specifically. What I would say, though, is and maybe I'll turn it over to you after, Éric, to talk about the profile of manufacturing-
Yeah
... and all the rest of it. Having a more normalized investment profile over time is one of the things that we can now give to ourselves because we've repaired the balance sheet, and we're not as worried about cyclicality if there is some in the business. So being able to invest at a more normalized and level rate in the future, it allows for better planning for our engineering and design teams when they're looking at enhancements to our aircraft. If we ever did do a derivative, we could plan it out in that way, and we can be more productive in the way we do our work, so that's absolutely a goal.
whether that translates into a certain dollar amount per year, though, we're a little bit away from that, and we'll discuss that later this year, and if we're thinking more in that line, we'll probably have something in our guidance next year.
The cyclicality issue that we have in terms of our delivery profile is one of the biggest issue of this industry, and it's actually right now amplified by the fact that the supply chain, you know, we still have mainly the engine OEM late to deliveries. So this is a priority, okay? I'm personally involved supporting Éric, and the team, and Shauna, and David into that. Because, you know, we have a lot of cash right now sitting on the balance sheet just to get to the intra-quarter, you know, because you delivered a lot at the end of the quarter, then after, less deliveries, so but you need to get the... You're burning down cash, and then you're going back up, and the same thing actually at the macro level, I would say, at the yearly level.
Priority number one is to bring our supplier back to be delivering on time, and that's going to happen, okay? We're working very closely with the engine OEM to do that. I said on the call that one of them is in a much better position now, but we still have work to do with some others. This is gonna be extremely helpful, and actually, you've seen the chart that Bart showed, you know, about, you know, the type of the liquidity we need to keep. At some point, there's money sitting there just for that. That's the reality.
So, we need to unlock that money and better use it for investment or whatever, but that's clearly a top priority for my team right now, to sort out the delivery issue short term, and then after, work on the profile of how we're delivering the airplane. Thank you.
Thank you, Kevin.
Good morning. Lou Raffetto from Wolfe Research.
Good morning.
So as we think about the $900 million of free cash next year, first, what is the book-to-bill assumption you have? And then, as we think further out, should that grow alongside your growth in net income?
Good. So, maybe I'll answer the first part of the question. The book-to-bill assumption we have is one. So we're basically in the mindset that we're gonna be preserving the book-to-bill, the, the backlog we have today, no increase, no decrease. It's going to fluctuate, guys. From quarter to quarter, I may be like, we just increase it by 700, and then I may reduce it, you know, another quarter in the year, but on the long run, we're, we're managing our backlog to preserve what we have. So we talked about 150 airplanes, but, you know, we've seen the number of billionaire high-net-worth individuals increasing. We've seen a lot of things that could maybe reset, you know, in a few years, that, hey, maybe the new normal is not 150, maybe the new normal is 160 or, or even better.
We'll be careful. We're not banking on it. That's the main message. The Book-to-Bill we have in mind is one. That's what our plans are based on, basically.
Yeah, and when it comes to delivery or contribution to EBIT, from that growth in aircraft deliveries, if I've got your question correct-
I'm just wondering if the 900 is kind of the new baseline going forward, and should that grow alongside-
Ah, yes, yes.
Okay.
Yeah, great question. So with about 150 deliveries, that's how we've modeled it, continued book-to-bill from a planning basis of 1 and then growth of the other businesses. Yes, I mean, there's... We, we will certainly see opportunity to grow our free cash flow beyond that. Now, we haven't come out and given future projections, but it's, it's just logical, particularly since those businesses that will be growing tend to have a the highest margin profile for our company. And again, we get to shelter all those earnings through, through our tax attributes. So absolutely, we'll get with EBITDA growth, you know, and, and EBIT growth, we're, we're gonna get close to 100% conversion to cash. So it's, it's logical that we'll see potential growth over time, for sure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's Konark Gupta from Scotiabank, and-
Welcome
... thanks for the presentations today. Maybe first question about, you know, like, I love to talk about balance sheet, all the time with you. So, you know, perhaps if you can explain the $900 million free cash in 2025, you know, if you're sustaining the deliveries and, you know, growing sort of the aftermarket and defense and all that, let's say you get $900 free cash for the next 6 years from 2025 to 2030, right? Maybe it's good. That's about, like, $5+ billion in cash flow. That's an excess of your operating CapEx, right? You have a $1 billion dollar to pay down in terms of debt, that you kind of talked about. Then there's M&A opportunities and things like that.
Like, how do you, you know, allocate that much excess cash in terms of debt reduction beyond $1 billion, in terms of, you know, M&A, bucket or any other opportunity? You know, like, how should we allocate that $5+ billion, in three or four buckets?
Well, First, I can tell you today, we don't have a pipeline of things in front of us that would say, "Here's how we're going to use that much cash." What I can say is that we're about to embark on an exercise internally and with our board and, you know, strategy the board has to approve, where we're going to come up with, you know, what we think is the right formula for deploying that cash and capital in a way that, you know, gives us the most flexibility, optionality, and can drive the most value. So some of it could very well be, yes, incremental debt reduction.
I don't think, you know, there's maybe an optimal amount of debt, but I, I, you know, not having enough debt is usually not a bad thing, as, as kind of the way I look at it. There's a, you know-
Yeah
... a comfortable amount of leverage, and then anything below that is great. So certainly we would look to that as an opportunity to deploy if we don't have enough other activities going on. Éric talked about, though, investment in our fleet. We'll continue to invest in our fleet. There could be opportunities down the road that I think will look a little bit different than the small things we've been doing. They'll still be very managed and not huge expenses, but things that can make and continue to make our aircraft the best fleet in the business, and I think that's what we would aspire to, Éric. And then return of cash to shareholders in some way, shape, or form. I think there's a lot of appetite.
Again, again, the board has to, to weigh in on this, and it's really their decision at the end of the day, but, we'll be making our recommendations. So I, I think there will be enough opportunities, for us to get out there, and that's before we even start to look at, you know, what M&A and partnerships could bring and drive. All of that would be incremental. So there's, there's a lot of work to do to figure all of that out, but, you know, this, this is a company that, that has proven, I think over the last number of years, that we can, we can use our cash wisely, and that's what you should expect to continue to see in the future years. Conor?
I think to Bart's point, all the, you know, all of the options will be on the table. We haven't decided yet, you know, what percentage of that excess cash will be spent where, but I think they're the usual one that Bart mentioned. You know, it could be around the capital structure, you know, pay even more debt, share buyback, reward our, our, you know, shareholder with dividend or whatever, that those are all option. Direct investment in our product, I think is another one, and M&A. You know, if it's a strategic, a strategic or partnership M&A investment, that could make sense and, and give us leverage, a, a better leverage in defense and services, we will definitely consider those. Thank you.
If I can follow up pretty quickly. You talked about resilience in the business jet market for you guys. What really has changed in the last 10, 15 years, you know, in terms of cyclicality? Why do you feel so confident that, you know, you're not back in those, call it, pre-GFC kind of markets, where you were seeing a lot of cancellations because of the recession and whatnot? You know, I know you have Learjets probably out of the business now for you, but even the Challengers, I think they had some cyclicality back in those days, right? So is something changed structurally in the market as a whole-
Yeah
... or for you guys specifically, that has changed the resilience? Thanks.
I think one of the things, Konark, is, as, as an industry, not just Bombardier, but we were also part of that. We were, like, increasing rates in the, in the old days faster than we do today. We're much more prudent. I think, you know, we were running on no backlog sometimes, and when something happened and you get cancellation, you know, you're being hurt the next day because you don't have airplane to deliver. But if you have two years of backlog, then, you know, if you lose the equivalent of a month, it doesn't change your profile. You still carry on. So that backlog strategy, you know, which sounds obvious maybe, was never respected before. So any movement...
So the cyclic- cyclicality, in my mind, still exists and be possible, but I think that we have today a way to absorb it with our backlog without impacting, you know, the business right away and giving us a chance to either adjust the rate if needed. But clearly, right now, I'm trying, and that's what we're doing with the team, to say, "Okay, maybe 150 is our new cruising speed. Let's see how it goes." So maybe, hey, maybe I'm going to lose a month of backlog, maybe I'm going to win a month of backlog, but it's not going to be dramatic to the point where we need to react on rates and everything, okay? So that's very significant and very important as an environment.
Again, you know, I mentioned that earlier, you're right, but I said earlier, too, the large segment, if you go back in history, the cyclicality is not the same than the rest, and that's a big chunk of our revenue. Services is very stable, too. And you're right, if you, if you, if you believe that Challenger is, what? 25% of our revenue, it's not going to go down to zero, even if there's a downturn, but it may be affected, too. But the spread of our revenue gives us, and the backlog, gives us the ability to get through any cycle. That's what we've been building this business for in the last four years. That was from day one. Thank you.
Okay, we all have time for one last question from Cameron.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Morning. Cam Doerksen from National Bank Financial. Wanted to ask a question about the announcement just regarding NetJets this morning. Obviously, you've very positive news. They've made a long-term commitment to the Challenger 3500. Can you just provide a little more detail, possibly about, you know, how the options get exercised? Is there sort of an annual number they can do that, and how have you protected yourself from pricing over, you know, a very large number of aircraft potentially? And I guess maybe as a sort of a second follow-up question, I mean, you put up a slide that, you know, clearly showed that fleet operators are flying a lot more hours, or the growth has been much higher than individual operators.
Is it maybe safe to assume that you expect that, you know, fleet operators might become a larger proportion of your overall deliveries over time, or should we expect kind of the same mix of deliveries based on the customer?
...That's a great question. So, I think right now, as you know, we're in the 20% zone, and I think that this will probably remain. It may vary by a few points from year to year, but I don't see it to be more than 20%, you know, significantly more than 20%, I should say. Could be 24, could be 25, but in that zone. It could be, maybe, 18 one year, but it's gonna be in the zone of 20%. To your other question, there is a belief out there that, you know, when we sell to fleet operator, they pay much less, which is not completely true, okay? So there is, of course, because they're buying more, a certain discount, but it's not to the significance that people may think of.
The second thing, which is important, is, as I said, as building the installed base, a diversified installed base, I really like to have these guys in the installed base because they generate much more revenue per airplane in service. So that shift of the installed base is important. But think about this like, you know, we are selected. This morning was a nice announcement. I'm very comfortable, you know, with the price, they are, too. And I think, you know, as you know, you know, we do the maintenance for the airplane with NetJets. You know, anything can evolve, but today, that's the case, and we're still selling the part anyway at the end to that. But we're very comfortable. The relationship is strong.
You know, there's a reason also why they're coming back to our airplane, okay? That's the, you know, the best performing airplane out there in the super mid-size category, so I think that's an endorsement, and clearly, you know, that we were very happy to get. Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much. This concludes the prepared remarks and Q&A presentation. I'll let Éric say a word of thanks for the ones on the webcast, and we'll continue the event in person in a minute.
Thank you, Francis, and first of all, I would like to thank the people that are in the room here, but also the one that joined us by webcast today. I hope, you know, that we were able to share with you, you know, enough of our view on how resilient our business is gonna become, on the real potential, the significant potential of growth we have just organically. But if you had on top of it, you know, that potential of growth is becoming even much bigger than what just the organic could do. But I think the growth is there. The foundations are solid.
Bart talked about, you know, our balance sheet, you know, what we've done, the optionality also that we will have in the future in, you know, spending that money wisely and with the best return, with a return on invested capital mindset. So there's a lot. You know, we're happy to where we are. We're ahead of our plan, basically, and I think, you know, the potential for us between, you know, next year when we finish the deleveraging and everything, between 2026 and 2030 is quite of impressive. So thanks for joining us today. For those on the webcast and for those in the room here, you're gonna have the opportunity to ask more question as you visit the booth with our executive. Thank you.