Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Capital Markets Day 2024 of ANDRITZ. We are delighted to see so many of you here today with us in Leipzig and also online. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Susan Trast, Head of Group Communications and Marketing, and it's my pleasure to serve as your moderator today. Today, we are looking forward sharing our company strategy, the new financial targets, and the steps we are taking to shape the future of our industry. Joachim Schönbeck, President and CEO of ANDRITZ, will start the day with his group presentation, followed by four business area presentations and a financial presentation. There will be a Q&A after each business area presentation and the financial presentation.
We will conclude the day with concluding remarks from our CEO. And after that, there will be a final Q&A with the entire executive board on the stage. As we will be making forward-looking statements, please pay attention to the disclaimer. And now, without further ado, I would like to welcome Joachim Schönbeck to the stage.
Thank you, Susan, for the kind introduction. Good morning to everybody here in Leipzig and to everybody joining us online from hopefully around the world, but presumably mainly from Europe. A big thanks to all of you here in the room who took the hardship to travel to Leipzig, to the German outlands, with an even more painful journey as we have another strike of the Deutsche Bahn, yeah, which makes travel more difficult. But the people who come from the U.K. might remember that 40 years ago it was the same there, so maybe we go through the same cycle. Believe that some of you, it would be the first time here in Leipzig.
We do it here because we will, in the afternoon, visit the Porsche press shop in Halle, where you can see our presses working in an impressive manner. For everybody who has not been in Leipzig before, who might be the first time, it's not only a beautiful city, but it's the city where the German unification started on September 4, 1989. They made what they call the Monday demonstrations, and this led, at the end, to a peaceful unification of Germany. So I believe we are all living and enjoying the free world, owe to these people, starting that movement here, which was unreal when it happened 35 years ago, and which is even more unreal today when we look at the world around us.
So, thinking about that, I think we would like to start. We have collected the entire Executive Board here, not only Norbert and myself, who you usually see in the quarterly calls. We moved a bit into diversification, not on gender, but on nationality. We are five people, four different nationalities, bring at least some fresh perspectives. So starting with what we do, think it might be good to remove that because we refer so much to the industries we are working in, not to lose sight what we are doing. We do large-scale engineering business, medium, small, medium, and very large projects. We do it with our own technologies.
These are different in the various industries, but we deliver best available technologies, and then we are supporting our customers through the entire lifetime of that equipment with a cradle-to-grave services 24/7. More and more, what we deliver empowers our customers to make their green transition successfully. That's what we want to do, and this is basically what is about what we are going to tell you. We have, however, organized our business in four business areas, of which Pulp & Paper is the largest, representing almost 50% of the business volume, and the others, metals, hydropower, and Environment and Energy, floating around 20% each, depending a bit how the markets are in the various, in the various industries. We have the three business areas, Pulp & Paper, metals, and hydropower.
They are organized as what we call industry verticals, where we deliver basically the core technology for the production processes of our clients in these three industries. While in Environment and Energy, we have bundled certain technologies we have for environment, energy, but also chemical, mining, food, and beverage, where we have particular technology that is applicable in various industries. So there is a bit of a different setup, but we believe combining that type of business in one business area with a lot of overlapping customers is more customer-oriented, and we believe enables better growth. In all business areas, we will increase our service share. We are, at the moment, between 25% service share in metals up to 47% service in environment and industry.
That is for sure something we will need to look into. In all four business areas, we have a solid market position. We and also others consider ourselves as number one in pulp. We are in paper, we are number three with quite a big gap to our competitors. In all other areas, we enjoy good positions between one and two. Having a relevant market position is one of the key parameters we are looking into if we make a portfolio review, because if we do not have a relevant position on a global scale, then that is definitely questionable whether we want to stay in that business. A few words, you might have read the announcement, a few words to the new business area, Environment and Energy.
As I said, we have organized it, specific technologies available for multiple industries, with a clear focus on Environment and Energy. We have five divisions in this business area, the Separation Feed and Biofuel and pump divisions, and now, also moving in the Clean Air Technology, which includes the carbon capture technology, and the green hydrogen, which also includes the renewable fuel, activities and the Power-to-X projects. So in total, if you look to the financials, it is not too, not too big changes. So on the order intake, we moved EUR 200 million from Pulp & Paper and from metals. Pulp & Paper was the home of clean air solutions, and metals was the home of the green hydrogen.
On order revenue, as you probably are aware, the green hydrogen is just starting up, so basically no revenue had to be shifted over. So we believe the impact on these business areas, on the figure side is not too big. However, we believe that we will have quite a big impact on the market, and we have much better situation positions to grow these businesses, in particular, the green hydrogen and the carbon capture, and Dietmar will elaborate on that in more detail when he is on stage. Few words on the business model we are following. We are serving several industries with one conclusive business model. We do the engineering business combined with a life cycle service.
We, if we do large and complex projects for our customers, it requires a strong balance sheet, as the customers need to be aware that we will be around during the execution of the project, but also that we will be around until the end of lifetime of the equipment that we have delivered, because they can rely on our expertise and services to develop their assets further. We have, as a risk containment on our side, we are in different industry cycles, if we look to metals, Pulp & Paper, and hydropower, which constrains risk and also helps us in our adaptability to these, to these changes.
As we know, and this is, this is also built in, in what we do, we know there are cycles, we know there are years with huge projects, there will be years without huge projects, and we need to be, we need to adapt. Our organization is set up for that. Also, there is sometimes the fear when these, when these big orders are coming, we report huge order intakes, but, a lot of that is also extended workbench, because we do not have the full, the full value add in these large projects like we have, for example, in the service business. We also can take synergies. We have the Metris platform and our digital services, project management expertise for sure, but also regional expertise and proximity we can exchange between the business areas.
And you see, we have distributed our 30,000 people across the globe in 280 locations in over 80 countries, ensuring and giving confidence to our customers that wherever they want to move to with new projects to invest, that it will not be far to reach the next hundredth location. Our 30,000 people around the world, we have the largest country is Germany, 17%, and then we have a very nicely balanced distribution of our workforce, Austria, North America, South America, China. This gives us a good setup on the one side, to concentrate our know-how where we have it, but to be as close to the customers as possible and have the value add very close to the customer.
We have 46% white collar and 36% blue collar, and more than 33% are working in engineering, technology, or project management, so a very high-educated workforce. We are very proud that our solid manufacturing strategy really bears fruits. You can see that we have had a continuous increase in manufacturing hours in emerging markets, and we basically have no growth or a slight decrease in high-cost countries. That is very important, as I said, moving on the local for local, not to ship too many items around the world, but also to be sure that we are very cost competitive. So since 2022, we have more manufacturing hours in emerging markets. The trend is increasing, and this trend definitely will not be stopped.
I'm very, very happy to inform you that we have extremely good progress in our ESG program. In all three areas, we are moving ahead, and some of the 25 targets already have been achieved. We would highlight three, three of these goals. The one of the most important for us as a company, for sure, is that we want to increase the share of our revenue with sustainable products and solutions above 50%. We are currently at 45%. We will reach, or we want to reach, the 50% in 2025, and for sure, we will not stop there. And you see that our innovation pipeline is full of new ideas, and the large share of that is organized around this renewable and sustainable solutions and products.
To increase the share of the workforce of women is a particular area where we are focusing on. It is not easy to reach this 20% considering the amount of female engineering students we can see around the world, and considering that 36% of our workforce is blue collar, where also the ratio of female is much lower than average. But we have this target. I'm not 100% confident we will reach the 20% by 2025. On the governance side, as you also read in the papers, the control of the supply chain is becoming more and more important.
We are happy to report that we already have 82% of our suppliers audited, and we are confident to reach the 85% by end of next year. We have expanded our portfolio in all business areas through acquisitions, and we will continue to do so. We made 76 acquisitions since 2002, and since the last capital market day, the acquisitions I would like to highlight is the Dan-Web, our move into molded fiber technology, the SciTech Service, an R&D think tank accelerating our development for cellulosic textile fibers.
And then in 2022, we acquired the Sovema Group, a technology to manufacture batteries, and we are joining that competence together with Schuler's competence to deliver large and complex projects to the automotive industry, to set ourselves up to supply the gigafactories that are needed for the e-mobility worldwide. As I said, we had 76 acquisitions, successful acquisitions since 2002. We invested EUR 2.1 billion in total, with a total earnings of EUR 3.6 billion and a total value creation of EUR 8.4 billion. So we believe that is a, that's a good track record. We want to continue on that. Why are we particularly successful in the acquisitions? I can tell you, we have a few strategic cornerstones that we usually obey.
That is, we want to acquire complementary business in our areas, so business that fits on the value chain of our customers. We usually retain the management, because we do not have anybody in ANDRITZ who can run the business better than they can do, and we give them the resources we have, and the freedom we have in our management system that they can develop further. We usually do not acquire competitors, because that is a very bloody business, as one plus one usually is much less than two. Following that leads to successful acquisition, and we can promise you that we will keep track there. Looking to our markets, they are all growing, which is good.
You might not be too impressed by the numbers you see, but this is the, these are large markets, and there are particular niches in each markets which grow much more than this underlying market growth. And my colleagues will explain this in more detail to you later on, and we are well positioned to go into these niches. We have special opportunities, and we are prepared for that in Pulp & Paper. That's paper machines. I already mentioned to you that we are number three in the market share, and the gap to the two leading competitors there is quite large, so we will definitely close that. We move into molded fiber, moving into cellulosic textile fibers and also into textile recycling. All areas which will have a significant growth the next time.
Metals, e-mobility, battery business, silicon steel, lightweight vehicles are particular driving forces where we are well positioned. In hydropower, on top of the traditional business, which will increase as the demand is increasing, we are prepared for grid services like pumped storage, synchronous condensers, and hybrid solutions. In Environment and Energy, I already mentioned we have the green hydrogen, we have the carbon capture, the Power-to-X, and alternative proteins, which offer particular growth potential. So looking to our strategy, we have on a group level, we have a quite easy-to-comprehend strategy that's based on decarbonization, on digitalization, and on customer service. That should lead to the long-term profitable growth we see, and we want to grow revenue, profitability, and the service share. That's the target, and all the activities are directed to reach these ambitions.
In the decarbonization, we believe that we are a leader, and we should lead the industry in certain areas, as we have the knowledge, the resources, the teams, and also the customer access to make new technologies viable. We will develop these technologies, and we have to develop these technologies that they are economically viable. Because any of these technologies we use for decarbonization, if they need subsidies to prevail, then at the end, it will not be applicable around the world. Maybe rich countries can use it, but as what we see in a political discussion at the moment in Europe and in Germany, we see that even the rich countries do not like to spend that money. So our target is develop technologies and develop economically feasible technologies. Therefore, we need the innovation. We do a lot for that.
Almost EUR 140 million were spent last year on R&D, yielding 370 new patent applications in that year, with a total patent protection rights of 6,500, which is quite impressive. In 2018, we already started to enable what we call fast-track innovation through our venture program, because we could see and we envied the startups for their speed and agility, so we try to create something similar inside our organization. I would say, even though I personally was skeptical when we started that, we can call it overwhelmingly successful, if you see what came out of that. And you see these are the new technologies we commercialized from our in-house developments, and the majority of that was a result of this venture program.
I would say I'm really impressed and proud what our teams did. Without going through all of that, I think last year with the first order for alkaline green hydrogen electrolyzer was a huge market success. The carbon capture, we already have two plants in operation. We, on the textile recycling, we have more than 20 mechanical textile recycling centers already operating around the world. Chemical is under construction. On the battery side, we have lab and pilot lines in operation. We have gigafactories contracted for us last year, which is good. And the biomethanol, we have one plant in operation, I think now since four or five years. We have another big one under construction, and the SulfoLoop, we have two plants already in operation and another one under construction.
And what you see here under, on the lower part of this table, coming out of this CircleToZero, that's basically, these were the first innovations that came through our venture program. So digitalization, we started that journey quite early, I have to say. We started already with the first applications in 2007. We, we launched the Metris platform already in 2017, with a target to lead whatever we deliver to an autonomous operation. And you will see impressive testimonies of autonomous operation, especially in the presentation from, from Jarno, in Pulp & Paper.
The idea is to establish a vendor-neutral, middleware, digital platform, what we call Metris, that can talk and connect to all legacy automation system the customer might have and will have, so we don't lock them into a cage of being, being bound to only one supplier, and then do what they really need to do to optimize their asset, to optimize their processes, and enable their plant management. That is really successful. We already have more than 200 references with customers, and I think we still can keep it, that nobody who went into these OPP contracts have ever stopped using that because they are so powerful, yeah, and to optimize their own processes. All of that comes with the required cybersecurity, as cybersecurity for OT, so for operational assets, is a challenge.
We have, as we did not find a suitable solution, we have established a joint venture with experts on that, developing our software ourselves, and we see a very good success in that. Last but not least, our customer service. As I said, we are committed to provide service from cradle to grave for whatever we deliver, 24/7. Part service, repairs, modernization, you name it, operation and maintenance. We have more than 1,300 people in operation and maintenance at the plants of our customers. We are ensuring high product quality, high output, and high uptime through, I would say, very quick response times and through our cost-competitive solutions. Having said that, we can also see that on the volume side, we see a very nice growth of our service business throughout the last 10 years.
The service share of the business increased very nicely from 28% - 39%, and a compound annual growth rate is almost 10%. What is good for the customer that we bring a lot of service is also good for the company, and we believe also good for the investors. We have a very high service level and a very close customer proximity. This ensures stable and recurring revenues, and that definitely balances very well with the fluctuation of the large project business. And as the profitability in the service business is also higher than on the capital side, it also evens out the earnings and also the cash flow. So summarizing, if we do all that, we will see a bright future for ANDRITZ, and we believe that we can...
that we can increase the business volume of ANDRITZ above EUR 10 billion for the period ahead of us, 2024-2026. We want to increase the EBITDA margin above 9%. The net income would increase above 6%, and the M&A strategy will continue, and we will put a special focus this time on service and digitalization, because, as you learned, these are two main growth areas, and we want to achieve—we want to overachieve the ESG targets. Looking back to the last couple of years, we have reached the targets we had announced to you on the last Capital Markets Day, despite quite a challenging environment regarding COVID, the war, several supply chain restrictions. So we can proudly report that our teams got stronger through this crisis.
They are confident that they could manage that, and they are very confident, and we are confident that we can also deliver these new targets. Thank you very much. So thank you. Now I have to, I ask Jarno Nymark to the stage. Our new board member for Pulp & Paper, having taken this responsibility in October last year, but having served for ANDRITZ and in Pulp & Paper for 20 years, so he knows everything. He was part of the success of Pulp & Paper in the past, and will be even more successful in the future. Jarno, stage is yours.
Thank you. So welcome, everybody, also on my behalf, and thank you for coming here to Leipzig, and thank you for joining online. And thank you for the kind words, Joachim. I'm not the expert. I have a team, and we are the experts together. And I would like to start in presenting and getting us all on the same page, who we are and what we do within the Pulp & Paper business area. In the beginning of this year, we have reorganized our organization, so we have grouped ourselves into various four business area segments. We also have a common Pulp & Paper leadership team that covers the regions and also our global functions.
Really, the aim and target for us is to become more, even strengthen our customer focus, and really focus on the complete life cycle of our customers. If you look at the first segment, service, which is our largest segment with 40% of the revenues in 2022, we have a wide assortment. We serve all of the capital business segments and serve all the installed base available, starting from the spare parts, starting from the wear products, and especially these production consumables very much determine the end quality of our customers' products. And then doing the rebuilds, upgrades, modernizations, but then the field service and the full maintenance support as well, spending the 24/7 at our customer sites.
Then, if we go into our pulp and power business, which is a market of EUR 4 billion, and as mentioned by Joachim, we're extremely proud to be the number one in the pulp business both on the greenfield projects, but also on the brownfield projects. And this business area segment covers our complete chemical pulp technologies, and then also the biomass and waste- to- energy boilers. Then we have another capital segment, which is our paper and textile. This is also a EUR 4 billion market, and here we cover our board and tissue machine technologies, then also the various fiber preparations to these technologies, be it recycled fiber, be it virgin pulp, or be it mechanical pulp in this area.
And then we also have our nonwovens in the business in this, plus all the textiles. And I will show some example of on the nonwovens and the textile industry later. And then we have a business area segment for the automation and digitalization. In this area, we cover the traditional AE and I scope, automation, electrification, instrumentation, but then also building on our Metris platform, the smart products, the digitalized solutions with advanced process controls, with our simulations, with the digital twins. And we wanted to keep this as a separate focus area for us, as mentioned by Joachim as well, this is an area for us to further grow. And if we look where we are, we are 14,000 global experts, so I'm not the only expert, and I have more colleagues with me.
We are approximately 33% of us in emerging markets, and 67% in developed markets. Our largest base of employees is in EMEA, and this is where we have the majority of our product home technology centers are based in Europe. If you look at 5% of our employees are within the service business area segment, and here we are very widely spread, close to our customers, giving the support in the local language, the local dialects, even understanding the local culture. This together with the combination of our service centers that we have in each of the markets, and also our wear parts manufacturing, that we produce machine clothing, the roll service, refiner plates, screen baskets as well in this segment.
If we look at the right side, the share of the business in the last three years, where we have, if we focus on the service, we have a majority, over 60%, 60% is coming from what we call the mature markets in EMEA and North America, where there is an old, let's say, older installed base. But then also continuously growing in South America and China, Asia, where we have a younger installed base. So it takes a certain times before the installed base becomes and you start doing the bigger repairs, the rebuilds, et cetera. In the beginning, it's more the consumables, the spare part business that you have. And if we look at our capital side, we have been extremely successful the last years in South America, so...
China and Asia, especially on the pulp side, the Southern Hemisphere, we have been very strong. So this, of course, with the growing installed base, gives opportunities for us in the service as well. Then on the paper and textile, strong in Europe, but also in Asia and China, and this as well, giving the base for our future to grow in the service in these regions. Then if we continue with our sustainability products, or what I would like to also say, solutions, because we are quite a much a solution provider, not only a products supplier. The biggest impact that we can do within the Pulp & Paper is that we support our customers to reach their targets in their sustainability targets.
Sustainability is very much in the DNA of everything that we do in all of the R&D, in all of the innovations. We continuously focus on how can we make more from less. We want to reduce the water consumption, reduce the energy consumptions. We want to have higher yields with our technology. So this is something that we continuously develop in the technologies, and especially together with our customers, because this is where we can have the biggest impact. And just some highlights that we have in this area, the biomass, the multi-fuel boilers for green heat, and power.
We have looking at alternative fuels for our to energize the processes, looking at, for example, bark gasification for the lime kilns, wood dust burning, even lignin for the lime kiln, and the same alternative fuels on the paper and drying of the paper side. Then, as Joachim mentioned, we have the Circle to Zero, where we look at the side streams, and I will highlight this a little bit more later. And of course, we're looking at the side streams also becomes one of the main streams for our customers, an additional revenue. And then the cellulosic fibers and cellulosic man-made cellulosic fibers, and then also the cellulosic nonwovens as well. Textile recycling will be highlighted a bit.
But of course, all of this, that it's not only for the new mills, it's we can implement these also into existing brownfield mills. And this is then with the continuous support of our service and the automation and digitalization, we can improve the performance and increase energy and environmental efficiency. Because especially with the through the optimization and digitalization, the more smooth we have our customer run their process, the much less variations we have, and we can save on the chemicals, the waters, and so on.
Then, looking back, what has been promised before in the area of Pulp & Paper, I think we have delivered on our promises. On the financial side, we have reached the target that we have set at that time, being it revenue, profitability, and also the service growth. Then, we have made the CircleToZero into a business for us. We have several plants in operations, and we have several projects ongoing in this area as well. We're continuously developing on the tree to textile area. Of course, here we are strong with the mechanical textile recycling, but then continues on the chemical.
But also like to highlight that we have—we have, in this time also started up the largest dissolving pulp mill with continuous operation as well to support this initiative. And we are continuously pushing for the autonomous mill operations. We have projects ongoing where we are implementing these technologies. We have started up, for example, autonomous log yard, and this will be—I will show a short video from this. And then we have started up our rolls and shoe press facility in China. So I think that we have delivered on the promises that we have made, and this is for sure something that we will continue doing also in the future.
Then if we look at the market and frame conditions that we have in the Pulp & Paper area, I mean, we are benefiting from the global mega trends, be it urbanization, e-commerce, replacement of plastics, because all of these areas will give us additional growth opportunities as well. And if you look at the underlying midterm growth, we're looking at 2%-3% in each of the areas. But of course, there are regional differences where we see, for certain segments, that the growth, I mean, for us in service, it is global. We still have global opportunities. The pulp and power, very much related on the pulp with the Southern Hemisphere, with the eucalyptus plantation, pulp short fiber.
Then on the paper and textile, we have North and South America. North America is an extremely old installed base, but now it looks like there are activities, customers have announced and have done projects, and they also have announced a future installation, especially in the board area. Then also in South America, we have seen lately that our customers have, instead of shipping the pulp, but also generate more value with tissue and board production as well in South America. And digitalization, I mean, North and South America. South America, together with our new installation, North America with the silver tsunami and the know-how, I think they need to work on this.
In each of the areas, we have set up special growth opportunities where we see growth for the future. On the service side, definitely to cover the installed base that is being built and has just recently started up with long-term service agreement and making sure that we cover from the beginning to the end and support our customers. In the pulp and power area, with the decarbonization of the industry, and here also with waste boilers. Then on the paper and textile side, the textile recycling, man-made cellulosic fibers, dry molded, but also in the area of the machine as well as Joachim mentioned.
I mean, this is an area for us definitely on the tissue machine area, but then also on the board machine with the growth of packaging and the e-commerce. There are opportunities also in this area for machine conversions or then new high-grade board applications as well. Then on the automation and digitalization side, with our smart products, the control valves, and in general, with the complete autonomous operation that require the advanced process controls, the simulations, and in this. Then if we look at the market development, in the areas, in the end market areas that we are active, if we look at the paper demand, looking backwards in the mirror, it looks quite flat if you only look at the top of the curve.
But I think here is worth to mention that there has been continuous growth in the packaging, in the tissue area. The drop, in general, is coming from the decline of the graphic papers and printing and writing grades. Going forward, the statistics show that we have reached the bottom of this, and we will see also then a stable growth overall going forward. And then the same follows on the chemical pulping side. But here, of course, we see the growth going forward with the raw material we need for the board and tissue production.
Here we see both the growth in the kraft, in the bleached grade, the white grades for the hygiene, majorly for the hygiene papers, and then the unbleached for the packaging, but as well as the dissolving pulp, which is then required to produce the man-made cellulosic fibers, be it viscose, be it lyocell, going forward. So in all of the areas, there is growth where we are active in all the markets. Then if you look at the capital market shares and the competitive landscape that we have, as we mentioned, if you still remember from the one of the first slide, I mean, we are number one in pulp. We are two-three on the boilers, on the biomass boilers.
So if we look at the complete segment, Pulp & Paper, we have a market share of 31%, and here we are the number one, but it's a fragmented market, mainly coming from the boiler, the boiler side on this. Then on the paper and textile, we are a number three on the paper side, but then looking at the complete, I mean, on the fiber preparation and the textile, where we have a strong position, but here we have a market of 17%. And as Joachim also mentioned, this is an area for us to grow in this. Then if we go into the strategic directions, and of course, we want to continue with our profitable growth, and we want to support our customers in their sustainability targets.
We focus on our R&D, and we really offer the complete ANDRITZ life cycle over the complete mill, and from the beginning to the end. Some of the actions that we look at to grow, especially on the service side, grow the share of wallet with our key customers, and then also take a leading position in digitalizing and plant autonomy in our industries. So I would list these really, the two major topics for the growth are grow the service and grow in the area of digitalization and automation.
Of course, we need to stay competitive and defend, especially the position, the number one position we have in the pulp area, but also come up continuously with new solutions for our customers, like the CircleToZero and these type of solutions. And of course, then also to grow in the waste-to-energy area and maintain also the business that we have on the biomass boilers. Growth in the paper and textile area, here mentioned on the board and tissue machines, and then also expand offerings in that field, but also then work with the complete nonwovens and producing more sustainable products, for example, of the molded fibers, but also into wipes, into tissue applications as well.
And we will continue the complementary mergers and acquisition, and also, as mentioned here, for us, the focus to grow our service business, but then also the automation and digitalization. And of course, to all of the initiatives that we have set in each of the business area segments, you know, give a strong support and allow us to develop those technologies to create new businesses for us as well. As we want to grow profitably, of course, we need to make sure that we also keep our cost structure and cost under control. So of course, this is something, you know, relentlessly focused on operational excellence.
This is something that is continuously that we're working on, looking at our complete supply chain and, and the project execution, and also looking at the engineering and the location where we are doing certain engineering. And we want to keep a flexible cost structure, because as you all know, with there is some fluctuation in the Pulp & Paper, especially when we have these large, large orders. And I also see that with the new organization that we have in place one common Pulp & Paper management team, we also have the possibilities to optimize and, and become a bit more efficient with with our resources going forward. And also looking at that when we want to grow the share of the service and, and definitely improve that, the profitability when we have additional service.
Currently, we are in the range of 40%, 41% of the service. Of course, this is a share that we want to continuously grow. Then if we look on some of the growth initiatives that we have, and if you look at start with the textile recycling, and here we have an E.U. directive coming 2025, that textile waste cannot be-- it needs to be collected separately and cannot be sent to landfill. So we see an opportunity for here to create, create additional value from, from the recycled textiles. And so we have a full suite, full suite in this area, so be it mechanical recycled, be it then chemical textile recycling....
We'd like to mention here that in November last year, we just opened up together with our partner a complete sorting facility in France, where we can sort the textile, tear the textile, prepare it for the next stage. Does it go to spinning, or would it go into a nonwoven mat in the future? So we have the technologies available, and this is an area where we see potential for future growth. If we continue a bit on the nonwoven side, which was mentioned, the acquisition of Dan-Web, and this is a leading supplier in a wide range of technologies for the production of airlaid nonwovens.
These are products, like, baby, feminine, and adult care products, and biodegradable wipes. But of course, through this acquisition, it also gives us a fast-forward in getting into the market of dry molded pulp and packaging parts, so getting away from the single-use plastic, so entering into that business as well, with, for example, lids, coffee cup lids, et cetera, in that. Then, another highlight is our CircleToZero, with going towards zero emission and zero waste. And, as I have mentioned, here we have projects running. We have technologies running at our customers, plus we have also more in project execution.
Here, really, the idea for us is to reduce, so really reduce the consumption of water, energy, and chemicals. If we cannot reduce, I mean, then also reuse within the process itself. And then if we cannot reduce and reuse also then to refine and for new side streams, and these are also new revenues for our customers. And here we have products like SulfoLoop, which is sulfuric acid production within the mill, Kraftanol, so biomethanol purification, and lignin recovery. And these are products and technologies that can be implemented into existing mills. When we have looked at the installed base, there's approximately 100 mills that we see that could utilize these technologies, and there is a strong interest from our customer in this area.
We are continuously looking at developing also new processes in that fits to our CircleToZero program. Then a highlight on autonomous operation, and this is an autonomous log yard crane that has started up in northern part of Finland. The video is taking in still in September, so there's no snow yet in the videos, but it is in northern part of Finland. A crane itself has very many benefits that it causes zero CO2 emissions. It's running on electricity.
It has no reduced emissions and reduced noise pollution, because this is typically an area where you have mobile loaders emptying the trucks, emptying the trains, and feeding either to the storage or to the debarking drum itself. A lot of movements, and of course, with the crane, it's also a big safety improvement that we can control all of this. We are in the ramp-up phase of this project, but I would like to show you a short video of the movements and how the log yard looks like. So going forward and in the startup, so the autonomy, the AI, will empty the trains. We will empty the trucks, load automatically, and store on the log yard.
And with this also, you can get better transparency, transparency where certain logs are located in the log yard, so you can have a complete transparency all the way to the final pulp, from whose forest the wood has been cut, so that complete transparency on this. This is just one example of autonomy. We have a multiple areas, for example, in the recovery boiler, where we work with a lot of robots and the recovery boiler. Even if it's the heart of the pulp mill, it's one of the most dangerous places in the pulp mill. But here we are working a lot with robotics and autonomy, in order to increase the safety of those that operation. Then going to the financials. As, as...
Here you can see our order intake since 2018 to the last four quarters this year. You can see that we have fluctuations on the order intake, depends when we have booked these large greenfield projects. But if we look at the dark blue, we look at our service business. Here we have had a very stable growth, starting at EUR 911 million. Then in 2019, we had the acquisition of Xerium, that bumped up the order intake. But then in 2020, we have a drop due to the COVID, but then a quite quick rebound back, and then to the level of the last four quarters of EUR 1.6 billion.
And if you remember on the graph that I showed on the market, you could see that there was a slight drop in the demand in 2023, so we have seen this on the operational levels on, on the machines, and this has a direct impact on our ordering intake for our production, consumables, and wear products. And then you see the fluctuation from our capital business, and the last four quarters, we have not lost any greenfield project. There has not been decided any greenfield project in the last four quarters.
Looking at on the revenue, here we have had a good and steady growth from EUR 2.1 million in 2018 to a record of EUR 3.9 billion in the last four quarters, with an EBITDA of EUR 420 million and EBITDA percentage of 10.6%. Here we can see that in the last four quarters, 41% has come from our service business. Regional-wise, we are quite in the last four quarters evenly split between Europe, South America, and China, Asia, and then slightly smaller in North America.
But looking at the targets and ambitions that we have on the Pulp & Paper side, we want to continue the growth, we want to continue growing with above 5%, compound average growth rates, and we see our markets are growing. The additional green transition is giving further opportunities for us to grow. We see areas where we can grow also on the market share. And as we want to grow on the share of service business and automation digitalization, we have also increased our profitability targets to 11%-13% going forward. Looking back the last three years, we have, you know, from 11.4% - 10.6% in the last four quarters.
And then last slide to finalize a little bit on outlook and how we're gonna achieve these targets that we have set. I mean, we have a strong position and strong presence in all of the growing markets, and in also in all the growing segments that we are in. We have a large and stable profitable growing service business. This is an area where we continue to invest in. The investment in resources, investment in manufacturing, investment in service center capabilities. And I see also with the new organization that we have in place, that being more united and focusing on our customers, in our larger customer segments, we will be successful.
And we have the solutions, and together with our Metris applications and simulation topics, to further grow in the automation and digitalization area. And we have a proven track record in project execution, even in the times of volatility with COVID, et cetera. I think our references that we have speak for themselves. I think it's from the operational performance and the environmental performance of our references. And we will continue focus on the mergers and acquisitions. And I think that especially we can utilize, we can leverage the good global standing and the reach we have within ANDRITZ with when acquiring new companies. Thank you.
Thank you, Jarno, for the deep dive in the business area Pulp & Paper.
Thank you.
Now it's time for our first Q&A session. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is open for questions. I'm happy to see already the hands are raising, so, yeah, please raise your hand and we will hand you the microphone.
Thank you. It's Akash here from JPMorgan. I have two questions, please. The first one is on flexible cost structure. I think, when we look at the pulp order intake, it has been quite volatile, and you were talking about this flexible cost structure. Can you provide a bit more detail on what you really mean by that? Like, what are the options? Can you lay off people for the time being, or can you relocate their engineering hours, where you basically give them more holidays in one year than the other? Or maybe it's like you can send them to other segments where there is growth, they can be utilized there. So, the first one is on flexible cost structure.
The second one is on the trajectory of growth, because you see more than 5% growth on at a CAGR basis through 2026. But when we look at your book-to-bill, it's down this year quite a lot. And therefore, the question is: How do you see the trajectory of this 5% or more than 5% CAGR from here? Like, the revenues, do they need to go down first before they go up, or can they still go up? That's-
Thank you. Thank you for the question. And regarding related to the capacities, of course, now, as we are in one complete Pulp & Paper business area, and we have a complete team leadership team, of course, we are flexible with shifting capacities where we see areas where we have growth. And we're not only looking at shifting where we can utilize capacities within one business areas, you know, but we have the complete ANDRITZ, all the business area segments that where we can support each other. Because as Joachim mentioned, there are the cycles are at different times, and this is definitely something that we are currently already doing and utilizing.
Then also within the Pulp & Paper area, we have also a lot of engineering resources in India, where we can, for example, flexibly use in for other business and segments as well. Regarding the 5% growth target that we have set, yes, we have the volatility on the capital side, but we see that we still have the potential to grow in the other segments, areas of segments on the service, automation, digitalization. We cannot, of course, comment when is the next large greenfield project being booked. We don't... You know, that is our customers are making those decisions.
But there are projects that are being discussed, but cannot comment and know when they will be decided.
Before we take the next question, so I would like to inform our online participants that in order to enter the queue, the question queue, so please, press hashtag five. Thank you. Now we can take the next question from the audience.
Yes, thank you very much for taking my questions. Lars vom Cleff, Deutsche Bank. I mean, you showed the order intake, and it also follows what you just said. Understood, you don't know when the next greenfield project will be announced, but, would you say we've reached the trough when it comes to the order intake in Pulp & Paper, or could it be even lower or become lower from here?
The market is growing. We see the demand is there. There is growth on that. I would say that if we look at that history, there are two years that there has not in the past, I think it was 2016-2017, there was no big projects decided. Cannot say that have we reached the bottom or not, but we see that the market is growing.
Perfect. I, I see the CFO is already looking at me-
Yes.
So I'll stop asking order intake questions. Then the second one, when you also spoke about textile recycling and the business opportunities there, and completely understood. But I have the pleasure to cover Lenzing, for which the textile recycling business is still relatively small. Then there's Renewcell, with serious trouble when it comes to textile recycling. So when do you expect the business to finally lift off? Does it take until 2025 until we see the E.U. directive, or could it happen earlier?
I think that we have already seen it, and we see it on the mechanical textile recycling side, so the sorting and the mechanical. Of course, those customers that you announced, of course, they are in the chemical recycling process. And this is also an area where we are continuously working with two of our partners, but still are in the pilot scales. And when it will take off, I cannot, you know-
... I think this is a discussion maybe to have with our customers. So maybe to complement, the mechanical textile recycling is reality. We have, I would say, around 20 centers around the world equipped with our machines. They are doing mechanical recycling of clothes, and they produce new yarn from that. So that is done, and that is done on a surprisingly low cost level. In particular, if you compared to whatever is at the moment under development on the chemical side. So there is that reality, and I would say technology is ready for 2025. It's only 23 months away, so who has not planned what to do will not be ready by 2025. We know how Europe works.
Half a year before, everybody will say, "We need, we need more time," yeah? Then we will have a more transient time. But there is business, and there is solutions. I think that is the clear. And they're surprisingly good. We have opened a technology center in France in November, where we can do an automatic sorting of the textiles, and that is a precondition for everything, mechanical or chemical recycling. If you cannot sort automatically, if you- everything needs to be done by hands, it will never fly. And I think it's an, it's quite an impressive, it's quite an impressive installation. In three sorting steps, a textile is separated to 95%-98% into its individual yarns that are, that are included. So I would say we are on a good track.
That's one of the areas where we see, where we see growth. Yeah.
Okay, then let's take our next question from the online participants. Sven Weier, please. Go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon. I hope you can hear me.
Yes.
The first question, and, and thanks for taking my questions. The first question is on the, the group targets, where you're aiming for revenues of above EUR 10 billion, and I think in the financial part, you state that is before any major acquisitions. So does it mean that you also aim to get close to EUR 10 billion, organically? And, and the second question is, if I take the divisional guidances that you've kindly given and take the margin ranges, I would get to a group margin range of 9%-11%, if I take the, the low and the high end, but rather a midpoint of 10%. Maybe you can also comment on, on that calculation. Thank you.
Come to the stage.
So, I would relieve Jarno from commenting on the group targets. So we believe that we can reach the EUR 10 billion, and that is based, and the rough idea is that we have a growth of approximately 500 coming from the normal growth of the services. And then we have about EUR 1 billion we expect from these particular growth areas that I mentioned, like the electrolyzer, green hydrogen, carbon capture, batteries. So that would be, in a rough idea, how we believe it can be done.
Thank you, Joachim. Do we have more questions from the audience in Leipzig?
Hi, thanks for letting me on as well. Daniel Lion, Erste Group. I would like to follow up on the number crunching. Can you provide maybe a reference or a comparison of the revenue share that you expect by 2026, compared to 2022, 2024, 2023, in terms of capital business versus service business? What would you expect? What are the basic assumptions of the 5% CAGR then, by 2026? Will the share change of services massively, or do you expect it to remain more or less stable, so the market coming back by 2025?
Yeah. So, unfortunately, we will not see a significant increase in the share. Yeah, we are at the moment, I think, is it, in total 40? Yeah. The new technologies we are investing in, they basically come without service in the first years. We get an order intake, delivery time, we are talking 12-24 months. So then it's-
... in startup, and I would say a serious service business can be established after three or four years, yeah? So over that period, due to the much more new projects and new technologies, I would say the share will not increase, yeah, but in absolute numbers, it will increase. And in what we say the legacy business, the share will increase. Yes.
So this implies also to that we will see a cap a rebound in the market by 2025 or someone during 2025, right? Otherwise, this might get difficult.
Yeah. We see in all areas there is the need to invest, and we believe that we can take certain shares. We know there are cycles, and we cannot time it on a quarter, yeah?
Thanks.
Thank you. Then I think we will try to take the next caller from online audience. There is a person from Germany who has called in but not typed in his name. So the person online who recognizes him or herself from this description, so please go ahead with your question.
Many thanks for taking my question. It's Christoph Blieffert from BNP. I have a couple of questions on Pulp & Paper, please. With the rising service share, you have been able to generate an EBITDA margin of some 10%+ over the last couple of years. Could you please explain what brings the margin above 11% in the years to come?
The years to come, I think it's the increase in our service business, and we continue with our continuous developments on the operational side with our supply chain and also on the engineering side. I think this is the areas for us.
Okay. Can you please disclose your target of service shares for 2026?
It will grow from 41.
So 41+, yeah? Can you help me understanding the margin difference of new ex- on the new equipment side if we compare EUR 1 billion+ greenfield project versus a smaller order?
I see our CFO would like to-
Present this.
Like, uh-
Because this question comes all the time, we are well prepared to answer that, Mr. Blieffert. It's something around 10 as a margin difference. I explained this very often already, and you can assume for the future it is targeted to stay in that range, because as well as in services, also in capital, we want to try to improve the margins.
Okay. Can you give us some indication about the revenue base you have already generated with your textile business and what we can expect in 2026?
This on detailed figures on this, what we have generated, especially on the Laroche, on the mechanical textile, we need to come back. I don't have that on top of my head on this.
Okay. Okay, and as a last question, could you please help us understanding what amount or which percentage of price increases you have embedded into your 2026 guidance?
Price increases, I think.
For Pulp & Paper.
I mean, of course, we work on the cost structure that we have continuously and naturally, of course, always try to improve our margins through our costing and also through pricing.
Okay, thank you.
Before taking the next question from the audience, again, so I would like to remind online participants that remember to press hashtag five in order to enter the queue. And now the next question from the audience, if we have one. Yes, there.
Yeah, hi, it's Akash again. Thanks for the follow-up. So couple of questions. The first one is on pulp. You have gained market share in last 10 years, and that's driven by technology, where I think your technology was a bit more superior than your key competitor. The question I have is that, where do you stand on the technology? Like, is it still the gap versus number two in terms of the yield or whichever way to define the higher productivity, it's still there, or are they catching up? Because as you have ambition in paper, I'm sure they must be having similar ambition in pulp.
I cannot comment what our competitors are doing in this area between, but definitely I think that we have the technology answers, technology advantage. And I think that we have proven this with the operational references that's what we have and the achievements that we have. And of course, we continuously develop. I mean, we know that we're number one, and we will defend this position, and we will defend it also, you know, from developing further our technologies, you know. Achieving faster startup curves, that reducing the chemical assumption. This is for us, a normal day-to-day that we will continue developing our technologies to even become better and better.
And then, the follow-up I had was on the underlying midterm market growth that was on slide 10. So you show services will grow 2%-3%, and I guess everything is growing 2%-3%. So is this underlying volumes? And then, let's say, if there is continued inflation, then we should be adding on top, or this is in Euro terms, or?
It is the volumes.
Okay, thank you.
Then we still have time for one final question, and that question goes to Sven Weier. Please go ahead.
Thanks again for taking my follow-up question. And, that was again, regarding the, the group margin targets, which I asked previously, because if I do the calculation, I get to a group margin target of 9%-11% in the high and the low end. So that's the first one, if you can comment on that. And the second one is a Pulp & Paper question. I mean, if I understand you correctly, you're also targeting more the board machine markets. And, if that was true, I was just wondering where you see your edge. I mean, Valmet and Voith are extremely dominant in that market, and I was just wondering how you, how you intend to take share there. Thank you.
So I would have been surprised if your calculation is wrong, and you're absolutely right, and this is why we are giving our ambition and the target above 9%. And of course, this depends a bit also on the volume in which business area, and therefore, yeah, we can confirm what you have calculated.
And then on the board machine comments, yes, we know that we are number three in the market, but we see the opportunity also for us to tackle in that. And we have successfully already done machine conversions from printing and writing to packaging. We have supplied new machines in the area of MG paper, and of course, we will utilize the strength that we have. I mean, we will be selective in these projects where we go and where we can create the value. And I do see here as well, I mean, especially on the market share that we have gained and the project execution capabilities we have within our group is a strong value and asset for us also in this area.
Thank you.
Thank you for all the good questions. Now it's time to move on to our next presentation, and we will take a deep dive into hydropower. I'm pleased to invite Executive Board Member Frédéric Sauze to the stage.
Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Frédéric Sauze. I'm an Executive Board Member of ANDRITZ since end of March last year. I'm European, born in France, also holding a Mexican passport. I have a bit more than 30 years of experience in the power industry, and I've been joining ANDRITZ 10 years ago, where previously I was heading operation in Americas. I will take you through this exciting journey of hydropower, which is one of the oldest renewable energy in the world. As you can see here, we are officially in charge of supplying electromechanical for hydropower plants, and I will develop that a bit further. This journey has started decades ago, century ago, at the end of the 19th century.
So you could see—you could say it's an old technology, providing less opportunity for change, for innovation, but it comes back at the heart of what is today's decarbonization policies. ANDRITZ, with 470 GW installed worldwide, represent 1/3 of the total worldwide fleet. So it's an impressive background or different trademark, starting with Escher Wyss , General Electric and so on, during the history of the company. So we provide innovative solutions, as I mentioned, from very small hydropower to very to the largest power plants in the world. We have digital solution that I will develop, initiated mid-2010s, and we are very active in servicing our customers and some additional activities. So what do we do?
The Large Hydro segment is our largest segment, division, where we host our capital projects for greenfield, and I will develop that, but also for the very complex, large brownfield modernization. The Compact Hydro segment is serving power plants with capacity by units below 30 MW. It's quite small one. River flow with a lot of orientation to environmental protection, sustainability through oil-free solutions, fish-friendly solutions. This is how we deal with this segment. The service and rehab is very important, as it explained through our group strategy, and I will show that to you. In the other segment, this is a bolt-on segment coming from our technology. We master generator technology, so we use our technology from hydro to serve other industry segments, like the thermal application. So we sell turbogenerators mainly to open gas cycle suppliers.
This is how we are organized within hydro. In most of the segments, as you see here, we have either a number one or number two position oscillating with some of our peers, but this has been always a leadership position. Compact Hydro is a much more dissolved division with many competitors. Here, we have made the choice some years ago to prefer profit to volume, and this is where we are positioned in terms of size. Our employees are, for 1/2 of them, based in Europe, serving the EMEA markets, but also serving as competent centers, supporting our rest of operation worldwide. This is important because we have four-eyes principle of most our processes to mitigate risks, and this is going through our base employees in Europe.
You see from the revenue perspective, we have a pretty good share of representation of our employees worldwide, mainly through the service approach, but also through capital approach, to be as close as to our customers as possible, either at their headquarters, a lot of them are based in Asia or in Americas, but mostly also at their sites, construction sites. So what do we do physically? You have this schematic cut of typical reservoir with the powerhouse. So we are not active on civil engineering. We normally see and attend separated packages on the market, the civil construction being attended separately. Sometimes we join forces with civil construction companies. And we cover all the rest of the electro and mechanical equipment between the water intake up to the main substation.
We call that water to wire, and this is our strategy through turbines, as you can see on the left, gates to regulate the water intake in the powerhouse, generator, the blue circle at the bottom. You see a cut of a powerhouse where turbine generator are stacked and closed, and the electronic portion of the control of the power plants to be able to regulate the energy supply to the grid. So our project products and solutions are obviously sustainable. I explained it. The first power plant worldwide were delivered at the end of the nineteenth century, and since then, this is completely an emission-free environment. And in terms of sustainability, as I said, we work on avoiding contamination through oil, protecting nature through these fish-friendly solutions.
What is very important is hydro and the renewal of interest in hydro is actually the booster or the only green enabler for more wind and solar. So everybody's betting on wind and solar, rightly, but wind and solar, due to the intermittent power and energy it supplies to the grid, is not sustainable in such. It requires grid regulation to ensure grid stability. This can be done through oil and gas solutions, and this is one of the reasons why we see our turbogenerator business growing, because we sell a lot of open gas cycle solution, which are flexible to regulate the grids. However, this is contaminating. Hydro is, in terms of base power and storage power, the regulator, the natural green regulator, acting as a large battery.
So this is one of the most important driver of the renewed interest in the hydropower industry and what should drive our growth, profitable growth, in the short and medium run. So since the Paris Agreement, and recently renewed at the COP 28 in Dubai, there is clearly this commitment to triple renewable capacity by 2030. So this will mainly happen through wind and solar PV, but as I explained before, with a direct impact in hydro. We will also see the fact that hydropower as a renewable source, massive source of energy, will be an enabler as well of the strategies regarding green hydrogen. So the growth of the business, the base growth as we see it, as we plan for it, is quite limited. It's a continuous growth of project.
However, we see in special growth those new interest for pumped storage in the storage and availability of power environment, and for synchronous condensers, which are natural technological solutions to regulate grid stability. So the synchronous condensers are also a derivative of our generator technology, which is basically a generator producing reactive power, and therefore, we can offer that, and we have started to offer that in the past years. We will continue and attend the growth of this short, medium-term market. In Compact, we are seeing more and more complex, larger Compact projects. This will be our main area of interest as we can provide more efficient technology and better margin. Service will grow through digitalization, operation and maintenance automation. I will come back to that.
So the picture of the market over the last few years, we are seeing in gray a decline of the fossil energies to leave space, in blue, to the renewable energy. You all know that. This is a tremendous increase, mainly driven by wind and solar. We see that on the middle chart, where the investments have been significant over the last years. Although the hydro investment is low, this is an additional capacity because we have seen a downturn in traditional countries like Canada, like Brazil, with less new power plant. But this has opened the door for modernization, to extend life cycle up to 40 years, but also to change the operation, operating modes of the power plants, because those plants were used to be used on continuous basis, river flow or through dams.
They are now really served to regulate the grid and the systems, and therefore, there are more stop and start, so a different, completely different mode requiring different design of the components. In generation, hydro remains the largest renewable energy used, either on base power, mainly for these river flow operation, a lot of reserve power, as I explained, but in gigawatt hours, terawatt hours, this is much higher than even solar or wind. So what we are doing, we are cautiously planning the growth, as I explained, and those projects of pumped storage, some mega projects of synchronous condenser, some big projects in Asia or in Africa, are not planned in our figures. We try to cautiously, cautiously plan that because they are lumpy, so sometimes we win them, sometimes not, and we are dealing with them separately.
But what you can see on this left chart is a renewed growth over the last few years with a major number of those projects. We got one two years ago in Mexico, a large rehabilitation project, close to EUR 1 billion, just below EUR 1 billion. We got one this year in Asia, a project of around EUR 500 million. So there are a few of these projects, and we have a few in the pipeline. Obviously, we are striving at getting them in our order intake. In positioning on the market on the right side, ANDRITZ has been holding, as I said, a position between number one and number two. The average over the last few years shows a clear position number one. This is a combination of capital project and service activity. We are, from far, number one.
So what are our strategic directions to serve this market and to enable profitable growth? Greenfield first. So this was probably a dream a couple of years ago to talk about greenfield, but we are seeing, mainly through this pumped storage approach, a renewed interest, as I mentioned. This coupled with the development of Africa, where we are seeing more feasibility of the mega projects, the big known projects in Africa for base load power, we believe that this greenfield segment will start to grow again and to provide significant order intake. For that, we are looking at getting closer to our customers to share risks on the project.
In the typical contracting mode that you know from the market, where the projects are tendered and we win on fixed price, we win projects sometimes up to six years, eight years, and we face all the risks. We've mentioned in the introduction the risk of supply chain that, due to COVID and then to the political unrest worldwide, have really been struggling. All of those risks, I would say, or most of those risks, were with us as technology provider for raw material, for logistic, and, and so on. So this, our market, our customers are recognizing that, and rather than going through this typical, buyer and supplier relationship, they are looking through competitive approach to select and pre-select partners to co-develop the projects.
and to progress phases by phases through the engineering development, the supply chain, the installation, and share the risk and revalidate, revalidate the costs step by step. Which is an approach which eventually enable the timely delivery of the project on the market, which is important for them and obviously important for us. Pumped storage, I will develop it a little bit more, and as I said, conventional projects, a lot in Asia and some apparent growth in Africa. So regarding the, the split of projects, the conventional hydro project, big projects, still dominate through what I just said in Asia, Africa, but we are seeing this important growth on the right of pumped storage, representing roughly 25% of the future installed capacity, with a majority in Asia, China, India, but also, very importantly, in the rest of the world as we see projects running.
We have projects in our backlog, not only in the Americas, but also in Europe, where the interest, and more than the interest, the need is there. So you see on this map that worldwide we have a pretty balance of our offers between those conventional projects, the rehab modernization projects, the pumped storage, or the large Compact Hydro that I mentioned. So developing a little bit the need, the innovations, and the evolutions, this is quite a heavy slide, but, IEA is classifying countries' grid by phases. And the phases is the share of variable renewable energy on the grid. So you are seeing that this is no surprise. Most of the countries which a few years ago were in phases one and two, are now reaching phase three and above.
Phase three and above, that requires grid stability solutions to enable quality supply of energy. If not, you will have breakdowns of power substations. You'll have power cuts because of the intermittency provided mainly by wind and solar. So what are the solutions to those intermittent impact on the grid? They are the three of them in our portfolio in ANDRITZ Hydrop ower. The first one is pump storage. Pump storage, at the contrary of battery or complementary to battery, responds to medium-term storage, a medium-term response. You know, battery will be enabled to respond in terms of seconds, in terms of minutes, probably a few hours. Hydro is complementary. We start at a few hours, but we can provide energy for weeks, even months, depending on the storage capacity. So we will see in the last...
I jump to the last leg, which is this, those hybrid solution, a lot of combination, both on storage between battery and hydro pumped storage, at grid level, at development level of new infrastructure, but also, in the terms of operation, because we are combining in operation, ourselves or together with our customers, solar power, wind power, hydropower with pumped storage to provide this stable quality energy to the grid. So this is a clear trend in the market, and we are already—we have in our backlog project like that, I will show you a few, and we are planning to get more of those projects over the coming years. The synchronous condenser, I've explained before, I'll come back to the details, is obviously the other leg, important leg, to secure the stability of the grids.
So pumped storage, what are they? Basically, it's the same as a turbine, but the turbine work sometime in generating energy, sometime in pumping water to the upper reservoir of two reservoirs in order to have the storage. So this is regulation between either pumping or generating. Different modes, obviously watching the electricity prices, but more and more responding to some specific compensation from the market regarding those storage capacities. They are sometimes segregated between pumps and turbine, and we, we do offer those two solutions in our ANDRITZ portfolio. The synchronous condensers, I will not enter in too many details, but this is providing several needs in the grid. What is important with the retirement of all oil and carbon solutions with boilers, we are losing inertia from the grid.
The inertia was given by this kind of application, compared to wind and solar, which doesn't provide inertia. Our hydro synchronous condenser are bringing, in addition to other factors like voltage support or reactive power, bringing this inertia to the grid. So this is something which is required in the long run, that in an evolution with more wind and power, will require this technology, which is a transition technology, to support this inertia requirement of the grid. The short-circuit power is also a long-term need, because you can have failures in your substation, and you need to absorb suddenly an excess of voltage on the grid. And therefore, you need this kind of solution to absorb that and avoid grid disruptions.... So this is, in a nutshell, not a very efficient solution in such, but a necessary solution needed for grid stability.
We see that in some countries where the regulators are imposing to the big wind farm or solar farm to include in their substation synchronous condensers to provide this quality energy to the grid. So we have projects in Brazil, in the U.S., in Australia, because the regulators or the operator themselves recognizes these needs and invest in this kind of equipment. The hybrid, it's an example of one of our running projects, Kidston, in Australia. So it's a combination of a solar, sorry, yes, a solar PV farm that you see in the background of the picture, and a pumped storage in the front part. Pumped storage between two reservoirs. You pump up to the upper reservoir, you generate on the lower one, and this is like a closed cycle.
We have a number of these projects running worldwide, including in Europe, which is a tremendous change of the market over the last two years. You see in the graph, by the natural combination of both, you have solar power during the day. You don't need so much of wind or whatever you have as base wind, which is the green bottom line, and you only use hydro generation when you don't have that wind or solar available. The rest of the time, you pump hydro or generate, depending on those trade-offs and regulations. The second strategic leg is brownfield. As I said, this has been the reason of the survival of hydro with the downturn of mega capital projects over the last few years, mainly in Europe first, then in North America, Latin America.
Because of the reason I explained before, this modernization needs extension of lifetime and flexibility needed in different operating modes. We are seeing that the share in gray of brownfield projects, modernization projects, are continuously increasing. The power plants are aging, and the need for stop-and-start operation at lower load, high load is needed from our suppliers. All of these triggers these kind of big projects and profitable projects. The other leg of our strategy is our digitalization approach. We have two solutions running. One is what we call Metris Diomera. In this Metris approach that the group has developed, we started that more than seven years ago in development. So what is it? It's a strategy to enable better operation and maintenance of the power plants through digitalization.
So we have developed product by product, turbine, generator, gates, everything you saw on the pictures, solutions which enables remote control of those equipment, a little bit as the airplane engine suppliers are doing with their engines, on behalf of our customers. So we do that alone if we get such a contract, or we do that through the customer if he doesn't want to disclose some of the data, because obviously, as input, we need their operation data, and importantly, we couple that with our design data. So the mix provides a unique solution, which is much, much better than only the operation data, because we can move into predictive maintenance from the traditional preventative maintenance approach. So we are running that in a number of projects, and for the last few years now, we are making a two-digit million order intake per year.
This is coupled with maintenance programs. The other important leg, which is not new, it's all the automation part. So we regulate the use of a power plant. Most of our medium, small, medium-sized solutions are remotely operated, not in the power plants. And this is through control systems, protection systems, excitation system, all the electronics needed to operate the regulation of those power plants. And we have integrated, as we do in our ANDRITZ solutions on cyber protection, in-house solutions in all our equipment. And finally, the last leg, if it comes... Yeah, sorry. Last leg of our strategic axis is service. Probably hydro, compared to the other products and solution we're offering that you will see, you have seen in Pulp & Paper, you will see the rest of the day, is a bit less oriented...
No, not less oriented. We have less service opportunities. We have less wear parts and so on, but anyhow, we manage the typical service attention through spare parts, training, troubleshooting, diagnostic, and a significant portion of what we call system rehab. So when we modernize a power plant, this is a Large Hydro project, as I explained. When we only modernize one system, like a turbine, like an electronic system, we do that from a service perspective. It's quite short-term projects close to customers. And those are impressive increase. We will see that in the financial due our to our proximity to the market and to our customers. We also enjoy a nicely spread worldwide service network base of offices, service workshop, with a concept to be two to four hours away from our customers.
So, on reactive demand, we can intervene, and we can visit them and be close to them whenever they need. So this has been one of the secret of ANDRITZ being successful in service. So what does it mean in terms of financials? In order intake, the market downturn that I was referring to, you know, you see the market figures. We had exceptional 2000s, beginning of 2010s, and since 2014, we have seen a real downturn. This is changing back because we are seeing 2022 over the last four quarters, a rebound of projects, enabling us to come back to the previous volumes that we were seeing in the 2000s. Two important things here to mention when you look at the graph.
Obviously, in the downturn, to remain profitable, and we have, compared to our peers on the market, remained profitable, we had to do a lot of restructuring. We focused energy trying to preserve the technological knowledge of the company in engineering, in R&D, at site, all those critical competencies which are needed in our projects. And this has been the right choice, because those are quite limited resources worldwide. In terms of, The next message is the expectation from our customers. Obviously, they want us to run the projects on time, as I said, and everybody's saying, "Okay, fine, we have big plans." Canada has, Hydro-Québec has renovation plans of, tens of units over the coming 15 years. Same for other Canadian customers, like OPG. You go down to the U.S., there are more. Go to Brazil, come to Europe, go to Asia.
There are a lot of plans. All of this requires resources. So their concern is: How are you going to address this market growth with enough resources, taking into account that we need some customers, you need some, your peers need some, and your suppliers needs as well, in a context of quite significant retirement period and so on? So, as I said, this consciousness was developing and hit through the restructuring program several years ago. We maintained the base workforce, and we started, at that time, knowledge transfer programs through apprenticeship programs, through graduate programs, trying to attract more people to the industry. So we are in that journey, not only ourselves, the industry is in that journey, to be able to face and sustain those important growth that we are seeing in the market, and we believe we are ready.
So order intake, I have mentioned. This is the rebound is enabling us to refurbish, or replenish, sorry, the backlog. So we are seeing a backlog in excess of around two years of revenues, of sales, which is very good. You understand why in hydro, most our projects are long-term projects, so the time between order intake and revenue is phased out a little bit. So we are seeing a gradual transfer into revenue, and therefore, this is moving to a continuous growth that we will see in the objective slides. In terms of EBITDA, as I said, we managed to preserve positive EBITDA over the crisis years, the last six to eight years. However, we believe we can grow that.
We have launched, obviously, through restructuring a lot of improvement projects in our operation, cost optimization in our projects, in our labor force, and so on. We are looking now at putting in mitigating risks in the market, enabling better margin to come into our projects. So the combination of both of those actions, together with the renewed volume on the market, will drive our profitability up. The share of service is important, but as I mentioned, there is a fairly big size of capital kind of projects in this service activity when we look at system refurbishment. The spread, as you can see here, is well-balanced between the different worldwide macro regions. So we are not seeing one dominating regions like Asia, as it has been the case at one stage, or South America. It's well-balanced between the different continents.
Most of our activities are in Large Hydro, in service, as I mentioned. Compact Hydro, we made that choice to prefer profit than volume, but we are now able to gradually grow again through digitalization and environmentally friendly solutions. So this is the base of our targets, where in terms of backlog, we will secure this growth of around, well, around above 5% per year in the coming three years, and we will strive to increase that further. And in profitability, even if we are still suffering from older legacy projects, the new projects are coming with better margin, with stronger processes, as I mentioned, so we will reach this window of 7%-9% profitability. So in a nutshell, I hope you understood the message. Although being the oldest renewable energy source, hydro is in an innovation boom, in a development boom, so we are seeing big projects coming back. We are prepared to face those big projects. We are prepared through capacity adjustment to face them. We have the right digitalization and service approach to help our customers and team up with our customers wherever needed. So these are the good base for our profitable growth. Thank you.
...Thank you, Frédéric, for the deep dive into hydropower. Now we will open the floor again for questions. Before we start, I would like to remind the online audience again that follow the instructions on the screen, and remember to press hashtag five to enter the queue. Yeah, now let's get started with the questions. Do we have a question from the audience here?
Yeah. Hi, it's Akash here from JPMorgan, and I have two questions, please. The first one is on your market outlook. Like, again, when I look at that, it's low single digit you are talking about, despite you are sounding a bit more optimistic or bullish on greenfield. There's a growing momentum on pulp, pumped storage. And, I mean, if you look at other renewable technologies since passage of, or since Paris Accord, we have seen how the outlook for wind and solar has revised up, and again, there is some momentum in hydro as well. So the first question is about 2%-3% growth, that how do you come up with that low growth number? And then the second one is on margin.
If you look at your margins on last 12 months, and then you have 7%-9% target, can you tell us what are the drivers to get to 7%? How much of this is internal versus external? Thank you.
Mm-hmm. Very good. So on the growth itself, 2%-3% is by extrapolation, what we have seen from the market up to now. So that's how we have been planning cautiously, being cautious to make sure that those big projects in the market are coming. But as I said, in addition to those 2%-3% growth, we have those exceptional growth lines that we saw through synchronous condensers. You are talking of projects in EUR 10 million-EUR 99 million, or some grouping of synchronous condensers, which can go to the hundreds of millions. You have some additional pumped storage, where, in addition to what we naturally plan in our 2%-3%, we are striving to get more.
So this will enable us to get in order intake, more surely above the 2%-3% growth. In the profitability line, I think it's a balance between both the internal and the external impact. Internal, it's the obvious process improvement. We are looking at more digitalization. We are looking at more efficiency on our processes, the normal approach, but this has been significant in engineering and at site, mainly. Supply chain, we have, through the crisis, really developed macro-regional supply chain by localizing in China with Chinese standards, in India with Indian standard, in Brazil with Brazilian or South American standard, and obviously in Europe, the stable supply chain we had from the past. So we can respond, depending on customer needs, to different supply chain modes.
If a customer prefers a local supply chain, like in North America and Canada, we can do that, or Europe, yeah? If customer prefers price or cost, low cost, we can implement in our supply chains some low-cost countries supplying in combination with European or North American supply. So this has been a lot of improvement on the internal side to make sure that our costs are right, rightly calculated, and flexible enough to answer and maintain the profitability. The increase of volume from the market and this more cooperative approach between our customers and us in sharing risk is the external enabler, which will definitely enable us to come back to this 7%-9% profitability.
Do we have more questions? Yes, please.
Hi. Hello, Teresa Schinwald from Raiffeisen. Two questions. First, on hydro as a renewables technology. So PV and solar, they had this amazing learning curve and cost reduction versus hydropower, and hydro has been losing out on that. Do you see a potential to improve on that, on the learning curve and the standardization in the whole industry? That's the first one. And as a part-time utilities analyst, I find the synchronous condensers pretty exciting. I also know the regulators and the obstacles they might pose. So what's your timeline for a takeoff in the developed markets, like North America and the E.U., for this technology to really make a difference also in revenues? Thank you.
Okay. So, yeah, I'll start with the synchronous condenser. It has started. Our first project were one in Brazil, already a couple of years ago, in the middle of COVID, through a local regulation. Surprisingly, because, you know, Brazil is a heavy hydro-supplied market, but the growth of intermittent has been significant, and in specific area of the country, they need those over-energy absorption solution. So we have sold already a couple of project. We are in the third project execution there. The U.S. regulator already have included in their needs for big farms, so this is mainly offshore wind farms. They impose to the investor the quality supplied from the grid, so they have to put in their onshore substation, a synchronous condenser for the benefits I have explained there.
So we have a project running in the U.S. In Australia, we already—it's already our second project in the backlog. This is starting. The announced plan for Australia are big because, as you know, Australia is mainly a dominated intermittent power country with big plans of growth, and they, they have put that in their regulation. So the, our customers, who are the generation companies or the grid companies, are investing on that. So it has started. We are just planning now for the increase of volume based on market input. As you know, Europe has started somehow and have big plans in the key intermittent countries like Spain, like Germany, and so on.
So this is those are the markets we are attending with a unique solution, which is based on our salient pole technology, providing not only this reactive power, but all these things I've explained in inertia, in short-circuit contribution, and, and, and so on. So, just to remind me the first question, because I lost track.
It's about standardization in hydro.
Yeah. So, yeah. The more, in our electromechanical world, this is, let's say, a standard approach. I've mentioned the use of local standard in India, in China. We are always striving to make our cost as optimized as possible. So we are, let's say we are, we have been doing a lot. We can still do a lot. The further cost reductions will happen mainly in our supply chain, working closely to our suppliers and at site, which are those, let's say, more risk exposed area. Most of the difficulties you have mentioned on the standardization and the cost compared to solar and wind is coming for the development of big projects, either through reservoirs or sometimes on river flow. Obviously, there are country regulations enabling that to happen more easily.
We are obviously, through trade association, trying to explain that to the markets, to the different regulators. But what I'm recently hearing, and you were hearing that from Europe, which is a very strong market in that respect, with a lot of experience, but also with a lot of expectations and requirement, there is this push. We see it in Spain, we see it in France, we see it in the Nordics. So there's really this push for pumped storage and for potentially additional hydro capacity. So I think on the civil side, and on the permitting side, this is where we need to see some additional improvement, and we are obviously supporting our customers and our partners on that.
Okay, then we take one more question here from the audience before we go online.
Yes, thank you very much. Lars vom Cleff, Deutsche Bank. Two quick questions, if I may. You've shown us your, your envisaged growth by region or by continent, and I'm not sure you want to share the details with us, but at least it's worth a try. Would you be... Are there margin differences between the, the regions? Would a shift to more business in Asia with regards to the portfolio help be a headwind or a tailwind for your margin? And then the second one, you also showed that there's kind of a ratio order backlog to revenue of around 2x± .
Do you expect that to say, to stay the same, or shall we forecast rather a growing order book, given the current, client demand and the attractiveness of renewable energy and power, and then you work down the order backlog over the next couple of years? Thanks.
There are worldwide differences of key markets. I can develop an example for China. The Chinese market is highly competitive, difficult to access for non-Chinese companies like us in technology, but margins are extremely low. So we prefer in Asia to attend a non-Chinese project in order to get there. The answer to the rest of your question, what we see a pretty much equal market value. Our investors are, most of them, worldwide-oriented, so they know the prices and the costs in the different regions of the world. As I said, sometime they will impose or request some specificities in the supply chain, which can make cost varying a little bit, but in terms of margin, they are pretty much the same in most of the other projects.
We try, as a company, taking into account this increased level of demand, to be a bit more selective and prefer profitable projects. Yeah? So but anyhow, on the other projects, we work closely with the customers to try to derive through this cooperation agreement, early contractor involvement, some ideas how we can make the project profitable, mitigating our risk and enabling our margin, as I mentioned.
Okay, so, Sven Weier, if you are really quick, so we have time for your one question before we go to break. Please, Sven.
I try to be brief. Just on the growth outlook, I was just wondering if you could comment on the positive impact from the IRA in the U.S., and also talk a little bit about Africa... 'cause as we know, the greatest untapped hydropower potential is in Africa. Last years, it hasn't gone ahead because of political instability. Do you see that change? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. So IRA, this infrastructure act in North America, in the U.S., is mainly used by our customers to develop their projects. So a lot in innovative areas. Synchronous condenser can be one area for us, obviously, all these green hydrogen, environment, and so on, but also for innovative pumped storage solutions. So we are seeing a huge mobilization of our customers, most of them being government-owned, trying to use this IRA financing and support to develop their projects. That's how we are actively using it, and cooperative. So this is what I meant by saying in the U.S., in addition to Canada, for North America, growing significantly in the kind of projects I've mentioned before. For Africa, the projects in Africa are existing.
Political unrest and instability is obviously one threat, but we are seeing a lot of interest from the traditional utilities, combined with oil and gas utilities interested to, let's say, to diversify, teaming up with electricity utilities, really pushing through government relationship. So this is Europe, this is China, this is different government worldwide to develop those projects again. And here, we are well positioned on some of those projects with innovative technology. So this is where we can cautiously, but surely over the coming years, plan some mega projects growth.
Thank you for all the good questions. As mentioned, so now we will have our half-hour break. During the break, there will be some light lunch served in the foyer. The program will continue at 1:45 P.M., and I look forward to seeing you all back then.
Thank you.
I hope you all are feeling refreshed and ready to continue our journey through the dynamic world of ANDRITZ. We will start our afternoon session together with the Metals business area, and I'm happy to welcome Joachim back to the stage after the video.
So welcome back, everybody. I hope that everybody online had an as good lunch as we had. We managed to import Apfelstrudel to Leipzig, that you could at least get the feeling of Austrian, of an Austrian company. And, I see that it was apparently quite good because many people choose it. So going to the serious business and moving into metals, we have in metals, we have organized our business in two, what we call business area segments. The one we call Metals Processing, and the other we call Metals Forming. And, I already excused myself for maybe a disturbing language. The majority of Metals Forming is Schuler, and sometimes because I'm so familiar in my talks with the customers, sometimes I refer to Metals Forming as Schuler, which I should not.
So I will try to stay, but if I do, then you have to do the connection and the thinking accordingly. So that's, that's for that. What we are doing in the metals area, we have a complete value chain for the processing of cold-rolled strips from cold rolling, the processing of that cold-rolled strip through pickling, annealing, galvanizing, finishing, whatever, whatever you need, and we do that all for carbon steel, for stainless steel, and for aluminum. Then, once the strip is finished, it can be processed into something else. One of the main applications, for sure, is automotive industry, outer panel parts, inner body parts, white goods, and so on and so forth. The main technology that is then used is pressing, cold pressing of sheet metal.
That is the main part of the business in what we call the Metals Forming, representing about almost 40% of the entire business area metals. Then we have hot forming, that is basically forging, open-die forging, closed-die forging, that, and the associated heating and heat treatment equipment that stands for approximately 10%. And then we have the battery lines, our new hope for the future. Huge growth potential, which at the moment represents about 7% of our, of our sales. And then we have underlying, of course, the service business, where we provide all, all parts, all services from OEM parts, local support, repairs, upgrades, service agreement, on-site maintenance, and so on and so forth. In total, we have about 6,000 employees worldwide, and majority...
No, not majority, 50% of them are in Germany, and we are, we are striving to increase the internationalization of that, to move more, to move more of the of our employees closer to our customers. As you know, local for local is one of our main strategies... With the acquisition of our, of a Chinese press, manufacturer, press supplier, Yadon, we had nicely grown China now to above 20%, and also here, the tendency is definitely increasing. Then we are quite, quite well-balanced. We have, Brazil and, and U.S., almost 10% each. Quite, important, as Brazil basically serves as the manufacturing hub for North America, and with the investment, the significant investments which are going on now, in North America, it is quite important to really reinforce this axis.
We have, across the metals business, a strong demand and good development of our metal solutions, and that is for these asset optimization, process optimization, solutions that we already went into a bit in my first discussion, and also Jager elaborated on that for Pulp & Paper. We have a special application, what we call for process performance, is the visual die protection that ensures that the press is ready to go down. As you might imagine, if there is a part in such kind of press in between, especially if you talk about cold sheet forming, then the press is at least at risk, and the tool and the die is definitely damaged. So we have camera systems and very high-efficiency systems there.
Track and trace, we are now going the way that we can connect the properties of the workpiece from the steel history, but also the geometrical properties, with the physical location of these parts in the supply chain, which is of great help in taking out a lot of cost in the supply chain and in the car manufacturing, respectively, in the final assembly. We have worked over the past three years intensively to also increase the amount of sustainable products and solutions in metals. That's in...
For the Metals Processing parts, we are focused on, in particular, silicon steel, for grain-oriented, non-grain-oriented applications, for electromobility, and of course, what is called, AHSS steel, so advanced high-strength steel, which still is the main driver to bring the weight down of the vehicles. Regardless whether it's, battery, electrical vehicle, or internal combustion engines, the weight of the, of the body is still the main driver, what can be done. On the steel processing, we, main focus is on the, on the green steel applications. Also here, we have, we have these green steel galvanizing lines, as well as that we connected several new applications with hydrogen burners, basically developing their technology, and at the moment, a lot of pilot installations are going on, waiting for the economic availability of green hydrogen for these, for these lines.
And then, you see on the battery lines are definitely our main product here in the metals business for the future and for the future growth potential. So a quick review since the last Capital Markets Day. On the Metals Forming side, I think we can happily announce that the restructuring is done, successfully done. A lot of work has been achieved. We analyzed the portfolio, we got rid of certain products which did not really fit and were hurting our profitability. The organization has been streamlined. The break-even point of the organization in Metals Forming has been lowered by roughly EUR 200 million.
We have closed certain locations, and we definitely put a lot of work into improving the processes, in particular, the project management process, as we had to avoid the cost overruns in the large projects in order to regain the profitability. You could see that, the personnel reduction, the headcount reduction, basically happened in Germany, and it was reduced by 1,600 people within three years. It's been quite an impressive achievement, bearing in mind that during that time, we had ongoing orders, we had ongoing supply chains, we had commitments. So all these supply chains have had to be relocated and shifted. We delivered, we delivered, we continued to deliver in time and within budget, and I would say it was really successful, and now with the cost position lowered significantly, we are ready to grow and innovate.
On the Metals Processing side, we had restructuring ongoing that was not as much associated with capacity reduction, but it was more associated to improve project performances, improve the project management, and make sure that the various highly valued competence centers we had could work together as a team towards the customer, and that definitely has been done. On the cost side, we moved a lot of engineering out of Germany towards the markets of our customers in Asia, but also in South America. The growth was mainly done in carbon steel, where we had a, I would say, a lower market position than in, than in stainless steel, which we kind of were leading. And you see what is not achieved is our service initiative. The target is high EUR 400 million service we wanna reach by 2030.
That is ongoing, and it takes all efforts from our side. I would say a real successful achievement milestone for us is the development of this new monoblock rolling mill, which increased our market for stainless steel and silicon steel rolling mills by the factor of three, which is quite significant, and we are the only supplier worldwide who can supply a monoblock rolling mill and a rolling mill in the split housing concept. It might not mean a lot to you because you don't know the difference, but it is very important because it is like the Roman Catholics or the Reformists. You have one religion, yeah, and if you can serve both, you're usually in a better position. So, market development, how do the markets look like?
While the underlying midterm growth in the automotive industry is rather small, with the 2% we have with e-mobility and battery, we have exceptional market growth, and we are well positioned in both of these markets. And if we look to the e-mobility first, you can see on the left-hand side, the global vehicle production growing with a compound annual growth rate of 2% until 2030. That's the expectation. While the battery electric vehicle grows with 16%. So we have to be, we have to be there. We are there. We are, I would say, a solid, reliable supplier to all Western electric car manufacturers, be them from Europe, Germany, or from the United States. We, we do have. We are still struggling to get into the Chinese electric vehicle suppliers.
It is quite challenging, and we have not really—we had picked up small orders, but not really, have not managed to really deliver a press line to them. So there is some work to do, but we see it rather as an opportunity. But with the fast-growing Western suppliers, we are in a good position. An even higher market growth we see in the on the battery side, this is the annual growth rate in gigawatt hours of to-be-installed capacity. That's all based on an assumed demand of electrical vehicles in the world. And even if it's only even if the assumptions are wrong and the growth is only 1/2, it is still a lot of business that we can and we want to address.
I told you before that we have acquired the Italian company, Sovema, providing the technology for battery manufacturing, and we are marrying that with the capabilities of Schuler to deliver large-scale projects to the automotive industry. We believe that with this combination, we can make a solid offering to the industry, who is actually not asking, but would appreciate if they have an alternative which is non-Chinese, because that market is dominated by Chinese competitors, who, and this is kind of the first time we are envisaging that, who are leading in technology and are leading in costs and are leading in price. So it is something we have to address... They have all the factories already set up in China, and we will go up for that.
We have made successful milestones in that, achieved with the battery division in 2023. There are three important orders, I think, worth mentioning to you. The first comes from Fraunhofer FFB. That's, I would say, worldwide, the largest, maybe not worldwide, but definitely in the Western world, the largest research center for battery manufacturing. And we got an order for a cell assembly pilot line, in October. This is now already almost finished and under delivery. Then we have, from a German OEM, we received an order for a pilot line, for a cell assembly pilot line for their all-solid-state battery.
We believe that this battery is the battery of the future of electromobility, as it combines so many advantages compared with the traditional lithium-ion battery, that many of the questions we have today on electromobility will vanish once that technology is available. So the weight to power ratio is about double as what it is with conventional cells, which means the distance you can bridge is about double the size, or the weight of the car is reduced. By that, then a distance with one charging of 1000 km or 1200 km is not a problem anymore, which would remove many, many obstacles. Then the charging time is significantly lower than in conventional batteries.
The third, and not to forget part, is that this all-solid-state battery cannot burn, and whoever has seen one of these burning electric cars understands that that also is a, is a benefit in itself. We are providing that pilot line. The customer uses that pilot line to really develop the technology for the mass production, and we believe that we are then in a good position also to deliver the real production lines. In November, we received an order for the first giga project for a conventional lithium-ion battery line from a German battery cell manufacturer, 2 GWh per year.
We believe with these three, we can say the first milestones on our journey to a battery line supplier have been taken, and we are ready to address the market, and I believe we are well positioned for that. Metals Processing, the midterm market growth is, I would say, goes along with the GDP growth in the various areas of the world. What is driving for sure is the electrical steel, green steel, H2 burners, and of course, the further call for lightweight cars, the further reduction of weight, will be paramount, and our technologies for that will be asked for. So looking into Metals Forming, what's the strategy looking forward? The existing strategy has been, the restructuring has been executed.
We have the execution of the strategy in full swing, and we are ready to grow and innovate. We have five important vectors that we are following in that area. Improve the profitability. You definitely have noticed that the profitability in the metals area is the lowest of all our areas and need to be worked on. We will particularly take benefit of further digitalization, supported by AI. We will focus on improving the traditional business and also exploring the new markets, and we definitely need to attract the right people to be successful in what we have in mind. The improving the profitability is local for local, so bringing more value add from Germany to the parts of the world where our customers are sitting, where finally our lines are ending up.
Of course, increasing the service share, which is very important, and with the 25% that we have overall, you see there is a huge room to increase that. On the traditional business, we will go on with further modular design, with new innovations and focus in particular on the new opportunities we see from this battery, where we are really excited about what that can bring to us. The order intake, we came up from a deep depression we had in 2020, the COVID year. We have been last four quarters, we are above EUR 2 billion, which is a good way, and we are trying to keep that going.
You see that the profitability has been increased steadily. Are we happy with that? Yes. Are we content? We are not. So we believe much more should be done and will be done, so the 4.7% we have in the last four quarters is only one step on the way where we want to enter our growth ambition, and frankly speaking, this is fully supported by our targets for the battery business and by increasing the service.
We would assume that everything else is probably leveraging out against each other, but we have a clear ambition to grow in average above this 5% for the next years to come, and that would also enable us to reach the profitability target we have set at 6%-8% EBITDA margin. Looking forward, we see that we have a strong market position. We have identified the growth drivers in our markets that enable us to deliver. We have improved the cost structure. We will further go on doing so. The standardization is a never-ending story, and it is as long with us as we are building machines, and all of that we can work for our long-term profitable growth, which we believe we can deliver in that business.
Thank you very much for your attention, and we are ready for questions.
Thank you, Joachim, for your comprehensive update on the Metals business area. Ladies and gentlemen, we are open for your questions. Who wants to have the first one?
Akash is not the first one.
No, I guess Akash will follow afterwards. Three quick ones, if I may. Lars vom Cleff, Deutsche Bank. The first one, I know it's quite late to ask the question, but can you remind us why a change of management of the division was necessary? And then shall we go one by one or yeah?
We go one by one. So, the Domenico Iacovelli, he decided that he has better chances to develop himself as a manager outside ANDRITZ, which actually we could not believe that there is, but it's a free country, and the board of ANDRITZ is not a prison. So, yeah. Therefore, I have to take it to take it over now, and... But we are looking for a permanent solution. This will not be the permanent solution.
So nothing for us to read into that. Understood.
No, no, nothing. And we departed on good terms. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, perfect. And then Metals Forming, you had a slide with global market outlook by division, with e-mobility, for example. Is it also possible to split the metal forming's revenue by end customer groups, so that we not only get a feeling about which sector is supposed to grow by how much, but how many percent, but also how much you can participate from that?
I have to think. I have to look into that.
Okay, perfect. And then lastly, the automotive industry. I mean, independent from whether we look at combustion engines or electric vehicles, there's a challenging, another challenging year ahead of us, I would say. Volumes might be stable, but definitely there is a lot of pricing pressure, independent from the engine type. Are your major customers, against that background, continuously willing to invest?
I mean, they for sure are not willing to invest, but they have to invest if they want to survive, yeah? They rather like not to spend money, yeah, to keep it. We can be sure about that, and we also can be sure that they use all their, their power to push their price pressure down the supply chain, yeah. So, but investments will be done. The good for us, the idea that the electric vehicles and the internal combustion vehicles will be pressed on the same line, this basically does not happen, so they have dedicated lines, which is good, which will continue in the future, which for us, as a, as a press manufacturer, is good. Our exposure to the powertrain is very small, so we are not, we are not really, really affected by that.
And it's the industry we are in. Yeah, we can't help it. We believe the underlying trend of individual mobility will not stop. It is, since people living on Earth, it's the way, and it will continue like that, regardless which engine they choose. So, and the high professional approach of the automotive industry is also good and healthy for our organization because they keep you fit, yeah? And you have an area where they really help also yourself to develop.
Yeah, please.
Yes. Hi, Akash here from JPMorgan. Two please, and I'll allow us to ask one by one. The first one is on profitability split between metal forming and metal processing. So maybe if you can help us understand what sort of margins are currently between the two segments.
Differences are small and fluctuating, so there is no big surprise, yeah. So it's about the same level.
And then the second one is on metal forming. That business has historically been a margin drag on ANDRITZ Group for quite some time. Can this business generate enough growth and margins to be part of ANDRITZ in the longer term?
That is what we are working for. We have not given up that idea, but, for sure, you, your question, your question is right. I think the restructuring is done. We have a, we have a bet out for this, with this battery. If we get that, if we get that up, I think we are in a, we are in a good position, and if you look long enough back, then you also see that we had, years, with margins from the Metals Forming business, which have been in the target range. Same is true for the Metals Processing, so we believe there is, there is a lot of hope to do so.
Because we know that we can do, I can remind the people who are longer with us that we had for many years, it was not me, it was my predecessor, Wolfgang Leitner, who was always asked about the separation business area, that this makes no money and that we should get rid of it, and I think we also managed to turn that around. We are in a company 172 years old, yeah? And we and we believe that we can do that, and we also believe that in the metals area.
Thank you. And then, I would like to remind again that people who are online, please, remember to press hashtag five. Yes, and then we have one person online who would like to ask a question, and that is Sven Weier, please.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for taking my two questions. The first one is just, I was just wondering on where you are on the Giga Press technology. I mean, we obviously saw Tesla adopting it. We're hearing that some of the Chinese are adopting it, so would like to get an update where you stand on Giga Presses. And the second question is just to get a better understanding on the battery side, on what you compete for. So would this new Northvolt battery plant in Germany be something you're competing for? Thank you.
So the Giga Press, I'm not 100% sure I know what you refer to. There are ideas in Tesla to make, to make huge parts of the front and the back part of the car out of, inject- not injection molded, diecast, diecasting from aluminum or magnesium. If that is what you're referring to, then I can tell you that we have no, production technology for that at the moment. Yeah, so no, also no, no, no business growth. We are technically discussing these topics with Tesla, as they would like to have our opinion on that, but we don't have real production, real production assets there. On the...
We cannot comment on specific projects, but you can trust that we are quoting for all relevant projects that are on the market.
Understood. Thank you.
Yes, please, in the audience.
Yeah, thanks. Daniel, from Erste . I'd like to follow up on the Giga Presses. You mentioned that you are in discussion with Tesla about it, and he's asking for your opinion. What is your opinion on these presses?
I'm the CEO, and I'm an engineer, yeah? So I cannot. I don't know what our people tell them. I mean, there are challenges, yeah, and the question to us is: How can we come up with a more simple design, a higher output, yeah, at a lower cost. And we are delivering solutions for that through the technology we understand. So we don't have a technical opinion on this casting technology, as we cannot really give an educated opinion. But we are in the discussions with an alternative approach to reach the same target.
Okay, understood. And the second would be on the EV batteries. What would be your share of a gigafactory CapEx, total CapEx? Or put it differently, what would be an average order volume of a gigafactory? I'm referring not to specific cases, as you showed some, but can you give a range, maybe just to get a feeling of what business we are talking about?
Our share of a real gigafactory, which is not what we, what we booked, what we booked in November, that was a, I would say, a small gigafactory. But the ones that have been now is under consideration by many OEMs, we would talk about order intake or a project volume for hundreds in the low three-digit million EUR. Yeah. So it is, it is, it is significant, yeah, and, one will definitely be a challenge for the organization. If we take two or three at the same time, it is definitely, a, a very high challenge, yeah.
Would you expect market consolidation to already happen for suppliers of production lines for the batteries at this point in time, or would this-
We are-
Start maybe later?
There is nothing to consolidate, as there is nobody, yeah? So we, the battery lines, the battery plants that have been built in Europe, have been built mainly by Chinese suppliers. And out of that, it's mainly one Chinese supplier who has built that. Now, there is our wish to move in, and there is also, and as I can say that, there is also the wish of the customers that they have an alternative out of Europe. But at the moment, there is nobody who has really supplied it in that size, and we can show it that it runs. Therefore, we are very happy that we have been selected for this small gigafactory in November, yeah?
That will be built in Germany, very, very close, actually, to our center of competence, and we believe that this can really make a good step forward for us.
It seems that you don't really need the reference at this point in time, because hardly anybody has a reference anyway.
Unfortunately, this is not the case, because the Chinese have very high... have many references, yeah.
Okay, thanks.
Yeah, we have one more person.
Yeah, hi, it's Akash again, and a couple of follow-ups. The first one is on service revenues, so you target-
On?
Service revenues.
Service, yeah.
So you target to get to EUR 400 million from EUR 200 million, and I think it's for 2030. So can you talk about what are you thinking about new service models or maybe selling new solutions that are having compulsory service agreements? Like, what are the driver of this service growth?
So we, frankly speaking, we have a huge installed base, which we are not properly taking care of, and it is basically, we can do whatever you think of, and we will have business behind. That is... But we need to set up our own competence, and we need to set up our global, our regional setup to be close to the customers. And then, of course, it will be parts, yeah? It will be repairs, it will be modernization and upgrades. So it is rather on us at the moment, whether we can build up the organization quick enough, and it's not so much that the market is not there.
Thank you, and the last one from me is on the metal, metal forming. Sorry, not metal forming, metal processing, the Schuler bits. Just getting confused between the two. So you talked about, you have improved your cost base, but still in China, you are not able to, penetrate to Chinese OEMs, because some Chinese competitors are quite, cost competitive. Can you quantify the gap between your cost and their cost? Like, what is the delta? Are you talking about single digit, mid-single digit, high single digit, or double digit?
No, we are. Sorry, sorry for not being clear. We cannot enter the Chinese battery electric vehicle market. We have entered the Chinese internal combustion engine markets. So we are competitive there, that is, that is no doubt. Frankly speaking, for the electrical cars, we don't, we don't come to the table, and we don't know where the prices are, because the terms we have that, that the customers are proposing to us tell us that, it makes no sense to, to spend our time in these projects. So that's, that is what the reality is today.
The next question comes from Christoph Dolleschal, from online audience. Please.
Hi, guys. Thanks very much for taking the question. I've got a follow-up on the service revenues on metals, because in the past, I remember that you said that service levels of above, let's say, 25%-30% are unrealistic, as OEMs are often doing service themselves. And that is a bit of a word of, or a change of tone that you're doing now. So, what has led you to say, as you've just said, "It's on us, and we have a huge untapped base?" Because as I said, I mean, that was different from what you said in the past.
Yeah, if we have better ideas, we follow them. We believe that there is an advantage for us, and also our customers, they are under pressure of costs. And that opens for us this window of opportunity, because what we can provide is we can provide better expertise, because we can leverage the expertise among the various customers we have. And we have usually the knowledge of the parts and the knowledge of the machine, of the machine building technology. So if we have acceptable response times, yeah, and if we have a network close to the customer, I think we are a good choice.
Okay. Thanks so much.
Okay, we have come to the end of the Q&A session, and it's time to move on with the agenda. Next, we will have our last business area presentation, which is Environment and Energy. I welcome Dietmar Heinisser, the Executive Board Member, to take us on the journey through the Environment and Energy business area, please.
Yeah, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Also from my side, I'm glad to be here to present you Environment and Energy. But first of all, let me briefly introduce myself. Dietmar Heinisser. I'm an Austrian citizen, working for ANDRITZ since more than 26 years. I had various management positions within the ANDRITZ Group. I became a board member last April, responsible for the separation business area, and since 1st January , a very interesting and enjoyable journey, starting to be responsible for the business area, Environment and Energy. As an introduction, just to say where we are and where the journey will go. First of all, of course, we support our customers to achieve their goals. It's so important to help them, especially with the new challenges, with new ESG targets, and also helping them to improve their operations.
We want to be part of the transition in a greener world. We want to be part of helping the society to become a better world. With our expertise and solutions we have in various processes, we will extend our product portfolio and our business in our current and existing markets, but especially we will go into the new markets, in the fast-growing markets and sectors of Environment and Energy. More than 4,000 employees within the business area, Energy and Environment, are proud to deliver sustainable value to all of the stakeholders. Giving an overview about the business we have and about the business area, we have an exceptionally broad product portfolio, so we're in a lot of different industries serving our customers. The biggest area is separation.
In separation, we deliver mechanically and thermal separation in various industries, just like environmental, mining, food, and beverage. Another area is Feed and Biofuel, where we deliver plants, processes, equipment for the feed industry, for the animal food industry, and also for biofuel.... Pumps, of course, is also in our product portfolio. It's a very important part of our business. We deliver various pumps in various industries, for Pulp & Paper, for desalination, for irrigation, so it's a big opportunity for us in these fields. Clean Air Technology is a new area in my division, and this is emission reduction technologies, including the carbon capture. And this, of course, provides a big opportunity for us in going forward. Last but not least, green hydrogen, and as we know, this is a big boost currently in the industry.
We have a lot of projects ongoing. We deliver green hydrogen, renewable fuels, and also Power-to-X solutions. We consider us as depending on the industry, depending on the processes, the number three, number two, but in most of the cases, we are the number one, we are technology leader. Looking at the regional split, where we do the business and where our employees are, it's quite balanced between mature countries and emerging countries. Why it's so important? In order to be successful, especially on the service side, we need to have customer proximity. We are close to our customers, we are fast to respond, we are there. And furthermore, of course, looking at the whole supply chain, if you are local, you have no risk not being able to deliver what you have promised to deliver.
So for us, it's very important, close to our customers as one of the success stories we have developed over the last years. Looking at the share of the business in the different region, you can see that the majority of our business is really well-balanced all over the globe. That means that gives us the opportunity to really be on top of each region if there is developments, to be able to address growth potentials, to be able to address new products, to be able to address new customers. And this is also which will help us further to improve and grow the business in the different segments.
Yeah, which is, or what is maybe not so known to the investors world, we have already a lot of products supporting the transition, the green transition, and I just listed a few here, which is water management, desalination, irrigation, waste sludge to value, battery-related mining, food and feed valorization, biofuel, air emission control, and air emission reduction, and Power-to-X. So this is a box of a lot of different applications where we already are in a position to deliver solutions to our customers. Now, if you look back what has been promised in the last Capital Markets Day and where we stand right now, I am proud to say that we have achieved all of the targets to grow the business beyond EUR 1 billion to achieve the profitability between 9%-11%. Actually, we have outperformed that.
We have been considered as a premium supplier, and we further work to gain technology leadership on digitalization and digital and automation. So as you can see, I don't want to go through all these points, but the main message is we promised, we delivered. Looking at our markets, I think this is the most exciting story; it's a growing situation for us. The growth is driven by a lot of big pictures like urbanization, green energy, battery-related mining, resource scarcity, clean water, and all this we can address with our existing product range. So for us, it means we have a good opportunity to grow the business in these segments.
Looking at the separation, we see a growth of around 5%, Feed and Biofuel around 3%-4%. Pumps, we also see 4%. And then, of course, besides these mature product lines we have, we have Clean Air Technology, here in particular, carbon capture and green hydrogen. As you know, this is a journey which I just started, and we actually had our first successes, where we are very proud of it. In the different markets and in different segments and industries, we have, of course, special growth opportunities. In separation, just as an example, battery minerals, waste to energy, food valorization, desalination, plastic recycling.
So all of these solutions are already in our product portfolio, and we will, for sure, go out in the market to further push that and being known as an Environment and Energy company, ANDRITZ. In Feed and Biofuel, we're offering plant solutions, especially now, in particular, to the growing area where the population is growing, like in Africa, in Middle East and Asia. We're focusing on that. We have developed modular plants which support the local need in these markets. Of course, also, the alternative protein is a very important market in going forward, supporting also population growth, and we are able to supply here the proper equipment for this area.
Pumps, water management, desalination, efficiency, is definitely something which drives the future, and I will show some examples later on, especially on this, desalination, potable water, water availability, where we have delivered already big plants, all over the world.... The air, Clean Air Technology, of course, is based also on regulations. We see here more and more the push for the industry to invest in a cleaner technology, and we will be part of this transition, especially with our carbon capture. In hydrogen, same story, everybody's looking for a sustainable energy supply, for green energy supply. And as I said before, and, also Joachim mentioned it before, in both new segments, we have been able already to book orders, and, we are now in the execution of these projects.
As an example, where I can see a big potential where ANDRITZ will participate and can participate, is the green hydrogen demand. We have currently about 2 million tons-3 million tons per year, but this will grow to 30 million tons by 2030. This is the outlook provided by the Hydrogen Council, and this means for us, as an overall potential, EUR 100 billion, even though this might be a little bit, you know, from the current point of view, a quite a stretch, what we see, but even though it's just 50%, the market will be huge. The journey for green hydrogen is big, and we are a player, and we're part of that. Looking at the current market, and as you can see, it's still a quite fragmented market.
We have market share between 8%-14% globally, but having said that, we see in our positions between number one, number two, number three. By having the opportunity in a fragmented market, you can, of course, grow via new products, via acquisitions, so we see that the consolidation will take place over the next years, and we will definitely harvest on that. Yeah, strategic direction. I think this is something which is, of course, a business for us, which is essential. We want to be market and customer-focused, solution-oriented, service-driven.
But having said that, it's so important for us to push for the service business, not just to have a high margin business, but we are strong believer to be part of a complete cycle from delivering new plants, to wear parts, to spare parts, and help the customers when there are problems coming, challenges arriving. We want to be the preferred partner. We also will invest in automation and digitalization, as we see this as an additional opportunity where we can harvest on. R&D and innovation is in our DNA. We continuously develop new products, new concepts, in order to help our customers, and especially now with ESG targets, rising customers challenges in this area, we will be there to support them. Operational excellence is part of becoming a more profitable company. We've worked on that in the past quite a lot.
You can see that when we present the financials, but this is something where we want to be strong and to work on a day-to-day business. Now, going into the deliveries and orders we have received by our approach, market and customer focus, green hydrogen. We have started the journey one year ago, a little bit more than one year ago, and we already received a significant order from Salzgitter in Germany. It's one of the European largest green hydrogen plant, so we are very proud to be honored with this order. We're in the middle of the engineering phase. It's a 100 MW green hydrogen plant, producing 9,000 tons of green hydrogen per year.
That means, with that, the production of green steel is more than 100,000 tons a year, and the CO2 emission reduction is more than 200,000 tons a year at Salzgitter. So this is the goal, and we work together with our customer in the execution phase. But this is a starting point, and on the green hydrogen, a lot of projects are in the market. So from now to 2030, about 1,000 projects are announced already, according to the Green Hydrogen Council. Another exciting journey is carbon capture for industrial processes, and here we also received one order. We received a second order already.
This is for Rohrdorfer, a German plant in cement, and we do the CO2 absorption on the cement kiln, which produce about 1 million in clinker per year. It's a pilot plant, but it's on an industrial scale, where we capture 2 tons a day, and we see also certain moves into different industries with the carbon capture. Municipal wastewater treatment, also one of our core segments, where we have delivered many plants already. This is a wastewater treatment plant in the southwest of France, where we help the customer to work on a system, where do we have the sludge upstream with a thermal terminal treatment in order to produce energy. And they produce now, within the plant, certain million megawatt of energy, and this is recovered from biogas.
And we also saved up to 5,000 tons on CO2 emissions per year. So you can see a lot of projects what we do, which is maybe not so well known in the rest of the world, is going into sustainability, and we will continue this journey. It's an exciting journey, and we are part of it. It opens for us great opportunities. Desalination. This is a project in Hong Kong, where we helped the society resource scope to produce 135 million liters per day of potable water. Also, this project addresses the need of clean water, of urbanization, and so on. This is another example where we address the need of the society in going forward. It's a big mega trend. We are part of it. Of course, as mentioned before, R&D and innovation is in our DNA.
We need to innovate, we need to bring new products in the market. We bring new solutions in the market in order to help our customers. We need to improve on a daily basis. Here are just some examples what we do. The first is a new product. It's a Turbex. It's a breakthrough innovation in the extraction of nutrients for the food industry, that enables customer to produce on the same energy, much more on nutrients, and this is also something which helps to save energy. The second one is digitalization. We have developed a sensor, and the sensor, together with artificial intelligence, helps the customer to save polymers in the drying process.
Modular plant solution, we have developed here a plant solution which addresses the need in the growing areas of Africa, Middle East and Asia, to have smaller modular plants at site, where the big fields of corn or soybeans are, to produce feed with these modular plants. And of course, as it was addressed before, intelligent service solutions. We have 24/7 support with digital solutions. We have, we are on site, we are close to customers, and I think this is all together, and ANDRITZ is one of our key strengths. Yeah, what are the targets and the visions in going forward? We want to grow the business by 10% per year, based on what I've described before. We have a bunch of initiatives set up in order to do so.
Of course, we want to increase our market share in our current industries. We definitely want to be participate on the mega trends, as described with the green hydrogen . We want to further partner with our customers in order to better understand their needs and work on strategic solutions, rather than just deliver equipment. We want to further enable ourselves, not just deliver single equipment, but really go into plant solution, especially in the Feed and Biofuel area. Automation and digitalization I've described before, and we need to expand our product portfolio. The target is also lifted up, from EBITDA, from 9%-11%, now to 10%-13%.
In order to be able to go in this direction, we further want to extend our service business to increase our customer proximity, value-based pricing, and we want to continue, continue to transfer our manufacturing and engineering in best cost countries. Of course, it's a matter of operation excellence to improve productivity and efficiency. And one subject, which of course, going into delivering bigger plants, we also will need to improve our projects execution, competence in going forward. Yeah, and then last but not least, establish ANDRITZ as a premium brand in Environment and Energy. This is now our new footprint in the ANDRITZ Group, and we will make sure that everybody knows that we have state-of-the-art, outstanding solutions to boost this business. What we need to do is further expand our product portfolio for sustainable solutions.
Integration of concepts across the ANDRITZ business areas enable us to deliver Power-to-X solutions to various industries, Pulp & Paper, metals and others. And of course, we want to look at complementary acquisition opportunities to increase our footprint in this Environment and Energy market. Looking at the financials from 2018 to the last quarter, last four quarters, as you can see, it is a really good, I would say, success story, growing from EUR 970 million - EUR 1.4 billion over the years. Considering all the crises we had in the middle with wars and Corona, we have been always able to grow our business throughout the world in the different segments. Here you can see the development, not only on the top line, but also on the bottom line.
Here we have been able to double, more than double our profitability over the last couple of years, being now beyond the 11% in profitability, coming from 5%. Looking at the revenue split between capital and service, we at about 50/50, so we have been growing the service business over proportional in the last couple of years. As I have mentioned, this was our focus and will be our focus. Looking at the revenue per region, also here we are very well set up, about 1/3 in Europe, 1/3 in North and South America, and one-third in Asia. So very well-balanced, which helps us also to expand our market share.
Financial targets and ambitions, we want to grow about 10% on a compound annual growth rate, backed up with the product portfolio we have, backed up with the initiatives we have, and also with the develop of the different market segments and outlooks. The profitability margin former was 9%-11%. It's now 10%-13%, so also here, we set up a higher level of expectation in our business area. Yeah, the outlook, we see ourself definitely well positioned for profitable business development over the next coming years. We have a global presence, we have a global service network, we have a proven track record. Looking back, we will go and continue with this track record, following mega trends, following our core segments. We are very strong positioned in the growing emerging markets.
We have a well-balanced product portfolio, compared to a lot of competitors. We have a stable business, and we will focus on these new mega trends like carbon capture, green hydrogen, which gives us a good opportunity going forward. We have technology leadership, as mentioned before, in a lot of areas, which helps us to be a preferred partner for our suppliers, and, also, you know, what is very important, especially going into this green hydrogen business, we have the backup of the ANDRITZ Group with a strong financial strength, enabling us to be able to offer this kind of projects going forward. Yeah. Thank you very much.
I hope you can see ANDRITZ Environment & Energy has a bright future, and we will work on that, and we have now the organization in place. Still a lot to do, but we see we are on the right track. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Dietmar. That was an excellent introduction to the new business area, Environment & Energy. Let's continue our discussion with questions. Who has the first question? The gentleman on the second row, please.
They were discussing it obviously.
Maybe we changed the order, yeah, because you start smiling the second I raise my hand. Maybe we should surprise you with another order soon. First one, kind of a cheeky question. I mean, you're a relatively new player when it comes to green hydrogen plants, and there are established players. How do you convince potential customers to choose you over one of the established competitors?
Yeah, at first, we have, in the meantime, built up good competence within ANDRITZ on green hydrogen. We also, you know, have a long history in the competence of EPC deliveries, which is a significant advantage compared to a lot of other green hydrogen players, because some of them, they're more in the startup phase, so we are able to really deliver complete EPC. So for us, this is a clear unique selling proposition. And of course, we work with partners. They also have a long history with, for example, HydrogenPro, and as a package, we are able to convince customers to go with us, and also the bankability of ANDRITZ is an advantage on that.
Okay, understood. And then you just renamed your separation division, now Environment and Energy, regrouped some smaller businesses from the other divisions, added that to your new division. And now you state that you're also looking at what you call complementary M&A. And now I wonder, do you already have all attractive technologies at hand already today to service the market? And is it only, or would M&A only be about acquiring market share, increasing your share of wallet? Or are you missing any crucial technologies which you would like to acquire via M&A?
I mean, as described before, M&A for us is complementary. And complementary can be that we add companies to address markets where we are not in, and also it can be that we acquire a complementary company, which are adding some technology to our portfolio, and this is exactly the two directions we are looking for.
Hi, it's Akash here. I have for you as well. The first one I have is also on green hydrogen, and that is more about the risk sharing with your partner, who is producing green electrolyzers in this case. So, I mean, I've been told recently that the issue in electrolyzer industry is the failure rates, which are surprisingly high, and they are not performing in line with specification. So again, given this new info that is coming out from electrolyzer market, how do you balance the risk-reward between you and your partners? Like, are you-- will you be liable for something that may not be adequate coming from your partners?
So maybe if you can talk about how we should think about the risk-sharing in new technologies like green hydrogen if they don't deliver what has been written in the contract?
... we are EPC suppliers, so finally, you know, we take the overall risk, which of course, we try to balance, depending on the sub-suppliers with back-to-back , et cetera. But, finally, you know, we work together, to come up with common solutions on that. So it's really depending on the supplier, and on the situation, how we can balance the risk.
Just to make sure, you are not taking any risk related to performance of overall system, where you are not responsible for the performance that is not according to specification?
It really depends on the contract. For each customer, it might be different, what kind of guarantees we need to give. So for me, this is not a one-fits-all answer. It really depends on the different contracts in the different fields, in, for example, on the metals or hydro or Pulp & Paper, or even going outside of these areas, with the green hydrogen, and this is a discussion on contract by contract.
Yeah. And the second one is on market share. So thanks for the slide that shows your market share in all the five individual businesses. I think one thing which is quite interesting here is that these markets are quite fragmented, like in each of these businesses you have several competitors. The question I had more it with respect to given that is very fragmented market, what's your unique selling point when it comes to... And are there any specific areas within these, where you may be enjoying, let's say, very high, 20%, 30%, maybe more than 30% market share?
I think, one advantage we have, compared to some other competitors is our global setup. So we are, in almost all of these, areas, represented in all the different regions. So this gives us a certain advantage in growing the business, and to increase the market share. And coming back to the question about, in which, areas we are really strong, this, of course, are certain niches where we see, we are very strong, like, in the drying area for baby food, in certain battery-related mining. So there are a lot of, different niches where we are very strong with technology, and market shares beyond 30%.
Then, of course, when it comes to certain applications on the pump side, we are just starting, and we have a very low market share.
The next question we will take from online. Sven Weier, please.
Yeah, I have two questions, please. The first one is also on green hydrogen. You show a market share of 5%, and yet I guess the market is still very small. You show quite a high market share for some other players. So I was just wondering who those competitors are. Is it Linde, or who's competing with you, and is so much bigger? And the second question is just on, you know, when I look at the fragmented market, especially in separation, I guess we could have looked at this chart 20 years ago, it looked the same. I think you're competing a lot with private competitors, which are not for sale. I guess GEA and Alpha are looking for acquisition. So do you see that—do you think that chart will have really changed in 10 years from now?
I mean, answering your second question first, we have developed a new product. We have increased slightly market share. We just acquired a company, Dedert, in the fourth quarter of last year. It's a Chicago-based company, specialized in drying and evaporation in starch and so on. So this gives us also an opportunity to further extend our market share. So I see a movement towards being a stronger player in the separation market in going forward. And the first question, on the competitors on green hydrogen, what I have seen, there are more than 200 competitors out there. There are some which are more mature already, and you know, you mentioned one of them.
I think, you know, there are some others, which are quite well known, I would say, but I don't want to disclose on that who are now these competitors shown on our slide.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We also have Christoph Dolleschal online.
Yeah, guys, thanks again. Also follow up on that slide, on page 13, where you show the different segments. And you already kindly explained those bits. I was wondering, how about the margin differentials? Because I remember when you transferred the pumps business at the beginning of the year, the margin jumped. So basically, the pumps business must be much more profitable than the rest of the businesses. So could you probably share the main differences between the five segments, that would be the first one?
Yeah, just to verify on this slide, all the numbers represent the current business setup. That means that also the pump numbers are included since 2018, so there is no change in the reporting. What you're seeing is an improvement from the operating side. And having said that, we are quite balanced in the profitability between the three segments, separation, feed, and pumps. Going forward, of course, in the new bigger areas, we will challenge ourselves in order to hold up with the high profitability we have in our business area.
Okay, so, I understood correctly that separation, feed, and pumps all have a similar margin level currently at around 11%, right?
It's in average, it's a quite similar margin level. Not always the same, but in average, pretty much the same, ±2%.
Okay, so a bit higher, but it's because obviously clean air and green hydrogen. Is it fair to assume that these are not yet profitable idea that they're dragging down margins because no revenues yet, but obviously the costs related to it?
We are going forward with the challenge, going into new areas with start-up costs, of course. So the profitability level is lower than in, let me say, the legacy business from the initial separation business.
Okay. And, is it... Well, can you sort of quantify that to at least, like, is it like in the, is it roughly 5% range? Is it 10% range? So just a broad number so that we can get a better idea of how that all adds up to your targets as well.
Sorry, we cannot disclose this in that detail.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
We would still have some time for a few questions. Do we have any more questions coming from the audience, either here in Leipzig or from online? It seems that there are no more questions. So this means that we are a little bit ahead of the time, which is a positive surprise. This means that we can move on with the agenda. The next presentation will be about the company's performance numbers. Now our CFO, Norbert Nettesheim, will take over the stage.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Yeah, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, here in the room and online on your screens. After this really impressive presentations of my colleagues, it's now my task to summarize what that all means for the consolidated financials of the group. And I hope it will be the same way impressive as what you heard so far. Most of what I'm saying to you is something which you somewhere heard already, so it might be not that much news. But I think it's good to start with a short view backwards, and the question is what we have achieved in the past. And for not saying too much at the beginning, I can say what we have promised to deliver in 2021, we have delivered. Let's start with order intake.
You see here this sequence from 2015 - 2023, last four quarters. And you see these periods, 2015 - 2018, in the EUR 6 billion level, then ramping it up to the EUR 7 billion level, shortly interrupted with the 2020 COVID dip. And then since 2022, in the next, let's say, billions dimension between EUR 8 billion-EUR 9 billion. So from our point of view, a very impressive development over the last years. And when you look into the structure, then you see at the bottom, this dark blue area, which is the service development in the past years. Here we have a 7% growth rate since 2015, so continuously growing. Also, the 2020 number is simply the COVID dip, which we saw there. When you take that out, continuously improving.
The middle part, the gray part, this is a bread and butter business, I call it always. These are the below EUR 100 million capital orders, which are also coming in more or less continuously when you look at our business from the group perspective. Growth rate is 3% in the last years. The only thing what is fluctuating in hundreds are more or less the Let's say, the big projects, which you see on top with this light blue share, these projects, let's say, really different from year to year, between EUR 100 million and also EUR 1.8 billion, depending on when the big orders are placed by our customers.
Overall, this kind of business is 12.5% of all the order intake, so—and the fluctuations which we see there year-on-year ends up more or less in orders on hand. It flattens out in execution, so and when we discuss order intake high, order intake low, yeah, you have to understand always that in the capital business, you have these huge fluctuations in the big projects. And, as I said, 12.5% is coming from that.
You should know that more than 1/2 of this is, let's say, material portion, so this is anyway flexible, and the rest of it, the value added, which we take out of these businesses, we are well prepared to handle these kind of fluctuations by adjustments of staff if it is needed, and if it really ends up in a fluctuating in sales during the execution of the projects. In total, this leads now to orders on hand, a value of nearly EUR 10 billion, and this EUR 10 billion will bring us securely over the next year with regard to sales, and maybe also a certain portion right into the 2025 year.
So it's more than a year execution time for these kind of backlogs, and also in the next years, we will get these stable service and mid-size orders. So currently, I would say we are well secured for the next two years out of this backlog, which was generated. So having already used these keywords, sales, revenues, and growing revenues, the next page you see here, which I have prepared, is the revenue development as in the last years. All in all, also a very good development in the first years, and then now in the last twtwo years, again, back to the 15%. In between, we had a period of stagnating revenues, which was more or less hydro being a little bit weaker in these periods.
Frédéric has explained it already, and also the Metals Forming automotive decline in these years, which then combined with the growth in other areas and growth in service, led more or less to these total stagnations. Both topics are well addressed, and we are more or less over, and you see it later in the slides where I present also the business areas. We communicated a target of, let's say, above EUR 7 billion, and including acquisitions above EUR 8 billion in 2021. And, in this EUR 8.5 billion revenues, which we saw in the last four quarters, there is EUR 210 million out of newly acquired units in.
So, when you take this off, both targets have, well, have been well overachieved, so more than EUR 8 billion revenues, excluding and including acquisitions, and also a clear sign of promising... Delivering what we promised, sorry. So I have now two slides on capital and on service. Capital is more or less mentioned before already, so I jump immediately into service. Here you see this continuous growth, what we saw in order intake, also in revenues, which is clearly to be expected that way, because service has a very short order cycle, and what we see there in order intake, also very soon is seen in the revenue numbers.
2019 was the first full year with the Xerium business in Pulp & Paper, so this was the jump from 2018- 2019. 2020 was COVID, also 2021, some effects. Then since 2022, back to the EUR 3 billion and with another 10% growth in recent years, EUR 40 million acquisitions in the number last four quarters, so this is also mostly done on own developments in the last years. All in all, total growth target achieved, CapEx okay, service very well, and this is a summary of this first target. We delivered what we promised to deliver with regard to growth. This we did in all business areas.
You see here in the last year, since 2021, 3 x 15%, and in Environment and Energy, at the 12%, so also in on the business area perspective, everything what we said, we did. The question then will be, what came out of this with regard to profitability? Here, the target was to get over the 8% threshold, and in the already in the year 2021, so in the first year after the communication of this new target, we achieved the 8.5% after a period of being at around 6.5% in the years before. Because also of major restructuring costs, which we had in 2015, 2019, and 2020, let's say, excluding of these extraordinary costs, it would have been 7.2%.
So we lifted more or less the profitability level of the group by more than 1 percentage point in the last three years. And this was heavily supported by the success in the service segments, but also by the recovery of metals and hydro in the last years. You also see here, maybe a quick side remark, how quickly these restructuring things are paying back. And we certainly, in the future, will immediately act as soon as we see that there is some need. You never should say, "Let's wait a year or two, maybe it gets better." When you see that you have restructuring needs, that you have overcapacities, you have to act.
Anders did this very early and very quickly, and with the first round in 2050, and then let's say a second round in 1920. And you see, especially when you then look to the, to the business segments, that all this restructuring effort in metals is in the process of being fully paid back. And be assured that also in future, we watch very closely about capacity utilization, and also will immediately act as soon we need some necessities to act. Yeah, with regard to the absolute numbers, you see here, front runner is Pulp & Paper, with more than EUR 400 million EBITDA. And the other threes in sum make up for nearly a similar number.
Target for the future is to bring these things certainly closer to each other, and certainly not by not developing in Pulp & Paper, as we did in the past. Let's see how it works. With regard to the relative profitability, the 8% was achieved in all segments except in Metals. Yeah, we defined this pretty demanding target, 6%-8%. We didn't make it yet, but be assured that we are heavily working in getting into this target range very quickly. Yeah, it's a nice picture when you are in all areas in the target range. If you're now wondering, "What is this guy telling us here?" Hydropower is not in the target range.
I have to make the remark that the bars, so the numbers, are the adjusted numbers, where the pumps business has been transferred to E&E. But for, let's say, not disturbing the reference to what we said in 2021, we kept the orange lines the same, so the target for hydropower is the old target, including pumps, and same for Environment and Energy. So you have to move a little bit of the blue bars from Environment and Energy to hydropower. And with this, let's say, having hydropower also accounted to hydro, they would be somewhere in the middle of the seven-point-something area. And so also for hydro, they made what they have promised.
All in all, over eight, full success in all areas, and in metals, we need maybe another year, and then we have also there achieved what we wanted to achieve. That's about profit, but profit is a number on a piece of paper. And, no, sorry, this is about operational profit, and now we have to go down to next level of profit lines. And, those of you who know me since a while now, they are clearly know that I'm looking at the bottom, bottom line, because any earnings before something is 1/2 of the earnings or is half of the truth, but only what counts is the bottom line. And, you see here, with the light blue bars, what we achieved with regard to net income.
Here we said at the Capital Markets Day in 2021, that we will get it up to over 5%. So operational business brought it up. We had a little bit of a tailwind in these years from tax quota, where we worked on. We had a little bit of a tailwind in the recent year from the financial results, where this change in the interest environment also will have some positive effects. So we are pretty sure that we will be safely in these dimensions, and that we have good chances to get it further improved in the next years. One relative number, which you from the capital market might be interested in, return on capital employed.
So what volume of, let's say, assets and working capital do we need to generate these numbers? And, let's say, did we earn the cost of capital for that? And you see here the development, capital employed increased significantly in 2019. This was the Xerium effect. Yeah, this organization brought a lot of assets and a lot of net working capital into the group. Since then, it was managed to bring this a little bit down. Also, some regular depreciations led to the fact that it came down. And when you then put our, let's say, operational results minus tax in relation to this, you see that we achieved now numbers in the dimension of over 20%.
Having an after-tax cost of capital of 8.4%, you see that there was a significant value creation in the last years. By hundreds, we created value in double-digit percent numbers based on the capital employed of around EUR 2 billion. So that's also a proof of the relative performance. Now I'm at the point what I mentioned already before. Profit is only half of the truth. Cash is the full truth. Here you have the bar chart with the development of operating cash flow over time and free cash flow over time. And you see that it is a highly fluctuating number. This is more or less based on this big project business what we do.
Usually in a big project, you are at the early beginning, cash positive. Then in the middle period of the project, you get cash negative, and then by the end, back cash positive. And depending how these big projects are on the time scale, whether you have a lot of new projects in your order book at the end of a fiscal year, which are maybe all highly paid or with down payments, then you have, at the thirty-first of December, a low or high working capital, and this then goes into these numbers. So to judge it really on a realistic basis for ANDRITZ, you should do it on a rolling average basis.
I have here prepared a slide with a three-year rolling average for EBITDA and a three-year rolling average for operating cash flow. You see that the pictures are here more and more, let's say, in line and better harmonized. So the cash conversion based on free cash flow is very near to 190-something% of the net income we poured into the free cash flow. We are also proud that we could achieve such a performance in the last years to get profits really into our treasure box. Then treasure box is a keyword. If you see here, our financial position in the last years developed very favorable since 2018, 2019, then in the last three years.
So we generated, in the last five years, since 2018, we generated EUR 1.1 billion of cash, of net liquidity. And in that time, we also paid EUR 620 million of dividends. Yeah, so ANDRITZ is also a investment where you can be sure that it's not only, let's say, numbers on a piece of paper, it's also cash on a bank account, what you find then after the execution of the business. We have sufficient cash now, and we have it since years, and this means we are very much capable to finance quickly and without any limitations, own growth investments. And I mentioned this first because I really this is a priority to finance our own growth investments.
We are doing a lot of things, new service centers in all kind of areas of the world, all these, investments which we might need in the, in the new businesses, so this is all well-funded and financed. The next is acquisitions, and we talked a lot about it in, in all these meetings which we had. We are able to act very quickly, as soon as an opportunity comes up, and, we do that, as you have seen. We would love to see more opportunities coming, and, we are ready to, to execute. So and then there is something, which I, as a CFO, have to mention. We also have some debt on our, balance sheets.
We will certainly use a part of this cash in the next year for repayment of debts, to shorten the balance sheet a little bit. And then, despite all this, we are able and willing to use a part of this cash for paying good dividends. And, for paying good dividends, you also need equity, and you have—need profits. The equity development in the last years was also very favorable. We made it now nearly up to EUR 2 billion equity, which is an equity portion of 23%, or goodwill adjusted, we are at an equity portion of 15%. And, from time to time, we get, especially from the analyst side, these questions: "Is it well used?" et cetera, and, "Why don't you split the company?" And so on and so on.
This equity and this, cash and this financial strength is, from our point of view, a prerequisite to do this business, what we want to do. Yeah, if you tell a customer, "I can deliver you a plant of..." Where the whole plant, or the whole order for us will be EUR 800 million or something like this, what we see when we, when we deliver very large, pulp mills. And when you then tell the people, "We make sure that we will provide you a 20-year or life cycle service on this," you will not be taken really serious when you are a lightweight. Yeah, you have to be a heavyweight to do these big projects. You have to show that you have enough of equity and enough of cash.
To survive and to stand through with the customers, through every difficulty, what you get, yeah? And from my point of view, it enables us to have this position in the market, and that's the reason why we need to maintain these numbers. Maybe not on this very high level, but we need to have a certain equity and a certain cash portion to be the ANDRITZ as we are, also in the future. So that's my view on balance sheet structure. But let's say with regard to developing of the company, it is a clear basis for acquisitions and for growth and for own investments into the future. So that's it, more or less on the balance sheet stuff.
As I said already, these are the numbers just to remind you, after this, let's say, COVID-related special years, 2019, 2020, a little bit 2021, we came last year back to a dividend of EUR 2.10, which was a payout ratio of more than 50%. Average payout ratio in the last year is 53%, and we want to keep it that way. But this I tell you later when I talk about the targets for the future. So summarizing in this slide, these are the 2021 targets, and 5 check marks you see there. So growth targets, profitability targets with regard to EBITA, and net income well achieved. M&A strategy, 11 acquisitions done, all in the areas of new growth technologies.
And also with regard to our ESG topics, targets, target achievement, progress well on track. So mission accomplished, I would say, for the last CMD setup and targets. And then it's clear that with this flow, we look now into the future. And it's clear, and Joachim has disclosed it already, and my colleagues have told you about their targets in the business area presentations. When we look to the total group, yeah, we target to be by 2026 above EUR 10 billion. And I can tell you this EUR 10 billion is without major acquisitions, yeah? So another Xerium, another Schuler, these kind of dimensions, acquisitions are not included here, so there might be some room upwards, yeah?
As the sharp calculators already did and saw these EUR 10 billion we will achieve if everybody achieves the five, five, five and the 10. So if anybody performs better, it could be more. On the other hand, it can always be that certain things happen, that certain things in our environment change. So if someone fails, there is enough room that it can be compensated. So we are very convinced that we have a good chance to deliver also this target, which we announce now. So the growth target will be, as it is here, above 10% by 2026. And maybe a slight remark, just for completeness on Environment and Energy. 10% growth in order intake is certainly the first step to manage.
Whether it enters immediately in sales will be an issue of the structure of the order. If you would make the growth only with long-term, big projects, yeah, huge, H2 plant, then it might take a little bit longer that we see it in sales, but at the end, it doesn't matter. The group's target we will achieve, and this is more or less the CFO's view on the details of the numbers, and I just wanted to mention that. So with regard to profitability, you have also seen the targets in the presentations of my colleagues. And also here, we had a sharp calculator in the audience. When you multiply the growth target, the lower level of the growth target with all the volumes which we plan, then we get to the 9%.
If all would deliver more than the minimum targets we have mentioned here or we have chosen, then it might be a little bit more. But we are all old enough, experienced enough to know that in every plan, something happens which is not planned, and takes this as a, let's say, as a kind of a contingency in our total plan. So also, if someone not fully achieves the profitability target, then we are certain that we will be in the 9% range in 2026. So that's the arithmetic behind that. And as always, we have to bring it down to the last number. So net income also has to increase to 6%.
Here you see in the small graph at the upper right, the arithmetic, 9% minus amortization, minus -- plus, minus financial result minus tax gives 6%, and there might be some room in the financial result upwards. And now with the changed interest situation, we certainly have to target for a financial result which is positive. And with regard to the tax rate, we have, I have in my plans to think about the group structure with my colleagues and think about the tax structure in the next years. And we would like also here to contribute to the bottom line, also from the, let's say, from the not business, directly business-related functions. And we will certainly look intensively into our tax structure in the next year or this year, which is now coming.
So that's the reason why we are convinced to deliver the 6%. And with regard to cash, why should we do different than we did in the past? As I said, with more than 95% conversion, net income to free cash flow, so we keep this target. And when I say average near to one, then it's yeah, near to one from the 0.9, and in average, getting as much of the net income into the free cash flow. This is the target. Yeah, and then when we do both, when we be that profitable, when we be that cash generative, then it will be easy to continue with the dividend policy we had.
We start a little bit more to phrase it in a way that we say we want to pay continuously dividends, and we intend also to continuously increase the dividend. This might lead to a little bit wider range in the spread, so there might be years, very good years, where we pay maybe a little bit less than the 50%. And if there is a bad year, what we don't hope to have, then it might be a little bit more than the 60. On average, we stay with the guidance between 50% and 60% payout ratio to let also you investors benefit from our business, what we more or less do with your equity you gave us to work with. So that's our mission, and this is our commitment for the next three years.
Here again is the summary: EUR 10 billion, 9%, 6%, cash conversion one, and continuous dividend payment in the, in the range you know. So that's it so far from my side. Thank you for your attention there so far, and happy to take questions.
Thank you, Norbert, for your financial insights. Who has a question for Norbert? There, gentleman.
If I may, I will start this time. I apologize. You mentioned that you, you would like to even out the divisions in terms of revenue, weight, share to some extent. When we look at the guidance for 2026, this does not really change too much. How do you want to balance this? Is this more like through acquisitions going forward?
Uh-
Or, do you see other means of how to bring the divisions closer to each other?
It will be certainly by our acquisition strategy, yeah. Because in Pulp & Paper, we have already a huge market share. But I said I bring all this—we've tried to bring all the three closer to the one. It's certainly a very long way to bring another division, another group, business area into these dimensions. So that might be a misunderstanding. So all the threes together should come closer to the Pulp & Paper. You know, that we have this topic, that we are considered as a, let's say, Pulp & Paper equipment supplier in the markets. And this is something, let's say, what is not the full tools. If you buy ANDRITZ, then you buy Pulp & Paper, but you buy a lot of other businesses.
For getting a little bit more in this, let's say, balanced structure, the target is that we bring all the rest a little bit closer to Pulp & Paper. Acquisition is an element in this, yeah, so we did the major acquisitions in the last years. We did outside of Pulp & Paper. We did one which is accounted in Pulp & Paper, which goes more in the boiler segment. But in this, let's say, core Pulp & Paper area, there is certainly less room than in other areas. But let me not speculate anyway, because acquisition is more or less an issue of opportunities, and we have to see what comes.
Regarding M&A included in the guidance, would you see this on a similar level, like, in the last guidance and development so far?
Yeah, the M&A we did in the last three years, let's say this is a normal level. There was nothing really big included, and it has to stay at least at that level. And our pipeline is, let's say, filled with certain things, and I, I'm sure that we will continue like we did in the last years.
Okay, thanks.
Then the next question we can take from online. Sven Weier, please.
... Yeah, two questions, please, Mr. Nettesheim. The first one is really, you talked about contingencies in the guidance, and if maybe one division doesn't perform. I was just wondering about contingencies in the growth outlook, right? Because, Dr. Schönbeck mentioned earlier, EUR 1 billion is going to come from capital equipment. If you assume that maybe the rate environment doesn't change, as we think, and capital equipment decisions remain delayed, so if that EUR 1 billion doesn't come, and it's just the service business that grows, I guess you would still probably see the more than 9% as a realistic margin target. Or have you already invested quite a lot in people that you need also the capital equipment to grow as much to be above 9%? That's the first one.
I don't know whether I understood you right. You say, you ask whether we have the people in the right capacity already prepared for the growth?
No, I would just wonder how, how contingent is the above 9% margin target in that you really come in with EUR 1 billion of growth in the capital equipment in the next three years, right? So imagine that growth comes in much lower, have you already invested a lot in people and you need that, you know, leverage, or is it not so much contingent on that?
It is well planned through on a divisional level, and it has a, let's say, a clear basis in our midterm planning numbers, and there is a growth in both areas, and with this, we will deliver the numbers.
The other question I had was just, in terms of, I mean, 2026 is not too far away. Now, these are ambitious targets, quite a bit above consensus, and you're normally conservative, I guess, right? And, and I was just wondering, is that also a reflection that the current trading, the current pipeline, what you see for the next 12 months, looks quite good?
We have a, let's say, an order backlog of EUR 10 billion, which gives us, let's say, the confidence that also in the year 2024, we will certainly not disappoint you with regard to our sales numbers. Yeah. The order backlog turns into sales, and the new orders in service turn into sales, and so we are quite confident that this will not be seen in the year 2026. It will be seen also over all the three periods, like in the past. And yeah, I'm confident that we will also already in 2024 will see a growth or intent or most likely see a growth.
Sounds good. Thank you.
Okay. Do we have... Yes, we do have a question from the right side of the room.
Yeah. Hi. It's Akash here from JPMorgan. A few from me, and I'll go one at a time. The first one is on the balance sheet. So do you see further potential to improve the balance sheet structure in terms of reducing the gross liquidity and use other resources for flexibility on funding and potentially reducing the tax liabilities, sorry, tax rate further? And maybe just a follow-up to that is also on the size of the group is going to increase as you're targeting more than EUR 10 billion revenues. Is now the time for you to get a credit, investment-grade credit rating?
First question, clear. We will use the cash for what I... As I explained it, and there is, let's say, repayment of debt, an element. So there is a clear target to, let's say, get a little bit of this cash used, this gross cash used for, for repayments and whether we have to refinance it, by a, by a debt instrument or by some lines, we will see. It depends on, on the cash need. So if there's a big acquisition coming, then we certainly will go into a kind of a debt financing again and get the, get the money for, really into our balance sheet of getting into assets. If not, then we certainly will wait with, with these instruments.
We have pretty well established relations to our bank partners, and they are well aware of what we are planning, so it's all prepared that we can choose a very flexible solution which fits then to the needs in the next year. Rating, as long as we don't need it, why should we burden the organization with these things? Currently, I have heard from our banking partners that we don't need the rating for, so from their point of view, they have their own view on us, and as long as we deliver what we promised, and as long as we're that strong with regard to profit and cash, I assume that we will not need ratings for getting the funds we need.
And then the second one is on M&A. Dr. Schönbeck, in the morning, described the strategic aspect of selecting a company for acquisition, but I'm wondering if you can share any financial criteria that you would also look in who you should acquire and who you shouldn't?
Be assured that we take a very clear look into the issue, whether we jeopardize, whether we dilute our performance with the acquisitions. On the other hand, if there is a really a strategic rationale behind-
... We have a very long-term perspective, yeah? So we're not, we are not afraid to take something which maybe in the first two or three years will, let's say, put a little bit of stones in our backpack, when we are clear convinced that it will be paid, it will be paid back, in a reasonable time after these initial years. So, target is not to dilute. On the other hand, we will not put us into any limits to go into a real strategic investment when it is necessary.
The final one I have is on dividend policy. If you look at your long-term financial performance, you have, you have had quite strong operating performance, cash flow generation. As we look at the company now, you have significant revenues coming from aftermarket, with probably higher margin than the group. The question I have is that when it comes to dividend, what is stopping you from moving to progressive dividend from payout ratio?
Stopping is simply the fact that after a year, there is another year. And when we want to be a reliable long-term dividend payer, we need to be careful with the spend. And I assume that you all would love to have a reliable partner instead of a jumping up and jumping down person. Why should I now pay a high dividend and explain to you next year that I can't pay it or that we can't pay it? So we would go rather into this constant and constantly increasing policy instead of jumping up and jumping down. And remember what I said before, there is some risk in this big projects business.
So it's always good for the company when you have room to maneuver and when you have, let's say, enough cash to quickly decide on growth opportunities when they come.
We need to move on with the agenda. We will continue still with Q&As. So, now, next, I will invite Joachim to the stage to share us, his, his concluding thoughts. Joachim, we're ready for your remarks.
So maybe, first of all, thank you, thank you for all attending all the time. Still in the room, everybody is still awake, which is a good sign. Maybe a short wrap up from my side. I think my colleagues all told you that the targets from the last capital markets, they have been achieved in all business areas. They have been achieved on group level, so we would say all promises kept. We delivered as we have promised to you. I think we have a clear strategy going forward. We are prepared and I think very positioned to capture the opportunities that are on the market.
We for sure are in a very good position on the decarbonization with what we have, with the ability to innovate, and with the strong teams that are behind. My colleagues have presented ambitious targets on the, in the business areas, on profitability. All business areas see the potential, have the ambition to move up on the profitability. They all have the markets. They're preparing the tools, they're preparing the products to be there. We, you have seen the gentlemen that are heading these businesses. They know what they are talking about. They have a very strong team behind. They have the ability to deliver that.
As I mentioned already in the, in this morning, our teams have achieved the targets of the last Capital Markets Day in a very, I would say, very, very difficult market environment with the COVID, with the war in the Ukraine, all the supply chain disruptions, all the limitations to travel, the limitations to ship equipment. And I would say the results were amazingly, and, what we could still deliver under these circumstances. Our teams have improved their resilience against crisis, and they are not afraid for what is coming. And this is why there is a, I would say, a solid level of confidence in ANDRITZ that we also can tackle the next challenges we have put up on the screen.
If you still have not answered the question to yourself, why to invest in ANDRITZ, then let me summarize our thoughts on that. We have a leading position in very attractive markets. We have a track record to create value in our business and through acquisitions. We have a strong balance sheet. We have a solid and growing service business generating strong cash. We have an excellent track record to manage large projects, and we have the ability to manage volatility and to adapt ourselves and the organization along with the industry needs. We have excellent perspective, as we believe that the decarbonization definitely will accelerate our growth.
And here, we can say one of the questions that was coming. Of course, we are not sure about the exact timing when this investment will come, and when society decides to go away from the green transition and go back to rely on oil and gas, then some of these plans will not materialize, but that is a risk we take, and we are happy to do that. We don't believe that. We think it's a good way, and we believe it is very attractive technology. And as I said in the morning, we have special care and have development programs to make these technologies economically viable, that they can also, over time, be a real competition to oil and gas-based solutions in many areas.
So having said that, coming to the group targets, EUR 10 billion in revenue, EBITDA margin above 9%, with net income above 6%, continuing our successful M&A strategy and overachieving our ESG targets. That's my closing remarks. If there was any question left, we are happy to answer them. I would like to ask my colleagues to join me on the stage. Then you can ask whatever question you might, and we will have the right competence here to answer.
Thank you, Joachim. So I think we will start from the question from online. So we have Christoph Dolleschal on the online. Please, Christoph.
I still had a follow-up question on the M&A strategy from the previous presentation. I was just wondering whether you could give us an update on where you stand the pipeline, because I remember at the last call, you said that prices are coming down. So I would assume some targets are in ranges where you would like them, or might like to see them. And the second question is, what's the maximum M&A budget you are willing to spend until 2026? Probably even splitting that between, let's say, the normal budget that you would use, and you also mentioned if there is a big acquisition, I would probably treat that as a special case because that is a funny thing.
But probably answering those two questions, what is the normal M&A budget, and what is the maximum you could invest?
That's an interesting question, and frankly speaking, nothing we ever thought about in hundreds, but we might take it up. We never budgeted M&A budgets as we usually go into acquisitions, and then we can ask ourselves whether we can afford it or not, financially and from a risk point of view and from a management point of view. But it might be. So we will definitely think about it. I said that prices have come down, and that is true. We see a good—I would say we see a fairly good M&A market, and of course, we are in discussions, and you can be sure you will be among the first who will know when there is something to report.
We will read PR talk, yes. Thanks very much.
Do we have more questions? Do we have questions from the audience here in Leipzig? Please.
Just one question, and that is on artificial intelligence. So, I think we saw earlier in Pulp & Paper, you have one offering where the crane was using AI application. But if I ask everybody on the four segments outside of that specific crane offering, like, are there more opportunities where you can add AI to your products to differentiate against competition? And also, on the same topic, are customers willing to pay more for such offering because of higher productivity and cost savings?
So we have more applications than the crane with AI, but definitely as it started up in September, it's definitely one of our lighthouse projects. We are moving into applying AI a lot in all this autonomous mill environment, and we have a partnership launched three months ago with Microsoft, where our technology base together with the Copilot function that they are marketing. We have some applications specifically leading towards this autonomous plant, and this environment very much related to the pulp mills, because we have many applications and a huge data database going on there.
We will officially, with a bit more background, launch this and introduce this to the market on the Hanover Fair, together with Microsoft, and I think that is quite good. We, for our internal purposes, we are also applying AI to improve our processes, to get, to speed up our processes, and that is under implementation. On the willingness of our customers to pay more is unfortunately very limited, as they don't- they rather pay for the performance, and they do not too much distinguish whether it is coming from a conventional automation route or whether it's coming from an AI route.
We are much more efficient and much faster applying the AI, but I would say we are, we are in the beginning, and for sure, we will see a great development over the next 12-24 months.
Then we will take the next question from online. Sven Weier, please.
Yes, thanks for taking my question. I had a follow-up question for Frédéric on the hydro business, and we already talked about, you know, implications of climate change and higher need for renewables. But I was also wondering how it impacts, you know, innovation, because when we think, for example, for the run- of - river plants, when you have lower water levels on the rivers, what innovations do you have to deal turbines with lower water levels and the same efficiency? And I also think about when you think about these stark rain events, when there's heavy rain in one area, how that can be used also for hydropower generation. Thank you.
Yeah, on the technology side, there have been a lot of investments running over the last few years, and they are continuing, mainly for those low load and high load differences that you are mentioning. That requires different operation mode of our turbines, and this is where investment R&D in hydraulics are necessary to fine-tune our design. So we are coming up in different technologies, Kaplan for sure, for river flow, but also in more traditional technologies, Francis and Pelton, with new designs to face these low load, high load operations. This is always specified by our customer because they are getting the data and analyzing their data of different operating mode, take into account climate variations and so on.
So, that this is really ongoing, seriously, and that's a base of a market for modernization.
Thank you.
We have one question here from the audience.
Yeah, thanks. Joe, I would like to refer to one of your comments on a very previous Capital Markets Day. I think it was, I don't know, at least four or five years ago. And there it was on the differentiation of the margin between automation and services, yeah. And back then, it was like services was generating much bigger profitability. As automation, you know, it was quite good in paper, but it slowly tackled through the other divisions. Now, you have, of course, much higher scalability in the automation. Has this caught up? Are you seeing this already at a similar level as services business? Are you thinking or how are you thinking about the profitability development of the automation business going forward?
Yeah, we have a, there is a clear trend to improve, for sure. I think we have learned, our customers have learned, and a lot of our software solutions have been sold ten years ago as we sold a capital project. And today, and, and, and our customers and we realize that if you do not maintain an automation solution in the same way you maintain a plant, it doesn't work. And therefore, we basically have mainly now our automation contracts that we are selling software as a service, where they have customers have a continuous support, all the updates, all the connectivity we, we, we ensure, and that stabilizes the revenue, and at the end, is also improving our margins in a, in a decent way. I mean, we are announcing 9%.
We will not end up where Microsoft or Apple is.
Of course not, but, but, you know, if it's, if it's adding slowly-
Oh, no
... generating scale.
Exactly, exactly in that, in that direction, yeah.
With every new greenfield projects, you in the end could sell the solution, right? One question also to the large battery projects. Are you acting as a supplier, or would you also take the position of a general contractor if it was offered?
We would like to stay as a supplier. I would say the volume is large enough, and we don't see ourselves in a good position. And a lot of these investments are driven by the automotive industry, and traditionally, automotive is not driven by general contractors, yeah? They usually like to do it themselves. But at the end, yeah, you always have to find, have to find a solution everybody is happy with. But we would like to stay as a supplier with what we know.
Is there any other business segment potential, where you could also grow in terms of large order volumes, like you did now with the hydrogen? Is there anything similar, that you could also expand into?
No, we have. And I hope that you got an idea from what you heard today. We do not have a plan to move into a fifth business area. The opportunities we have in the businesses we know and the technologies we know is so huge, we can hardly manage it. And to tell you, I mean, the hydrogen is very adjacent, yeah? So but it's a bit different. It's a new technology. I introduced our venture program for these fast-track innovations in the morning. We just had the last call in Q4 of last year, and we received much more than 150 excellent ideas.
We don't know what is coming out, but we want to stay in the arena where we know also the customers, the applications, how the industries work.
Perfect. Thank you.
Do we have more questions from the audience? We still have some time. It looks like that there are no more questions, so in that case, I would like to thank our speakers for your contributions today. I would like to thank you, esteemed guests, for your engaging questions and participation. To our online audience, I would like to say thank you and goodbye. And we hope to see you all attending our full year result 2023 webcast on February 29th. Here in Leipzig, the program will continue with an exclusive tour to a Porsche workshop, a state-of-the-art production site for automotive body parts. The bus will leave from the hotel at 4:30 P.M. See you all there. Thank you, and bye for now.