Hi, everybody. Good afternoon. My name is Eric Linn, Head of Investor Relations here at Mirion. Welcome, everybody. Glad you're here with us. We have a full room here today at the New York Stock Exchange, and to those on the webcast listening as well, thank you for being here. So we have a full day for you, two and a half hours of presentations and Q&A. You're going to get to hear from Tom, our founding CEO, Brian, our CFO, as well as our two segment leaders on both the medical and the nuclear and safety sides. Before we get started, let me walk through a couple of housekeeping items. First, we're going to be using some forward-looking statements. This is all based on the best knowledge of the company at the time.
We have the detailed forward-looking statements in the presentation, as well as filed with certain SEC documents. Second, we'll also be using certain non-GAAP financial measures. We have reconciliations of those measures in the back of the presentation, GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations. That's available, again, in the appendix to the presentation and on the website. Now, turning to the agenda, you're going to get to hear from, like I mentioned, Tom at the beginning of the presentation, 40 minutes giving an overview of the company and talking a bit about Mirion's strategy. Next, you'll hear from Loïc Eloy, President of our Nuclear and Safety Division. Loïc will talk about how Mirion is enabling the nuclear renaissance. We'll take a short 10-minute break. We'd ask those participating on the webcast to stay on the line.
After that short break, then we'll hear from Luis Rivera, the Executive Vice President of our Medical Group. Luis will talk about the different ecosystems for growth within the Medical Group. And then last, we'll hear from Brian Schopfer, our CFO. He'll talk shortly about the financial strategy, the outlook for the company, and then after the prepared remarks, 30 minutes for Q&A. And we'll plan to wrap today around 4:30 P.M. So before Tom joins us on stage, we're going to watch a short video introducing Mirion to the team.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our inaugural Investor Day for Mirion. It really is a great pleasure to have you here today, and we appreciate the fact that you've invested your afternoon with us. You know, today marks roughly three years since we became a public company. We had the pleasure of ringing the closing bell here in October of 2021, and over the time that's passed, a lot has happened within our key industries, particularly the nuclear power industry and the medical industry, and our company has gone through an enormous transformation, and so today, we thought it was time to really convene an event like this as our first and perhaps best opportunity to really reflect and communicate to you how our views have changed about our markets and about the specific goals that the company is reaching for.
A few of the faces here, and certainly many of the people who are listening to the webcast, may be a little bit unfamiliar with the name. So let me begin by just some grounding discussion about how we think about ourselves as a company, who we are in our own mindset. To begin with, we would define ourselves as a category of one. We are the only pure play in the measurement, detection, and analysis of ionizing radiation. And granted, this is a very technical field, and on first pass, it sounds a bit dry. That is an absolute conversation killer at a cocktail party. But this audience, I think, understands well that this is a vast field. It is an addressable market of nearly $20 billion that right now is enjoying incredible growth dynamics.
And we believe, and we believe fervently, that we have a unique angle on this and a unique play on this. So this theme of being a category of one is something that I think we will reinforce throughout the presentation today. At its core, what we do is we provide compulsory products. In other words, things our customers must buy into highly regulated industries where the cost of failure is high. And paradoxically, oftentimes, the wallet share is low. And so we're providing things, again, our customers need to buy that inherently make things safer. And the core impact of all of that is the work that we do contributes to a cleaner environment through the largest source of carbon-free electrical generation in the world, nuclear power.
It makes the world safer by the work that we do in defense and in both military and civil defense, protecting people, property, borders, and the like. We improve human health outcomes through the work that we do in our medical field. Finally, we push the boundaries of discovery in terms of the work that we do associated with the big science community, particularly in space and particle physics. All of this ultimately correlates with our core mission, which is essentially to leverage our unique and compelling knowledge of ionizing radiation for the greater good of humanity. This is something that we take very, very seriously. This isn't merely a slogan on a conference room wall, but it really drives us.
But importantly for you as investors, the takeaway is this: it gives us the ability to grow vastly larger than we are today without ever having to conglomerate, meaning that the core work that we do in and around ionizing radiation detection, measurement, and analysis is scalable and has a high degree of fungibility across vertical market boundaries. Said differently, the work that we do in the big science community, in space exploration, the discoveries that we make there as it relates to detector design, material science, signal chain management, special manufacturing techniques, and the like, has an immediate and relevant impact across our entire network. And this really, if you take nothing else away from the presentation, is critical to understand this is the keystone of our overall strategy as a company.
The final thing that I want to note is that right now, we are enjoying literally for the first time in our lengthy history. So I've been running the company since we began the work of founding it in October of 2003, so more than 21 years. Throughout most of that time, we had difficult headwinds in our market. And we'll talk about what our growth experience was over that period of time. But today, we have very attractive end markets, most specifically in nuclear power and in healthcare. And we're going to do a deep dive, a double-click on both of these to really help you to understand very clearly what is driving the overall dynamic. But we're incredibly excited to talk about these things and ultimately to correlate them with our view as to what the company's performance looks like over time.
Mirion is organized into two operating groups. The largest of the two is what we are now calling the Nuclear and Safety Group. Formerly, we were calling this the Technologies Group, which we felt watered down a little bit, kind of the core activities of this operating group and really kind of the heartbeat of what they do. You'll hear shortly from Loïc Eloy, who runs this operating group, and he's going to give you a very deep dive on his key market segments, what he is seeing on the ground, and really what is driving his overall strategic outlook. But simply to give you a preview, to kind of tell you what we're going to tell you, let me note that there are really three key operating segments, three key market segments within the Nuclear and Safety Group. Firstly is nuclear power.
This represents in total about 60% of the group revenues. In aggregate, it represents nearly 40%, 37% to be precise, of Mirion's consolidated revenues, far and away the biggest vertical market that we play in and a market that's undergoing a true renaissance, a very compelling dynamic right now, which we'll get into. Secondly, it's defense and diversified. This is really dominated by the work that we do in the military field as well as the homeland security arena. In the military field, we support 22 of the NATO armed forces with militarized green gear that in the main represents ruggedized or militarized versions of civilian instrumentation that we do to assess radiation dose, dose rate, and the like in a tactical setting.
But on the homeland security side, we're also deeply involved globally in protecting borders, airports, shipping ports, event security like the Olympics, the Indy 500, major events like that. And it's work that is very compelling. We're very proud of our presence there. Thirdly, we have a significant presence in labs and research. The most exciting piece of that is the work that we do in the big science field. Many of you have heard us talk about this before as really kind of a touchstone for technological capabilities overall. We're very proud of the fact that our instruments have been deployed on most of the major interplanetary space probes over the last two decades. Indeed, our instruments confirmed the presence of water on Mars. We are on the International Space Station. We've developed dosimeters for NASA for the Mars mission. We're also deeply involved in the big science community.
Our instruments confirmed or discovered the last nine elements on the periodic table, and we are an integral part of the global quest to detect and identify the signature of dark matter. And this is important because this work that we do, again, is on the cutting edge of our field. But the discoveries that we garner from this work, again, in terms of detector design and the like, become commercially relevant almost immediately. And we have a very long history of taking things out of the science lab, figuring out how to produce them in commercially rational and attractive form factors at industrial scale. And this just kind of feeds the flywheel overall. Finally, I'll note that in the labs and research area, we also do a great deal of work in environmental remediation. We are closely aligned with the DOE in the U.S.
They're international analogs in helping with the environmental remediation in many of the government sites that historically have been associated with advancing the boundaries of nuclear knowledge. The second operating group we'll talk about today is our medical group. This group is led right now by Luis Rivera. Luis, similarly, will do a deep dive on what he is seeing in his space right now. Medical represents 36% of our total revenue, and again, there are really three key segments that we'll talk about today. One is the largest of which is in the area of radiation therapy, and this is in classical external beam therapy, typically delivered by linear accelerator or a linac.
Here, we are the leader in quality assurance solutions, both in terms of software, where we offer the leading workflow software application in the industry, but also through capital equipment that is used to ensure that this critical equipment is operating on spec in terms of beam geometry, beam energy, and other critical parameters. Luis will also talk about nuclear medicine. This is a field that today is undergoing a revolution. And that revolution is oftentimes referred to as theranostics or radiopharmaceutical therapy. But at its core, what is driving this is the fact that drug makers have figured out how to take known binding substances, typically referred to as ligands, but there are other mechanisms as well, and combining those ligands with a therapeutic dose of radiation delivered through some specific radioisotope. This is revolutionizing cancer care.
We are seeing this already that in a fairly short period of time, really over the last three years, the two largest blockbuster drugs in this field, Pluvicto, which is a Novartis drug, and Pylarify, which is a Lantheus drug, have aggregate revenues of well over $2 billion. This is a field that is, again, revolutionizing cancer care and growing very, very rapidly. Luis will walk you through some of the details. I'll tease it a little bit more deeper in the presentation, but it's important to know this is a special segment for us that will command additional attention today. Finally, we have dosimetry services. This is essentially a very attractive subscription-based services business where we are protecting the health of radiation workers, the vast majority of whom are medical workers. Again, Luis will walk you through that as we go through the presentation.
To give you some key metrics about our company and key attributes of our revenue contribution, let's begin with the fact that if you look at our TTM, our trailing 12-month revenue as September was $837 million. And that revenue is split broadly geographically, but about half of it is North America sourced. Just under a third is Europe. The balance is largely Asia-Pacific. What's more striking is that if you look at the revenue dynamics, that almost three-quarters of that revenue is either recurring or repeat in nature. What this reflects is the fact that the nature of our business is that once we gain a position of incumbency, whether it's at a commercial nuclear power plant, a radiation therapy clinic, or some other installation, the competitive dynamics and switching costs are such that we are highly, highly likely to retain that position for a very long tail.
In the case of a nuclear power plant, that tail literally can be 100 years. So a large component of our revenue overall is recurring or repeat in nature. One of the benefits of that is this becomes far more visible, and it gives us a much better insight as to what those overall revenue and growth dynamics will look like as we look ahead in our business. When we look at our two most dynamic business segments today, commercial nuclear power and nuclear medicine, or broadly medical, that represents nearly three-quarters of our revenue. The remaining quarter tends to be a little bit slower growth, mid-single-digit growth, more industrial or government-funded lab business in general. It is a useful metric to kind of look at those two components overall.
Today, globally, if you look at nuclear power, we have a foothold in more than 95% of the world's operating reactor base of roughly 440 commercial nuclear power reactors. We have 100% presence in the top 100 cancer clinics in the U.S. The company has 2,800 employees that are housed in 12 different countries, and importantly, given the legacy of Mirion, where even though we are a relatively young company, having been formally founded in 2005, our legacy predates that with the legacy businesses we bought to consolidate into Mirion, and so our customer relationships go back many decades overall. I'm going to talk just for a minute about culture because this is really important in terms of how we approach the business.
When founding Mirion, again, more than two decades ago, one of the key attributes, one of the key elements of the business overall, really related to what kind of culture do we want to have. Many of us who had come together to found Mirion, establish it, had had backgrounds in larger companies, smaller companies, a variety of different enterprises. And one of the things that we recognize very clearly is that culture was a secret weapon. And even better, it's a free secret weapon. And that if we could cultivate, foster, really develop a positive culture, and a positive culture defined by attributes like embracing risk, having the capacity, the bandwidth, the patience to develop elegant strategies, being free of politics, trying to be free of bureaucracy, having a highly, highly delegative environment, all of those things shaped the company that we wanted to create.
I'm really proud of the fact that even today, two decades hence, most of these attributes are extant within our company. I think most of our employees would tell you that, yeah, that is one of the things that I enjoy the most about being tied to this company. But importantly, again, this is a strategic element. We know that many of the people we compete with are larger companies where great careers are built on incrementalism. You win by not losing. We have the ability to kind of gear that up a little bit more, maybe take a few bets that some of our competitors would not make. I truly believe that our historical overperformance relative to our market growth is attributable to this factor. These cultural elements, to some degree, inform the way we think about our strategic priorities.
Not in a rigid order, but just to articulate some of the things that we're focused on right now, but include innovation. We invest very, very heavily in innovation. We invest about 10% of our top line in engineering, hardware engineering, which is the combination of R&D, sustaining engineering for our existing product categories, and customized customer projects. But beyond that, or in addition to that, we spend about 7% of our revenue on software engineering. So in aggregate, the commitment that we have to innovation is second to none. And that, coupled with the fact that we are many times larger on a like-for-like basis than any of our competitors, really drives an innovation flywheel where, as we get better, the distance that we create between us and our competitors becomes greater. And this is an area that commands the utmost focus within our business overall.
Secondly, it's customer experience. The industrial technology world, in general, is not known for a high degree of touch, a high degree of customer service. And there's a big sea change taking place right now in the community where, if you look at the constituencies that we serve, let's think about nuclear power as an example. What we are seeing is a mass aging out of the baby boomer generation and, to some degree, kind of the leading edge of Gen X. And we are seeing those roles taken over by Millennials and Gen Z. And the key characteristic of these new generations is that they're digital natives. And they're coming into an environment that today is largely analog. It is largely driven by historical practice. And there is an enormous opportunity to change the way we interact with those customers, change the overall experience.
And again, this is commanding a great deal of attention from us right now. Thirdly, we seek to be identified as a financial compounder. This is how we've always viewed ourselves historically. And we'll go through some of the historical performance figures overall. But as a new public company, we recognize we still have to prove it, that people understand what we've done historically, but there's still a show-me factor, show-me function that we have to overcome in the markets. And we recognize really the key elements to that relate to our overall margin profile and our free cash flow conversion. Brian Schopfer, our CFO, will talk about what our pathway there looks like to really drive us into that financial compounder territory. Operational excellence has been historically a high note for the company. We feel we're good operators. Historically, we've driven substantial margin expansion in our business.
We have a very well-developed business system that has been central to our operating activities for more than 15 years, and we'll talk about some of the elements of what operational excellence and really think about it as self-help looks like, again, in our journey to be seen as a financial compounder. Lastly, it's M&A. We built this company through M&A. It is a very high skill set that we possess in terms of not only deal origination and striking good deals, but more importantly, in terms of the integration of those deals into something that is coherent, cohesive, and ultimately accretive. Final thing I'm going to note here, too, is that three years into being a public company, we truly believe that the rigor associated with being public has made us a better company, and it's kind of a converse to the way many people think about it.
When many people think about when you become public, you become more short-sighted, you have the quarterly tyranny to deal with, et cetera. We feel like it's made us a better company in a similar way that policy deployment or strategy deployment does in terms of making you get better and better and better every quarter. So it's been an important journey for us and a good one overall. Now, in terms of, again, the way we look at our company and some key attributes for those who may be less familiar with it, firstly, to note that we have a commanding market presence.
Not only are we the largest player and the only peer player in our space, but we're the global number one in the vast majority of our product categories, 17 of 19 product categories, which is important because more often than not, that means we're going to get an at-bat. We're going to get the opportunity to bid on activity that's attractive to us and to have a presence in local markets. We talked about the innovation flywheel. This is really driven by the more than 400 engineers, physicists, and scientists that we have in the company that are really doing this exciting work on the cutting edge of technology, both real and virtual, and increasingly taking a focus or embedding, incorporating a focus on AI.
Given our history, given the markets that we serve, our tenure in the space overall, we've become a trusted partner throughout the various industries we serve for the most demanding applications, and of course, central to what we do is a commitment to shareholder value. Again, I've been running this company for more than 21 years. Much of that time, we were private equity-backed. We've had two private equity sponsors. The first private equity sponsor enjoyed a return of 6.6 times that multiple of cash, which is a very good return from a private equity standpoint. Our second sponsor enjoyed a multiple of cash of two and a half times. We've been public now for three years. Over that period of time, we've added $2 billion to our enterprise value overall, so this commitment turns into real deliverables.
Again, this is something that drives us, motivates us, and is an embedded part of our culture. Finally, I will note that we possess really an interesting and unique network effect within our business. Oftentimes, people will talk about network effects when they're talking about social media or some other Silicon Valley-based tech, but it's absolutely as relevant in what we do in industrial technology. The value of a network is simply the combination of points of presence and content that you put through that network. In our case, given our scale, given the geographical footprint that we possess, our physical points of presence are unequaled competitively in our space, but also given the scale of our company, so is our content. We have the biggest network, the most content going through it.
Again, this is a cycle of virtue that gets better and better and better. The history of the company reflects not only consistent growth, and we talked about this a lot when we took the company public, that if you look at the period from 2005 when we formally created Mirion through the time we went public through 2020, that 15-year period, we enjoyed a top-line CAGR of 12 points, 4 points of organic growth, 8 points of inorganic growth. There are a couple of striking things about that. Firstly, if you look at that period of time, compare that with best-in-class industrial compounders, we compare very favorably. But what's more interesting is that if you look at the macro picture during that period, much of our history, it's been characterized by headwinds overall, where you see here on the page that we had the global financial crisis.
What's not on here is the Fukushima incident in March of 2010. Additional things that are not on here would be the bankruptcy of Westinghouse and Areva, the two largest players in the nuclear industry, the devolution of trade between the West and China. We had another recession thrown in in 2015. We had power markets that were highly, highly distorted by a combination of a gas bubble and the emergence of heavily subsidized renewables in the face of fairly tepid demand overall. We had COVID, dot, dot, dot. We had just kind of a trail of tears overall. But again, throughout that period of time, you can see the chart. Not only did we grow, but we grew predictably. We grew in a fashion that was essentially free of the economic cycle.
During that period of time, we also drove about a 1,200 basis points expansion in our overall margins. I think we have proven that we're good operators. Importantly, a key takeaway for you is that we are a resilient firm. We are not tied to expansionary or contractionary economic cycles. We are very resilient. Again, this relates to that core engine of recurring and repeat revenue that's visible to us that helps keep this engine going overall. The final thing I will note here is that beginning in 2019, we began a very deliberate expansion of our market focus into the healthcare field. Prior to that time, about 70% of our business was tied to commercial nuclear power, which is a market we've always loved. We've always understood it very well. We've always felt that nuclear would have its day, as it appears to be having now.
But we wanted to essentially broaden our capabilities, increase the headroom in our total addressable market. And this is really what inspired the additional diversification into the healthcare field. But an important attribute of that is that it's given us kind of a portfolio effect where the covariance and demand drivers between the nuclear power industry and the healthcare industries that we play in is very, very low. And that gives us, again, this kind of natural diversification really adds to the resilience of the firm, adds to the top line. And we're very excited to talk about how those dynamics are likely to play out as we move ahead.
Now, we'll do a bit of a deeper dive here into two important super trends, really trends that we expect to be generational in nature that are driving our business today, the renaissance in commercial nuclear power and the dynamics that are taking place today in cancer care. And let's start with nuclear power. I think most of you have been certainly aware of the growing focus on this sector overall. And probably many of you considered, "How do I really play this? How do I get greater exposure overall to nuclear power?" We'll come back to why we think we are a particularly good play there. But it's important to look at the dynamics first and understand what is happening, why is this a short-term burst of excitement, or is this really going to be a long-term generational super trend?
On the demand side, what's commanded the most visibility of late is the activity by the hyperscalers. I think kind of the shot heard around the world for many investors was the Constellation Energy deal with Microsoft to bring the Three Mile Island power plant back online. That, to many people, represented just an extraordinary deal where Microsoft was agreeing to take 100% of the output of this power plant for 20 years at a level of pricing well above the spot price in the prevailing energy market that reactor, that power plant serves overall. This is reflective of systematic activity by the hyperscalers to really book long-term baseload power, ideally carbon-free power generation capability. This is a global phenomenon. It's not restricted to the U.S. I won't drain every item on the page and talk about all the other deals. I'm sure you've seen them overall.
But this is a critically important factor. In fact, if you look at the chart on the bottom of the page, you can see that the estimated demand from data centers, AI, and crypto today or in 2022 was 50 gigawatts. And think of a gigawatt as the size of a modern nuclear reactor. So that would be 50 utility-scale nuclear reactors scaling up to 90 in 2026, an extraordinarily short period of time overall. This is real demand. The AI business models are critically reliant on this power supply. And this is something that we believe strongly will unfold and unfold in a way that probably will be more dramatic than we expected it.
More broadly, if you look at other demand drivers, we would characterize just the post-pandemic global expansion, which has driven the need for greater consumption of energy of all types, including electrical energy, the general electrification of developing economies. So when an economy develops, the share of overall energy consumption that's devoted to electrical energy increases. That particular piece of the pie, we're seeing this function as well. There's been a proliferation of electric vehicles. And then finally, crypto mining, which if you consider the economic dynamics of crypto and understanding that a little-known fact today is that about 2.5% of U.S. grid capacity today is devoted to crypto mining. And we've all seen the run-up in Bitcoin and other crypto plays. We now have an administration coming in that appears to be more crypto.
This call on energy demand, even though it's overlooked by many, I think is going to be a significant factor. On the supply side, we've seen a general tightening of natural gas markets for a variety of reasons, including LNG diversion from the U.S. into Europe, into the Pacific Rim. There is a very predictable and accelerating decommissioning profile for U.S. coal plants. About 60 gigawatts of U.S. coal will be decommissioned over the next decade or so, and this represents an enormous opportunity to fill that gap with small modular reactors and other areas, but today, this is a supply-side issue. We do have aging nuclear power plants, even though some of those have been brought to life and recommissioned. There are some that simply are not economic to sustain, second-generation reactors built in the 1960s that will come offline.
And then finally, on the supply side, we have seen a very pro-regulatory environment, very favorable in terms of government subsidies, regulatory easing overall in the industry. And all of these things are helping to drive the dynamic in nuclear power. So coming back to our exposure to nuclear power, again, 37%. This is a fairly rigorous number. We could squint our eyes and be a little bit more creative and probably conclude that the secondary effects or secondary markets that we supply are correlated to this. But this is a pretty firm number, and we think conservatively depicted overall.
This, by the way, if you have looked at other ways of investing in the nuclear industry in a way that's comprehensive and responsive to the changes that are out there, you have undoubtedly concluded that this exposure is far greater to commercial nuclear power than many of the people that are commonly seen as bellwether investments in this space. So this is a significant factor, one that we're very proud of. And again, this is something that Loïc will expand on. But fundamentally, we are the connective tissue between all of the different players in the nuclear ecosystem. We have cradle-to-grave exposure. So today, a modern nuclear power plant that's being built will be expected to operate for 80 years, maybe 100 years. They'll be on the front end, five to 10 years of construction, on the back end, five to 10 years of decommissioning.
We play throughout that entire life cycle. A life cycle that literally spans more than a century overall, we are cradle-to-grave. Importantly, 80% of our revenue from nuclear comes from the installed base. Again, this is that recurring and repeat revenue function, that visible flow that we see. When you aggregate that against a large footprint globally and a large reactor base of roughly 440 operating reactors, it gives us a lot of insight as to how that future is likely to unfold. Finally, we have a full suite of offerings, not only capital equipment, but of increasing importance is the digital play, the software play overall, which will really tie this ecosystem together in combination with our services. Our exposure here is great.
To give you a little bit more flesh on the bone here, when a new reactor is being built, and so an example today, this is not a picture of this particular project, but a good example today is the Hinkley Point C project that's being built in the U.K. This is a two-reactor power station that's using EDF technology. EDF is the big French utility that operates 57 or 59 commercial nuclear power plants. But they're also one of the leading designers of third-generation utility-scale nuclear power plants through their unit, Framatome, overall. So this is an EDF power plant. And we've disclosed publicly on a number of occasions that on the front end of this project, we booked more than $80 million in backlog during that construction phase.
What that would represent would be some of the things that you see here: electrical penetration assemblies, which are highly engineered conduits to allow you to pass power and instrumentation cabling through a big containment structure, surveillance and security software. We are the leading platform in the U.S. market for this. And this is something that has significant infrastructure components associated with it: neutron flux measurement systems, which essentially are the speedometer of that power plant. These are instruments that go inside the reactor core and adjacent to the reactor core and measure temperature, water levels, and most importantly, the neutron field or distribution within that reactor, which allows the operator ultimately to operate that reactor in the most efficient fashion, guarantee or generate the largest potential thermal and ultimately electrical output out of the power plant.
Once a power plant becomes operational, there are a number of additional product categories that really kick into effect, things like dosimeters and survey meters, spectroscopic instruments that are used in radiochemistry labs to assay different types of solids, gases, and liquids, supervisory software that's used to manage the interface with the different classes and categories of instrumentation that we provide, contamination and clearance monitors that are designed to prevent that Homer Simpson type incident where somebody walks out of a power plant with a fuel rod stuck in their shirt, imaging systems, which have to be radiation tolerant, spare parts and services, etc., then finally, in decommissioning, we bring in waste assay systems, different types of inspection cameras, and these are all exemplary. There are many, many more things that we provide to a nuclear power plant over its life cycle.
But again, I think this just kind of helps flesh out the picture of the diversity of the solutions that we offer and the criticality of those components to nuclear power. Most of the people in this room today are American, and we tend to have a bit of an Americanized view of what the market is. But more broadly, it's important to note that the nuclear industry is a very global industry. Only about 20% of the world's operating nuclear reactors are in the U.S. If we look at the European market overall, it's important to note just quickly that many of the same attributes are taking place there. You can see here year-over-year changes from 2021 to 2023 in the profitability and revenue dynamics of European nuclear power plant operators.
But you can also see here what the growth plans are in Europe and understand the reality of just this new-build utility-scale momentum that's taking place today, not just in Asia, not just in China, but there's tremendous activity in Europe and in other parts of the world. Let's pivot now and talk a little bit about the medical field. Let's talk about cancer care specifically because this is an area where we are highly leveraged today in two discrete areas that I mentioned before, both in terms of external beam therapy, but also in terms of this exciting new field of radiopharmaceutical therapy or theranostics, if you will. Again, we can look at demand and supply-side dynamics that are informing the marketplace here. On the demand side, we have an aging global population. As people get older, they're more likely to get cancer.
That rate of cancer incidents picks up in any economy. Secondly, there's a growing middle class and a growing demand for Western standards of care in the developing world. As an example here, if Western standards of care were ubiquitous globally, the world today would need about twice the radiation therapy clinics that it has today. This was a major driver in the decision by Siemens Healthineers to buy Varian a number of years ago, the leading player in external beam therapy, and finally, there is a rising rate of cancer diagnoses, particularly in younger population demographics, which is adding to that overall demand side of the equation. On the supply side, again, there's this globalization dynamic as Western standards of care do begin to evolve, as they do begin to push more deeply into global markets.
There's a radiopharmaceutical revolution, which many expect to drive incredible geometric growth in the space. Again, Luis will talk a bit more about it, but if we had to choose a single segment that we think will grow faster than any, it would be this one, and then finally, there's a next generation of technology in the external beam therapy space as the linacs, the linear accelerators continue to evolve, incorporate motion, essentially drive a greater degree of precision and energy as they are delivering cancer care. Now, if you look overall at our medical segment, 75% of our medical business is related to cancer care overall. We've talked about the demand drivers in the space, and certainly our boat will rise with the tides. So as the industry dynamics and kind of core demand in those verticals increases, so will the velocity of our business overall.
But beyond that, it's important to note that we have a strong leadership position here. As we look at the radiation therapy market, we are the global leader in independent radiation therapy quality assurance. And this is important to, again, touch on for a minute. The vast majority of clinicians prefer independent quality assurance solutions, both capital equipment and software, to ensure that their linac or their delivery mechanisms are operating on spec. We are the global number one in providing those solutions overall. In the nuclear medicine field, we are the global number one in key instruments that are used to support nuclear medicine today, including dose calibration instruments, thyroid uptake instruments, and a variety of other things that are used in the transport, the compounding of radiopharmaceuticals overall.
We are also the global leader in workflow or data management software in the nuclear medicine space and see an enormous opportunity to take that globally, so importantly, today, while we have a strong leadership position, while in many or most of those product categories, we are the global number one, there are markets where we're not number one, where our share position is lighter than we would like it to be, and this represents an opportunity for us to fix that through that network effect, through our innovation, through the momentum overall that we possess. This has been a key factor historically in our ability to outgrow our markets, and we think that will continue into the future. A central part of that is the digital conversion.
On the medical side of the business, we've invested very, very heavily in digitizing our business through the development of our SunCHECK platform in radiation therapy, through the acquisition and further development of the EC² softwar platform in the nuclear medicine field, through the development and evolution of our Instadose product category in occupational dosimetry. On the technology side of the house, we have doubled down on our investment in digitization through the acquisition of the Collins Critical Infrastructure Software Platform, the leading security software platform in the U.S., which in turn is spawning a greater investment in digitizing our entire ecosystem. Again, Loïc will talk more deeply about this, but finally, all of this is being tied together with a focus on CX, the overall customer experience, to make sure that we are evolving to meet the evolving needs of our customer base overall.
This is just a quick overview as to what's happening today within the development pipeline for nuclear medicine. So I mentioned today that there are two blockbuster drugs on the market, Pylarify and Pluvicto, both of which are focused on prostate cancer, so-called PSMA-related drugs. If you look more broadly, and what you see here is what today is in the FDA approval pipeline, recognizing that there is a great deal of developmental activity taking place globally. But right now, the American market is the most attractive because of the greater reimbursement capabilities or dynamics within that market. But this gives you a very visual representation of what is happening today with this radiopharmaceutical revolution. So let's transition now and talk about how do we make our company better. We've been through a lengthy journey.
We've been through the challenges of becoming a public company and then becoming a good and competent public company. So the question is, how do we become a great public company as we look ahead at the combination of these incredible market dynamics that we've talked about, as well as our own capabilities? We'd summarize that by saying that, firstly, again, it's led by our position. Brand equity, number one player in 17 of 19 product categories globally, that alone, given favorable market dynamics, is going to help lift the arc of our development. Secondly, it's the network effect. As we get bigger, as we continue to develop organically, as we continue to add to our capabilities inorganically, the value of that network increases. And again, this is what allows us, more than any other factor, to gain our birthright market share in those markets today where we're underrepresented.
Finally, it's the innovation flywheel on the commercial side. Our heavy investment in capital equipment development, R&D, sustaining engineering, and project work, as well as the commitment to software engineering overall, this is allowing us to spin up that flywheel and innovate faster and faster and faster so we can put our competitors further behind us. On the operational side, the core of what we focus on is our business system. We'll talk a little bit about the actual manifestation of this when Brian runs through the bridge to margin expansion overall. But on top of that, we've disclosed publicly that right now, with the work that we're doing to consolidate our supply base and improve our procurement efficiency, that we see 150 to 300 basis points of margin expansion that's highly, highly attainable. And finally, it's industrial optimization. As a company, we continue to expand.
We continue to acquire new businesses, but we're also very good at optimizing that network, shifting work tactically to different factories, different industrial production sources where it makes sense, in some cases, closing factories down. This represents an ongoing opportunity for self-help and margin accretion. From a commercial standpoint, we've also made some changes, creating the role of Chief Revenue Officer, which has immediately had an impact on bolstering our inside sales capabilities, standardizing the way that we go to market commercially with our field sales teams and our distribution partners. We've expanded our marketing investment, launching our first e-commerce gateway, which went live about two weeks ago and represents enormous improvements in access. Again, particularly as you're thinking about the generational shift that we are seeing within our customer base.
We've done the same in brand development, though, where we've worked very, very hard to, even though historically and likely well into the future, we will be a house of brands rather than a branded house. We've done enormous work to make our brands identify more clearly and more coherently in the marketplace. We've talked about our focus on the customer, but importantly, we've also focused on strategic alliances, really inking long-term, tighter relationships with key customers. And just over the past year or so, we've announced alliances with firms like Siemens Healthineers through Varian, EDF, the SMR player, X-energy, and more recently, in fact, last week, we signed a deal with one of the critical players in the Indian nuclear ecosystem overall. Our business system, again, is a key attribute to it.
I'm going to spare you the details here today other than to note that we think about our business system. Not only do we do the conventional Toyota Production System-based things like policy deployment, which we happen to call strategy deployment and Kaizen events, and the various tools and techniques used for process improvement and daily management. But beyond that, we think of our business system more comprehensively as one that includes our cultural drivers, again, which we view as a strategic lever in the way we think about governance overall. Final thing I'll talk about is inorganic growth. Again, the company has been very acquisitive throughout its history.
We became particularly busy after 2016 when we had a change of control with a private equity sponsor that had a deeper war chest and allowed me to do a little bit more of the things that I was wanting to do, and that's driven a large array of deals. I think we've done 16 deals since that period of time. Up through the point we took the company public, the cadence of deal-making was very, very high. It was very effective. The deals that you see on this page here, we acquired for an average pre-synergy EBITDA multiple of about 12 times, trailing an average post-synergy multiple of about 7 times, so again, this kind of makes the case that we've been an effective integrator. Importantly, when we took the company public, we came out at a higher level of leverage than we really viewed as optimal.
We came out at about 4.4 times leverage. So over the last three years, we've been very focused on deleveraging the balance sheet. We announced in our Q3 earnings call that we're now below 3. We're at 2.9 times leverage at the end of September. We guided that we expect to be around 2.6 times at the end of December. So we're kind of getting into the sweet spot. And Brian's going to talk about this a little bit more deeply. But the key takeaway here is that we think it'll enable us to become a little bit more active in M&A, recognizing that we really do see that 2.5 times leverage as being kind of our equilibrium point overall.
One final thing I'll say about M&A is that when we took the company public, we guided the point of view that we expected our medical segment to become equal to or greater than our nuclear and safety segment within our planning horizon. That point of view has changed, candidly, as the market has changed, as the dynamic has changed in nuclear power, and as we see a greater opportunity, a closer-in opportunity. But more importantly, as we look at our deal pipeline, we see the opportunities that are out there. We also see more balanced opportunities. So one of the key things that we'd like to note today is that we expect to continue to be active on both sides of the house. And our deal pipeline right now is attractive and really reflects opportunities within both operating groups.
My final note today, you've seen this in the press release today, but very happily, today we're raising guidance. Our prior guidance for organic revenue growth was 4%-6%. Today, we're raising that to 6.8%. We believe we're at an inflection point in the nuclear industry. We believe a similar dynamic is taking place in nuclear medicine, and we believe the overall industry, the vertical dynamics are beginning to accelerate, but importantly, this is what we see today. This is the dynamic that we expect to enjoy over the intermediate term as this flywheel begins to spin up, and we think it's tangible, supportable, and obviously, we have conviction in it. From a margin standpoint, we planted a stake in the ground about a year ago that we would deliver 30-point EBITDA margins.
We were a little bit unclear, a little bit vague with intentionality on the timeline here. We're declaring that we're going to get there by 2028. From a free cash flow standpoint, we are committing to free cash flow conversion of 60% or better as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA by 2028. We think we'll be at 50% free cash flow conversion, again, looking at it as a percentage of adjusted EBITDA by 2026. And then finally, today we announced our first share repurchase program, up to $100 million. The principal focus here is on defusing dilution from RSU and PSU issuance to management overall. We reserve the right to use it for other tactical purposes overall, but we think this is a pro-shareholder move that adds value overall to our shareholder base.
I'm going to conclude today by reminding you again that we are a category of one. We're a company that has a proud history of value creation, a proud history of performance in difficult markets. Today, for the first time ever, we are blessed with markets that we think will be favorable and favorable on a generational basis. And we believe in many respects, we are uniquely qualified, uniquely positioned to play those trends. We, again, are a company that provides mission-critical solutions to customers with whom we've had relationships for many decades overall. And the market dynamics are something that we'll talk about in greater detail. So this time, what I'd like to do is to transition over to our technology segment. And we're going to begin with a short video after that. Loïc Eloy will join us on the stage.
Every day, Mirion Technologies drives the advancement of radiation safety, empowering progress across industries and continents. Our innovative radiation safety solutions are relied upon to provide vital protection and operate with remarkable precision, and our passion for what we do is rooted in our unrivaled knowledge and years of collective experience because we know the impact of our work extends far beyond today. That's why customers trust us as a partner in advancing solutions, technologies, and practices that enable the next wave of innovative breakthroughs. Whether that's safeguarding nuclear power or advancing small modular reactors, enabling discoveries in space and research labs, or delivering critical infrastructure and cybersecurity solutions, protecting homeland and defense teams, or developing precise technologies for waste management, Mirion Technologies ensures a safer tomorrow.
We work together with our customers every day to deliver confidence in safe operations and harness the transformative power of radiation to move our world forward. At Mirion Technologies, we're advancing radiation safety to protect what's next.
Hello everyone, and welcome to our Investor Day. I am Loïc Eloy, President of the Nuclear and Safety Group at Mirion. I would like to talk to you today about nuclear renaissance and how Mirion enables it. Starting with nuclear renaissance, I've been in the nuclear industry for almost 20 years. I've never seen such great market conditions. I am confident in the future of nuclear, and in the next 20 minutes, I'm going to talk about it and to show you why I'm confident and excited about the nuclear renaissance. Second, how Mirion enables the nuclear renaissance.
Starting with an example, EDF, in France, largest nuclear utility in the world, operating 57 reactors. EDF's strategy is to first extend the lifetime of the 57 operating nuclear reactors. Second, to build large new commercial reactors. Third, to build small modular reactors. EDF posted last year EUR 140 billion of revenue. As you can imagine, EDF has tens of thousands of suppliers. EDF has selected 25 key strategic suppliers to support them achieving their goals and objectives. Out of those 25 key strategic suppliers, as you can imagine, a very large multi-billion company in charge of civil work activities, in charge of the turbine island, in charge of the large components, and we have Mirion, part of those 25 key strategic suppliers. It shows how Mirion is critical for EDF, but also for all the other nuclear operators to achieve their goals and objectives.
So as Tom presented, Nuclear and Safety Group represents two-thirds of total Mirion revenue. We are active in three main core markets: nuclear power, defense, lab, and research. A few key metrics: 440 nuclear reactors operating in the world. Mirion is present in more than 95% of those reactors. Something which is very key is that we are expecting the nuclear capacity to double in the next 25 years. Today, 400 gigawatts of nuclear installed base, expecting this to double by 2050. 80% of our revenue in the nuclear power is recurring in nature and related to the installed base. We're going to talk today about small modular reactors and how this is going to change the future of nuclear power. We are estimating our revenue per megawatt to be 60% higher on a small modular reactor versus a large utility scale.
Three main parts that we're going to address today. First one is Mirion is the leader in nuclear power radiation detection and safety. Then we're going to talk about the favorable market trends that we are seeing in our core market. As a third point, how Mirion is capturing and how Mirion is going to capture the growth across the nuclear landscape. Three main core markets: nuclear power, representing 60% of our total segment revenue. We have a high visibility to revenue. We have a high degree of stickiness from our customers. Second end markets: laboratory and research, representing 25% of our segment revenue. We empower labs to analyze radioactive materials to protect the environment as well as to protect people. Our third main core market is defense, representing 50% of the revenue. We have solutions which allow the military to avoid potential radiation threats.
Tom presented our large number of product categories. I'm going to focus on our customers, so we are working with some key strategic customers, starting with large-scale nuclear OEMs such as Framatome, Westinghouse. They are part of our key customer base. Small modular reactors, we are for sure working with all the main players in the SMR world. Tom was mentioning X-energy. We have BWXT. We have TerraPower. We are active with all those main key customers. On the utilities, for sure, in the U.S., Duke Energy, Constellation, EDF in France, CNNC in China. We are active with all the nuclear utilities in the world. Also, very active with all the laboratories, mostly here in the U.S. with all the DOE labs.
On military activities, working with most of the NATO armies, really active in the U.S., U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, as well as in Europe or in many other countries, working on border security, first responders, and event security. Something which is key on this slide is we are uniquely qualified and certified to serve customers globally. First topic, to serve customers globally. We are active worldwide, and we have a large share of revenue in North America, but also in Europe and in Asia. Something which is very key, we are uniquely qualified and certified. This is a market, as Tom was mentioning, where we have high regulatory requirements.
Mirion is the only company which is qualified and certified with all the nuclear utilities in the world, with the NRC in the U.S., with the ASN, for example, in France, but also with different nuclear safety regulatories in Asia, but in many other different countries. So this is something which is very key because we are the only company positioned with all the nuclear utilities and nuclear safety regulators. 80% of our revenue comes from the installed base. This is something which is very key. This is high recurring revenue where we are delivering spare parts, service activities, replacement business. As Tom was mentioning, once we are at a customer, we'll stay within this customer for the next many, many years to come. 90% presence in the nuclear pipelines worldwide, and 25% of our revenue is highly profitable revenue coming from service and software.
We have a strategy in place to expand this share of revenue related to service and software. Switching to the favorable market trends that we are seeing. Starting with nuclear. Nuclear is an economic, climate, and national security priority. This is something which is very key. Economic, climate, and national security priority. Starting with economic, there is a clear need in the world for clean, reliable energy. Tom mentioned the high demand coming from cloud, crypto, and AI. Also, a strong need of electrification around the world. Something which is very key, economic priority. The climate priority, most of the countries have signed and have committed by 2050 to reduce CO2 emissions. A large number of countries have decided to integrate nuclear energy in their energy mix to be able to achieve the goals by 2050.
Due to the geopolitical instability, nuclear is becoming a national security priority. Countries have realized with the war in Ukraine, with COVID, that this is critical to have energy independence. Right now, nuclear is becoming a global diplomacy tool. Talking about the expected increase in the nuclear capacity, today, 440 reactors representing 400 gigawatts of nuclear power. It is expected by 2050 that the nuclear capacity will double. That would represent around 600 gigawatts of additional new capacity. Around half of it would come from small modular reactors, and the other half would come from large utility scale. It is also expected in this period of 25 years that around 200 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity will be decommissioned.
Mirion being active in the construction of large nuclear power plants, small modular reactors, but also in the decommissioning, Mirion has a gross capacity of opportunity of around 800 gigawatts. Something which is key is that we are expecting in the next 25 years more nuclear capacity to be built compared to the last 40 years. This forecast is even lower than what was announced back in December 2023 during the COP28 in the UAE, where 25 countries, including the largest countries with nuclear power, such as the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, South Korea, have announced the target to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. If we take the example of the U.S., the U.S. has around 96 nuclear reactors delivering 100 gigawatts of nuclear capacity. The White House has committed by 2050 to have 300 gigawatts of nuclear capacity in the U.S.
So it shows a strong commitment from the country. It shows a commitment of the U.S. government to triple nuclear capacity by 2050 by restoring retired power plants, by investing in small modular reactors, but also by building large utility-scale reactors. We're going to talk later how Mirion is well-positioned by signing strategic agreements with key players. How Mirion is well-positioned to benefit from this expected strong nuclear capacity increase. Nuclear to power the AI revolution. Artificial intelligence is something which is key. There is a clear race today between all the countries to be the first one to move forward on artificial intelligence. The view that we are having is that the limiting factor for artificial intelligence is not the technology. The limiting factor for artificial intelligence is not the people. The limiting factor for artificial intelligence is access to clean and reliable energy.
This is something which is very key is that the hyperscalers have realized that to be able to continue to develop artificial intelligence, there is a clear need for clean, reliable energy. Sam Altman recently announced, for example, his target to build up to seven data centers, each data center having a need for five gigawatts. Five gigawatts is the need of the electricity of New York, for example. So there is a clear need for energy, and nuclear is part of the solution. So we've seen recently various announcements from the hyperscalers in them committing to acquire nuclear power capacity. Ten times more energy consumption. So today, there are billions of requests which are made on Google Search. Tomorrow, OpenAI, if all those searches are transitioning to ChatGPT, the energy consumption need is ten times higher.
We've seen in the last 12 months, 10 gigawatts of incremental nuclear capacity deals which have been announced between the hyperscaler and nuclear utilities. Something which is going to transform nuclear power is small modular reactors. So small modular reactors are nuclear reactors below 300 megawatts. A large utility scale usually is above 1,200 or 1,400 megawatts of nuclear capacity. So small modular reactors below 300 megawatts are going to transform nuclear power. This is a significant accelerant to the favorable utility-scale dynamics. Why small modular reactors are interesting? Because they are safer, more flexible, and cost-effective alternatives. There is also a lower need for financing, which is something which is really key. It is expected in the next 25 years to have 300 gigawatts of SMR capacity.
Something which is very important for Mirion is that we have a large panel of solutions, and our solutions are compatible to all SMR technologies. Our strategy right now is to forge strategic deals with key SMR players, and I can confirm that we've been successful over the last 12 months and will continue to be successful in the future. Talking about other market trends on our core markets, laboratories and research and defense. Laboratories and research, we are also seeing an increase of the DOE budget with focus on environmental monitoring. We've seen large investments in research application and fundamental physics, and we see also that our solution can be deployed on other markets. One of them is nuclear medicine, and Luis is going to talk about it, but our product and solution are being used in this growing nuclear medicine market.
On the defense, military, and homeland security side, we are seeing, because of the geopolitical situation, a strong increase from most of the country of the defense budgets. This leads to higher investment. This leads to higher opportunities for Mirion. As the last part is how Mirion is going to capture and how Mirion is capturing the growth across the nuclear landscape. Five main topics I'm going to address. First one is on the installed base, then on the new large reactors, small modular reactors, digitalization, and new product introduction. On the installed base, as already mentioned, 80% of our revenue comes from the installed base. Different dynamics. First one is the nuclear power plants were built for a lifetime initially of 40 years. The nuclear operators are extending the lifetime of the reactors up to 50 years, 60 years, 80 years, potentially 100 years in the future.
Each time there is an extension, there is a need for investment from the nuclear utilities. It means additional opportunities in terms of services, spare parts, product replacement for Mirion. The second dynamic that we are seeing right now is for the nuclear operators to expand the nuclear capacity, either through power upgrades or to run the nuclear reactors at a higher capacity. That means also incremental CapEx and additional opportunities for Mirion. We are also seeing a dynamic of restoring retired reactors. We see that in the U.S., recently announced Three Mile Island, Palisades. We see that also in Europe or in Asia, that some retired reactors are restoring. It means also additional investment, additional opportunities for Mirion. On the second main lever for growth, this is the new large reactors. One number, 100.
Tom mentioned the lifetime of a nuclear reactor, around 100 years, five to 10 years of construction, 60 to 80 years of operation, 10 to 20 years of decommissioning, around 100 years, and the Mirion addressable market is around $100 million per reactor during this overall lifetime of the 100 years. If we make a focus on the new construction, we estimate today that our currently served market for large new construction is $25,000 per megawatt. This served market is expected to increase in the next year. We've seen strong investment and strong expectation in terms of nuclear capacity growth. Our strategy, once again, is to sign strategic agreements with key nuclear players.
We've announced back in August the strategic deal that we signed with EDF, where we are an exclusive partner to EDF for all the future reactors which are going to be built by EDF in France, but also in export, and also an exclusive supplier to EDF for the 57 reactors installed base. Also, with ECIL in India, there is a strong wish from the Indian government to expand nuclear capacity. We are very well-positioned through this partnership with ECIL. These are two examples. We also have additional examples, and we are going to continue to sign strategic partnership agreements. The third key lever for growth is small modular reactors. Expected additional 300 gigawatts of small modular reactor nuclear capacity by 2050.
What we are estimating is that our Mirion market opportunity on small modular reactors is 60% higher compared to large utility scale, representing around $40,000 per megawatt. We have already signed and will continue to sign contracts with several SMR players. Today, the contracts are mostly related to first of a kind, so mostly working with the SMR players on engineering upfront activities. But if we design our product and solution, we'll be very well-positioned when SMR will be built on a large number of units. The fourth main driver for growth is digitalization. Today, Mirion has at each customer tens, hundreds, thousands of measuring points with all our equipment. What we are investing in right now is supervisory software being able to connect all those measuring points.
This will ease the life of our customers because our customers will be in one room right now, be able to see all those measuring points, to see all those devices. They will be able to do some preventive maintenance, for example. They will be able to better control the nuclear power plants. They will be able to do that with a lesser number of employees. So this is something that we presented recently to a few customers in the U.S. All the customers were really excited about this development, and this is something which is very interesting. The last key driver for growth relates to product innovation. As Tom was mentioning, we are a leader in our industry. We are investing a lot in new technology. We are investing a lot in new products in production. When we introduce a new product, it generates additional revenue.
It can potentially also take market share from our competitors, and this leads to higher revenue for Mirion. As a conclusion, we have a strong foundation. We are a leader in nuclear power radiation detection. We have a global presence worldwide. We are active with all the nuclear safety regulators in the world, and we are qualified with all of them. We have very favorable market trends. What does it mean for Mirion, for the Nuclear and Safety Group? It means, on the short term, growth expected from the digitalization. On the medium term, it is expected growth coming from the favorable dynamics that we are seeing in all our markets, and mainly focusing on nuclear power with the expected strong growth of nuclear capacity increase. On the long term, we are starting to see nuclear fusion opportunities. This is something which is also very interesting.
This is more for the long term. Therefore, we are expecting to see 6%-8% organic growth with nuclear power, high single-digit growth. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, everybody. We're going to take a short break. We had originally scheduled a 10-minute break. Let's make it a 5-minute break, and then we'll meet back here around 3:28 P.M. Thank you.
Do you know what I know? A child, a child shivers in the cold. Let us bring him silver and gold. Let us bring him silver and gold. Send a king to the people everywhere. Listen to what I say. Pray for peace, people everywhere. Listen to what I say. The child, a child sleeping in the night, he will bring us goodness and light. He will bring us goodness and light. Santa baby, just slip a sable under the tree for me.
been an awful good girl, Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight. Santa baby, a '54 convertible too light blue. I'll wait up for you dear. Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight. Think of all the fun I've missed. Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed. Next year, I could be just as good if you check off my Christmas list. Santa baby, I want a yacht, and really that's not a lot. Been an angel all year, Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight. Santa honey, one little thing I really need: the deed to a platinum mine, Santa honey, so hurry down the chimney tonight. Santa cutie, and fill my stocking with a duplex and checks. Sign your 'x' on the line, Santa cutie, and hurry down the chimney tonight. Come and trim my Christmas tree with some decorations bought at Tiffany's.
I really do believe in you. Let's see if you believe in me. Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing: a ring. I don't mean on the phone, Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight. Hurry down the chimney tonight. Hurry tonight. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light. From now on, our troubles will be out of sight. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Make the Yuletide gay. Make the Yuletide gay. From now on, our troubles will be miles away. Here we are as in olden days. Happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us gather near to us once more. Through the years we all will be together if the fates allow. Hang a shining star upon the highest bough and have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
All right, we're going to get started back up again. First, run a video on the medical group, and then Luis will give his presentation. Thank you.
As the global cancer burden rises, Mirion Medical is working behind the scenes, enabling and supporting the medical community as they shape the future of cancer care. Harnessing our unrivaled knowledge of ionizing radiation, we partner with hospitals and cancer centers across the globe to ensure safe and effective clinical care and to provide vital protection to healthcare providers and patients alike. We know the power and potential of radiation to transform treatment outcomes, from radiation therapy to the emerging field of radiopharmaceuticals. Together with our customers, we're creating device and software ecosystems to support stakeholders. From research to production to the point of patient care, Mirion Medical Solutions are relied upon every day.
Whether it's implementing the newest generation of diagnostic imaging or enabling the ultra-precise delivery of today's most advanced radiotherapy systems, accelerating the development and manufacturing of radiopharmaceutical therapies, or creating safer environments for those who deliver critical care. At Mirion Medical, we're improving lives, delivering better solutions to enhance patient safety and unlock new possibilities at every stage of cancer care. Better solutions, better outcomes. That's the science of better.
Good afternoon. I'm Luis Rivera. I'm the Executive Vice President of the Mirion Medical Group. I'd like to thank everybody for coming today to our Investor Day and having a discussion around the medical business. The team's very excited about where the medical business is going, the trajectory we're on, and the direction that we're headed. Most notably, how our ecosystems and technologies are aligning very well with the emerging and growing cancer markets.
As Tom mentioned, the medical business is just over a third of the overall revenue of Mirion Technologies, and we're segmented into the three groups of the radiation therapy, nuclear medicine, and diagnostic—excuse me—and the dosimetry services. Radiation therapy and nuclear medicine, of course, being directly tied to the cancer market. Dosimetry services also has its ties to the cancer market but also has a broader footprint across all of healthcare and even into the industrial and nuclear space. A couple of statistics that we'd like to share with you around the medical business as a whole. Notably, 75% of our revenues are coming from markets that are directly related to the cancer care growth. 40% of our revenue today is now associated with digital and software and the operational services businesses.
This is a change from more of a hardware-focused business that we originally started with to really diversify our platform to the digital side. Global expansion of our business to over 150 countries, and probably most notable is the 70% recurring and replacement revenue from our existing customer base. When I go through the discussion today, really focusing on three different themes: the profile and foundation that we think is positioned well for growth within the medical business, leveraging the underlying cancer trends, specifically the nuclear medicine growth in the market, and then how our proven growth model is something that we can apply across other segments in the medical business. So when we think of our attractive profile and why we think it's foundational for growth, again, the strong incumbent advantage of doing business, 70% of our revenues coming from our existing customers, is a significant strength.
When we think about our market and being number one in radiation therapy and number one in the space of nuclear medicine in which we practice, oftentimes that can be concerning with regards to how do we continue to grow if you're already number one. But with the strong incumbent advantage and the number shown here with 70% of our revenues coming from expansion within our existing customer base, we find this as a significant strength. Global expansion has been another strength of ours as we've grown, as I mentioned, to 150 countries, and then the shift from hardware-centric innovation to digital software and services innovation. Not only driving an incremental revenue to the top line, but also margin expansion as we develop more and more software solutions.
As we look at our segments of radiation therapy, nuclear medicine, and dosimetry services, there's some commonalities across them through the medical group. First, our market space is primarily focused on quality of care and safety, whether it be patient safety or healthcare worker safety. The second, and probably more important, and Tom hinted on this with regards to innovation. It's cultural to our business, but it's also been the mainstay and the hallmark of all three of these divisions. Radiation therapy, again, is over half of the revenue from the medical side. We're the category leader in quality assurance and independent QA. And that's noted with our relationship with the top 100 cancer centers in the U.S. The U.S. News & World Report that ranks the top 100 cancer centers indicates that we do business with all 100 cancer centers.
As we look at the nuclear medicine business, 20% of the overall revenues. Again, very innovative on the hardware side, and with the acquisition of EC² , blending those two to continue to drive additional ecosystems is in the direct future of where we're going. We're also going to leverage the existing commercial channels as well as the service channels globally to expand the nuclear medicine business outside of the U.S. Rounding out the portfolio on the medical side are the dosimetry services with about 25% of the overall revenue. Again, innovation being key to this market space, and we'll talk a little bit more about the innovation on the InstadoseVUE in a moment. So as we've discussed the product categories, we'll talk about our customer groups briefly, starting with radiation therapy, where we partner with a number of different segments in the market.
Of course, we partner with the large academic institutions globally around the world, including Johns Hopkins, MD Anderson, and Cleveland Clinic, but we also partner significantly with the customer or the community-based hospitals, as well as IDNs such as McKesson and HCA Healthcare. The nuclear medicine segment has an expansion upon that. They also partner with many of the hospitals and freestanding cancer centers, but imaging centers and radiopharmacies are part of their segmentation. The dosimetry division probably has the widest breadth of customer base, including everybody that nuclear medicine and radiotherapy touches, but also getting into the small medical offices, dental offices, veterinary clinics, and even on the industrial side for industrial applications and, of course, nuclear medicine, excuse me, nuclear power. Our branding is something that is pretty significant in our space.
When we think about the radiation therapy, nuclear medicine, and dosimetry, there's a strong branding within each of these markets that's identified with the innovation that we've had historically. Sun Nuclear, Capintec, and Biodex on the nuclear medicine space, the newly acquired EC² software, and, of course, our dosimetry services. All the branding in this house of brands has consistently been a strong suit of our commercial play in the market, and it's not limited to any segment. It's across the hardware, software, and services in each of those businesses. When we think about being a critical enabler of a digital ecosystem, we'll start with the radiation therapy piece.
Actually, across radiation therapy and nuclear medicine, if you think about what we're driving towards in patient safety and making sure that the patient doses are accurately delivered, whether it's delivered with a linear accelerator or radioactive isotope, it's our equipment and our solutions and our systems that are making it safe for the patients and their deliveries. Beyond just the hardware components of it, there's regulatory aspects to this. There's operational efficiencies and aspects to this, as well as clinical decision-making, so we developed organically on the Sun Nuclear side of the business the SunCHECK platform, which integrated the hardware with the software and provided also integration within the department healthcare systems, the oncology information systems, the imaging systems within the department, and built this ecosystem around that relationship and that synergistic value of the hardware and the software.
Similarly, that's exactly the path we're developing right now on the nuclear medicine front. With the hardware and the install base that we've had and the success that we've had on the nuclear medicine front on the Biodex and Capintec product lines, now merging that with the EC² software, we have the opportunity uniquely in this space to build that same type of ecosystem and get those synergies among the two providers. That ecosystem will be built across all segments of the nuclear medicine business, including the drug owners, the pharmacies, as well as the administrators of the drugs. And as I mentioned before, dosimetry services is available across these networks and these ecosystems as well. And the innovation around the dosimetry services business primarily has to do with what I'm wearing today, the InstadoseVUE.
The Instadose VUE is digitizing something that has otherwise been an analog and a labor-intensive process. Typically speaking, for radiation and occupational dosimetry, the labor-intensiveness of collecting badges from the entire staff that's wearing the badges, shipping them off, getting the reporting system, shipping them back to the users, and managing lost badges and the entire workflow is quite labor-intensive in an antiquated way to look at the business. The Instadose VUE has the opportunity to revolutionize this space by simply hitting a button on the view, taking a dose measurement, seeing it on an application or on a software system on a PC, and the radiation safety officer being able to completely do that manually behind the scenes without any of the labor-intensiveness or without any of the logistics. So we're looking for big things from the Instadose VUE in regards to this revolutionary opportunity.
I think Tom spoke to some of the macro trends in the cancer care space, including the aging population, rising instances of cancer diagnosis. People are living longer, and it's expected to the extent of 75% plus increase in cancer diagnoses. There's also an anomaly that we're starting to move from more of an acute care perspective for cancer diagnoses into more chronic and continual care, which is, again, driving additional patient volume. If we drill down to the fields within radiation therapy and nuclear medicine in regards to what's driving the volume within these particular spaces, it's around targeted therapy. Radiation therapy went through a few years ago an evolution of technology which allowed physicians and clinicians to escalate dose levels to the tumor while sparing patient, excuse me, sparing the anatomy around the tumor.
Nuclear medicine is going through today that same evolution of targeted therapy where we're going to use different binding agents to be able to take the radioisotopes in the treatment directly to the tumor and to the cancer cells and spare the healthy tissues and the critical organs. What this means for patients is higher efficacy because we can escalate the dose to the cancer and spare the healthy tissue, which means less side effects and a much higher quality of life. This is why these two areas within all of cancer care are thriving and continue to get patient volume. At this point, 50% of the global cancer care diagnosis is being treated either primarily or through secondary treatments with radiation oncology.
We're going to see as we talk about the influx of radiopharmaceuticals from a therapeutic perspective, this continue to increase with the pipeline from the FDA being filled with this targeted therapy. As we think about the business in the medical group and what's been successful for us, there's a number of areas that we're going to look to expand throughout the enterprise. As I've mentioned about the idea of binding the software solutions with the hardware and the innovation in the hardware that we've had and building an ecosystem, this is something that we did in the radiotherapy space. Not only does it drive the revenue on the software side and the increased margins. We've also gotten a secondary effect where as we continue to get investment in the software, it's getting dragged along hardware investment as well.
We have this innovation flywheel effect that's occurring where we continue to invest and provide value in the software to our specific hardware users, and the hardware is being designed to take advantage of the use in the software. The investment continues to grow, and we have a couple of case studies to discuss this. Similarly, the market that we've built internationally, growing from a U.S.-centric business to a business in over 150 countries, is something that we're looking to expand the nuclear medicine business as well as the dosimetry services business. Mirion's invested heavily in an infrastructure both commercially and the channels for commercial approach as well as the service and support infrastructure around the world. This infrastructure can be leveraged to grow the overall Mirion business into the global markets.
As I mentioned, we have a couple of case studies where we have this growth of software driving growth in the hardware business in Japan and in Belgium, in particular here. Japan was a saturated market, and we saw declines because it was only replacement business from a hardware perspective. As we released the software platform and the enterprise modules and the software, we certainly saw an increase in the software uptake in the Japanese region. But what you'll see here in the orange bars is there was a change in trajectory from the hardware business as well, which invigorated more hardware purchases because of the value that they would get with the integration with the software.
Similarly, in Belgium, we had a similar effect where we had a flat hardware business, a standard repeat business in that region, and when we invested and put the enterprise software systems into that region, there was a nice adoption on the software side, but we also saw this growth again in the hardware business that did not exist before the software platform. I'd like to take a moment to double-click a little bit on the radiopharmaceutical space as this being one of the significant growth drivers for the medical business. As I mentioned, the personalized therapy and the targeted therapy that radiopharmaceutical companies are investing in today and taking a technique that was used primarily for diagnostic purposes and now attaching radiopharmaceuticals that can help treat the cancer and target the tumors specifically is very rampant in the FDA pipeline.
From a pharmaceutical perspective, they're expecting significant gains in this market space, going from a $10 billion industry to a $40 billion industry over the next 10 years. It's not isolated to oncology either. There's certainly technology, or excuse me, pharmaceutical medications that are going to be used for Alzheimer's disease, cardiology, urology. So there's a growth within that pipeline outside of oncology as well, which will benefit our business. What does this mean for Mirion? Certainly, you're going to see revenues go up because of the changing in prices from a diagnostic agent to a therapeutic agent being significantly more expensive. But we're also going to see steady increases in patient volume, but more notably, an increase in the infrastructure and the access to care.
We saw this same anomaly as the targeted therapy was being rolled out in radiation oncology and radiation therapy, where the main cancer centers in large cities, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, were where most of the therapeutic centers were. It's the same with nuclear medicine, where the therapeutic centers are in the main centers, and they're not at the satellite facilities, they're not at the rural facilities, and they're certainly not outside the main areas. There's a big push that is coming in the market to get access to care, access to these radiopharmaceuticals out in the market. We've already seen many companies making these investments and growing their business in order to support what's coming through on the FDA pipeline. Our software and hardware in the nuclear medicine space is directly tied to the shift in the growth that we expect to see on the, excuse me, in the access to care.
Another component about the nuclear medicine that we think is unique to Mirion has to do with the segmentation of the supply chain. There are several businesses out there that are focusing in on nuclear medicine, but typically only to one of these segments where Mirion has the ability to go across the entire spectrum of the supply chain. When we look at the drug owners who are responsible for getting the drugs through the FDA trials, takes about 10 years to do so on average, and the needs that they have for the research development and getting it through the FDA pipeline, then they partner with the drug manufacturers and the radioisotope producers and the radiopharmacies in order to get the drugs manufactured and into the market and the doses down to the administration level.
And then the drug administrators, the cancer centers and, excuse me, MD Anderson, the 15,000 diagnostic facilities, which will be shifting to therapeutic facilities as well. Our portfolio works across all three of these segmentations. And with that segmentation of the drug owners, the radiopharmaceuticals, the isotope producers, the radiopharmacies, and you see here the drug administration, this is where the power of the EC² software comes in and building that ecosystem and providing standardized data across and the value of that data back to the drug owners and other people in the value chain. Loïc mentioned earlier today about the crossover in some of the technologies that we have between the safety and nuclear business and the medical business.
On the right-hand side, you can see a number of our technologies, including area monitors, dose calibrators, hand and foot monitors, and other devices that are throughout this network from a hardware perspective. Many of these technologies got their roots in the research and development side of Loïc's side of the business, and we've been able to modify these for the medical side of the business. So the sharing of knowledge and technologies is something that is continually escalating with our research groups. So for nuclear medicine, our play is to continue the innovation on the hardware side, grow the software business, expand globally, and connect that network around the ecosystem.
From a future perspective, when we look at the data that we achieve and grab in both ecosystems in the radiotherapy space and the nuclear medicine space, we have an opportunity to take this and monetize this data to help with clinical trials, clinical decision support, and predictive analytics using AI and other technologies, and this is the direction with these ecosystems that is going to allow us to go on the next step of our innovation.
So in conclusion, we certainly are very proud of the innovation and the foundation of our business today, and we look to continue to expand on the software side in particular and looking for that software growth to outpace the segment growth of the business, expand globally into markets utilizing our current infrastructure that we've invested in on the commercial channels and on the service and support channels to drive that growth, and then to take that data in the ecosystems, both on the radiotherapy side and on the nuclear medicine side, and drive use of AI and data analytics to provide value and monetize that value on the longer term back into the value chain. We're going to drive towards a 7%-9% medium-range target for organic growth, and the nuclear medicine side will be pushing the upper end of that spectrum.
With that said, I'd like to turn it over to Brian to talk about our financial strategy.
Thank you. So we're running a little behind, but we'll catch up. That's okay. So just to reiterate, as we think about the next four years, the evolution of Mirion from a financial and strategic perspective, and just to bring this all kind of home, first off, we're talking about 6%-8% organic growth. I'll tell you how that kind of compares to the last couple of years. We're reconfirming our 30% EBITDA target and with a 2028 kind of end date. And we're very focused on free cash flow.
One of the things you'll see in a couple of slides, and I'll talk more about, is not only are we here today talking about those targets. We've also structured all of the incentive compensation plans within the company, both short and long term, around making sure that the margin and free cash flow targets are achieved. Just to tie a complete ribbon around this. As you can see, since 2021, when we went public, we grew at about 7% organically. It's interesting. That's an as-reported number. The FX and the M&A kind of offset each other. Our target over the next four years, as we've talked about, is 6%-8%. You've seen this and heard the team talk about this: high single-digit growth in nuclear power, high single-digit plus growth in nuclear medicine.
And I think what's really interesting as people look back on Mirion for the last couple of years is that end market diversification has really benefited us. When things got tough, when Russia invaded Ukraine, our technology business kind of had a muted first year out, our medical team showed up strong, both on the margin side but also on the organic growth side. This year, we've seen a bit of headwinds out of China and Japan, more from local issues on the medical side. The technology team has delivered for us. I think we see that being a bit more balanced going forward as both teams look to deliver high single-digit type growth with margin expansion, as we'll talk about in a minute. I've got a lot of questions over the last couple of weeks on backlog and orders.
I thought I'd try to kind of cut through some of the numbers and give you a bit of a representation of what it looks like kind of under the noise that's out there. What we've done here is we've adjusted our order numbers over the last three years as of the end of September. These are on an LTM basis, and I think you'll start to see us talk more LTM order growth to kind of take some of the noise out of it. We've taken all the orders out that we've made above $20 million. That tends to skew the numbers a bit. Here you can see the underlying order growth rates are a two-year stack number of about 12%. That's good. That's what's fueling the growth we've seen over the last couple of years.
And we believe that that is the foundation for what we can grow on in the future. We're also reemphasizing the large order pipeline that we have here, about $300 million-$400 million. We announced this on our last earnings call. About a third of that's in new builds, two-thirds of that's with existing customers. And I would remind you that that existing customer base tends to be a bit more profitable for us than the new build base. So that's an encouraging number. And with all the numbers you saw from Tom on the new builds and Loïc talked about and the SMRs, I think this is a trend that we'll continue to see, these more elevated active pipelines that we have out there. Timing's always difficult, which is why we don't like to commit too closely on that.
But we do believe we continue to have a very good opportunity on all of these orders over the next five quarters. Here's the backlog. Backlog's up 16% since September 2021. So good backlog growth. So order growth has been good. It's translated to backlog growth. I think the other thing that sometimes we forget is we're doing a ton of work in the factories on how do we push orders through the pipeline faster? How do we get it in and out quicker than what we're seeing today? So not everything hits backlog. So it's something to think about that backlog isn't necessarily the ultimate indicator for how we're doing, because as we ship orders faster, it may not ever show up in this number. I think the other interesting thing here is to show you how strong our order book has been on the nuclear power side.
54% of our backlog continues to be nuclear power. 24%, about 25%, is in the new build space. I think that's a number that will continue to probably grow over time, and we continue to believe and tell you that 50% of our backlog will convert over the next 12 months. This gives us good visibility into 2025 from where we sit today, so I think that's very, very important that we continue to watch that number, but also continue to see. I think when we started in as a public company, that number was more towards the 45%, so we're shifting more visibility today than we had even 24 months ago. Margins. Margins have been a hot topic for Mirion. Tom and I, along with the team, committed to 30% even of margins.
About a year ago, obviously, we're doubling down on that today. Our margins were flat for the first three years of being a public company. It was the kind of when you adjust for public company costs. You've seen, and we're continuing to expect good margin expansion from the company this year. And even at the low end of the range, if you use the midpoint of our 2024 range, you're seeing 100 basis points of margin expansion expected next year. The high end of the range is almost double that. So we continue to expect good margin improvement. This isn't a back-end loaded forecast for us. We're going to deliver margin expansion every year on a go-forward basis. Here's how we get there. So first off, biggest bucket continues to be operating leverage.
If you go back to when Tom started the company 22 years ago, he talked about 1,200 basis points of margin expansion through 2020. The biggest lever he used and we had was operating leverage. That continues to be here and alive today. Fixed cost, discipline, and let us grow into it. Procurement continues to be something we're going after, and I'll talk about that in a minute, and then the Mirion Business System. That continues to be a lever we're using to drive the other two, but also within its own right, so as we double-click into each of these, how do we grow on top of our fixed cost base? We continue to believe we have enough capacity in the company to deliver on these targets and to grow into them. None of our factories run 24/7. They're all single-shift factories.
So we have capacity if we need it. Local manufacturing, we're doubling down. And Loïc and the team on the nuclear and safety side have done a fantastic job this year on lean and Kaizen and putting that into the factory. We've seen it very apparent in some of our U.S. businesses. That's now expanding to the globe. And I think that will continue to drive inroads for us to hit these numbers. And then mix. We've talked a lot today about digital. We continue to say that medical, likely over four years, will grow a bit faster than the nuclear and safety business, has higher margins. That provides favorable mixed dynamics for us in both ways. Procurement is something we've spent a ton of time on this year. Last year was about pricing. This year has been about procurement and supply chain.
The team has really rallied around this locally. We've formed category councils where we're letting people kind of get more involved outside of just their local site. That's driving a cultural change within the business, but it's giving us leverage. We're now using our entire footprint in order to help optimize our supply chain. 3,000 suppliers today. We expect that to dramatically decrease. One category alone, we have something like 1,200 plus suppliers. We think we can get that over time down to under 100. That gives us leverage. That gives people to invest in us while we continue to invest in the company. I think the other thing that's going on, and we're spending a ton of time on, and we're investing in, and it's in the numbers, is value analysis and value engineering.
This is how do you take engineers, break down the product, and relook and rethink about not only how do you manufacture it, what kind of parts are going into it, what do we need or don't need in the product. We made great inroads in a couple of products last year in Luis' business on the medical side. Loïc and his team are now very involved here. I think we've hired six standalone engineers to date just to focus on VAVE efforts. We expect to continue to expand this. So we're using our PEG team, our Performance Excellence Group model here to drive VAVE. And then the last is the business system. One of the things we've done internally is we've created a Digital Innovation Group. So this is how do we leverage all these software things we're doing?
How do we leverage our scale to make sure we're not duplicating? How do we make sure we have expertise? How do we make sure we're not solving the same problems we've solved somewhere else? We're doing that through our Chief Digital Officer and the Digital Innovation Group that we formed. We should be able to leverage that. We continue to look at footprint optimization. We announced one in the second quarter. I think that would be a continuing theme you'll see from us, is just making sure are we in the right places? Are there places where we have factory space available that we can use, et cetera? This has been a big lever that we've used over the last nine years, and specifically over the last four years. It's something we'll continue to do.
And then we do believe we continue to have opportunities to price in both the near term but also the long term. Cash flow has been something that we recognize we need to continue to work on. We've talked about enhancing margins, so we don't need to spend time there. In the third quarter, we reminded everybody or told everybody maybe that we've reduced our working capital days by 10 days from the third quarter last year to the third quarter this year. We expect to continue that, both on the inventory side, on the project cash flow side, on Loïc's business, from our new builds. That tends to be one of the things that ebbs and flows our cash the most, is that project timing. And it is just that. It's just timing. We're committing to eliminating non-operating expenses across the company.
Those have come down dramatically since we became public. That's something that we expect to go away. And I think we continue to look at our optionality on the interest side. Our gross debt still sits just below $700 million. That weighs on our interest expense. I think today our debt trades above par. I think we'll continue to look at refinancing opportunities and some other avenues, including debt paydown over time. But I think the point on the right is the most important, which is we've tied all of this in with incentive compensation for both the short and long term on both the management team, but also our operating group management teams. And that will ensure that we only get paid when we deliver value from a shareholder standpoint. I think this is really important for us. Tom talked a bit about this, our leverage story.
This was structural when we came out. This wasn't created via the operating of the business. Although the business historically operated at a much higher leverage target, we were private. That's very normal. Today, we've seen that journey come from 4.4 to 2.6. I would tell you, or we're expecting to hit 2.6 at the end of the year. Up through September, half of that was done just by the old-fashioned EBITDA increase, working capital efficiency. We did do some structural things to help us on the other side as well in order to get this down. But I think we're in a much better spot than where we have been. We continue to believe two and a half times probably the right long-term leverage target for us. That lets us continue the M&A flywheel. It takes us a bit off the sidelines after this year.
But I think we will continue to be disciplined. We will continue to be thoughtful about the M&A that we do. As you think about the next four years, and if you assume two and a half times leverage is the norm for Mirion, at least, that gives us about $900 million of capital available over the next couple of years. And I think the right side kind of shows you how we're thinking about it. How do we get a creative M&A done that's smart and more bolt-on in nature? But how do we continue to rethink about is debt paydown the right answer for us? And I think you'll continue to see us think through that pretty carefully. And then obviously, the share repurchase plan we announced today, which is really focused on the antidilutive side going forward. We don't plan to try to do anything backwards.
Then opportunistic, if the timing presents us to be able to deploy more capital into the share repurchase plan. So I think this gives us ample capital to work with, and we continue to feel very good about the M&A pipeline, but we also continue to feel very good about the other options available to us to deploy capital. We did initiate this morning guidance for 2025, generally in line with our longer-term targets of 6%-8%. So we have 5.5%-7.5% for next year. We have about a 30 basis point headwind from the Lazzero closure we did last year. One thing to note that I just want to call your attention to is we are seeing a headwind from the euro. The euro is now the dollar is strengthened, for sure, against the euro.
The euro continues to be a big piece of our revenue and cost structure. So generally, the revenue we create in euros also has cost denominated in euros against it. So the fall through isn't terrible, but it does create us a headwind. And you can see that's about 150 basis points for us year over year and a slight headwind on the EBITDA side as well. But we did initiate guidance range of 215-230 for the year. We're expecting free cash flow to be on the low end of the range, just below the 40% number. At the high end of the range, closer to 50% with 48%, as you can see on the slide. We feel like we have a balanced set of numbers here, and we continue to drive execution and commitments to things that we know we can hit.
And then just to wrap it up, to kind of bring all of this back together, Mirion, it's been a great three years for the company. But as Tom mentioned, we believe the end markets are at a point where it's time to raise our guidance. So 6%-8% organic guide. We're committing to 600 basis points of margin expansion over the life of the plan. You can see that that's driven by high single-digit growth on the nuclear power side, high single-digit plus growth on the nuclear medicine side, and that 30% EBITDA target. I think what matters most for us is the markets are favorable. The margin expansion is generally in our control. It's things that we have to go do and we are doing and executing on.
And then on top of this, any M&A we do becomes accretive to the plan we're talking about. So with that, oh, sorry, apologies. One more thing. Just a reminder, tomorrow, excuse me, Thursday, Tom and I are presenting at the Goldman Sachs Conference. And then we're also announcing two investor tours we're going to do in the first quarter. One in Melbourne, which is a tour we've done before, but we'll open that up to more investors and people that weren't able to do it last time. And then we're going to do one in Meriden, Connecticut, on the nuclear and safety side to feature some of the cutting-edge technology we do in that business. And that's in the middle of March. There's a QR code at the end of the deck. Feel free to submit requests to join, and we'll do our best to make that happen.
So with that, Tom, you want to come up and we'll do some Q&A?
Jesus. So for the Q&A, we have Jerry and Alex in the back with microphones. So anybody in the room that would like to ask questions, please raise your hand. Alex or Jerry will come over to address you.
Hi, guys. Vlad Bystricky from Citi. Thanks for hosting us and thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to dig in on the commentary around the SMRs and the higher content per megawatt that you expect there. Can you just talk a little more about what drives that delta and your level of confidence in realizing that as SMRs become more of a factor in the marketplace?
Yeah, sure, Vlad. Thanks.
So just to level set, I think Loïc talked about numbers of 25,000 per megawatt for utility scale, 40,000 per megawatt for a small modular reactor. Understand that these are aggregations where we're looking at the various relationships that we have both on the utility scale and on the SMR player, looking at where we are likely to have significant opportunities based on the various discussions that are taking place. So understand it's kind of a benchmark. Depending on the reactor type, there is an envelope around that that we think is likely to play out. The simplest answer, Vlad, is that there are some level of scale diseconomies with SMRs.
So as you're thinking about instrumentation that ultimately is scaled over a smaller footprint, particularly related to intermediate electronics, think digital to analog conversion and other things that are necessary to tie signal chain inputs into the I&C systems of a power plant. That's where you really lose a little bit of efficiency. So it's that to a large degree. But I would also note we're also doing some very interesting things in terms of advancing technology in that space as well that we think will command a little bit more of premium pricing in certain areas.
I know we're a little bit far out on this, but continuing on the SMR theme, could you guys talk a little bit about what ways Mirion content might need to change on something like a high-temperature gas reactor?
It seems like you guys are kind of far out there already talking to X-energy, but just know because of the heat in some of those reactors that content might need to be a little bit different. Could you guys give a kind of a preliminary view as to what might need to change and what that would look like?
I think what might be the most tangible example there would be with X-energy. X-energy is using a very innovative so-called pebble bed technology for their specific reactor design. One of the most critical elements of this type of pebble bed technology is the ability to assess the remaining life of fuel modules, essentially these fuel pebbles, which are cylindrical in nature.
We're working very closely with them on a so-called burnup measurement system, which if you think of almost like a gumball machine, these fuel spheres coming out of the reactor core being assessed when they're extremely hot from a radioactivity standpoint for, again, kind of remaining life. This is an area where, again, our capabilities are being applied. We're working very closely with them to essentially make that commercially viable for them. We could look at high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, sodium-cooled or moderated reactors. I think in every instance, there are distinctions in the technological demands. This is, again, a field where our capabilities are quite broad, and we have a high degree of willingness to work with players to evolve these strategic instrumentation requirements.
Thanks for hosting us, and I'm Yuan Zhi from B. Riley. Maybe two quick questions.
Number one, across the globe, where do you see your growth drivers between now and 2028? Russia and Ukraine may get better. And what other growth drivers should investors focus on?
Yeah, so between now and 2028, when we think about revenue growth drivers, we really see it as being balanced, Yuan, where if we look at dynamics, so there's an example Brian mentioned that's impacted us this year in our medical business, where we saw the continuing effects of the Chinese anti-corruption programs and kind of waiting in anticipation with the rest of the healthcare or med tech industry for the kind of much bandied about Chinese stimulus, trillion-dollar stimulus to begin to flow through and pick up. And so right now, we've seen a period of 18-plus months of fairly tepid demand out of China from a healthcare standpoint.
We did see some impact in Japan as well, just given the strength of the dollar relative to the yen that impacted business, and then the other anomalous market, obviously, has continued to be Ukraine and Russia with the ongoing conflict there. When we look ahead over the period of time that you mentioned, we would expect, A, that the Chinese anti-corruption efforts will have equilibrated, and so we will see a normalization in the market, recognizing that there's a very real need there to build out radiation therapy clinics and continue to improve and embellish upon the healthcare system overall, so we would expect that from a Japanese equilibrium standpoint, we think that it's more likely that we stay in the pocket, in the trading range that we're in right now on FX.
I think the wild card really is Russia, that certainly all of the parties, Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., have kind of signaled a willingness to try and end that conflict on an accelerated basis. I would say that if there is a pathway to normalization, firstly, a brokered peace deal in the region that ultimately might lead to a pathway for Russia to kind of rejoin the global economic community, that could have a significant impact on dynamics in that region because the Russian market is inherently attractive to us, both on the nuclear and safety side as well as on the medical side, so those are kind of geopolitical drivers that could impact things, neglecting the potential impact of tariff dynamics, massive changes in FX trading ranges and the like, which could be disruptive to everybody in all industries as they flow through.
Recognizing that those things are wildly unpredictable at this juncture, those would be the main things. I would really see it as kind of balanced. If you look at where we see the biggest gaps right now in terms of growth, I think we see a tremendous opportunity to kind of carry our digital capabilities and nuclear medicine across the Atlantic into Europe and other markets. I would expect to see some net favorability in that period of time there as well.
I would just comment too that the Russia-Ukraine stuff getting sorted out is not reflected in the forecast we gave today. I think as we think about growth drivers, to Tom's point, I think digital is a big one across both businesses, the new build landscape. Clearly, we expect to continue to pick up over time.
But, remembering that most of the revenue base comes kind of from our installed base on both sides, we continue to believe that that fuels a lot of the growth, but bigger pickups on the digital and the new build side over time.
Got it. Very helpful. And maybe one quick follow-up. So, for the 2028 guidance, what's the contribution from the pricing standpoint and the volume and pricing?
Yeah, I think in our model, we're assuming about 2% over the period.
Yeah, Chris Moore from CJS. Just on the 30% target, Brian, you walked through kind of some of the drivers there. Maybe I missed it. From a segment perspective, medical has always been the driver. Is that stays there? Does that gap close a little bit? Or how should we be looking at that?
Yeah, I don't know if the gap necessarily closes.
I mean, we didn't give segment-level kind of margin targets, I think. But I think we continue to believe that we will see margin expansion in both segments over the period, for sure. I think medical will continue to have a larger EBITDA percentage and gross margin percentage so largely than technologies. But we do expect to see margin expansion on both sides of the house.
Rob Mason with Baird. Again, thanks for the opportunity to ask a few questions. Just with respect to the nuclear power business, you mentioned digitization near-term on the growth curve. Can you just speak to your ability to push that through to your customers? What levers do you have to accelerate that? Are you dependent on maintenance windows? And then just with respect to the supervisory system you mentioned anyway, that was pretty interesting.
Just let us know where that stands in development and how quickly you can get that to market, qualification phases, etc.
Yeah, so the situation today is that we have a variety of different classes, categories of instrumentation we saw in the nuclear power. And the generalized rule is that each of these classes of instrumentation has some level of supervisory software application. What that means today is that users are required to learn each of these disparate systems. In other words, there is no kind of unifying plug-and-play environment where they can have that installed, become familiar with the UX, and then that applies to every category and class of instrumentation. And this is what we're driving toward. This is what Loïc mentioned through kind of a unifying project that we have well into development.
I don't think we've announced the commercialization window, but I think we're very bullish about where we are and the scale and scope of what this will entail. And we would expect that there will be some commercial traction in this realm in the near term, probably in all likelihood in 2025. The way that this gains traction commercially is through a number of different dimensions. Firstly, understanding it isn't purely for nuclear power, but this is also relevant in things like DOE labs, where they're using similar instrumentation and have similar usability issues overall. I think candidly, it's a combination of an evolutionary change, working with the utility-scale players, that vast installed base. But where we're likely to see the most rapid adoption and the greatest demands is in the SMR space, where the key players there want turnkey digital solutions from the get-go.
They don't want to deal with a variety of disparate systems that don't have the type of UX and digital capabilities that their broader instrumentation suite would require, and so I think that's going to be a bit of a catalyst in the industry overall, but I noted, again, that today we're spending about 7% of our revenue, Rob, on software engineering. We have a significant dedication of that resource base to this campaign overall.
Sure. Switch products from our competitors to us, so our products will be connected to our supervisory software. So this is something also which is really key. Luis presented two business cases in Japan and in Belgium with software leading to hardware growth. This is something also which is interesting.
You guys talked a lot about the EDF partnership. Can you touch on the MOU with Electronics Corporation of India and what that opportunity is?
Just a little bit more there. You announced it today.
Yeah, I'm actually going to call on Loïc. Loïc is kind of fresh off the airplane from India. He actually signed this deal last week. So I'll invite him to comment on the scale and scope of it.
Yes. Thank you. So first, India is targeting strong growth and targeting strong investments on the nuclear side. They have announced construction of up to 10 nuclear reactors in the next years. So definitely, India is a key market growth for nuclear. India has always been a country difficult to enter because of different historical sanctions in India and everything. So we have a pretty low market share today in India. Completely different in China, for example, when we started in the 1980s with Framatome, with Westinghouse, where we had very strong market share.
But in India, we do have a low market share. The only way to enter into the Indian market was to partner with an Indian company. ECIL is the largest instrumentation company in India. They came to us a few months ago saying, "Okay, we would like to partner with Mirion as we are the worldwide leader." And the idea is that we're going to provide the core of our products, and we are going to assemble the products in India in ECIL factories. ECIL will be selling to NPCIL, which is a nuclear utility in India. So I mean, it's a win-win collaboration agreement, and we are expecting in the next years to come some additional revenue coming from India.
Hi, Chris Marangi from Gabelli. Too, if I may. First, not a lot of airtime on dosimetry.
Does your guidance assume any licensing deals on Instadose VUE , or would that be upside? No, guidance does not assume any. That would be upside. It doesn't assume any significant licensing deals for the Instadose VUE . Great. And then, Tom, you mentioned network effects and the value of the content through your points of presence. And then Luis had a couple of slides, I think, alluding to monetization of some of the data points that you have. Maybe you could just unpack that a little bit. How do you actually monetize that dataset?
Yeah, so where this really plays well, again, would be in markets where we feel like we are underrepresented based on some historical factor, where we didn't have a channel into that market or we had a strong regional competitor as well.
And so where we really see the benefits of this network effect is commercial, where, as an example, we talked about the EC² software platform, leading data management software platform in nuclear medicine in the U.S. We compete essentially head-to-head against Cardinal Health in that market, very little presence outside of the U.S. But conversely, if you look at the distribution network that Luis has throughout Europe, throughout the rest of the world, if you will, both through our direct field sales capabilities as well as through agents and channel partners, there is an enormous opportunity to bundle that into a broader selling campaign and to use that to gain share.
Historically, if you look at our above-market growth, recognizing, again, that systematically over two decades, we've outgrown our markets, that is a key factor, is our ability to, again, kind of leverage a growing and increasingly relevant commercial network to drive a broader product mix globally.
Hey, we have one question online, Tom and Brian for you both. The question is, how do you expect the overall shift in cancer treatment modalities to impact your medical segment's growth trajectory? Is there potential for cannibalization of sales as things shift more toward radiopharma?
Yeah, so very interesting question. Obviously, very difficult to peg right now because if you look at the various modalities in oncology, you have conventional chemo-based oncology, surgical oncology, external beam therapy, brachytherapy, and the emerging biologics, and now nuclear medicine as well.
Today, if you hold nuclear medicine aside, there's a broad recognition that those modalities are balanced, that it really is the primary oncologist that's deciding and prescribing the appropriate treatment protocol. So as an example, today, more than half of newly diagnosed cancer patients within the United States are prescribed external beam therapy as a component of their overall treatment protocol. We think that what will happen with nuclear medicine is that it's likely to evolve in a very dynamic fashion based upon the early success of key drugs in the market and then the subsequent success of those in the pipeline. So looking at the market that we talked about earlier, which is the prostate cancer market, characterized by so-called PSMA agents, prostate-specific membrane antigen. These are Pylarify and Pluvicto. Pylarify is a Lantheus diagnostic. Pluvicto is a Novartis therapeutic.
But today, Pluvicto is only authorized for use for very late-stage cancer patients that have essentially exhausted all other protocols. Novartis would like to extend that to kind of pre-chemo patients and is doing trials on that right now. And that would substantially open up that marketplace conceivably that could have an impact overall on the dynamic balance between nuclear medicine and external beam therapy. But if so, this is a trend that is likely to take decades or more to kind of play itself out as new drugs emerge, the appropriate balance of different modalities emerges. And so from our standpoint, firstly, to be clear, none of that would be reflected in our long-range plan or guidance that we've given. But ultimately, we think that probably bolsters our role and significance in the value chain for this critical care.
Any more questions from the room?
There's one other thing I'd like to say about nuclear medicine that we didn't bring out too, just in terms of how it's evolving. And that is there's an incredible focus within the nuclear medicine space on the evolution of specific radioisotopes that are being brought to bear. Historically, the primary agents have been gamma or beta emitters. If you look at Pluvicto and Pylarify, they use Lutetium 177, which is essentially a beta emitter with a gamma signature. The greatest area of interest right now is on so-called alpha emitters, which an alpha particle is essentially a helium nucleus that has the paradoxical benefits of carrying higher energy. And so it has a greater ability to literally destroy DNA strands within cancer cells intracellularly, but it also has a lower penetration capability.
We talked about the opportunity for us to kind of carry some of our broader scientific and nuclear instrumentation that today we largely sell into the nuclear power and research market into this market, and where that would apply would be in some of the emerging demands for alpha-based isotope production, particularly as it relates to things like radionuclidic purity and the generalized safety and dosage in this realm, so there's so many dimensions to this market right now. It is such a brand new and emerging market, but if it's not clear, we are super, super excited about what this represents longer term.
Okay. Thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Thank you.