Good morning. We apologize for the delay. Unfortunately, we had an event which is out of our control, but happy to see everything is fine, and we can proceed this morning. My name is Éric Vachon, and I am President and CEO at Stella-Jones. On behalf of the entire Stella-Jones team, I would like to thank everyone, both in person and virtually, for attending our inaugural Investor Day. Many of you in this room have met Silvana and myself. This Investor Day is the first time that you'll hear directly from the leaders of each of our key product categories. We have a great lineup of speakers and presentations for you today.
By the end of the day, we trust that you will be well-acquainted with our experienced management team and gain new insight about our business, and be excited as we are about our future opportunities, upcoming ESG strategy, and our updated 3-year goals. Before I continue, please note that comments made in today's presentations may contain forward-looking information. This information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. Further information on these risks and uncertainties can be found or consulted in relevant filing on SEDAR. Please note that all figures are expressed in Canadian dollars. I'd like to begin by sharing the agenda and introducing the members of the Stella-Jones team that will be presenting.
My presentation will include a brief overview of our company, our growth drivers, our outlook, where I will touch upon our updated financial targets that we issued earlier this morning. An overview of each product category will be presented by its respective leaders. As I name them, I would invite the SJ team members to stand up for the audience. Utility poles will be presented by Ian Jones, who is Senior Vice President for our Utility Poles and U.S. Residential Lumber division. Railway ties will be presented by Patrick Kirkham. He's our Senior Vice President for Railway Ties. Residential lumber will be presented by Brian Grant, who is our Vice President, Canadian Residential Lumber Sales and Procurement. Following our product category presentations, I'm excited to have you receive an update on our ESG strategy from Rhéa Carver, who is our Senior Director for ESG.
Rhéa will be followed by Silvana Travaglini, our Chief Financial Officer, who will provide a financial overview and discuss in more details our updated three-year goals. Then I will wrap it up and conclude with a Q&A session before lunch. For those of you attending in person and staying after the Q&A session, members of management will be here to meet with you, and we also brought some product samples, which we encourage you to visit in our showroom. In attendance today, as along with our presenters, I want to take a moment to present a few of our team members that are with us today. We have Richard Cudahy, who is our Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer. Marla Eichenbaum, who is our Vice President, Legal Counsel, and Secretary. Kevin Comerford, Vice President, Sales for Utility Poles and U.S. Residential Lumber.
Sylvain Couture, who is Vice-President, Utility Pole and Residential Lumber Operations for Eastern Canada. Amanda Battisti, Director of Sales for our Class I Railway Tie customers. Stephanie Corrente, who is Director, Corporate Communications. Stephanie is over here with the Lumi team. Thank you, Stephanie. Carmen Estrella, who you met at the entrance, who is our Executive Admin Assistant. These leaders are key to the success of our organization, and I'm lucky to have such a strong team. Before we move on, I would like to share a special community engagement note in relation with today's event. In an effort to align with our ESG strategy, we opted to substitute a promotional gift for attendees with a donation to the Shaw Woods Outdoor Education Centre in Eganville, Ontario.
In addition to being one of our valued pole suppliers, Shaw is an engaged organization with a special focus on fostering responsible environmental stewardship and providing educational opportunities for students and families. Their outdoor education centers includes 50 hectares of old-growth forest and 160 hectares of wetlands and mixed forest. They offer outdoor education programs for school groups and do wonderful work sensitizing visitors to the importance of a healthy and diverse forest ecosystem. The center is open year-round and is free of access. The organization relies on partner donation programs, of which Stella-Jones has a 5-year commitment. Today, we are proud to donate an additional CAD 5,000 to the education center. A big thank you to Shaw Woods and Dana Shaw for their community involvement. If you have a chance, I encourage you to spend a day at the education center.
It's one of the finest old-growth forests in Eastern Canada. You'll also find on each of your seats a leaflet with more information on the organization. Let's turn back to our agenda for today. I'll begin by providing a brief recap of who we are, what we do, and why we're excited about the future of our business. Stella-Jones is a leading producer of pressure-treated wood in North America. We operate 43 treating facilities spanning the United States and Canada. It's a robust presence that allows us to service customers both efficiently and on a cost-effective basis throughout North America. We are very proud of our solid reputation in the marketplace and the position that we have earned, of a proven track record in being dedicated to quality and customer service.
We have an array of world-class customers, which includes major electric, utility, and telecommunication companies for our utility pole business. We service every Class I railroad through our railway tie division. Our residential lumber product category manufactures and distributes premium residential lumber and accessories to North American retailers for outdoor application. In our industrial product category, we provide essential products for a variety of infrastructure projects, from general constructions to marine applications, and this product category complements our rail and utility offerings. Since 2000, our company has grown significantly, both organically and through acquisitions. We've benefited from 23 years of accretive acquisitions, which include three transformational transactions. Tangent Rail Corporation in 2010 for our railway tie business, followed by McFarland Cascade in 2012 for our utility poles.
Finally, in 2015, Ram Forest Group Inc. and RAMFOR Lumber for our residential lumber product group. Although we have grown to be a large organization, the agility and entrepreneurship of the small businesses we have acquired has remained, weaving a unique culture that we pass on to members that are joining our company. Not only have we acquired great assets through M&A, but we have acquired great people. In fact, today, 11 out of 20 members of our senior leadership team have come from these acquisitions, all of whom have brought their industry expertise to enhance our bench strength and drive company success. In addition, we have further strengthened our management team with the appointment of a vice president, Information Technology, a chief people officer, and recently named our vice president for sales and procurement for residential lumber in Canada.
Let me provide some critical basics regarding our business. As many of you know, we have been focused on wood treating. At first glance, it may seem like a relatively simple business, there's a lot of complexity involved in this process to produce high-quality products in a timely fashion. At Stella-Jones, one of the metric we measure is the cubic feet. This is a representation of one cubic feet of wood. It's a measurement in volume, which is 12 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches. To give you an idea, an average railway tie would be 3.7 cubic feet, and an average distribution pole is about 30 cubic feet. If I were to stack 37 million of these, I would get the Empire State Building.
In 2022, Stella-Jones sold 140 million cubic feet of wood, which is the equivalent of 3.8 times the Empire State Building. That's a lot of wood. It's a lot of hours spent procuring, inspecting, treating, and shipping. This is the magnitude of work that goes behind our results every year, and that is required to support our customers' requirements. Secondly, treating seems basic as a process, but it's actually complex. Wood is an organic matter, and every species has its own properties, such as density. Humidity levels in wood will vary and impact treating cycles, and the treatment process in health in itself has many intricacies, where consideration must be given to cylinder pressure and treating solution temperature. Treating wood is a science, and Stella-Jones masters this knowledge, which is important to produce high-quality products.
This is why consumers come back over and over again. As much as quality is important to our customers, distribution, sales, and logistics are key to our model. Timeliness of delivery is critical. That is why we lease over 1,000 rail cars a year, so we can transport our products across the North American networks. Our proprietary trucking fleets, Timberline Express in Canada and Kisatchie Midnight Express in the U.S., allow us added flexibility in logistics to better service our customers for regular maintenance and emergency response. Our customers know that they can rely upon our company to get their quality products delivered on time. In a short while, you will hear from our leaders about procurement, operations, and distributions of product. You'll also learn about the importance of ESG in our mission.
Ever since its inception, Stella-Jones has been focused on meeting regulatory compliance, implementing robust environmental, health, and safety practices, and creating a strong and ethical culture. Our first ESG report covered the year 2017, where we acknowledged the need for better data collection to elaborate a strategy and set meaningful goals. This morning, you will get a glimpse of our 5-year strategy and the goals we will be putting forward in 2022, that will be published in our report in Q3. We've done a lot of work in the past 5 years to improve and report on the aspects of environmental, social, and governance, the addition of a dedicated resource with a background in sustainability was key to formulate a comprehensive strategy. Mrs. Rhéa Carver will be presenting the ESG topic in this morning's agenda.
When we think about our path going forward, we're mindful of the capital allocation efforts to drive shareholder return. As we see our business grow, we continue to strategically invest in capital expenditure programs. We are reaping the rewards of our investment by seeing the strength of our sales and profitability. Our strong operational and financial performance in 2022 well positioned us to meet or exceed the financial targets that we laid out last year. This morning, we announced updated three-year financial objectives, which extend to 2025 and build upon the guidance we've previously provided. To give you a few highlights, our sales target is to achieve over CAD 3.6 billion by 2025. We plan to reach EBITDA margin at 16% through 2025.
This is an acceleration over our prior target of 15% that was shared last year. Lastly, we plan to return cumulative basis over the next three years to our shareholders, a continued commitment from our previous financial goals. Later, Silvana will take a deeper dive in our full financial outlook and the drivers behind each one of these goals. Our products continue to play a key role in the development, upgrade, and maintenance of North America's infrastructure. The momentum we generated last year has carried into 2023, as we continue to support growing demand for our products. We see several growth catalysts that will help us achieve our financial targets and create long-term shareholder value. Our product leaders will delve further into these, into their respective presentations.
Lastly, I mentioned earlier, as Stella-Jones has had a history of making accretive acquisitions to bolster the business. This strategy remains a key area of growth potential for our company. The wood treating industry still has acquisitions to offer. We intend to execute on them to complete our North American network. As we have increased our presence over time, we have built a strong infrastructure product company that services railroads and utilities. Our customers recognize the quality of our work, our ability to adjust, and our distribution capabilities. They engage with our teams to explain their requirements. Over time, we have expanded or innovated in our product offerings, such as bridges for rails or fire-resistant wrap for utility poles. As engineering and technology evolves, so do our customers' needs.
They seek strategic partners that can support their infrastructure projects and assure the supply chain for a variety of products. Stella-Jones is focused on being a manufacturer of infrastructure products for its rail and utility customers. We will pursue acquisitions in the treated wood tie and pole industries, but also consider other products and materials that have unique applications and are complementary to the products we offer to the railroads and the utilities. This opens up new acquisition opportunities that will be subject to strict criteria in line with our historical approach. We will seek acquisitions that are accretive for Stella-Jones from a margin and return standpoint, have steady revenue and solid free cash flow generation, and have a seasoned management team with a track record of performance.
Today, we announced that our 2025 sales objective was to meet or exceed $3.6 billion on an organic basis. We believe acquisitions may have the potential to push our sales aspirations further, given the opportunity. Hopefully, by now, you realize how hard we work and how high we set the bar of success. Our ability to deliver consistent results is driven by our world-class team, who you will meet and hear from today. This great management team, coupled with our strong culture, enable us to deliver quality products and service and remain focused on our customers. With that, I will now pass it along to Ian Jones for his presentation on utility poles. Ian?
Thanks, Éric. Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Ian Jones, and I'm the Senior Vice President for Utility Poles and U.S. Residential Lumber. Today, I will be focused solely on utility poles. You will hear from Brian Grant later today with regards to residential lumber product category. Before I begin, I'd like to provide a bit of a background on myself. I started my career in the pole business in 1980. Over the past 40 years, I've worked in all areas of the business. I started in the peeling and procurement business segment, and then worked through from treating to sales.
I've been with Stella-Jones for 17 years. During that time, I've actively participated in all acquisitions related to poles. I've been fortunate to be a part of those deals since 2006, which Éric spoke about moments ago. I'm very excited to be here today to talk to you about utility pole product category and our plans and expectations going forward. Let me start by giving a quick overview of our utility pole product category. We supply large and small electric utility and telecommunication companies with wood utility poles across North America. In the harshest environments and much longer in other regions throughout the U.S. and Canada. Utility poles is the largest product category in Stella-Jones, representing approximately 40% of Stella-Jones's total sales in 2022. Not only is it the largest product category group, it's also the fastest-growing.
We have seen strong growth in sales over the past five years. In 2022, sales of utility poles rose approximately to $1.2 billion, up organically by 21% versus 2021. We have a leading position within the marketplace and have established a footprint across North America. Of our 43 total Stella-Jones facilities, more than half are for utility poles. Plants in Canada for a total of 26 facilities on the continent. In addition to our peeling and treating facilities, we continue to expand our robust distribution network. This network to remote facilities, also known as finished goods yards, enables us to transport efficiently treated poles to distant locations, provide customers with the same level of service they would enjoy located near the wood resource and our treating plant. We have over 30 of these facilities.
Our network of distribution facilities allows us to respond to unforecasted demand and catastrophic storms and ice storms, large-scale fires, and tornadoes virtually every year. In any given storm response, we can supply thousands of poles quickly, utilizing multiple modes of transport throughout our network. We are proud of our robust network, of our facilities that enables us to service large industry presence and serve our customers efficiently and quickly. This coast-to-coast network enables us to help support future demand while leveraging economies of scale. We have purposely and methodically built out our business coast to coast because of the different wood species that are native to the different parts of North America. We have a broad array of fiber options that we offer our customers, and just want to run down a quick options of the wood species that we treat in our plants.
Western Red Cedar, which is mainly grown in British Columbia, Idaho, and Washington, is popular due to its light weight, its natural resistance to decay, and its resistance to insecticidal attack. Douglas fir, which grows on the West Coast of the United States, starts from Northern California, extends up into Canada to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Douglas fir is considered one of the best softwood species, given its strength and its symmetrical shape. Red pine, which is grown in Eastern Canada and Northeastern United States, with production coming from both plantations. Yellow Pine, or SYP, which is grown in the Southeastern United States, starting in Western Texas and growing right across to Virginia. Southern Yellow Pine represents the largest wood pole resource in our footprint.
The picture on the right side of the slide represents a single-stem harvesting project that we did. It's Western Red Cedar. What's interesting here in this picture is what we do is we send skilled arborists in, and they trim off the limbs, and they climb the tree. They top it. They flag it with a bright ribbon. They come down, they have a GPS locating coordinate on the tree. They put in an undercut and a back cut, and they wedge it. Throughout the stand, every one of those stems has a marker, and then, when we bring the helicopter in, the helicopter with a grapple breaks off that tree.
We have high rate of recovery, very low disturbance on the footprint of the stand, and it's a very unique, very specialized harvesting technique that we deploy. Let's turn the trends to. Sorry, I just lost my place here. Let's turn the trends facing the utility pole industry, which for this product category. I'd like to call out 5 trends that are driving demand today. First, our customer base typically prefers treated wood poles because of their durability, flexibility, low cost, and the safety it offers their line workers. They also have a relatively low cost to purchase, install, and maintain compared to poles of other materials. Second, a significant volume of installed poles are approaching its end of useful life.
Major investments in the electricity grid in North America were made after World War II. A large volume of wood utility poles were installed in the 1950s and 1960s, and many of those are still in service today. I'll speak more on this topic later. The third industry trend is the growth of broadband and 5G cellular networks, which require, in many cases, a taller, stronger, and a larger pole. The fourth industry trend is society's need to support heavier electric loads, which is mainly attributed to the proliferation of electric vehicles, as well as the focus on moving away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy initiatives such as wind and solar. Finally, the last industry trend is the need for utility poles to better withstand heavier and more frequent weather events, including wildfires.
Stella-Jones is well-positioned to meet this expected demand, given our competitive strengths within the industry. First, we have an extensive procurement network. Our production facilities are strategically located close to the resource and the respective wood species. Our strong industry reputation and long-term relationships with wood suppliers assures us access to wood fiber needed to make our products. We maintain large inventories of treated and untreated wood. This allows us to buffer unplanned pole demand with supply, which can be unpredictable based on large storm events. Next, our vast manufacturing network across North America allows us to convert untreated inventory into customer-specific products very quickly.
We also have an extensive distribution network that offers broad economic coverage, allowing us to utilize economies of scale from our large leased railcar fleet, while also providing just-in-time custom delivery services, utilizing our trucks or third-party providers from a network of finished goods yards. Over the years, we have built a broad and diverse customer base. We have over 1,000 customers across North America focused on electrical distribution and telecommunications. Finally, we have assembled a best-in-class team, which was driven by prior acquisitions, as well as hires from outside our industry. We have the operating and technical expertise, including foresters, salespeople, procurement specialists, sales of utility poles that continue to increase. These are utility pole maintenance, fire-resistant wrap for utility poles, broadband expansion, renewable generation, transmission, wheeling, and electric vehicle expansion. Let me run through some of these growth drivers now.
Perhaps one of the biggest growth drivers for our utility pole product category is regular utility maintenance. Many utilities have focused on other investments since much of the distribution system was built, 70 years ago. As many of our customers explained to us, capital requirements for large power generation, clean air mandates, renewable generation, and additions to transmission grid. That said, poles keep aging, and regular and ongoing maintenance continues to be deferred. Utilities will be increasingly forced to prioritize investments in their distribution network, and we are seeing that today. Fire-resistant wrap. This provides added protection and prolongs service life to the product in areas prone to wildfires and has gained favor with utilities looking to harden their grid against increase in severity and frequency of fires.
This photo of the application of fire-resistant wrap, we apply FireMesh fabric to the poles that are customized to customer specifications. The wraps make them resistant to fires, thereby protecting the infrastructure. As such, we see great potential for this product in the infrastructure landscape. We have some samples of the fire-resistant poles in our product showcase outside that you can view after the presentation today. Broadband access and expansion has also become a large growth driver for our business. The need for accelerated broadband access was heightened during the pandemic and has continued. As more people embrace a hybrid working environment or work exclusively from home, it's become apparently clear that many rural locations do not have the adequate access to broadband internet.
In addition, government subsidies have been used to incentivize and augment investments in delivering high-speed internet to all areas as quickly as possible. We are seeing projects emerge in numerous markets. Pole demand is typically in the thousands of pieces per project. Climate change, as well as government mandates, are prompting utilities to continue to find alternates to traditional fossil fuel. New generation sources are becoming a necessity. Although wind and solar farms have been added for more than a decade, new facilities tend to be further away from the existing transmission lines, which requires longer hookups and newer utility poles. Many models and studies show this demand remaining robust for another 10-20 years, which is a significant growth driver for our business.
Let's turn to the sharp increase in electric vehicle- that are driven by federal and local government mandates, both in Canada and the United States. It is clear that the existing distribution system is not adequate in most areas to handle the volume of electricity that will be needed for residents as the volume of EV growth is mandated over the next several decades. Additional electric capacity is a given, and we see wood utility poles being the preferred product in most regions. There must be additional generation and distribution upgrades needed. More and larger transformers at the residential level require new and larger utility poles. Now let's turn to a brief overview of the preservatives that we use. We treat utility poles with all the main preservatives based on customer preference, with the exception of fir, which must be treated with an oil-borne preservative.
These include CCA, also known as Chromated Copper Arsenate, creosote, Copper Naphthenate, DCOI, pentachlorophenol or penta for short, which is currently being phased out. I'm sure many of you are aware the penta is being phased out across North America, and I'd like to provide a brief update on that development now. In the United States, the phaseout of penta is well established and in progress. It is required to be completed by 2027, and we will most likely complete our phaseout in 2024. The vast majority of penta customers have decided to transition to DCOI. Our phaseout in 2024. The vast majority of penta customers have decided to transition to DCOI, which is also an oil-borne system. We began converting our U.S. plants late last year and will continue converting plants until the final conversion in 2024.
The transition has gone extremely well, a true testament to our operations team and our abilities. Like the United States, Canada has also announced its intention to phase out penta by October of 2023. As of yet, Canada has not granted a label to another oil-borne preservative system. One thing is clear, we have been on the forefront in transitioning to an alternate preservative solution and consulting with customers on available options since the phaseout of penta was first announced. We have converted 1 of our Canadian facilities from penta to CCA. We will convert another plant likely before mid-year and are working on transition plans for our 3 remaining penta facilities. Stella-Jones is no stranger to innovation. Innovation has always been a part of our past and will be a part of our future.
Much of Stella-Jones' recent growth in CapEx has been deployed in the utility pole product category, and I'd like to speak about a few of these innovations today. The first is an increased use of technology to help increase our quality, capacity, and safety. The photo that you see here, and on the left-hand side of the video behind me, is a robotic framing line at our plant in Eugene, Oregon. The use of robotics allows us to increase worker safety while helping us automate our process. We first started using robots in our tie division, and we're able to leverage our relationship with that manufacturer. To the best of our knowledge, we are the only ones using robots for this drilling application in the industry. Based on results to date, we are now evaluating the next robotic location.
You can learn more about a robotic framing line at our product showcase in the next room, our pine plants, as well as enhanced peeling technology to help improve this basic manufacturing step. Other major investments include additional kilns throughout our network. A kiln is essentially a large oven that can help expedite the drying process, assuring consistent moisture content for some species, as well as allowing us to reduce the amount of time required to naturally air season our product. We have also invested in replacing older treating vessels or retorts with new, and in some cases, larger retorts. These larger retorts increase our capacity at existing facilities without major investments or building greenfield facilities. The conversion of an 8-foot diameter retort to a 10-foot retort increases capacity by approximately 75%.
With the recent addition of four new 10-foot diameter retorts, we have added capacity of a new treating plant at a much lower capital cost. In addition, plans are underway to add a third retort to our Cameron, Wisconsin, facility by the Q4 of 2023. Overall, we started up upgrading and adding critical equipment to our network more than eight years ago, which has now strengthened our manufacturing backbone. More peelers, more kilns, larger retorts in the right locations is critical in supporting the forecasted growth we are predicting. In 2023, we will add four additional peeling machines, with one of these units focused on state-of-the-art recovery and throughput. That's expected to come online late 2023.
In addition, our extensive network, coupled with continuous supply, our ability to respond quickly and readily to emergency situations, and our ability to innovate, have firmly established Stella-Jones as a leading supplier of wood utility poles across North America. We are excited about many demand drivers related to infrastructure investment in North America, present and future needs. We see notable growth ahead in our utility pole business. Our solid industry reputation has resonated with our customer base, many of whom are asking for long-term agreements to secure supply. We've begun laying the groundwork to cater to demand through significant CapEx investments to support our growth. These CapEx investments, coupled with strong leadership position in North America, as well as our broad distribution and procurement networks and our experienced team, will position us to meet growing demand in the industry.
We are very proud of what we have achieved to date, and we continue to invest in this business to support our next phase of growth. Thank you for your time today. With that, I'll now pass it on to Patrick Kirkham for the Railway Tie presentation. Patrick?
Good morning. My name is Patrick Kirkham, I'm the Senior Vice President in charge of the Railway Tie division. Prior to coming to Stella-Jones, I had a 16-year career as an environmental consultant working for large international consulting firms. I started with Stella-Jones in 2010 as an environmental health and safety manager and was responsible for EHS aspects at both pole and Railway Tie facilities. In 2016, I moved into the Railway Tie operations group to help lead the day-to-day aspects of the business to ultimately lead the Railway Tie business in 2021. I'm excited to talk to you today about our successes to date and our plans as we move into the future.
As you may know, Stella-Jones is an industry leader in the manufacture and distribution of wood railroad cross ties, switch ties, bridge timbers, prefabricated bridges, crossing panels, and pre-plated products. We serve a key role in the development, upgrade, and maintenance of North America's railroad infrastructure, which has a significant existing base of wood ties. Approximately 90% of railroad ties in service, or 500 million ties, are wood ties and require regular maintenance. The North American railroad industry replaces, on average, 18-20 million railway ties per year to ensure the rail lines are structurally sound and safe. Stella-Jones has the capacity to supply up to 10 million pressure-treated cross ties per year to the industry. We service all the Class I railroads, as well as short line railroads, transits, and commercial operators from coast to coast.
As you can see in the graphic, Stella-Jones railway tie plants are geographically positioned in the Mid-Atlantic, where we source both oak and various mixed hardwoods from approximately 850 sawmills. We have an extensive network that includes 12 treating facilities. This broad footprint, coupled with our steady supply chain, allow us to provide exceptional service to our customers. While we supply 35% of our products to the commercial and industrial market, 65% of our sales are to Class I customers, and we have long-term contracts with all six of North America's Class I railroads, creating inherent stability for Stella-Jones railway tie sales. I'd like to now provide you with an overview of what we offer to the railroad industry.
Whether it's a wood cross tie in the main track or a bridge over a major waterway, Stella-Jones provides high-quality products that allow our customers to safely operate their business. Our facilities manufacture rail, railroad wood ties treated with creosote, copper naphthenate, and borate, as specified by each customer. We also build bridge decks, fabricate bridge timbers, assemble crossing panels, and manufacture switch ties. In addition, we offer value-added services like pre-plating, where we spike or screw rail plates to our ties so our customers can allocate their resources to their core competencies. There are a number of trends impacting our industry today, which I would like to highlight. First, our business is driven primarily by maintenance demand.
With close to 90% of the North American rail infrastructure built on wooden cross ties and 90% sold for the purposes of maintenance, we are well-positioned to meet the rail industry's needs. The movement of goods and services by rail is key to the continent's logistical flow. Railroads need to be safe, and goods and freight must be delivered on time, and this is why maintenance is a priority for our customers. On top of maintenance demand, in late 2021, the Biden administration passed the infrastructure bill, putting $102 billion into rail infrastructure spending between 2022 and 2026. We have recently seen an increase in project requests related to this funding and expect it to pick up further in the second half of 2023 and beyond.
The raw wood or untreated tie we purchase from a sawmill is the largest cost component of a railroad tie. In the last two years, the cost of untreated ties has increased by approximately 25%. The most recent increases have been driven in large part by the lack of demand for competing wood products. Railway ties are sourced from the center of a hardwood log, which includes the heartwood. A healthy mix of demand encourages a sawmill to cut a variety of products from the sapwood and produce a railway tie from the center of a log. As the other graphic on the slide shows, a sawmill has to strategically cut a log into various products to ensure profit. I've also included a table from the Hardwood Market Report to show the historic demand for various wood products.
The black on this chart represents products that are in strong demand. You can see that most products were in strong demand through the first half of 2022. When competing product prices are favorable, as the graphic shows through the middle of 2022, railway tie prices rise, our volumes drop as sawmills increase their volume of competing products. This creates a shortage of ties, and in turn, forces Stella-Jones to offer more money to sawmills to get enough ties, which is the situation we were in for most of 2022. When competing products are not in demand, sawmills will turn to producing railway ties to generate cash and have to accept lower prices for the competing products.
If the mix of products that the sawmill produces does not generate a profit, it may temporarily shut down. Given this cost pressure, the Stella-Jones Tie Sales Group has worked closely with our customers to ensure these inflated costs are communicated, understood, and agreed upon so that we can pass these costs on to our customers. All Class 1 contracts include price adjustment mechanisms to cover cost increases. Fortunately, we believe raw material pricing has stabilized. Stella-Jones targets to maintain approximately 23 million-24 million cubic feet of wood at any given time, but due to the limited availability of wood supply, our inventory fell to a low of approximately 18 million cubic feet in 2022. It's important to note that we stack and air-dry most of our inventory prior to the wood being treated.
Because of this, there's a 6-9 month lag between when a tie is processed and stacked and when it gets treated and shipped to a customer. As you can see, we were falling short of untreated tie procurement targets for most of 2022. Fortunately, that dynamic changed in late 2022, and we've been outpacing our procurement and stacking targets each month. If the current pace continues, we anticipate that we will reach our target inventory level by fall of this year. The increase in stacked inventory in the 3rd quarter of 2022 and the 1st quarter of 2023, will position Stella-Jones to capitalize on that inventory in the 2nd half of 2023.
Our procurement capabilities and relationships with our sawmill partners have nonetheless allowed us to outperform our competitors and maintain adequate inventory to supply our customers during these difficult times. In addition to increases in untreated tie costs, we've also experienced a 25% increase in creosote pricing in the last year. Creosote is a derivative of coal tar, and coal tar is a secondary product generated from the coking of coal used for steel production. Production and export of coal tar from Ukraine has been greatly reduced as a result of the conflict in that region. We also face additional pressures on coal tar pricing in the United States as steel mills move to more environmentally friendly processes that do not use coke to produce steel.
Prior to this situation, creosote pricing had been relatively flat for almost 10 years, but in 2022, Stella-Jones received 3 price increases from our primary supplier. It's worth mentioning that Stella-Jones also owns and operates a coal tar distillation plant in Memphis, Tennessee. This facility has the capacity to manufacture 12 million gallons of creosote per year using domestic coal tar as a raw material and supplies 40% of our internal needs for the railway tie group. Manufacturing our own creosote provides security of supply and cost benefits. In addition, the Memphis facility purchases and distributes approximately 14 million gallons of creosote per year from both North American and European suppliers to both pole and railway tie plants. Stella-Jones is the leading wood tie supplier in North America, and there are many reasons for our strong position.
We have built strong customer relationships, have an extensive manufacturing, distribution, and procurement network, have differentiated product offerings, and robust inventory levels. As I've said earlier, 65% of our sales are to Class I customers, and we have long-term sales contracts with all six of North America's Class I railroads, creating inherent stability for Stella-Jones because we have proven Stella-Jones provides a high-quality product, we are flexible to our customers' requests, and we always do what's necessary to provide the product on time. We are also able to support our Class I in emergency repairs and replacements. A fire that destroys a bridge, Stella-Jones can and has provided replacement materials in very short time frames to get the railroad up and running again.
Our tie treating plants have the treating capacity, the procurement base, and bridge manufacturing capabilities that allow us to quickly to respond to our customers' needs. Second, needs. It allows us to quote projects from the closest facility to ensure we can offer reasonable freight rates, giving us a better chance to win a project. We also have the treating capacity to ensure we can quote commercial orders in accordance with the customer's schedule. In addition, Stella-Jones has an extensive transportation using truck, rail, and at times, maritime transport to deliver our products. 11 of our 12 treating plants are online with the Class 1 railroad and receive raw materials and ship products by rail right from the rail spurs at our facilities.
Our procurement team leases in excess of 400 rail cars to ensure we can move untreated ties to our plants and treated products to our customers. Stella-Jones also works closely with our customers to expand our product offerings and develop new processes and alternate treating preservatives. Specifically, we have manufactured equipment that allows us to offer a dual-treated bridge product. Another product that is in growing demand from the railroads are pre-plated ties. Providing pre-plated ties to our customers shortens the amount of time they need to install the ties and track, whether they are a replacement tie or new construction. Stella-Jones has built 3 pre-plating lines that have automated this very labor-intensive process and allowed us to offer a higher margin product to our customers. We have also converted multiple cylinders from Creosote to Copper Naphthenate due to the demands of our customers.
I also want to quickly talk about our robust inventory levels. One of the things that sets Stella-Jones apart is that we own our inventory. This ensures that we have products for our customers when they need it, and this is why another reason why our customers continue to trust Stella-Jones for their needs. We have three key drivers that will help us reach our long-term targets: number one, increased volumes, number two, favorable pricing dynamics, and number three, product innovation. Stella-Jones has always focused on Class 1 business as our core, because we are a volume business, and the Class 1's buy the most ties in North America. Class 1 business drives steady volumes, allowing us to operate efficiently. Each of our railroad tie manufacturing facilities has a base Class 1 customer. Our relationship has been strong with our Class 1 customers.
That being said, it can be difficult to gain large increases in our Class 1 contract volumes because these entities, for the most part, want to maintain a diverse supplier base. However, in our recent negotiations, we gained additional percentages of two of the Class 1 annual programs, which demonstrates the trust that we've built with these core customers. As I mentioned earlier, we expect volumes to increase across North America, and particularly in the U.S., due to the passing of President Biden's infrastructure bill. This bill has provided unprecedented funding for rail improvement projects and will help make the rail network safer and more reliable. Funds will be made available for intercity passenger rail, Amtrak's national network, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation program, and the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement program.
Currently, all the long-term supply contracts with Class I railroads include price adjustment mechanisms, which allow us to adjust our selling price to reflect added material costs. Even with these contractual provisions in place, several of our Class I customers can be slow to accept or approve price increases. New tools are being developed this year to automate price adjustment calculations. We are engaging with these customers in a timelier way to capture the benefits of adjustments earlier. In addition, we are evaluating the benefits of shorter-term supply contracts that will allow us to better manage price changes when the current contracts expire. I spoke earlier about product innovation as a competitive strength. It is also a growth driver for us.
We've been working on our dual treatment bridge process, our three pre-plate lines, and our conversion of our cylinders from creosote to Copper Naphthenate, which are examples of how Stella-Jones has increased our product offerings. Our operations and engineering groups are also in the process of designing another potential bridge manufacturing operation that will allow us to offer additional higher-margin bridge products to our customers. We look forward, we will continue to innovate and expand our product offering to respond to our customers' needs. Moving to 2023 and beyond, we have a robust plan to continue to make investments that make the tie treating plants safer and more efficient and more environmentally and employee-friendly. We are excited with our 2023 investment plan.
We are investing capital into automation, which will shorten the treating process and allow us to treat more efficiently. We will convert another treating cylinder from creosote to Copper Naphthenate to meet the demands of a Class I customer. The video that's gonna be behind me, an industry first that Stella-Jones has developed, is the use of robotics to stack our ties. In 2023, we worked with the robot vendor to build, program, and install the first robotic tie stacker. To date, Stella-Jones operates 6 of these robotic tie stackers, and the 7th is being installed in 2023. It was developed to improve efficiency. The robot builds a more stable air stack and allows our employees to perform this operation safer and with less injuries. This robot can stack 3,500 ties per shift.
The robotic stacking is the last step of our trimming process, which includes us taking the tie from the sawmill, cutting it to length, inspecting it, grading that tie, and sizing the tie, applying end plates, and then this robot will stack that tie. In the product showcase, we have some a video out there and a tie that shows the process. We can talk about that if you have further interest. Finally, for 2023, one of my favorite projects, Rhéa's favorite as well, a solar panel installation, the second of its kind at a Stella-Jones treating plant. The first one of these projects was installed at our Clanton, Alabama facility in 2022. We worked closely with our consultant and Alabama Power to complete this project.
This installation provides for 70% of the treating plant's electricity requirement, minimizing our usage of traditional energy and saving the equivalent of 92,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually. Our consultant has ranked all of our facilities, pole and tie, based on their solar potential and other factors, we will continue similar projects to shrink our carbon footprint. Looking into 2024 and beyond, we are evaluating the feasibility of new projects that include robotic destacking, automatic banding stations, and additional prefab operations. Each of these projects is designed to improve efficiency and greater safety for our employees. In summary, we remain excited about the prospects and growth trajectory for the railway ties category. There are many near-term catalysts that we are poised to benefit from, including steady maintenance demand, new product offerings, and an acceleration in US infrastructure spending.
Our business is built on our strong relationships with the Class 1 and commercial customers who rely on Stella-Jones for our high-quality products and services. Supporting our growth is our continued investment that will drive efficiency while improving safety. We believe that Stella-Jones is well-positioned to grow through our industry-leading position, coupled by the strong market fundamentals of the industry. That concludes my remarks. I'm going to pass it off to Éric Vachon. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Patrick, and thank you, Ian, for those presentations. We're gonna take a short break until 9:45. There's still some coffees and some snacks out there for you. Obviously, the team's gonna be out there to exchange and answer any questions. We will, as I said, we'll resume at 9:45 for the following, or the balance of the presentation. Thank you.
Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Brian Grant, and I'm the Vice President of Residential Lumber of Sales and Procurement for Canada. It's a great opportunity to speak to you today about the residential treated lumber category. Let me share a little background about myself. I've been in the business for 27 years, starting with MacMillan Bloedel in 1996. Some of you in this room may remember that name. In 1999, I joined a newly formed trading and lumber distribution company called Dynamic Forest Products, which was a division of Tembec Forest Products. In 2015, we were given a tremendous opportunity with Stella-Jones, and I'm excited to discuss and highlight some of what the future holds for residential lumber today.
Stella-Jones is the largest treater of residential lumber in Canada, treating over 400 million board feet of softwood lumber, or as Eric would put it, 33.3 million cubic feet. We're a manufacturer and distributor of treated grade premium lumber, composite decking products, and accessories supplied to Canadian and American retail partners. Let's take a step back. Many things changed for the business in spring of 2020, from COVID shutdowns and uncertain business conditions to record demand for lumber building products and the wild price swings that ensued. Our team of experienced and talented individuals did a remarkable job of working to overcome the challenges brought on during this period. Through our strong relationships, open communication, and dedication to the business, we were able to successfully respond to the demand of our customers.
All the lessons we learned during the pandemic strengthened our position in the marketplace and put us at an advantage going forward. The majority of, which is approximately 75% of Stella-Jones residential business, is in Canada, and our treated and lumber distribution facilities are strategically located across the country to support speed-to-market service effectively and efficiently. We have 6 facilities in Canada and 2 in the U.S. Our plant in Tacoma, Washington, services the British Columbia market, as well as the customers in the Pacific Northwestern U.S. We also have a plant in Warsaw, Virginia, that focuses on industrial treated wood products. We treat a variety of softwood species, including the species that can be found across the country, which is a mix of spruce, pine, and fir, also referred to as SPF.
In the Western Canada, we use a species called hem-fir or hemlock, and in Eastern Canada, we use red pine. I would like to note that 80% or more of all product procured is from a certified source. All Canadian residential lumber is treated with micronized copper, an environmentally friendly preservative. We treat a variety of products, most of which can be found in any backyard project in a variety of lengths. Adding to the mix, we are the largest distributor of composite decking and related products in Canada. Our customer mix is approximately 70% large box stores and 30% retail lumber yards, which we're proud to say are all long-lasting industry relationships. During COVID, as everyone remembers, we were forced to gather and meet outdoors.
This shed new light on the backyard experience, and the backyard continues to proliferate, and has now become a 3-season, in some cases, 4-season extension of one's home, with beautifully redesigned decks, fences, outdoor dining, kitchens, fireplaces, and TVs. A popular social media deck designer and renovator has recently said that your backyard reinvestment can return up to 70% when you sell your home. We've recently hosted a variety of pro and contractor events, and while the reoccurring theme is new home construction has slowed, those same pros and contractors are shifting into decking and fencing. In addition, the fact that treated lumber prices have reset from the highs of COVID also play well for homeowner affordability.
With the longer-term fundamentals pointing toward new housing growth and continued renovation in Canada in the years to come, we are well positioned to capitalize on opportunities for pressure-treated lumber as we move into the future. Stella-Jones is a leader within the residential lumber industry. What sets us apart are several factors. First, we offer high-quality products. Not all treated lumber is the same. Our program consists of premium-grade lumber and complementary products in all dimensions and sizes. Not only does the Stella-Jones process begin with premium-grade lumber, but during the production process, our grade is enhanced further as we perform two more additional visual inspections, removing defects that the sawmill may have missed. Second, we offer best-in-class service, and we're always in stock. This is crucial in times of volatility and shrinking North American supply.
Now more than ever, our established relationships on the supply side ensure we're always in stock for our customers and, in turn, the end customer. I mean, imagine trying to build a fence on a given weekend, but the fence boards are not in stock. We know this is incredibly important to help our customers drive sales; therefore, the relationship between the customer and supplier have never been more important. What is also key is our speed to market. We get the customer what they need, when they need it. Our dedicated logistics teams plays a leading role in executing timely delivery to the customer. Once an order for treated lumber is placed, it is shipped within 24 hours to 48 hours across the country. In some cases, orders received first thing in the morning are delivered the same day.
As a company, this is something that we are extremely proud of. We also have strong procurement and market intelligence skills. We have some unique, interconnected relationships with our sawmill vendor partners, which I will touch upon shortly. Lastly, a key focus is, and strength is our field team that is dedicated to educating the customer about Stella-Jones' product offerings and helping to drive retail sales. The team works to increase sales through merchandising suggestions, getting the right products to the right place, and proactively following up on orders. Stella-Jones' culture is committed, providing high customer service and is always focused on the importance of quick customer response times. We have three key growth drivers that will drive our strategic plan: product expansion, sourcing and procurement, and macro favorable trends.
While this may sound repetitive, I'm going to once again mention our best-in-class products as a growth driver. We have recently increased our focus on an innovative redesign of our treated wood accessory offering. We offer superior quality with more substantial product sizing to that of the competition. I have samples that everyone's welcome to view on the table later today. We are working closely with retail customers to ensure the merchandising is on point. It is also important to note that Stella-Jones uses an environmentally friendly preservative, and it can be used with ground and freshwater contact. In composite decking, we continue to see strong growth, and with our manufacturing partners supporting and promoting brand awareness, we are very excited about this category and continue to offer product innovation and product options.
Stella-Jones has a well-established distribution base, and because we've partnered with the strongest retailers in the country, together, we are well positioned to deliver high-quality, premium products to the end customers. We've also seen a stronger presence on social media as supplier partners invest in online platforms, highlighting promotion of product and design ideas with the end consumer in mind. The second drivers are sourcing and procurement opportunities. 50% of the SKUs we carry are 2x4 through 2x12 dimensional lumber, and the other half consists of specialty products such as fence boards, fence posts, and 5-quarter decking. These products are therefore not exposed to the same moves as the baseline commodity. While the historic price, commodity price for 2x6 has been relatively stable, the last 36 months has brought unprecedented swings.
Volatility in the lumber market is more in relation to products used in new home construction and the renovation and remodel market, or R&R. Stella-Jones purchases premium-grade lumber in premium lengths and has a mix of specialty products. We are therefore not exposed to the same volatility. Looking only at 2x4 commodity construction-grade lumber as a market price benchmark does not accurately define our procurement story. Not to say that 2020, 2021, and 2022 were not difficult waters to navigate, our procurement team and our expert team and our model enabled us to reach record sales and profit. Turning to the right part of your slide, you can see that the market price for 2x6 has stabilized over the last 10 months, allowing us to spend more time on merchandising and new products.
We're very proud of our strong supplier network that we have across the industry. Our annual procurement volume is attractive to North American sawmills. This has led to long-standing partnerships. These relationships were especially useful in the months when lumber was in tight supply. In some cases, we procure lumber from suppliers that also produce railway ties and poles. This interconnectivity between categories from a procurement standpoint puts us in a unique position. Staying abreast of new sourcing and procurement opportunities is important for us in order to control cost. While lumber supply across Canada is contracting, we've taken steps to ensure we have product. Not only do we have a strong supply network across North America, we've also included or expanded our scope to include European premium lumber at a very competitive price.
We are the first Canadian company to bring a ship of premium-grade lumber directly from Germany into Montreal at the end of 2022. We had another boat arrive just last month. This enables us to broaden our supply network, to better control costs, and support long-term growth. As we touched upon earlier, we see a number of tailwinds driving the housing market, which supports our products. Homeowners continue to renovate and update their outdoor living space as an extension of the home. Next, we've seen the majority of new home construction over the past 3 years shift into more rural communities as people with space, yard space, as people exit major cities. We expect solid demand for decking and fencing, as backyard projects can lag new home construction by 12-24 months.
Homes for sale inventory is historically low, and the general overall population is increasing. This supports the needs for new home in the future and potentially translates well for the decking and fencing segments of construction. The long-term demand for new homes construction in both Canada and the US, along with shrinking supply, should help support higher prices over the long term. Lastly, aging homes in the US will help support lumber demand and prices above historical averages, with over 50% of the homes in the US being built prior to 1980 and in need of repair. Stella-Jones continues to improve operational efficiencies in the residential lumber business. We are currently building a new 50,000 sq ft composite distribution facility to replace a warehouse that we're currently leasing.
This new distribution center will be built adjacent to our Shelburne, Ontario, treated plant, which is centrally located near major highways. The design will maximize efficiency of our composite order preparation process and allow us to share the workforce with the treating plant, optimizing our labor expenses. We have recently installed a new automatic bundle wrapping machine at our Shelburne facility that packages the material uniformly without the traditional use of staples, which our customers love. This new process makes for more secure packaging, reduces health and safety risk, and requires less labor. Our plan is to install the wrapping machines across our network. We've also installed a lumber grading system that automatically performs the quality inspection process at our Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, plant. This allows for more consistent quality output and increases the speed of the line.
Our plan is to install this system as well across the network. More recently, we installed heating chambers before and after the treating operations to reduce manufacturing lead time. The heating chamber installed before treatment allows us to thaw frozen lumber in the winter months and help with production efficiencies. The chamber installed after treating allows us to dry the wood quicker and increase production output. Lastly, we've also invested in our accessories production facility to increase productivity and safety. We've installed an automatic one-piece stair stringer machine and an optimizing saw, which cuts and trims lumber used in a variety of our programs. In summary, while we continue to anticipate more normalized pricing environment for lumber, we believe the product category has the potential to maintain annual volumes above 2019 levels.
We have a highly loyal and dedicated customer base that recognizes the value of Stella-Jones' premium lumber product offerings. Our quality products, coupled with our ability to provide seamless supply chain service and customer support, enables us to provide a holistic experience, everything the customer needs for their deck and fence project. Over the years, we have proven our ability to keep retailers and big box stores in stock, which speaks to our ability to procure lumber amidst an environment with declining supply. We can procure lumber because of the annual volumes we require, making Stella-Jones an attractive partner to sawmills. Our procurement group can negotiate advantageous pricing because of ongoing trading activity, making our team best-in-class. It was our team that had the foresight to take the necessary measures to ensure we have continual supply, including sourcing premium lumber from Europe.
We are very pleased with what we have achieved so far and see many opportunities to continue to advance our operating efficiencies in this product category.
With that, Rhéa Carver will discuss ESG at Stella-Jones. Thank you.
I think I'm gonna need one of these almost straight away. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you this morning, and I'm excited to share a little bit about what ESG means to Stella-Jones, and what our vision for sustainability looks like. I joined the company about a year ago, and I've been really inspired by my colleagues, who are not only passionate about the quality products we produce, but also the impact we have and the benefit we bring to the communities we operate in. Our management team has been incredibly supportive, and they've created a solid foundation of sustainability values that are shared from the plant to the boardroom. I'm looking forward to helping progress our ESG initiatives in a meaningful and targeted way for Stella-Jones. Sustainability is nothing new to Stella-Jones.
Our pressure-treated wood products, by their nature, are renewable, with more trees planted annually in North America than harvested. Our products also store significantly more carbon than they emit over their lifetime, which is why wood products can offer a meaningful, natural solution to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and help mitigate the effects of climate change. By choosing Stella-Jones products, our customers are supporting their own sustainable development objectives. As government and business act to address climate change, the shift to a low carbon economy presents real opportunity for Stella-Jones. We see this impacting our business in three key ways. One, the drive for electrification leading to increased pole demand. Two, utilities are increasingly looking to harden their networks against the impact of wildfire, and Stella-Jones is well-positioned with our market-leading fire-resistant pole wrap.
Third, our rail customers will also need a consistent supply of rail ties as more goods shift from road transport to the more environmentally friendly mode of rail. Overall, the climate challenge does present real opportunity for Stella-Jones, and we're well-placed to capitalize on it. As we continue to execute on our corporate strategy, we are committed to growing in a purposeful and sustainable way that helps deliver meaningful environmental and social impact. As part of this commitment, today, we're giving you a sneak peek of our new ESG strategy that will be published in our upcoming ESG report in Q3 of this year. The tagline, "Connecting our Sustainable Future," embodies how we help connect communities and economies via railroads and energy infrastructure.
This first strategy for Stella-Jones is all about connecting the ESG initiatives already underway across the organization into a vision for a more sustainable Stella-Jones. The full strategy covers our ambitions and targets for the six key ESG topics at Stella-Jones. Today I will touch on just a few of the targets that we're excited to share in advance of the full strategy. Let's talk about climate change and greenhouse gas targets. While we believe in our products as climate positive solutions, we also recognize the importance of doing what we can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operational processes. Our climate change and greenhouse gas reduction strategy outlines our ambition to reduce carbon emissions from our operations and advance renewable wood products as part of the climate solution. We have two targets. I'll read them out.
The first is a 32% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from a 2022 base year. The second target is to measure our Scope 3 emissions and assess a science-based target by 2025. We are confident in our plan to achieve a 32% reduction by 2030, but we also recognize the need to strive for a science-based target, which would be in line with the reduction needed to keep global warming on a 1.5 degree trajectory. This is why we've included Target 2, to assess what a science-based target would look like for Stella-Jones, including the potential solutions and pathways, as well as the investment required. We intend to continue to explore reduction options in ways that create meaningful impact and permanent greenhouse gas abatement, as well as create business value.
Our strategy to achieve our 32% reduction target is focused on three key areas. The first is energy efficiency, making sure all our facilities are operating in an energy efficient manner, that reduces operational costs. A key focus in this strategy is real-time energy monitoring, to ensure our teams on the ground have visibility into the performance of equipment in real time. We are also continuing site-specific energy efficiency audits, which help to develop the process and equipment improvements needed to ensure best management practices across our network. This audit program began back in 2021 with our first site in Gatineau, Quebec. This resulted in the investment of new electric kilns at the site, which has helped reduce carbon emissions by over 70%. We've just completed our third audit and are in the process of project planning for project delivery.
The second focus is renewable energy, both from on-site installation and procurement of renewable energy. As mentioned by Patrick, in 2022, we completed our first solar power installation at our Clanton, Alabama, facility. Our current plan is for 9 additional installations between now and 2030, for a total investment of over $10 million.... which we forecast will help reduce our Scope 2 emissions by over 40%. Our turnkey solutions utilize government incentives to reduce payback periods. The third focus is innovation, where we're seeking partnerships to maximize the carbon sequestered timeframe and improve options for product end of life. On this front, we have a few customer contracts that take old utility poles and use them as biomass in cogeneration electricity plants.
The main roadblock to rolling out end of life product options for customers is the high freight costs involved. With ties and poles widely dispersed across geographies, it makes bringing them back to a centralized point for use of biomass or other recycling options costly. Next, is the social pillar, where we have a safety target to achieve an annual recordable safety incident rate below the industry average. Safety is a core value at Stella-Jones, and our health and safety program, SHIELD, was introduced over a decade ago. Since then, it's grown more robust and comprehensive. We've spent the last few years working on the consistency of implementation across our network and aligning the company around our safety-first culture.
As you can see, our safety statistics are starting to show this in results, with our total recordable injury rate trending down and reducing by 22% in 2022 when compared to 2021, our lowest year to date. Looking forward, we are focused on identifying areas for improvement, sharing and adapting successful practices, and engaging our people to make safety personal. On this last front, in 2023, we are focused on a new safety campaign, Safety Matters Because You Matter, which aims to engage all our employees on the personal responsibility to create a safe work environment. Also under the social pillar, we will be launching our Indigenous People Strategy, with one of our goals to have 100% of Canadian areas with forest management obligations covered by relationships with willing nations by 2030.
Currently, we just have one land management area with forest management obligations, which is in British Columbia. Our team of foresters regularly engages with over 14 different Indigenous groups in this area. To support this strategy, earlier this year, we published our Indigenous Peoples Policy, which outlines our commitment to improving our awareness and understanding of Indigenous cultures and history, developing mutually beneficial and collaborative relationships, and ensuring we continue to include Indigenous perspectives in our forestry practices. The policy, which is publicly available on our website, was developed in recognition and acknowledgment of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the calls to action of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Building and sustaining relationships with Indigenous bands is critical to our ongoing access to fiber in British Columbia. We really do view our Indigenous people strategy as an opportunity to continue to secure a long-term, sustainable fiber supply in this region. Moving on to governance. Our responsible supply chain strategy focuses on supplier engagement and sustainable forestry practices. We have a target to complete an ESG due diligence assessment for 25% of our tier one suppliers by the end of 2027. This is no small feat. We have a very large supplier base, with tier one encompassing over 180 suppliers.
The intent behind the ESG due diligence process is to profile our supplier base and understand where we may be exposed to environmental, social, or governance risks, and then work in a proactive manner to mitigate those risks and jointly improve practices with our suppliers. Our approach to supply chain due diligence also includes our work for the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, the TCFD regulations that we can expect in Canada, for companies in Canada, sometime after 2024. This year, we will review the climate-related transitional and market risks with the help of third-party experts, focusing on our fiber supply chain, which we know can be significantly impacted by climate and weather events.
Also, under the topic of supply chain and sustainable forestry, we are planning for the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, the TNFD regulations, which we expect to come at a much faster rate than the TCFD. As a company that relies on healthy forests for our long-term success, we take seriously the framework for biodiversity, and we look forward to understanding these nature-related risks in more detail. Which brings me to the ESG rating agencies. We track 5 different scores, and we are currently rated in the middle of our peer group across all agencies. We also know which of these agencies a few of you in this room follow, and we will continue to prioritize those relationships.
Our current plan is to more actively engage on our scores in Q3 and Q4 of this year, once our new ESG strategy has been published, to help ensure the most up-to-date information is being used in the scores. We do expect the overall score to improve once we have the ESG strategy formally published, as well as the targets. Thank you. That's it from me. I look forward to sharing the full ESG strategy in our next ESG publication this year. With that, I will hand it over to Silvana.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Silvana Travaglini, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I've been with Stella-Jones over three years now, and it has been a privilege to work within an organization that continues to deliver strong performances year after year, while maintaining an industry-leading position in the markets that we serve. By now, you likely have greater visibility on what each of our divisional leaders are focusing on and the growth that lies ahead. Shortly, I will share in greater detail some commentary on our updated three-year financial goals. First, a few comments on Stella-Jones. When we look at Stella-Jones, we can see that we have a resilient business in place. This is attributable to the steady maintenance demand for our products and the extensive network of facilities that we have to service our customers.
We have an established, industry-leading customer base. With our procurement capabilities, we are able to continually capitalize on the growing demand opportunities. This is evidenced by our track record of sustainable, profitable growth. We have achieved many milestones in the last financial year. That momentum has continued into 2023. Let me highlight some of those achievements. First, 2022 was the 22nd consecutive year of sales growth for Stella-Jones. We achieved sales over $3 billion, which is almost double the sales that we realized just 7 years ago. When we compare this to 2021, we grew our sales by over $300 million or 11%. Our EBITDA also reached a record high last year of $448 million.
This represents an increase of 12% year-over-year, outpacing our strong double-digit sales growth. Our EPS followed suit, increasing by 13% in 2022 versus the prior year. While our EBITDA grew year-over-year, you will note that our EBITDA margin has remained relatively stable. This is particularly noteworthy given that we were faced with cost inflation pressures, volatile commodity prices, and supply chain issues. We were able to navigate exceptionally well through this challenging environment. This is due in part to our infrastructure-related sales, which are largely contractual and include cost pass-through clauses that insulate us from rising costs. For residential lumber, as Brian mentioned, we do have a business model that provides resiliency against lumber market volatility. Our business also generates a strong level of operating cash flow.
This allows us to actively invest in our business, notably in our inventory position, to meet customer demand. We are able to expand our pole production capacity as well as seize new growth opportunities. Over the past three years, we were able to convert approximately 40% of our EBITDA into free cash flow. We have remained committed to returning capital to shareholders, as evidenced by the almost CAD 500 million that we have returned to our shareholders over the last three years through dividends and buybacks, an increase of over CAD 300 million compared to the prior three years. Since we began to buy back shares back in 2018, we have reduced our share count by 11 million or 16%. Today, we are providing you with our updated three-year financial plan.
As you have listened to each of my colleagues speak about their business categories, we hope that you can better understand the catalysts that will help us to achieve our three-year goals, which now extend to 2025. We plan to build on the momentum that we have seen across our businesses. We are excited to deliver an acceleration in the top line, expecting our sales to exceed CAD 3.6 billion by 2025, while reaching an EBITDA margin of 16% through 2025, which is an improvement of 140 basis points when we compare it to the margin that we realized in 2022.
We also plan to return over CAD 500 million of capital to shareholders over the next 3 years, while maintaining our net debt to EBITDA ratio between 2 and 2.5 times. Let me discuss each of our financial targets. Our plan to achieve sales of over CAD 3.6 billion by 2025, which is a 6% CAGR from 2022, is based on organic growth only. This growth is driven by our infrastructure-related businesses, whose sales are expected to increase at an annual compound rate of 9% from 2022 to 2025. The key driver of this growth is our utility poles product category.
The significant increase in demand, as Ian explained, and our proactivity and capacity to support that demand growth, explains the 15% CAGR projected for utility poles over the next three years. A large part of that increase is expected to be realized in the earlier years. Building on the growth that we saw in 2022, we expect our utility pole sales to increase at a compound annual rate of 20% from 2022 to 2024, before reducing to a mid-single digit growth in 2025. Over the outlook period, we are projecting that approximately 40% of the overall increase in the sales will come from volume growth, with the remaining increase coming from higher pricing. Most of the volume gains will be realized by 2024, and for pricing, no significant increases are anticipated beyond 2023.
As a result, the projected sales growth that we are expecting in 2025, which is the mid-single-digit growth that I just mentioned, is strictly driven by operational efficiency and inflationary price increases. In terms of the relative sales proportion, we expect our utility pole sales to grow from 40% of total sales in 2022, to representing over 50% of our total sales by 2025. Turning to our railway tie business. We expect the annual growth sales to continue to be in the low single-digit range. This is in line with our historical averages and supported by the stable maintenance and replacement CapEx of the railroads. The railway tie business remains a stable source of revenue for Stella-Jones, with the potential to grow beyond GDP growth.
The significant funding from the U.S. Infrastructure Bill for rail improvement projects and new higher-margin product offerings, are potential catalysts for us to grow this product category above GDP. As Brian explained, for residential lumber, favorable industry fundamentals should support further growth for this product category. Being the largest pressure-treated lumber supplier in Canada, we are well-positioned to capitalize on this growth. Given, however, that the dynamics of the lumber market as well as consumer trends are difficult to predict, we have maintained our annual sales projection for residential lumber between CAD 600 million and CAD 650 million. We are confident that we can consistently generate this level of annual sales, given the business model and the unique value proposition that we have in that product category.
Our sales projection of CAD 600 million-CAD 650 million is based on pre-pandemic volumes and on the current random length 2x6 delivered Toronto prices, which, as Brian mentioned, have remained relatively stable over the last 12 months. Compared to the sales that we realized in 2022, the CAD 600 million-CAD 650 million annual sales projection does anticipate a 15% pullback or a negative CAGR of 5% from 2022 to 2025. With the significant growth that we are anticipating for our utility poles product category and the residential lumber pullback, we now anticipate that our residential lumber product category will represent less than 20% through 2025. We continue to project our infrastructure-related businesses to account for 75%-80% of our total sales. Top line growth is important, but so is profitable growth.
To that end, we see our EBITDA margin expanding by 100 basis points from the previously disclosed target, accelerating to 16%. We anticipate our EBITDA to reach approximately CAD 575 million by 2025, which implies a compound annual growth rate of 9%, outpacing our projected sales CAGR of 6%. There are a number of factors driving the upside in our EBITDA margin. The most significant factor being the greater proportion of the higher-margin utility poles in our portfolio. Utility poles are expected to contribute approximately 50% to the company's sales mix throughout the periods. Given the strong growth environment, particularly for utility poles, we also expect to leverage higher pricing and economies of scales to drive our Stella-Jones's margin up and improve our profitability.
Over the years, we have maintained a very disciplined capital allocation approach, balancing growth through investment while returning capital to our shareholders. In terms of our capital allocation priorities, we remain focused on reinvesting in our business. To that end, we are targeting to invest between $65 million and $75 million annually, up from our previously disclosed annual CapEx targets of $50 million to $60 million. The higher level of annual CapEx spend takes into account the larger scale of our network, the newly established ESG initiatives, as well as inflationary cost pressures, which have affected all aspects of our capital projects. Our annual program will continue to include CapEx to maintain the quality of our assets and to ensure that our facilities remain safe and reliable.
We will also allocate funds to projects that will improve productivity and drive cost efficiencies, such as the robotic pole framers that Ian mentioned, the use of robotics for railway ties, and the installation of wrapping machine across our residential lumber facilities. We will also prioritize projects that support our sustainability initiatives, like the installation of more solar panels at our plants. In addition to our regular CapEx program, we will continue to execute on our growth CapEx for utility poles, actively increasing our drying, peeling, and treating capacity to support the anticipated growth in utility poles demand. The growth of CapEx program for utility poles is relatively unchanged from what we had previously disclosed.
We did invest CAD 33 million in 2022. We are targeting an additional CAD 80 million over the next 3 years for a total of CAD 115 million. A large part of the remaining CAD 80 million of investment is projected to be spent and invested in 2023. As such, we anticipate that the total CapEx program for the year 2023 for the company will be approximately CAD 125 million. The growth investments in utility poles are expected to increase our capacity by approximately 20%. As I mentioned, most of this additional capacity will be online and contribute to sales by 2024. As a result, the payback on these investments will be less than 3 years.
Though our targets are modeled on the current CapEx program, Stella-Jones has the ability to undertake additional capacity-enhancing projects to cater to additional demand opportunities. In terms of returning capital to our shareholders, the consistent payout of dividend is a staple of the company's strategy. We take great pride in the fact that we have increased our dividends every year for the last 19 years. As you all know, our policy is to pay out 20%-30% of our prior year's EPS as dividends. The expected increase in profitability, as well as the continued buyback in shares, will contribute to higher EPS going forward, and as a result, ongoing dividend growth. Our company is highly cash generative, and this provides us with the financial flexibility to also fund growth opportunities and as well, to continue to be active in share repurchases.
We anticipate returning to shareholders over CAD 500 million on a cumulative basis over the next three years through dividends and buybacks. This is in addition to the almost CAD 500 million that we have returned to shareholders over the last three years. It's also important for us to maintain a solid financial position, so we continue to target a net debt to EBITDA ratio between 2 and 2.5 times. Our healthy balance sheet allows us to invest and maintain the inventory necessary to meet our customers' demands. As you know, the inventory that we carry for our infrastructure customers needs to be air-dried for a period of time that can exceed nine months, and therefore, our inventory turnover is relatively low. Inventory is the largest asset on Stella-Jones's balance sheet.
At the end of 2022, in order to service our customers, we had CAD 1.2 billion of inventory on hand. The financial capacity to maintain this level of inventory puts us in a very strong and unique position to leverage the growing demand for our products. Our low leverage target also provides us with the flexibility to increase that target beyond the high end of the range, if the right strategic opportunity comes along. To wrap up, Stella-Jones continues to consistently deliver profitable growth while managing efficiently through a volatile macro environment. We hope that today's presentations clearly highlighted the strength of our healthy business and the numerous opportunities that lie ahead of us. The company continues to reach new financial records each year, and we plan to build on those achievements.
Our knowledgeable team knows what we need to do to drive financial excellence. We see a clear path forward to continue to deliver sustainable, profitable growth for our shareholders. With that, I will turn it back to Éric for his concluding remarks.
Well, thank you to the Stella-Jones team for all the great presentations. I hope everybody got the most out of it this morning. We're gonna take a brief moment to set up the room for the Q&A session. I'll thank everybody for joining us this morning. I want to thank the Stella-Jones team for the time they dedicated to us today to share with all of us, you know, why they're so passionate about the work they do at Stella-Jones. We're making a concerted effort to engage with the investment community. Earlier this year, we conducted an investor perception study. We heard from many of you that you wanted to meet our senior leadership. We also heard that you had an appetite to learn more about each of our product categories.
Today, through our inaugural Investor Day, you know, we believe that we achieved this goal of presenting our team and as well, giving you some more insight in our product categories. What I would like to impress upon you today is we see strong momentum and growth for our utility pole product category. We expect steady demand for our railway tie product categories as well over our forecast period. We have a loyal and dedicated customer base for our residential lumber product category. Finally, everything we do is rooted in ESG principles that cascade throughout our organization. With that, we're just gonna take a moment to set up the stage. We will take some questions from the room and as well from our attendants that are online.
You just simply need to input the information in the chat, and it'll pop up here for me, and I'll read those out as we get organized. If you give us maybe five minutes, we'll set this up quickly. Thank you. Just to step up and ask a few questions, and as you guys are getting organized, maybe I'll start off by reading one of the questions we received online, and I'll read it out, which is, "In what inning are we for North American utility pole and railway tie consolidation?" I'll take this one, but my plan today is to have the team answer most of the questions. I wanna answer that question, you know, I guess in a couple of ways.
First, as we see our market or demand in the utility pole demand or the utility pole industry increase, you know, we are addressing that market through our growth CapEx. We're investing to be able to, you know, participate as much as we can in that demand. As I mentioned in my remarks, I do believe that there's still a few acquisition targets that are available that we would love to be able to add to the Stella-Jones network. With regards to railway ties, you know, my belief is that there are fewer targets available, but we have maybe one or two on our cheat sheet. In all cases, those acquisitions will happen when the owners are good and ready to proceed.
We have relationships, in many cases, with all of them. They know Stella-Jones very well. They know how good a partner we are when it comes to M&A, and, you know, we'll keep addressing those opportunities as they present themselves. As we've shown in the last few years, we've kept on executing on certain acquisitions to increase our networks. Maybe Benoit, since you're standing there up front.
Yes, Benoit Poirier from Desjardins. Thank you very much for hosting the Investor Day. First question: If I look at the EBITDA margin, obviously, Q1 was a strong achievement in terms of EBITDA margin. You mentioned great color also on the conference call about the visibility to kind of achieve a 16% even this year. When I look at the 16% disclosed in 2025, how conservative is the 16% EBITDA margin in light of the growth drivers and the tailwinds that you foresee? Thank you.
Maybe I'll pass that along to Silvana. Obviously, we had a great first quarter to the year, which is not representative of the whole year, but Silvana will provide more color about our expectations on EBITDA margin.
Yeah, just to build on what Éric just said, maybe just to clarify, the 16.9% that we realized in the first quarter does not take into account all the product categories in terms of the relative proportion. You all know, residential lumber, the busy season is Q2 and into Q3, which has a bit of a lower margin. In terms of the relative proportion, we should see that margin, you know, basically, you know, stabilizing closer to the 16% as we go through the year. In terms of our projections for 2025, you know, we feel confident that we'll be able to continue to reproduce and deliver that 16%.
You know, could there be potential for more operational efficiencies as, you know, we keep growing our network and adding capacity to our network? There could be some additional efficiencies there. Depending on the demand environment, particularly for utility poles, there might be some other opportunities to leverage higher pricing, but for now, we were very comfortable with the 16%.
Super. Yes, Mike?
Michael Tupholme, TD Securities. Also a question for Silvana. Just the growth projections for the utility pole segment, I think you said 15% CAGR over the next 3 years, dropping to sort of mid-single digit growth in 2025. I guess if you can just clarify what goes into that mid-single digit assumption for 2025, and maybe put some context around why it drops down to that level, considering it's been so strong recently. Are you being conservative, or what's the thinking behind the sort of the drop down to mid-single digits?
The mid-single digit, first of all, takes into account our current CapEx program. As I mentioned, we will pretty much be completed by end of 2024. In terms of volumes, we are pretty much running at capacity. We have no additional volume, so there's no additional sort of volume growth through capacity increases. The only growth that we've factored into 2025 are operational efficiency, so it does limit it based on the current CapEx program. In terms of pricing, we've just factored in just, you know, inflationary price increases, as I mentioned, because most of the price increases or the more significant price increases, we basically just have not gone beyond 2023.
We feel, you know, quite confident, obviously, that this year the price increases will be higher than inflationary pressures, as you saw in Q1, but no assumptions beyond that, other than just normal inflation.
Sorry, I just want to add something to that, Mike.
Yeah.
You know, every year we prepare a 5-year plan. You know, each of the respective leaders with their teams sort of look at the volumes and the crystal ball, the volumes they're gonna see. We know what we know today, and certain customers have plans that haven't been disclosed to us. 2025 is a far, you know, a further period out. We would have time to react and adjust with more growth CapEx if we needed to. Right now we're forecasting what we know. We're very confident with this, with this forecast, that we'll execute it. That's why we said, you know, graded and $3.6 billion on sales. It's just that, you know, we know we can react quickly.
Ian mentioned, you know, we built our facility in Mississippi in 10 months. We know we can do a lot of things quickly. We have that ability and knowledge in-house, so. Just to be a bit more color on how we're approaching this.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Second question, just sort of building on the first question you received about M&A. I think when you unveiled your three-year plan, in early 2022, the original three-year plan, you were talking about the possibility of looking at adjacent markets, expanding into adjacent markets, as part of your broader M&A strategy. I didn't see that mentioned specifically today. Can you just comment on what's happening with that, the valuation of that opportunity, and if that's still something of interest?
Thank you. You're right. I didn't use the word adjacent. I sort of used it, I guess, another vocabulary, right? I'm talking about, complementary products or products that are, different materials or complementary to the needs of the utilities and the railroads. Perhaps similar vocabulary, if you want. It still comes back to, you know, when we engage with our customers on utilities and rail, they are consistently now bringing up requirements that they have on needs, on other products, and how they design lines today, and how the new engineering teams, the younger generation that are coming up, are thinking a bit differently about things. They look towards us and go like: "Hey, Stella-Jones, you know, we'd like you to be able to do a bit more for us. We'd appreciate it.
You know, you have the distribution networks, you've got the financial means, we trust you. You guys deliver on your words." You know, so it comes back to a bit what I was suggesting, you know, in, let's say, in last year's disclosure, if you want. I do believe firmly now that we're hearing more of this, and there are some opportunities that would present ourself, to ourselves, you know, in coming years, that we will, you know, not just turn away and say, "Well, it's not treated wood," or, "No, it's not this." I think we need to turn ourselves there just to make sure that we maintain that leadership position in North America and remain that supplier that our customers need.
Hey, James McGarrigle from RBC Capital Markets. I just had a question on the utility pole outlook. You know, you've highlighted a large percentage of your poles are throughout North America, are upcoming on their useful life. Are you able to quantify how many that is? And, you know, what percentage are you assuming that you're going to replace in the guidance that you provided today?
Ian, that would be a good one for you.
Sure. That's... Nice to start with an easy question. Well, you know, I think that, when we look at this, you know, we talk to many, many customers, on a regular basis to sort of formulate our business plan going forward. We, you know, we've got, you know, several large customers that have given us forecasts that are going out 5-10 years as far as a replacement plan. Conversations with customers change on a weekly, monthly basis, it's really interesting because, you know, we take what we know, and we formulate a plan. We know the plan is gonna change. You know, our sense is that the trend is that we're gonna have more requests coming at us, the challenge for us is, how do we react to that?
To actually quantify and say, well, what percentage of that, you know, is replacement, is difficult to quantify, and we don't really track it that way. We look at the business as a whole, and we say: Okay, collectively, when we look at these 1,000 customers, you know, what does that overall demand look like, and how are we going to service that? Then, you know, try to contemplate, well, what else could be coming? We, we tend to take a pretty conservative approach. You know, we don't, we don't start modeling things, you know, because we can get really, you know, I think, sidetracked pretty quickly because there's so many variables. We, we tend to just take the information we have, build it into our business plan, and then look out from there. That, that's kind of how we approach that.
Thank you. More on sort of the retail side of the business, you'd highlighted a pullback, kind of a normalization of demand. How are you kind of managing your capacity to plan for, you know, a pullback in the end, in the next couple of years, but at the same time, trying to plan for growth longer term?
Just when you say retail, are you referring to Residential Lumber?
Yes.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Well, go ahead, Brian.
We have the capacity, and like I said, you know, we're looking at 2019 volumes, plus a little bit of growth on top of that. Yeah, the managing of the capacity we've got, we're positioned to adjust and respond to increased demand levels however we need to. It's. Yeah.
Sometimes it's a question of adding a second shift or not, or adding a weekend shift, right? That's how we'll scale it back if you want.
Thank you very much.
Good. A lot of questions are queuing up here, maybe we'll take a few that have come from online, and then we can come back to the floor in a minute. This next question, within, will be for actually Ian and Patrick. It's, you know, and I'll read it out. It's, you know, what are your utility pole and railway tie inventory levels at our current customers or clients, and how does that inventory look like relatively to inventory levels in the past decade? Maybe, you know, we'll start, Patrick, I guess.
Sure.
The question is like, do our customers hold a lot of inventory, and what does that look like? How does it impact our business?
The maintenance demand for railway ties has been consistent over that 10-year period. We do see an ebb and flow. In some years it grows, in some years it shrinks. I would say they are pretty consistent, and each of the Class Is is continuing to maintain a similar program. I do anticipate that in 2023, we'll see several of those programs grow in some way.
Yeah. Patrick, I think the question is referring a bit more to the inventory. Do you have visibility on, like, let's say?
That they're maintaining?
How much are they maintaining of railway tie in their network?
It's very different from Class I to Class I. some Class Is are want to maintain 1 million ties, others maintain 200,000. It's really Class I specific, but I would suggest that their strategy hasn't changed in what they're maintaining.
Got it. Perfect. On pole side, Ian?
Yeah, on the pole side, you know, I'd say that a lot of our large customers rely on us to keep their inventory. You know, we talked about how large our finished goods network is, and you saw through some of the, you know, the videos of how much material we carry on a day-to-day basis. They rely on us to do that stocking for them. You know, they've got limited storage space at their yards, and in some cases, you know, we've got customers that are really taking material, and they're putting it in the ground the same day. It depends on the project, it depends on the size of the utility, depends on a variety of factors. I'd say certainly inventory levels at the customer level have not grown, that's for sure.
Maybe I'll add to that. If you remember in Ian's presentation on the map of North America, you had all our plants with green dots, and you had the distribution network with bronze or golden dots. Those are the sites that hold the finished goods to have it closer to the customer. That's why they sort of rely on us for the inventory. I believe on the video outside, we have a shoot, an overhead view of our finished good yard in California.
Correct.
Right? I think that yard holds 12, 15,000 poles or more?
Oh, no, much greater than that. You know, we're talking 40,000, 50,000.
Oh, there you go. That's how much I know.
That's the inventory level.
Right. That gives you an idea of what those yards look like and the magnitude of what they represent. Our customers really view us as, like, "You guys have got this, and we rely on you." We're great. Thank you, guys. Benoit?
Question is around the infrastructure plan. Part of your 2022-2024 strategic plan, there was no big assumption with respect to tailwind that would come from the infrastructure spending. You've been talking about $1.2 billion to come, talking at the engineering and construction firm, we haven't seen yet a lot of fund flow coming from that infrastructure plan. I'm just wondering, what kind of assumptions are you building right now as part of your 2025 objective? Assuming we see more fund flow, could we see a boost to the $3.6 billion revenue target that you're looking at?
Right. Well, thank you, Benoit. That's a great question. It has multiple aspects, right? Simple answer from a financial projection, we haven't included any impacts of infrastructure tailwinds, if you want. What I'd like to do is take your question and maybe go to Ian and Patrick and ask them how they're seeing in their respective businesses. Are they seeing this money flow through? What are their thoughts? You know, give your honest impression, 'cause it's sometimes hard to decipher. Maybe we'll start with Ian on that one.
Sure. Well, that's, you know, anytime that government announces large spending initiatives, it's challenging to track where that money is going, when it's gonna surface, you know. You know, I guess when I look at the dollars they're talking about and what we've seen, I would, I would categorize that we're at the tip of the iceberg. You know, I guess, what does that really mean? How do you know, how do you build that into your business model and say, Well, when is, you know, when are these projects gonna get released, is there gonna be...
you know, what we sort of hope is that, and believe is that there will be the rate of, in which the money will get spent and get built out, will be controlled by a number of levers. You're gonna have limitations on people, it, you know, like services and equipment. I think it may get queued up, and we may see more things come into the queue, but there ultimately, if you look at the dollars that we're talking about, it all can't happen at once. It's physically impossible, right? How you, how you actually model that is really challenging. you know, we're just really starting to feel and see the change now.
Great. Thank you. Patrick?
It's a similar situation in the tie side. We're at the tip of the iceberg. We're just starting to see additional quotes come in from those commercial and industrial customers. Most of them are related to the CRISI Grant program. It's hard to say what that's gonna look like by the end of this year, but we certainly see it picking up now, and I would expect that to continue through the third and fourth quarter of this year. We'll have a better idea what that looks like.
Patrick, that would really hit more the commercial side, more than the Class I business, right?
Right.
That touches a bit to my comment on the five-year plan. You know, we're planning what we know, but as Patrick and Ian expressed, it's difficult to speculate and not knowing. I mean, if we put it in our forecast, we'd have a list of caveats, and then I think you'd be having a hard time trying to figure out what we're trying to convey this morning.
Okay.
We kept it simple, and we'll leave it up to you.
Okay
... to put in an extra layer of upside if you feel like it.
That's great, Tyler. Thank you very much. Second question is on M&A.
Yeah.
You've been very vocal in the past that there was still about $200 million of potential acquired revenues to be done in your core market with respect to woods. Now, it seems that you're opening the door for complementary products outside of wood that could be complementary to better serve your customer for utility and railroads. I would be curious if you define what could be the size of the market that you're looking at right now in terms of-
Right
... potential pool of M&A candidates inside that complementary products.
Right. Thank you. Maybe three aspects there. I'll go back to our growth CapEx. We're building it 'cause in certain cases, we can't buy it, and in certain regions, it's not available. We need to make sure that we create that capacity. Secondly, on the wood treating business for poles and ties, I still believe there's another $200 million in annual sales that we could acquire over time. Last but not least, on those other products, it is a very large universe, Benoit, and we need to be very careful as we select, and I mentioned those criteria in my presentation. You know, I mean, the size of that universe would be in tens of billions of dollars, and obviously, that's not our sites, obviously.
You know, we'll be going through it in a very disciplined manner and making sure that we acquire, as through my criterias, you know, accretive to the business, seasoned management team to support that decision and we'll navigate this very carefully. I'll jump quickly back online. We've got a question for utility poles, so it'll be for Ian, and I'll read it out. What percentage of our current utility pole sales are towards renewables, that would mean specifically wind farms and solar grid deployment, and what percentage do you reasonably think will this represent in 5 years? Ian, wanna take a shot at that?
I'll take a shot at it. I would say, you know, as a percentage today, it's very low. You know, when you look at the volume of business that we do across the continent and where we're, you know, our poles are going today, you know, it'll be low single digits as a percentage of our sales for green energy projects. I guess the, you know, as, does that percentage grow? Potentially. I guess it depends on how our, how we grow overall in our portfolio. It's a bit of a tricky one because if we, if our, you know, our growth, it may be static as a percentage, but it'll still grow organically regardless.
You know, I think that it's a, you know, it complements our sales profile and our forecast. I, you know, I think that with, when I look at some of the other growth drivers in our sector, there's gonna be, you know, much greater sales as a % coming from some of the other legs.
Great. Thank you for that. We do have a question here on infrastructure and the impact on our business. I believe we've addressed that one. I've got another question here is: What do you think your full cycle of organic volume growth in utility poles and ties are? I guess I'll be referring back to our 3-year guidance. I guess the question is more on the volume perspective, and maybe Silvana, you know, when we sort of laid out that plan, maybe by product category, how do you, how do we... What are the assumptions behind there?
For the volume growth in utility poles, like I mentioned in the presentation, with the current program that we have in place, we would expect our utility pole capacity to increase by 20%. That, as I mentioned, most of that will be online and start contributing to sales by 2024. That would, and as I answered the previous question, no other volume growth is anticipated in 2025 other than just some operational efficiencies. In the case of, is there also the question on railway ties?
Yes, both. Yeah. Yeah.
On the question of railway ties, this year, we are seeing, you know, pricing increases, as you saw in the first quarter, impacting. You know, when we lap year-over-year, that increase is still expected to be a factor in 2023. Our volumes, as you saw in the first quarter, were down in railway ties, and that is really just a function of availability. As Patrick explained, we had very low untreated tie inventory last year, that translates into less treated tie this year, given the time that we need to rebuild that inventory and get the treated product.
going forward, in 2024 and 2025, the assumptions is that in the low single-digit growth, that we would have a combination there of both volume and pricing growth.
Super. Thank you.... You're up?
Yeah. Hi, Éric. Michael Block, ATB Capital Markets. I have a question on procurement, especially for the utility poles. Are you worried about, you know, with the growth, obtaining these tall, straight trees? I mean, you have to reach further and further every year and increase your logging activity, your procurement activity. Can you expect the logs and lumber segment sales to radically increase because it's just, you have to reach further and further and harvest more tracks to be able to obtain these perfect poles?
Yeah, it's a good question. It's really two aspects there, right? Do you have enough supply to sustain our aspirations to support the demand from our customers? Does that, by default, create more logs in lumber sales, right?
Yeah.
Ian.
So-
answer that?
interesting question. You know, when we look at, you know, the resource, there's a lot of trees that don't get converted into poles that could. They are either going into the sawmill or they're going into export offshore markets. You know, really, it's a function of where those other markets are going and our, I guess, our ability or our desire to pay what it takes to get the fiber. You know, in today's current market, you know, we're seeing more and more volume come available, as, you know, those that are harvesting are saying, you know, "What's the best return on the logs?" If you will.
In other jurisdictions, you know, we're taking steps to put in capital and infrastructure to be able to access fiber and wood baskets that we've never been in before. We're sort of taking it, we look at it as a two-pronged approach. You know, where can we go to get into resource areas we haven't had a presence? When we look at the existing resource, what's available and what do we need to do to make sure we get the wood to meet our demand? You know, our team is very skilled in evaluating that and understanding how to achieve that. Certainly, currently, today, if I was...
You asked me, says, "You know, how do you feel?" I'd say, "I feel very bullish that, you know, our team will navigate that, and then we'll make sure we get the wood to meet the demand.
Thanks.
Thank you. Thank you, Mike. One question here about pricing power. It's always a delicate term when we disclose public use of information, but what pricing power do you have left with utility poles and railway ties? Maybe we can answer that with the dynamics and discussions we have on an ongoing basis with our customers. Maybe Patrick, and you referred to that in your presentation also.
You know, We have a contract with each of the Class Is, which is 65% of the business. Each of those contracts has an expiration date that goes from now through 3-4 years from now. It's limited. I mean, when those contracts expire, and we move into the next cycle with those Class Is, we'll have those discussions and those negotiations, about what the price needs to be. Each one of those will have a different outcome.
Great. Thank you.
On the utility pole side, when we look at the demand and the growth drivers that are in place, we're feeling very confident in our current pricing strategy. Certainly if demand continues to run at a robust pace, then it would stand to reason that there's further pricing power available. We always try to look at that from a number of different aspects as we build our forecast.
Great, thank you. I'll just get a question here, and we have plenty of time, so no one-- don't worry, we will get to everybody's questions. A question with regards to the velocity of the share buyback, you know, using that capital, I guess, if I'm reading the question, versus deleveraging or, you know, going, doing some more M&A with the consideration of interest rates going up and potentially, you know, shifting the accretion argument towards one of these the deployment options. I've got some thoughts there, but Silvana, you want to give it the.
For sure.
Give an answer?
I mean, I think, well, our capital allocation, I think strategy is quite clear. Like we mentioned, we, you know, we always prioritize reinvesting in the business-
Yeah.
Always very mindful, of wanting to, as I mentioned, you know, return, capital through dividends to our shareholders. Given that, you know, the remaining sort of cash, generation that's left, that's where we find a balance, you know, if we have growth opportunities and, with share repurchases, always keeping in mind, you know, that we want to maintain that leverage between 2 and 2.5. Deleveraging below that, you know, is not part of our policy. We do, you know, do expect to maintain the leverage between 2 and 2.5.
You know, very confident with the cash generation and the M&A, you know, sort of pipeline that we have, that, you know, that we could return that CAD 500 million that we've committed over the next 3 years.
Right. We do have a large part of our debt, which is fixed, so we're quite fortunate in these, you know, in these days with higher, you know, spot market interest rates being high. We're shielded a bit, against, I guess, a larger negative impact of interest rates or interest expense. When I think about when we deploy capital, that's not holding us back or in my mind, not holding me back to think about share buybacks. I do believe we have a commitment there, as Silvana said, to return CAD 500 million over the next three years to our shareholders. I'd like to argue that our share price is still cheap.
Look at the multiple, I think we can, you know, there's some more headroom there for us to grow. We definitely think it's still an attractive price for us to keep buying back shares. Sorry, Mike, we'll get... you'll be next, Mike. Thanks.
Brian Madden from First Avenue Investment Counsel. You shared a lot of information in utility poles and railway ties about the demand growth drivers for the industry. I was hoping you might be able to speak to your market share in those two end markets and trends in that market share, and what are some of the levers that you can use to gain share, whether that's price or service levels or product innovation?
Right. Thank you. We don't disclose any type of market shares in our public disclosure. No, that's something that we sort of stay away from, purposefully, actually. It's, it helps us in our strategies, if you want, when we do M&A and so on. I guess we won't go there on that part of the question. You know, but in, on each of those product categories, and maybe we are hitting a bit of the growth drivers, I guess, for each of the divisions, I guess, in the second part of your question, right? Maybe we can turn to our experts here, and let's start with Brian.
You've been quiet here, and maybe just cover a few of the market drivers, what you're seeing with our current footprint of customers. You know, maybe give a bit of a flavor. We're having a good start to the season now.
Yeah, we've. You know, we're just midway through the season, but we're seeing good, our customers are seeing good comps over last year. You know, we're in a unique position because we're strategically situated across the country, where our speed to market is best in class. We're absolutely there to support the growth and quick response times. You know, if customers are apprehensive to take on too much inventory when they are ready to buy, and they need product, we're able to respond to that. It's. We've got so much experience and so much market knowledge that we can absolutely respond to anything that, pretty much anything that's thrown at us.
Okay. Patrick, any thoughts?
In the railway tie group, we obviously have all the contracts in place that we have in place. We think that we are outperforming our competitor by providing additional services. Class Is will come to us and ask for additional volumes, and we try to backfill and help those customers out when they ask for those ties. To grow that business, I think what we have to do is be the best tie supplier in the industry, and I think that we're performing in that capacity.
Great. Ian?
Yeah, I think as we've spoken, you know, there's plenty of opportunity in our sector. You know, part of that is as quickly as we can bring additional production and capacity online, we anticipate to consume it. You know, what we're going to do is we're gonna, first of all, support all our loyal customers. If their needs and their demands are moving up, we're gonna make sure we take care of them. Then from there, we'll allocate the rest of that inventory and that to what we'd call other customers that are interested in long-term strategic relationships. Because there is, there's definitely people out there that are saying: How do we get to join the Stella-Jones supply team?
You know, we'll be selective and strategic, as the additional opportunities come available, but there's certainly more demand out there today than the current industry can meet.
Did we answer your question?
Pretty well, yeah.
Okay.
Thanks.
Great. Mike, sorry, you've been patient.
Thanks. A couple questions about the residential lumber business. First off, in Canada, you do a lot more than provide simply treated wood to your largest customer in Canada. Are there other ways you can continue to grow and build on what you already do, but getting more involved with them, would be the first part of the question? Maybe I'll let you answer that first, I guess.
Great. Well, yeah, I mean, we've, you know, we're looking at other product opportunities. You know, there's innovation. Like I mentioned, we've renovated our accessories product offering. The composite decking lines are. I mean, there's a vast variety of product that's available. Staying ahead of trends, I mean, we look at, we work together with our customers to see what the opportunities are out there. What's the next customer trend? What's, you know, that 24-month, 60-month, what's gonna be next? Yeah, we, you know, there's a few things that we're playing around with as far as product SKU assortment. Yeah, there's been, there's good opportunity.
Okay.
That's within the same segment. I don't know if you were thinking about, you know, would we go into I-joists or, like, different types of product. Was that your question, or more how we evolve our current category if, with our main customers?
More just having them, lean on you for even more support, because you already do in many ways right now, in terms of the, you know, the delivery service you provide in some cases, the, all the different SKUs you handle...
Right.
which are outside of products that you actually manufacture.
Yeah. To that point, I mean, some of our customers always have their hand out for more services and more support, right, on logistics and things of the like.
Absolutely, because, I mean, we've got the network to be able to come up with these solutions to potential problems. We work together. Again, we've known these customers for a long, long time, and we share, we communicate, and it's important for us. We wanna work together with the customer that appreciates what Stella-Jones does from a service perspective and a quality supply perspective. You know, we don't go after everybody, but we work very hard and very closely with the people that we do.
In all cases, it's not off of our margins. They're willing to compensate us for it, right? They're saying, 'You guys are good at this, so why don't you take this on for us?'
Yeah.
The second one is in regards to the U.S. residential lumber business. I guess the question is, you know, how do you think about that business strategically? You don't have the same kind of footprint in the U.S. that you have in Canada. Are there opportunities to grow that business? Is it a business that you see as being core to Stella-Jones when you look out kind of longer term? What are some of the thinking around the?
... thinking around that business going forward.
Right. I'll give part of that answer, and, Ian, you can, you can chime in, right? I think the part of the residential business that we have in the Pacific Northwest is a bit unique in the U.S. market. We do manage to generate a good level of business with a good margin. We're leveraging our existing footprint, which, when we acquired it, had a residential lumber capacity, if you want. We don't have that anywhere else in our network in the U.S. The only way to get into that market, if we ever wanted to, would be to either to acquire something or add new capacity, which would probably start a bit of a pricing war with other suppliers.
I also tend to think that the balance of the U.S. market is a bit more of a building materials margin profile, if you want, which I'll say is not the case for Stella-Jones right now. We know, we're always thinking in terms of return for our business. It wouldn't necessarily be a next strategic move on my list of things to do, but maybe, Ian, you wanna maybe chime in on the strategy of why we have the Pacific Northwest in our portfolio?
Yeah, you know, thanks, Éric. You know, we have looked at some other opportunities over the last 15 years that would sort of fit closer to our current model. You know, through that evaluation, it just didn't quite make sense to us. We had a lot of other things going on. You know, when we look beyond our local sort of Pacific Northwest, you get into really the Southern Yellow Pine treated business, and that's very different. It traditionally functions on very low margins, high turn, you know, so it's not a model that when we sort of look at, is it really accretive? Does it really complement our business?
We say, "No, there's better places to deploy capital and get us the return we're looking for." That's kind of how we've looked at it.
Great.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Mike. Benamar?
Yeah. On the residential lumber side, we've seen a transaction with Lowe's, the sale of Lowe's. I was just wondering how it changed the market dynamics and whether you see some opportunities out of that announcement for residential lumber.
Yeah, it was a topic of discussion yesterday amongst us. We were chatting, so, Brian, you got that answer already?
I mean, certainly the, you know, we haven't. Our stance is neutral on our volume expectation from that perspective. If opportunity presents itself, then, I mean, we're certainly well positioned to answer back on a supply perspective.
Yeah. We got the capacity to answer the demand, and, you know, as we mentioned, we had a good start to the season. It might only take later in the year when some of our customers disclose results and share a bit more of how they saw the market evolve. They usually talk about their market share, and we'll know more about how we benefited from it right now. Right now, you know, we know we've got the procurement capacity and the production capacity to address anything that comes our way, so I'm not worried. As Brian said, neutral on that. We're just looking forward, running our race, and we feel good about it.
Okay. My second question is on the penta supply in Canada. We were aware of that situation, but I'm surprised that we haven't seen any alternative approved so far. The penta supply will be good until October 2023. How do you mitigate the risks? I know you turn a plan with Copper Naphthenate, and how quick can you change the supply? I would be surprised that no decision to be done by October 2023 in light of the big round projects that we foresee in Canada.
That's a great question. You know, to be clear, as a company, we will be, and we've obviously, we have a deadline of October 3rd or 4th, 2023. We've adjusted our production and our supply network to be sure we have no more penta left in Canada, probably a couple of weeks before. You know, we'll be fine with regards to that. We'll have phased it out. You're completely correct in saying that there's no alternate product approved right now. There's some in the pipeline that we know, so we need to bridge the two situations. Right now, as Ian explained in his presentation, we're converting some plants to CCA. We're talking with customers and saying: Look, we're gonna go to CCA in this plant and try to adjust.
We still need to find a game plan for some of our plants in Western Canada. One thing is clear, is that there is a wood species, which is Douglas fir, that you need to treat with oil, and we're gonna lose that for a while. We're gonna have to work with our customers, think about species substitution. Again, a lot of Douglas fir is dedicated to transmission projects, so that is sort of being slow-walked or slowed down until we get that approval, which is not clear of the timing of that. Maybe, Ian, you wanna provide a bit more color? You and Kevin actually have been heading that project for us.
Yeah, it's been fun. You know, it's, you know, certainly with everything going on, that's just added to the, you know, the complexity of the landscape on how do we run our business. You know, hopefully, you know, the government agency that makes those approvals, are getting enough feedback from utilities and others to say, "You know, you've got to get an alternative approved in a timely manner." You know, we're still, hopeful, mindful that that could happen, and we'll position ourselves to react on that. You know, we work very closely with our suppliers to make sure that, you know, hopefully, the day that that decision takes place, we'll react.
You know, we've looked at the balance of our NEP and said, "Okay, how do we absorb this interruption?" To Éric's point, we've got contingency plans in place to pivot and to have wood going through alternate sort of facilities with alternate treatments while we wait. We're also, you know, as I mentioned in my presentation, you know, not only do we have, you know, one of the additional retorts coming online in Silver Springs that we're just in the throes of commissioning, but we then took the decision to add another retort into our Cameron, Wisconsin, facility. It really is about looking at how do we, how do we bolster our, you know, our current network, where we can absorb that production as best we can?
Mm-hmm.
That is our strategy.
Okay.
You know, we'll adjust and adapt as new information comes along.
Okay.
That's.
Okay
really where we sit today.
It looks like the U.S. government approved the DCOI, went forward with the DCOI, which is, seems to be very efficient. Is there a reason why the government authorities is pushing more toward the CCA or the DCOI is still being looked at?
Well, you know, I guess from our perspective, the government, I don't know that they're pushing CCA. More that, you know, the regulatory landscape in Canada is very different than the U.S. In the U.S., the EPA has a mandate to, once they receive an application, they're on the clock to make a decision. You have a fairly well-known and understood approval process and when they're going to review your application and approve it. We don't have that in Canada. The regulatory body is under no timelines whatsoever to deliver a decision. You know, the application's been in for a long time. They're assessing it. You know, they don't speak to us because we're not the registrant.
You know, they will only speak to, you know, the applicant, and so we're in communication on a regular basis to see how they're doing. Hopefully, you know, they're hearing everyone, and they're making this a priority.
Sure.
It is a government agency.
Okay.
Bernard, you know, in a nutshell, we're adjusting, and it's a testimony to Ian and his team to be able to adjust. The CCA we're talking about is just a temporary solution, because when DCOI is approved in Canada, I'm assuming it will, a lot of our customers will go like, "We want to go back to oil," and then we'll convert back. It's a lot of inefficiencies for us. We'll be very tight until that happens, because it's not the comfort level that we usually would prefer, but, you know, we've got a contingency plan to answer our customers' requirements.
Okay. Great call. Thanks.
Super. Wow, a question on ESG. I love it. We in our presentation, we mentioned about ESG ratings. Can you remind us the framework that SASB uses for its ESG reporting in reference to GRI as or SASB?
They kept it easy for me. We report on both the GRI Standards 2021, general standard disclosures as well as SASB, which is the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board's building product and furnishing standard 2018. Both is the answer.
Great. Thank you, Rhéa. Another question here for M&A. Are you more apt to pursuing complementary products? Well, Stephanie, the question just disappeared on me.
Wood products in your new.
Yeah, yeah.
-geography.
Are we looking for new geographies, essentially, was the question. I think, you know, our presence is North American. We're building our business with the relationships we have in with our customers or utilities, utility customers and rail customers. We have a strong distribution network in North America that we aim to leverage to keep growing our business. Right now, our focus remains in North America. There's plenty of things for us to do organically and on the M&A side. Yes, sir?
Hi, Aman Budhwani with Pender Fund. I just wanted to understand the step-up in demand for utility poles, if I can broadly classify into 3 kind of categories. It seems to be coming from the electrification of transport, and secondly, the growth of renewables, and maybe thirdly, the investment in 5G network. As you had projected your demand for the next 3 to 5 years, can you talk about sort of, by year, which of these 3 would be the biggest driver for, so let's say, 2024, do you see 1 of the 3 being the biggest driver, firstly? Over the entire 3 to 5-year period, which of these 3 do you think is the biggest source of that step-up in demand?
Ian?
You know, I think right now with what we're seeing is that, and it depends on which region, because, you know, big marketplace, big network. You know, we look at this, we run the business, you know, in a number of different ways. You know, in certain segments, I'd say broadband is, you know, is going to actually drive usage in certain markets, and in other markets, it's gonna be pole replacements. When we combine that all together, you know, I guess we don't typically, you know, track that in that granularity. I'd say that right now, from a pure volume perspective, it seems to me that 5G and pole replacements for maintenance are gonna be the lead. What we're seeing.
We know that, you know, EV and the pressure on upgrading the grid is coming. That'll leave, you know, how that sort of rolls out and how that translates into sales is, I'd say, still not super clear for us. You know, on the green energy, we just see that as being a nice building block year in, year out, going forward. You know, we know there's gonna be wind and solar projects that are in process, and as they get close to, you know, activating, they're gonna need poles to connect to the grid. You know, we just see that as just a more of an added pillar to the overall growth drivers for our business.
Just related to that, can you give us a sense on how much of the demand right now comes from telecom versus the electricity network?
I'm not sure I can do that justice and give you a %. You know, I mean, I'd say, you know, a high % is always, historically been on the pole replacement and upgrade, so I'd be remiss in giving you a %. You know, but I mean, certainly, the 5G is now significant. It's really noticeable, you know, so it's not something that you just it gets lost in the overall sales plan. You see these projects, some of the scope and scale of these projects are extremely large, and so now they're a multiyear project. Because they're so large, it's gonna take, you know, 3, 5 years to build out on a project. So that, you know, for us, is significant from what I call traditional, you know, sales opportunities.
That's, that's what we're seeing. You know, when we get into the, into the south, these, the 5G projects are popping up in different regions, and they have different size and scale as well. You know, that's something that, you know, is really new. Trying to understand, you know, how that sort of is gonna project out is difficult, but what we're hearing is that these projects are getting queued up. They're coming, and that people are asking and saying, "You know, can you handle the volume?" You know, what we've really tried to do is sort of manage their expectations and, you know, as long as the demand is reasonable at the pace, we'll be there to support you.
We're trying to get that build-up, 'cause they have some flexibility, too. You know, some of these projects, they have the ability to go quickly, or they can stretch it out a number of years, and it, and it really comes down to do they have the crews? Do they have the other products? We'll gauge the pace in which the build of the project. You know, we see that as, you know, it's gonna ebb and flow as depending on what's going on. You know, what we're doing is we're adding the infrastructure, and to be able to take on more of that at a faster pace is really our goal. You know, we wanna be able to support their build-out schedule as much as we can.
Great. Thank you. Just my last- Yes, sir. -question on this topic. In response to one of the earlier questions, I think, you mentioned that potential upside could be there because you're being somewhat conservative in the sense that you're not, adding on any growth from infrastructure or any other things that might happen. If you look out 3-5 years, where, in these three buckets or otherwise, where do you see the most potential for an upside surprise?
Definitely, I would say, you know, railway ties and utility poles, and as Patrick and Ian expressed it, you know, as we're seeing these grants being structured and pushed down to the different industries, I think, you know, those are the two product categories where we'll see the potential uplift.
Sorry, I meant, like, between, say, electrification and renewables or-
Oh.
5G.
Sorry.
If there's one thing we should keep an eye on for what might impact Stella-Jones.
That's very difficult to say, right? It depends how those grants are gonna get structured. We haven't seen those programs yet. And that's exactly why, you know, if we had certainty on the programs and the POs, and we would, you know, have it on our docket, it would be in our forecast, and we might be talking about a different kind of guidance. At this point, it's very difficult to read through, so instead of guessing a percentage, you know, we're a leading manufacturer in North America. We do believe that we'll benefit from that in some shape, way, or form, but to say exactly where that's gonna fall, it's very difficult, and it'll depend, you know, new administrations, will they want to accelerate it?
You know, there's some challenges with EV. A lot of networks are not in the situation to handle the extra load from the network. Will there be a push similar to broadband? You know, we're seeing that in certain regions, strong push on broadband. Will we see that in the coming years? We don't know. At this point, you and I are just speculating on things that can happen, but that's a bit of the challenge that Ian and his team, even Patrick, when I ask them to do a five-year plan, they go, like... I don't let them go, like, last year plus 5% or 2%, right?
I say, "Let's build it up and figure it out." We cover these questions, and they're very hard to answer.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Any more questions from the floor? We're done as well from online, so I guess this will conclude the Q&A session. I wanna thank the team. Thank you very much for doing this. Much appreciated, and thank you all for attending. Those of you traveling, please be safe, and look forward to our next meetings, may it be marketing or for other reasons. As well, there's a lunch served outside, so please, if you wanna stick around, be our guests. The team will be there as well at the different displays to keep chatting. I'll be around for the balance of the afternoon as well. Thanks again, everybody. Much appreciated, you making the time for us today.