Gestamp Automoción, S.A. (GEST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today, Gestamp's Capital Market Day. Our company went public just 4 years ago on April 17. At that time, we explained our history, our solid position in the market, our challenges and our ambitions for the following years. Now in June 2021, we can clearly see that in this short period of time, we have had very relevant changes, especially we focus in the impact of the COVID-19 has created in all our lives and also in the global economy. But if we refer to the auto sector, specifically, of course, has been impacted by the COVID-19, but our sector was impacted and affected also before that time in '18 and also '19, specifically because of the disruptions coming around the case and specifically for the race for the sustainable mobility. A race that, of course, is forcing our customers, the OEMs to deploy a huge amount of capital in order to be able to develop and launch new EV and hybrid models. Of course, also is impacting our customers where they have a lot of uncertainty what is going to be the speed of this change and probably this is impacting the sales in the auto sector. And of course, in this sector, it's going to be right now, much more winners and losers. Today, in this Capital Market Day, I hope we can explain what Gestamp has been able to do during these difficult years, what has been our achievements and also our problems. And also, we want to provide you with more information that shows how Gestamp we are convinced is very well-prepared to take advantage on what is going to be the new auto sector to come. Now I'm going to start with the first section of our Capital Market Day, which is focused in the strategy. And I have decided, and even if a short period of time, to divide in different stages. Being the first one, the period from the IPO to the COVID-19, a period of between '16 and '19, where our company really focused in growth and of course, with a very important increase of our CapEx. And a specific period for 2020, where COVID-19 was the most important factor. And in that period, we were able to show that Gestamp is very resilient. Our business model, of course, is very resilient. Now we are in this stage of moving from '21 to '22, where our clear focus, of course, will be to keep on growing, but the real focus is going to be to go and to generate free cash flow. And of course, beyond 2022, we will have the chance to talk a little bit more later about this topic when we get to Section #5. So starting with the period between '16 to '19. At the time of the IPO, we stated some pillars that were absolutely relevant for us, and we had an intention not only to preserve but to enhance what we have already achieved at that time. Being the first of these pillars to preserve our global strategic positioning in regards to our customers. Second one, of course, to keep on moving in the technological area to be clearly the partner of choice of our customers; to keep on growing, outperforming the market; enhance a very solid financial profile; and of course, preserving our DNA and our long-term values and principles of a family business. Honestly, I think we have done a very good job in all these pillars, but probably in the area of our financial profitability, we have not been as successful as we intended to be. If we will start to review these pillars, first one is our consolidation as a strategic partner of our customer. We are absolutely convinced that we have been able to improve our position because we have really moved in the technology area, and of course, we have increased the -- our footprint. So our globalization and also technology is helping us to consolidate this position. We have taken many opportunities from the customers, covering their needs. And that's why we have been able to grow, outperforming also our main competitors. And that's why we have consolidated this first position in the area of body-in-white components, also in the area of mechanisms. And we are now clearly 1 of the 3 most important players also in the area of chassis. In terms of our technological leadership, of course, we have moved very fast. We have right now 13 research and development centers. We have been able to open since the IPO 3 research and development centers more: one in China, close to Shanghai; also in Japan; and the U.S. We are doing an increasing numbers of co-development programs with our customers. And we have right now more than 1,600 people employed in this research and development centers. And of course, what we do there is trying to improve every day our products and our technologies in order to be able to cover the needs of our customers, mainly in the area of safety, in the area of weight, trying to provide lightweight solutions in order to be able to help reduce emissions in the case of combustion engine vehicles, but also to help in the case of the electrical vehicles to increase the range of the batteries. Also, we are providing solutions in terms of comfort, for instance, in our area of mechanism. And in the area of chassis, providing solutions in order to be able to increase performance and also to increase the durability. But we will give much more details afterwards in the Section #5. If we refer to the growth and to the possibility or the achievement of being clearly always over the market. Clearly, in this case, I think we have been able to grow, taking the opportunity that was provided by our customers. And by that means we have taken advantage of the increase of the trend towards outsourcing. And also we have been able to gain some market share. If we can prove that is that in this period of time, the market in terms of global production of light vehicles, has slowed down with a negative CAGR of 1.1%, but our group in the same period of time, we have been able to grow at 9.5% CAGR. So that means that we have been able to outperform the market and also in each of the single regions that we are operating, especially in areas like East Europe and Mercosur; but also in NAFTA; in Europe, especially in East Europe; and also in Asia. This growth has been supported also by a very important growth in terms of our -- of the new plants, which we have been able to add to our footprint. In fact, we have been able to add 17 new plants from 6/'17 to 2021. But in the period between '16 and '19, we had been able to add 15 because the Morocco plant and the Bulgaria joint venture started in '20 and '21. Of course, in this growth and extension of our global footprint, the focus has been in Asia, where we have opened new -- 5 new facilities, 3 of them in China, but also in Japan and also in India. And also in NAFTA, both in Mexico and U.S., but we have also added to our footprint position in Eastern Europe and Mercosur and some extent in Western Europe. So it's been basically a growth made out of greenfields with a huge management effort. And of course, this growth has been related to a very large, large CapEx programs of EUR 2.5 billion between '17 to '19. All of this investment has been clearly strategic, basically organic growth. And all of these investments linked to nominations and clear contracts with our customers. It's a huge effort. Probably the timing of this effort has not been the best because volumes in the market in '18, '19 and also with COVID were slowing down. And also because we have added a very important industrial complexity in the moment of time. But we are absolutely convinced that by doing this investment and supporting the needs of our customers at that time, we have been able to further improve our competitive position and our partnership role. But if we talk about our financial profile, at the time of the IPO, we clearly stated that we wanted to improve our financial profile, and we have not been as successful as we intended. Because in terms of our EBITDA margin, we wanted to expand this margin. And in fact, we have not been able to do it because we had an 11.1% margin in the year '19 without taking into consideration the IFRS 16, we were below 11%. And also in terms of debt, in 2016, we were slightly below 2x debt-to-EBITDA. And we have ended up in '19 with 2.4x EBITDA -- debt-to-EBITDA. And the reasons behind them are different. Probably one important reason is that our expectations with the market is that it was going to be a kind of growth in '18 and '19. And instead of that, it was a clear decrease in '18 and '19. Of course, all these CapEx has increased our debt in a moment that we have not been able to increase the sales due to this market evolution. But also this accelerated growth in this period of time has added complexity with costs associated with ramp-up and launches. So with this, I think now let's try to focus what happened in 2020. I want to emphasize again that in -- for the auto market, COVID in 2020 was a real problem. But of course, the problem started a little bit early already in '18 and '19, probably a decrease in the market because of the introduction and the changes around the electrical vehicle. But in any case, this volume drop in '18 and '19 already told us that we needed to change a little bit our model in order to be able to enhance and to recover some part of our financial health. But whenever the COVID-19 really outbreaks, we needed to completely change and to build up a specific plan. I don't want to spend too much time because I think we all know at this time, how huge was the impact in the global economy of the COVID in 2020. A negative decrease in the global GDP of 3.3%, comparing with a kind of 2.8% growth in '19. And of course, impacting every region of the world being China, the only exception with a kind of a slight positive GDP growth. But if we refer and we focus in the auto sector. The impact of the COVID in 2020 was also very severe with a decrease of more than 60% in the global manufacturing of light vehicle in China and at the end of March, also rest of the world. And being the second quarter, the most difficult quarter of the year 2020. But in the second half with a quite clear trend of recovery, with volumes coming back to the volumes we had already in 2019. At the time of the COVID, we built up an urgent plan -- action plan, which, of course, started with the idea to preserve in the short term but to assure the long-term survival of the group and our competitive position. Four axles of this plan. Being the first one to preserve the health of our people, implementing very strict sanitary protocols. But of course, we're very fast in reaching agreements with unions and with our counsels in order to be able to implement all kind of labor flexibility measures. So probably all these measures altogether and our fast reaction is why we were able to show and to prove that our model was clearly resilient. So with this plan, in 2020, [ EUR 52 million ] savings comparing with the expenses associated in 2019. We were able to reduce substantially our CapEx from levels close to EUR 800 million in '19 to less than EUR 500 million in 2020. And also, we work a lot in the area on the working capital management. So with all this, 2020 with all the difficulties around this year, we were able to generate a free cash flow of -- and by the way, we were able to prove again the resilience of our model the same way we did in 2009 with the previous crisis. And at that time also, we were able to generate very important cash flow, reducing our debt close to 20%. So moving to the period of '21 and '22, where we are today right now. Of course, at the EBITDA margin. So we want to increase our profitability, continuing with the efforts already deployed in 2020. And of course, focusing in a very strategic and controlled CapEx allocation policies and keep on working hard in the area of the working capital and all around. So by doing this, we feel that after this period, keep growing, but of course, we are going to focus our management efforts in increasing our EBITDA, in increasing our cash flow and also reducing our debt. In terms of our sales, I have already mentioned that we feel is guaranteed. Because we have a track record in the last years and from the origin of our company to clearly outperform the market. And you can see that in this chart from '15 to the year 2020. So -- and the reason behind, nominated with many contracts, and of course, we have also deployed investment. So we have already a very important visibility of what is going to happen in '21 and '22. And in fact, we believe that today, in our order book, most of ourselves by -- until 2023 are already covered by firm contracts and nominations. In terms of our EBITDA margin, of course, the level is similar to the ones we had in the year 2019. We want to increase our EBITDA margin to sales from 11.8% in the year '19 to 13% in 2022. Of course, volumes are going to help. We feel they are going to be supportive. We are going to keep on moving, trying to be focusing in reducing our cost, our fixed cost. And of course, the continuity of the transformation plan and the ATENEA plan are going to support us in order to go in that direction. And of course, we are going to take advantage of the more operational stability. So that means that the period of time we are going to launch much less greenfield projects and with all these expenses and projects associated. And also, we had already been able to turn around part of the operational problems we have in some geographical regions like in NAFTA. And of course, we are also taking day by day advantage of all the investments we have been doing throughout the years around the industry 4.0. So by that -- by doing that, with this kind of sales already guaranteed, the focus, as I have already mentioned, is going to be to increase the profitability, to increase our margin of EBITDA, but of course, to have a kind of strategic CapEx control. We are intending to have our CapEx level at around 7% of our sales throughout '21 and '22. And of course, we will keep putting pressure in our working capital management. With all this, we will generate free cash flow generation. And after -- and we will also focus in a clear cash allocation strategy. We want to come back to our strategy of dividends, keeping our policy of a distribution of 30% of the net profit, but focusing a lot in this period of time to the net profit and trying to work a lot behind the possibility to repurchase a part of the minority positions in some of our companies, which is also going to help to increase our net profit and all of those. And everything is going to be focusing with idea to keep on moving in the -- in terms of looking for deleverage of the company. And we want to have a leverage below 2x, of course, at the end of this period. And just to end up with this period until 2022, I think it's important to say that when -- at the time of the IPO, we clearly stated that we want to preserve the values and the principles of our company because we want to be able to reach the most high -- or the highest standards in terms of corporate governance as a public company, but we did not want to lose the principles and values, which were in the DNA of our company. I think 4 years later, we believe we have made a quite successful transition. Our DNA, of course, is very much linked to long term. And also this DNA is very linked to some of the topics around our ESG policy. Because we need to think about the support we are also providing to the communities we are working with. Of course, environmental is basic to preserve the planet in order to look for future generations in the family business and also always trying to go for the most stringent standards in terms of corporate governance. So ending up this part in terms of strategy. We will also talk about the strategy beyond '22, our ambitions. Of course, we will have a specific and detailed section afterwards. But the idea, of course, is that beyond 2022, we will keep on moving, preserving our pillars that we have right now. Of course, our technology, our global footprint, enhancing and looking forward in order to be able to generate -- even generate more operational excellence and, of course, preserving a solid financial profile. But specifically from 2020, we want to reinvent and to focus even more in research and development. The idea, of course, of our department is that they need to focus in electrical vehicles and everything around the new mobility. Of course, we want to use our achievements in Industry 4.0 and also the ATENEA plan in order to keep on moving, increasing the profitability of our operations. And we intend to do a very important push in the area of the ESG in order to become absolutely excellent. I think now with this I have ended up this section. And now I hand it over to our new Chief Commercial Officer, Jon Barrenechea, who is going to explain Section #2.

So today, I'm going to talk to you about the automotive sector itself and about Gestamp's positioning on it. First clear message is that Gestamp has consistently outperformed the market, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.7% versus the market that has done 0.8% annual growth rate, as you can see in the previous years. This vision to grow from Spanish build-to-print to a global mega supplier has been based on the strategic access of globalization and technology on one side and supported by operational excellence and financial soundness. Let's now take a look to what has happened to our market since we became public in 2017. As you can see, we had a slight decrease during the first years, but this situation clearly worsened by the unprecedented impact of the COVID pandemic. To the point that only in 2020, light vehicle production was 27 million units lower than expected at the time of the IPO. This contraction was felt on all the regions, but maybe it's worthy to mention the China asset decoupling with the rest of the world in the decrease, but more even in the coming back. I would like to stress the message that, as we have seen in the first slide, Gestamp has committed on delivering future growth and value as we saw in the past, even in these circumstances. We do expect now for the period of 2025 is a clear market recovery. We expect a recovery to the pre-COVID levels, reaching 96 million vehicles in 2025, but clearly at an asymmetric pace. Production will shift towards emerging markets: China, rest of Asia, South America, East Europe, Middle East and Africa. While mature markets like West Europe, NAFTA and Japan, we have a slower recovery. So at the end, 2 different speeds, 4.7% compound growth at mature markets, and between 7% and 11% growth at emerging markets. In this situation, we clearly see China leading the recovery and reaching pre-COVID levels already in 2021, so this year. We also see the most robust recovery in Mercosur at an 11%. We will see later on how our footprint in Mercosur is so strong, with good numbers both in Argentina and Brazil. Europe will go at a slower pace and shifting production from west to east. And finally, in NAFTA, a very strong demand in the U.S. will be pulling the recovery after having been Mexico, the one that has been growing fast in the past decade. So we have seen what has happened in the previous years with the market. We have reviewed also what do we see in the next years coming by volumes and geographies. But what about the segments? We would also like to understand which ones will be the winners. And we see clearly the mid- and premium segments leading this growth. It is clearly the strategy announced by the OEMs to prioritize the more profitable programs. And this is something that we are even seeing very much today as the semiconductor sorts its crisis where they are diverting to the most profitable vehicles. So as a summary, we see mid- and premium taking almost 4 points of the market to entry vehicles to become 50% of the market. And here, the main message I would very much like to stress today is that Gestamp is very well positioned to capture the future growth in mid- and premium, as we will show you today. So together with the recovery that I just mentioned of the market, electrification as we see every day is already a game changer of the market in terms of leading the growth. The switch to a greener mobility is at a point of no return, driven by stringent emissions regulations, incentives and capital markets pressures. I'm going to give you some hints on these 3 topics. Emissions regulations. We will have Europe and Japan leading, but China and the U.S., clearly, very likely to converge by 2030. We also see incentives like tax reductions and public investment will change the way we know our cities today. And finally, a very important point we have seen later. Share price evolutions is clearly rewarding OEMs with a clear EV-focused strategy, as we see in very well examples like Tesla and NIO. So because all of these, OEMs will increase the share of EV models in the upcoming years to reach an expected penetration of 26% by 2028. In addition, this will be very widely spread because we have the world aligned. What does this mean the world aligned? We have China with several positive factors like access to raw materials to build batteries, the need to decarbonize the economy and new consumers that will get their first car an EV one. We also have Europe pushing very condition by regulations and the next-gen European post-pandemic funds. And finally, also the U.S. with a renewed greenfields from the Biden administration. But we are not only aligned by countries. We are also aligned by brands. We see all of them with very aggressive programs towards 2025 at the first stage, but clearly through 2030 as a goal to offer an EV solution for their customers. So under this scenario, we also have new EV players that have appeared, looking to capture a piece of the market. As an example, 15 new manufacturers since 2007 and 10 new platforms in 2020. While their market share is still limited, their volumes are expected to triple in the next 5 years. These companies have in common their high liquidity, their appetite for growth, an expected short-term market and the lack of industrial background, something that we all know as a really strength of Gestamp. By the way, in this scenario, we are considering Tesla, one of the best common brands having almost 1.3 million, which means 65% of the market of these new players. Therefore, to end this part of my presentation, I want to show how all these I have been talking about will expand the needs of the OEMs for further outsourcing. The combination of market recovery with the underlying trends of electrification and increased safety standards will increase the addressable market for Gestamp. Electrification will increase also the addressable market because OEMs are focusing their core investment on autonomous vehicle, software electronics and EV development and have capital limitations to grow into the components manufacturing market. Safety standards as well as weight reduction will increase hot stamping as a key technology in the upcoming future. And if we see it by segment, we have body-in-white, chassis and mechanisms addressable market increase will be mainly driven by growing vehicle production, increased SUVs, increased outsourcing rates and change in material mix towards advanced steels and aluminum. At the same time, battery boxes addressable market is growing from EUR 1 billion to EUR 6 billion, driven by the penetration of EVs. So altogether, what do we see? We see our addressable market growing. According to external sources, we can talk about from EUR 52 billion to EUR 82 billion at a 10% compound annual growth rate. So we went through what has happened with the automotive sector in the past, how do we see the future, which is the addressable market for Gestamp in this future. And now we will shift to the second part of the presentation to talk a little bit more about Gestamp's strategic pillars that are the base to achieve our share of that addressable market, we just talked about. So based on these automotive market trends, Gestamp is very well positioned to continue growing based on 3 main strategic pillars. Number one, a proven technological and product leadership to provide solutions for safety and electrification needs; number two, a truly global footprint to provide tailored geographical strategies; and number three, an outstanding track record as a reliable partner. So starting with the first point, as a technological supplier, Gestamp is a trusted partner for OEMs, offering solutions to make the vehicles safer, lighter and all this at an attractive cost benefit ratio. As mentioned before, safety will keep being the main pillar in the industry, driven both by regulation, but also by active and pedestrian safety as well as increasing importance of safety assistance. Gestamp product portfolio is key to meet the safety requirements as we have been proving through our history, both in mature and emerging markets. Lighter. Under the strict CO2 emissions regulations, weight reduction is key. We have to take into account that between body, 40% of vehicle weight and chassis 25% and the 2 areas with more potential impact to further weight reductions. Finally, battery packs are clearly increasing the weight of the car was to further reinforce the trend to hot stamp steel for structural parts. So as a conclusion, under this scenario, the position of Gestamp as a lightweight supplier, together with the new product segment of battery boxes give us a great chance for growth. Number two was global footprint allows a global strategy for a global market, probably one of the most important points I'm going to talk about. The first thing I would like to highlight is our global footprint. Based in many years of a clear strategy that has allowed us to be present in all markets at a global scale and in many cases, upfront of some of our customers. We have a market with global platforms, global customers, and a very mature logistics network that is being revisited because of trade wars, supply chain disruptions and today is clearly pushing for localization. On the other hand, the sector is very sensitive to local demands by price, by OEM and by vehicles. So it is difficult to see in the market a player like us with a clear tailored approach to untap all the potential of the geographically differentiated growth levels. Let me go now region by region. Europe, already very well positioned with all the major European OEMs. The strategy in Europe will be growth expected to come from electrification, where EVs will grow intensively and where we are very well positioned in the main OEMs and the main electrical platforms. All this reinforced by the fact that we are a technologic supplier participating in the co-development with the OEMs. NAFTA. After achieving all the volume ramp-ups in the last years, now we see ourselves with an absolutely strategic position with all the premium European OEMs producing in the U.S. and Mexico. Very focused, as we spoke before on premium SUV pickup market and with very good opportunities with the American and the Japanese OEMs. Particularly, we will be able to put in value our global knowledge in the second wave of electrification that is about to come in the U.S. Here, I would like to highlight the impact of our R&D center in the U.S. as a vector to channel clearly these opportunities. And even more, becoming the perfect partner for some of these OEMs in the strategic worldwide growth plan. Moving to China. As we all know, China is the biggest addressable market where electrification and safety requirements will boost the market. At the same time, premium segment will be the fastest-growing one, where you know we are an absolute consolidated supplier nowadays for Volkswagen, Daimler, BMW, already. But we see future opportunities with the main big EV players to come. Gestamp has a very successful story, both through organic growth but also through joint ventures, which clearly, we see it as our focus and our path of growth in the coming years. Moving down to India. Well, India, in absolute terms is the second country region with the biggest volume increase between 2022 and 2025 after China. We see here hot stamping, clearly increasing penetration driven from stringency in car safety standards as the India car safety standards will convert towards European ones. But growth could also come from customer-based diversification, India OEMs like Suzuki, Tata, Mahindra. We'll still have 61.8% share of total production in India in 2022, and we'll maintain that share throughout the years. Today, we have a residual sales to these OEMs. So there is a lot of room for growth with local OEMs in the coming years. It's also worthy to mention that Chinese OEMs like Great Wall or SAIC are progressively establishing production sites in India. And even if production of these OEMs will only account for around 100,000 vehicles in 2025, we could see more Chinese manufacturers following their steps in the long run. Mercosur, as I mentioned before in the presentation, this region has a sized footprint ready to cope with the expected growth to be led by European OEMs where we have a unique position. Further growth levels will come also from hot stamping, increased penetration, driven again from stringency in car safety standards as the Latin and CAP is expected to match actual euro standards by 2025. Number three, concerning customer development. Gestamp maintains the clear strategic vision of keeping the OEMs always needs at the center. Differentiating with traditional customer base like European and American OEMs, Gestamp has been thoroughly recognized as a key supplier, providing technological leadership, global reach and trusted partnership. These recognitions come in hand with a proven track record supporting our customers through organic growth, where our greenfields close to the OEM plants are probably the best example all around the world, but also through M&A and JV operations where we have very good examples, for example, like BHAP one in China. In terms of technological leadership, we also have supported our OEMs in the introduction of new products and technologies, probably being hot stamping and door rings as a very good example of this. But also, I wanted to mention that part of the volume recovery will come in hand with the increase in the number of global platforms as well as the average number of vehicles in each of this global platform. This will allow OEMs to grow their volumes while optimizing industrial performance and reducing associated R&D costs. Apart from providing tailored approaches to the different markets, Gestamp is also -- its global footprint also allows to follow the OEMs' strategy of concentration, decrease in overall number of vehicle platforms and the request for sourcing optimization. This is increasing clearly the importance of geographical coverage in OEM tenders to be able to supply a platform with multicontinent production. And thanks to the extended geographical footprint and positioning on the major global platforms, Gestamp is clearly strategically positioned to absorb growth coming from platform consolidation. As a consequence of all this, Gestamp has set the foundations in the past year to capture the expected production growth. In this case, with Japanese OEMs we have consolidated our relationship with a global leading Japanese OEM, becoming totally a truly global partner with projects in all relevant markets, Europe, China, Japan, U.S., Mexico, all relevant global platforms and in all relevant products, body-in-white, chassis and mechanisms. We have also opened a hot stamping plant in Japan and maintain our strategic partnership with Mitsui. With Chinese OEMs, we have managed to establish a relationship with technology as the entry point, launching several chassis projects in the upcoming years. And this will set us in a good position to take advantage of the faster market recovery and the very significant market size. With Indian OEMs, we are best positioned to absorb part of the growth from convergence in product and regulation. And finally, but probably very differential and very important, with new players. In this exceptional dynamic market, plenty of new players are arising. These new companies are characterized by their high liquidity, their appetite for growth and expected short time to market and their lack of industrial background. This poses further growth opportunities for Gestamp as our proven expertise in design, industrialization and mass production enables the company to support the new players in their ambitions. Gestamp is already collaborating with some of the top newcomers and exploring further growth opportunities with other new players. So as a consequence of this, I can say that we are the best partner to support worldwide setup that these new players will look for. Thank you very much for your attention.

Operational excellence has always been a core principle throughout Gestamp's history. Gestamp is a company oriented to our customers, assuring quality, service and permanently searching for cost-effectiveness. Gestamp has been growing at an extremely fast pace since its foundation. But in recent years, our growth model has faced some constraints. First of all, deploying a high CapEx volume in order to benefit strategic opportunities all around the world. Unfortunately, in parallel, market volumes were lower than we expected at the time of the investments, as previously mentioned by Jon. As a consequence of our organic CapEx deployment complexity on -- in our plants has increased temporarily, postponing our EBITDA ramp-up. We have launched 12 greenfield projects since the IPO until 2019. This has generated an important concentration of new technologies to be deployed with operational ramp-up periods impacting our margins negatively. Projects in NAFTA and Eastern Europe have been faced with tight labor markets in technical and skilled positions, which has also increased our level of complexity. Additionally, we have experienced some one-off managerial issues in specific projects. Since the IPO and as of 2019, Gestamp opened 15 new plants, of which 12 were pure greenfields. Geographically, our strongest growth has been in Asia and NAFTA. Gestamp has also performed 16 major plant expansions during this time period. Currently, in 2021, we have 113 plants and are present in 24 countries. All this has been done with a very intensive CapEx profile, well above our historical average due to the extraordinary amount of new opportunities in the market. During this time period, Gestamp has invested 9.7% of its revenues in the strategic projects. This amount to a total investment of EUR 3.2 billion, of which the majority has been related to firm client projects. As mentioned previously, we have had lower volumes than expected, amounting to 10 million vehicles less in 2019 than we thought at the time of the IPO. The COVID-19 crisis resulted in a market decrease of minus 16.2% in 2020 versus 2019, increasing this gap to 27 million vehicle less. Gestamp has been unable to expand its margins as promised during the IPO. This, in addition to our high investment period, has led to increase our net financial debt. Our EBITDA objectives have not been met partially because of the increase in complexity we have faced. High organic growth and increasing our footprint in new countries has played a part in this. Additionally, we have had to absorb increasing labor costs and adapt to a very tight labor market in some areas. Our plants themselves have become more complex by adding new technologies and products in their shop floors. Our experience in NAFTA is a good example of this. After the NAFTA profit warning in 2017, Gestamp reacted very quickly, assuring full group's leadership, support and dedicating all the necessary resources in order to readdress the situation. We implemented a complete change in the top management team and provided temporary support from technical employees from geographies of Gestamp. We had a detailed action plan in order to solve all inefficiencies and reduce our risk. Consequently, Gestamp has improved its EBITDA margin in the region in nearly 6 percentage points including IFRS 16 from Q3 2017 to Q1 2021, when we reached 11.5% EBITDA margin. Gestamp has already addressed many of the problems faced since the IPO and will further expand its cash generation capacity in the future. Thirdly, with a new CapEx profile. Because our footprint is already sized to cope with most of our potential future growth, also with a revised CapEx strategy, taking into consideration the optimization of current capacities and with an enhanced operational excellence focus. We have adapted the organization in order to promote operational excellence, looking for efficiency improvements and Industrial 4.0 full implementation. In conclusion, this optimized CapEx profile with profitability expansion leads to a future-reinforced cash generation profile. We will leverage our existing investment, increase our asset utilization and focus on a strategic allocation of new CapEx. Our priorities will be around the development of the electrical vehicle and premium vehicles. We will prioritize growth in Asia regions while continuing our efforts to improve efficiency and product development in our R&D group. By leveraging on our solid asset base with this new CapEx profile targets, we will create value for our shareholders. Gestamp's historical organization was very vertical to promote flexibility and empower decision-makers at a local level in order to facilitate our growth model. This model permitted us to grow via acquisitions and greenfields very fast. We have made changes to the organization to better serve the new needs of Gestamp. For the first time, we have included a new COO figure, which will focus on enhancing efficiencies and operation excellence with the following tasks: promoting standardization and developing a new set of homogenous industrial KPIs; assuring business plan objectives; optimizing current capacity of our assets; promoting talent mobility within the different regions; fostering best practice sharing; and deploying an ambitious Industry 4.0 rollout plan. This new organization is fully aligned with the objectives set for Gestamp in the next couple of years. And we will continue to live up to the operational excellence that has defined us in the past. Thank you.

Good afternoon, and morning or evening to those of you joining us from Americas or Asia. I'm Carmen de Pablo, Gestamp's CFO. It has been just over 4 years since Gestamp went public in April 2017. And we met some of you that are joining us today in this virtual Capital Markets Day. And what a journey it has been for all of us since we have faced several challenges, but we have also reacted and converted those challenges into opportunities. During my presentation, I will first briefly run you through a summary of our financial performance since IPO with a focus on the last 2 years. Then I will review Gestamp's financial strategy for this year and next. And to conclude, I will provide you with the specific financial targets for 2022. Looking back from a financial standpoint of view, and as Mr. Riberas mentioned, we did not manage to deliver on all the metrics as we initially expected. Not all the targets set for 2019 at the time of the IPO were met. A number of issues impacted Gestamp's financial performance. Firstly, a challenging auto market environment with lower-than-expected global light vehicle production volumes. Back at the beginning of 2017, IHS estimated volumes for 2019 to approach 100 million vehicles, whilst that year closed at 89 million units. Secondly, the combination of this volume decline, coupled with the complexity of simultaneously launching several greenfield projects weighted on our EBITDA margin. And as mentioned, Gestamp has opened 17 new facilities globally since IPO. Thirdly, we invested more than we anticipated at the time of the IPO. From a normalized pre-IPO CapEx to sales of around 7.5% to a 9.8% for the period 2017 to '19, Gestamp took advantage of the market opportunities offered by clients and enhanced its industrial footprint. However, it also incurred in higher financial debt and leverage. With this context, results post IPO were below expectations. 2019, as referenced for pre-pandemic levels, key metrics were EUR 9 billion in revenues, EBITDA above EUR 1 billion and 11.8% margin, equivalent to 10.9% when excluding IFRS 16. Slightly below that, we achieved pre-IPO. Net income just above EUR 200 million; CapEx of EUR 800 million or 8.8% of sales and net debt of EUR 2.3 billion equivalent to a 2.4x net debt-to-EBITDA, a leverage ratio higher than the target we set at the time of the IPO, which, as you might remember, was to be below 2x. A challenging market environment following 2 consecutive years of auto production declines led us to take action towards the end of 2019 and to start implementing flexibility and efficiency measures as well as reducing CapEx and setting the objective of free cash flow generation. Unexpectedly, 2020 brought us to even a greater challenge. The pandemic COVID-19 forced unprecedented shutdowns of facilities across the world. And we, at Gestamp, had to react quickly to manage uncertainty and preserves a sound financial position. During the first half of the year, we implemented a number of emergency measures focused on the safety of our employees, the service to our clients and the flexibility of our cost structure to adapt and preserve cash and protect the long-term project of Gestamp. At the same time, we proactively worked on reinforcing our liquidity position and financial flexibility through the approval of a waiver for all relevant financings. During the second half, as volumes started to recover, we continued our efforts to reduce cost, increased efficiency of our operations and continue to focus on cash generation and debt management. All these measures allows us to protect and reinforce Gestamp's financial position in a very challenging environment and to achieve a 12.3% EBITDA margin for the second half of the year, a net debt reduction of EUR 271 million in 2020 and an overall year-end liquidity position of EUR 2.9 billion. Actions taken during 2020 permitted us to deliver a good financial performance and overall proof the resilience of Gestamp's business model in the most difficult times. We managed to stabilize revenues and outperform the market by close to 8 percentage points, delivered an EBITDA of EUR 757 million despite the shutdown of our activity during the second quarter but reported a negative net income for the first time. We managed to reduce CapEx drastically, with investments below EUR 500 million, 6.6% of sales, without compromising our growth prospects and reduced overall net debt by EUR 271 million. We consider that all these measures taken during 2020 position us well for achieving our midterm goals. For this year and next, our top priority will continue to be free cash flow generation, implementing cost control measures, actively managing working capital and moderating CapEx will be key 3 strategies we will pursue while seeking top line growth. Post 2022, we will continue with a focus to maintain a prudent financial profile and to leverage on Gestamp's leadership position to capture future growth. This growth will come through product and client development actions and organic and inorganic strategic opportunities. Initiatives like ATENEA and Industry 4.0, which will be later explained by Patricia and Rene will facilitate the new stage of development of Gestamp. And of course, always with a commitment to ESG, which is at the core of Gestamp DNA. And for 2021, in terms of outlook, we reiterate our guidance for growing revenues and improving margins whilst generating free cash flow. We expect to deliver mid-single-digit outperformance versus the market in terms of revenues. EBITDA margin above 12%. CapEx to be around 7% of revenues and net debt to be below EUR 2 billion, excluding IFRS 16. Based on the current visibility we have, we are confident we are on track to achieve our full year guidance for this year. First quarter results 2021 are a testimony on how we are making progress towards these objectives. Just a few weeks ago, we delivered solid set of financial results for the quarter. We outperformed the results we achieved in Q1 of last year and even Q1 of 2019 at all levels of the P&L, even with lower market volumes. As illustrated on the slide, key achievements included growing revenues over the market by close to 8 percentage points, improving EBITDA margins at 12.3%, whilst maintaining net debt just below that of year-end. Now what are the premises that will drive our financial strategy going forward and will help us continue to enhance financial feasibility and shareholder value creation? One, we will continue focusing on free cash flow through EBITDA generation, a strict CapEx control and active working capital managed; two, we will actively manage our liquidity and debt position as well as financing costs, with a clear objective to improve our credit rating; three, we will focus on increasing net income delivery by actively managing on FX and other financial risks as well as the selective acquisition of minorities. All these measures will lower our financing costs, mitigate our financial risks, improve our credit rating and enhance our shareholder value remuneration. All in all, significantly increasing our equity value. On free cash flow front, we will measure it as EBITDA plus/minus changing working capital and other noncash items, minus interest, taxes and CapEx. It is important to note the change in profile that we have been able to achieve over the last 2 years. 2019 marks an inflection point in our financial profile as we reach a slightly positive free cash flow generation to then build up a solid contribution during 2020. This focus on free cash flow will continue to be at the top priority and will be one of the parameters of guidance for 2022. Key pillars that will drive this free cash flow contribution are: profitability and EBITDA generation; CapEx moderation; leveraging on last year's investments; active working capital management with measures to improve billing process, payment terms and inventory levels, of course; reduction of financial cost; and efficient tax planning. Free cash flow generation will be efficiently dedicated to enhancing shareholder value through investment in organic and inorganic projects, debt reduction and dividend payments. From a debt and liquidity position, we will continue to improve Gestamp's financial profile. In the chart, we show the pro forma debt maturity as of 31st March 2021, which incorporate the recent repurchase of EUR 500 million of 2023 bonds. This transaction, automatically has extended the syndicated facility on RCF from 2023 to 2025, and has provided us with an average debt maturity profile of 4.7 years. This is a first step towards normalizing our liquidity levels and still leave us with a very comfortable position of liquidity at EUR 2.4 billion, out of which close to EUR 1.5 billion relate to cash and cash equivalents and EUR 900 million to undrawn credit lines. With a focus on reducing financing costs, we will look to progressively reduce most expensive financing and normalize our liquidity levels. In addition, we will continue to focus on delivering enhanced shareholder return, keeping a remuneration policy of 30% dividend payout ratio going forward. This is the level that Gestamp has applied historically. As we increase our net income, dividends paid will increase proportionally, and solid remuneration to our shareholders. And to conclude and taking into consideration all that has been explained, we would like to provide you with guidance for 2022. Here, we set out the targets for next year. They are indeed demanding as they surpass levels of 2019 and several market challenges still remain, but for which Gestamp's team is motivated and committed to deliver. On the top line, we expect revenue growth to continue to outperform the market by mid-single digit; on EBITDA, to reach 13% margin through increase in volumes, fixed cost reduction and operational stabilization; on net income, and aligned with the commitment to enhance shareholder value, to generate 30% more than we did in 2019; CapEx to remain moderate at around 7% of revenues, leveraging on last year's investments; free cash flow generation to be above $200 million; and debt reduction with a target leverage ratio of net debt-to-EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16, to be below 1.8x. Achieving these objectives will place Gestamp in a position of strength for the coming years. And we believe Gestamp's best years are yet to come. With this, let me now hand the presentation back to Mr. Riberas, who will further elaborate on his Gestamp's midterm vision and guidance. Thank you.

So now, and following the presentation made by Carmen on our financial profile of the group until 2022, now we start section #5, where we want to cover our midterm vision beyond 2022 and our ambitions. But of course, I consider that the group, following a period of time until '19 of a huge growth and also this process in '21 and 22 where we are going to be able to focus much more in management, cash flow and some stability, by the end of 2022, our company is going to be very well positioned. We are going to have the best strategic relationship and positioning towards our customers because we have helped and supported in the past. We are going to have some industrial capacity, of course, based in contract and with room to grow as volumes come back and new projects are launched. Our industrial performance of all our plans is going to be substantially improved. And also, at the end of '22, we are going to have a good financial profile, with an EBITDA margin already at the 13% level and with a leverage substantially below 2x EBITDA. So in summary, our group, we have the opportunity again to look for new opportunities, exciting opportunities from our customers, but of course, in the year to come, always preserving a very conservative profile. So with this, and in this sense, clearly, now I think we are going to go through the kind of ambitions we foresee for 2025. And in terms of revenues, clearly, we believe that we can be growing, again, above market define as the global manufacturing of light vehicles based like always in our technology. We have a very important differential in technology and also in our footprint, and probably a growth much more focused in areas like electrical vehicles and in areas of geographies basically in Asia. These are going to be probably our key topics in terms of growth. If we refer to EBITDA margin, we are planning to keep on expanding our margin of EBITDA. And in order to do so, we have some specific tools, which are Industry 4.0 and the project, ATENEA. In terms of free cash flow, we are intending to generate positive free cash flow every year throughout this period. And in terms of dividends, we will keep our stable policy of distribution of 30% of the net profit, but with a clear focus in increasing the net profit and to work behind the line of EBITDA. In terms of our midterm ambitions, and if we refer to the organic growth, it is true that in the recent years, most of our growth has been coming from the organic area. But it's also true that Gestamp has a kind of solid track record in terms of doing acquisitions and joint ventures. We have proven for many, many years that we are able to do very good integration, preserving the value of the companies that we are buying. And of course, we do have also a very good experience in the joint venture partnership, attacking the specific markets like for instance in Turkey with the Celik family or in China with the BHAP Group. We have been able to do small transactions, but also large ones like the ones we did in 2010 with the integration of Edscha, and one year later, the integration of ThyssenKrupp Metal Forming. And the opportunities, probably in this inorganic area, probably are going to come from our customers to support our customers whenever they have some problems with weaker suppliers and also opportunities of growth. And in this case, for instance, in the area of Asia. So clearly, we had -- we will be ready for new opportunities if they are adding value to the group in the long run. If we refer to organic growth, it's true that our group has done a very important effort throughout this year and especially in the last years. Nowadays, we are running 113 industrial plants all over the world, but even the restructuring and some closures that we have been forced to do in -- especially in 2020. In the future, we are going to focus in trying to be able to grow using some of our existing capacity. And also, we will have opportunities because we believe it's going to be a lot of carryovers of existing platform, especially refer to combustion engine vehicles. So that means that we could be able to grow with a kind of a less intensive CapEx. But also, we will have opportunities for new greenfields and also projects. And in this case, our focus is going to be, our ambition is going to be in the area around electrical vehicles and in -- and also to consolidate our position in Asia, especially in China, but also in India. So for the next years to come, as mentioned, we will take advantage of opportunities, but preserving our conservative financial profile. And the main pillars we are going to have for this midterm plan are going to be, of course, research and development. In this period of time, very much focused to develop specific solutions for EV and electrical mobility. In this case, we are going to give you much more details and then Ignacio Martin, the Head of our Research and Development team is going to present. Industry 4.0 is going to be a very important lever in order to be able to increase efficiency. Of course, the efficiency of our industrial operations. And also, in this case, this area or this section is going to be presented by René González. The near plan is focused in redefining the processes, the systems, the data, the organization of the group in order to further improve the efficiency. And of course, after this period of continuous growth, and this plan of Gestamp is going to be presented by Patricia Riberas. And then, of course, in the area of ESG, the Gestamp management and the Board of Directors are fully committed to further improve in the area of ESG. And in this case, César Cernuda, who is member of our Board and recently appointed as President of our new ESG Committee is going to join us today. And now with this, let me hand it over to Ignacio Martin.

So I would like to introduce you into our R&D approach. So we have a quite holistic approach in R&D in our product areas like Body-in-White, chassis and mechanism. We develop technology, materials and products. We do this from our very first idea to a full validation program. And we're committed to the future with our innovations, and the products we design has to be sustainable in terms of decarbonization, but, of course, innovation. Innovation, in terms of lighter products, safer products, more comfort and reduce cost. We do this development from our 13 R&D centers, as you can see around about the world. They are in a network connected to each other, in which we produce and design different chassis application, control arms, we see car cross beams, we see battery boxes and everything around the body structure. Our developments are critical for the OEMs. Our products need to fulfill the highest safety regulations that we have on the market. And we see the performance of our products only in the event of a crash. You can see in the video how we have an interaction between our products from crash, from chassis and body together with the battery box. So crash requirements are increasing constantly. New crash requirements like the MPDB test as well as car to car are changing significant our product development, which this is a big advantage and a chance for Gestamp. So we have a wide range of technologies to achieve the balance of performance and cost when we make our designs. So we're mastering in terms of engineering capabilities, the complete range, which is in our research centers. We have the material development all over the world. We have innovation programs in our different products. We run product and process development centers, but the heart of the R&D is the CO2 assessment, with virtual full validation and our capabilities to do also the prototyping in our own facilities where we have our own crash laboratories. So we have unparallel, expertised and different technologies and a unique approach to our developments. And this unique approach is that we can run full crash capabilities in Gestamp. And with the full capabilities, we also run co-development programs where we design with the customer insights. You can see that the engineering capabilities that we have on the right side are very approached that we have important hot stamping products. You see that we're running here dooring, which is one of the biggest hot stamping products. And our unique approach to this is based on our proprietary validation systems. What is that? So these are GLABs. These are original digital cars that we have developed, in which we are testing and validating our own innovations. This is utterly important as with this, we not only can validate the products, we also can anticipate the future mobility concepts. You can see in the video how this innovation works together. And if we design correct our products, we can guarantee that we improve with our crash systems, the OEM standards for crash validation and in some extent, we will also exceed these solutions. We are a strategic partner of the OEMs with our co-development programs. We create a win-win situation. Co-development programs are programs in which we can transfer innovation inside the OEM into the cars. This, typically, we do 2, 3 years in advance, so that we are able to support our customers with the newest innovation and have the best technology available in the market. This, typically, we can do much earlier than the technology is being accepted in the market. A proved track record, you can see that we were running co-development program in the 2010, about 4 programs. This increased very fast. 2018, more than 150 programs. And today, we're managing about 300 complete programs. The key milestones in the development today are, like we can show you, hot stamping, we have the Volvo, the Y284 (sic) [ Y285 ]. We were the first one to get hot stamping in the cars. We were the first ones to enter the first soft-zone technology into Volkswagen in the Tiguan in China, first one in entering the hot stamping technology with soft-zone in Honda in Japan as well as integrated balljoints in our chassis product. But at the end, we're developing also full scope of chassis application for the platforms. In the MQB-A0 as well as in the SPA platform. These journeys through the technologies allow us now to bring these innovations and new things into electrical cars. For this, you can find our products in the 5 different areas of the car. So the first is the safety center. We see in the safety sale of our products like the hot stamping products. We have in the lower side, the platform, which is responsible for the driving dynamics as well as the allocation of the battery box front and rear of the car, where we have all our bumper systems. And, nevertheless, we have also the closures and the hinges that we need to apply. This vehicle electrification increases the product portfolio of Gestamp, massively. We see in the video that in our product scope that we have, the most important thing to the electric vehicle is the battery box. The battery box is changing the architecture of the car by adding massive weight in the center of gravity of the car. This opens a new opportunity for development, taking into account the new features that we have. And these features all around to improve the body structure of the car to get a better performance of the crash and good performance on drivability with our products in the chassis. So as a result, our portfolio will increase in 4 different new applications, which is battery boxes on one side; we have the reinforced body structure due to the massive weight; we have increased chassis performance as the motors are screwed on the chassis; and as well, finally, some applications of mechanism with powered solutions. This is not all when we are looking into electrical cars. On one side, we have the light motives and targets to develop safer, lighter cars with a reduced cost for the electrical cars, as we saw before. But we have the urban vehicle. And these urban vehicles, like small cars, are depending a lot on the case. So on connectivity, self-driving, sharing of cars, and on this small city cars, there is less crash requirements. So we will find their development light motive more in cost and weight. And for this, we developed a new center in Bilbao, which is dedicated to this. You can see on the left side that we are developing a normal electrical vehicle, more the safety of the car together with the battery integrity development. But on the small city cars, we have now small battery, and we can enter fiber technologies into this. Here on this video, you can see the latest development on fiber technology where we're going to produce fiber. For this, we are setting strategic, some stripes inside the tools. As Gestamp we are toolmakers, we can design the full process from the initial to the end. You will see how we placed the different stripes strategic in the tool. We will close the tool and generate by high-pressure and temperature, the material that will flow and will build up a new product. So in R&D, this -- we are -- for new cars, we try to build these type of door systems. And you will see, we're taking out of the tool a complete door system. Coming now to R&D and the importance to have the right technology on the right time in this journey of electrification. We have an example where you can see from 2012 to 2021, the development on the ICE, how we were able with R&D technologies to support the ICE cars with hot stamping technology, a development or full platform for chassis and being everywhere into the global platform. On the EV now, we are now introducing new steel grades into these cars, new sliding door application as well as new chassis. And what is completely new is totally battery box components. On the lower side, you will see that existing technologies like hot stamping will still increase. And you can see that in the MQB A, the average of the hot stamping content is about 20.3%. Meanwhile, in electrical cars, we see also an increase here in the MEB, around about 24.6%. If we come now to our innovation roadmap, this innovation road map is a plan that we designed for 3 years, in which we are designing 6 technologies, 3 materials and 19 product innovations. Today, we have video here to show you how a few of these innovations can work together, which will be the one piece flow, an innovative flow system, together with the one piece dooring rocker. And the function of this complete system will protect the battery, and we can generate a much lighter battery box. Performance of our products can only be observed in the event of a crash. Within our product scope, we're looking here into the dynamic interaction of press hardening extreme-sized products with different material thickness and different material properties. Target is to protect passenger and maintain better integrity, understanding the real crash event. Design, therefore, is a combination of a one piece door ring with best weight cost ratio, highest crash safety performance, one piece rocker, substitution of the state of the art aluminum, one piece flow allows to take site forces and a battery optimized design, thanks to the extreme sized parts. By mastering this arrangement, we can offer the best EV crash solution to our customers. So far the Body-in-white applications. And now, I would like to give over to my colleague, Ulf from Chassis. So please, Ulf.

Thank you, Ignacio. I'm Ulf Sudowe, Global R&D Director Chassis, and I'm going to show you some new developments for chassis today. Chassis products are safety critical providing, real control as well as right and handling feedback to the driver. Here, you can see an overview about the chassis product portfolio, which is covering all kind of relevant products. We are using steel, aluminum and fibers. There are a number of mobility trends across the automotive industry. Today, I would like to share with you a short overview of our developments around the topic of electrification. The e-mobility does provide some challenges around safety, comfort and lightweighting. Passenger safety is fundamental for new vehicle development. Battery masses increases the potential energy of the vehicle, and chassis products can contribute to absorb the energy in an event of a crash, as I will explain later. Quite AVs, increased road noise and chassis products can help to isolate this noise. This time, innovation and design approach deliver practical lightweighting today to reduce CO2 emissions and increase vehicle range. The vehicle consists of a rigid occupant cell in a deformable front and restructure to absorb energy in an event of a crash. Here, you can see the difference inside the car due to the electrification of vehicles. The removal of an internal combustion engine and inclusion of battery and electric motors changes structure and dynamic of a car. In a bit more detail, we can show you how chassis products are adapting. Here, you can see a typical internal combustion engine with gearbox in red. In green, you can see the battery electric motor and compare the engine size that contributes to crash behavior. In the event of an EV crash, there are 3 aspects that chassis contributes towards for improved safety. Firstly, the addition of a third load pass through the chassis to absorb crash energy. Secondly, the chassis mounts the steering system, and in the event of a crash, it is designed to buckle the frame downwards. This pulls the steering wheel away from the driver. Finally, the larger chassis structure, shown in blue here, is more forward in the car to support the body longitudinals in the event of a crash or an offset crash. That's all from my side from chassis. Thank you, and back to Ignacio.

Thank you, Ulf, for the presentation. And now, we also would like to give an introduction to Markus from our division Edscha with some innovations. Please, Markus.

Thank you, Ignacio. I'm Markus Kirchner, Chief Commercial Officer of Edscha, the mechanism division of Gestamp today. I will give you an insight of the latest innovations of Edscha. One megatrend is comfort. For example, we were the first automotive supplier in Europe, who brings the power side door into serial production. This power door offers high comfort and more functionality in the handling of vehicle doors. As everybody knows, it is not easy to open heavy car door by hand. This is exactly where the Edscha door puts things right. Thanks to its so-called [indiscernible] function, it ensures that the door can be moved easily. It does not matter in which conditions the car is parked. It always needs the same power to open and close the door. And in addition to that, the power door moves fully automated by pushing a button inside the vehicle. The product is also equipped with the vehicle's environment monitoring system, which makes a great contribution to higher safety and the prevention of excellence. If the sensor system detects an obstacle, it stops the opening process immediately. On the one hand, here, we are talking about static obstacles, for example, pillars. On the other hand, also about dynamic ones as pedestrians or cyclists, so an important contribution to another key focus of Edscha business on safety. Here, we offer the active frank, the solutions especially tailored to electric vehicles. Edscha is the first supplier to develop a system that combines the power system with the hinge for active pedestrian protection. In this solution, an electric drive opens and closes the front trunk automatically. If a collusion occurs, for example, with the pedestrian, a pyrotechnic activator opens the front lid within a few milliseconds against the regular opening direction. The buffer reduces the risk for pedestrians. However, superior technic activator must not, under any circumstance, stretch or compress the electrical drive. Edscha is currently the only supplier to offer 2 mechanical solutions for different system requirements in order to ensure that. Another Edscha innovation is also designed for electric vehicles, the smart activator system. Here, the power system's electronic control unit is integrated directly into the spindle drive that saves space, and there is no longer any need for an external control unit, another business in which we will achieve the next modules. Unlike conventional ways, they are not made in steel, but of aluminum. To realize this innovative process, Edscha will set up a competence center in Santander. That's all from Edscha's side. Thanks. Back to Ignacio.

So thank you, Markus, and thank you very much for your time. [Presentation]

I'm leading this journey towards the digitalization at Gestamp. Thanks to the experience we have acquired during the [indiscernible] transparent because the information is here. They are not secrets at the shop floor. What makes the factories more efficient at every moment? The smart factory means a new level in the automation of the industry. It is not the traditional automation with physical robots. It means automated decisions. It goes about software and raw material optimization and 100% client satisfaction. All this because of the efficiency and the flexibility we can have in these new smart factories. Talking about digital factory, we have defined digital standards for all activities. We have done more than 100 Internet of Things projects, more than 50 virtualization projects and 9 applications are running. We have also big knowledge in the new technologies. Most of them are being used in the existing projects and other are going to be relevant in the future. So we want to be in the definition and development to be sure that they fit for the industry use cases. 5G technology is a clear example as it is going to give us more capabilities to build a smart factory to a global activity and the other to a single plant. The sample of the activity is about hot stamping. Most of the lines are connected. We have worked in the adoption of the digital tools. As a result, we have improved 15% overall performance in the hot stamping activity in the last 2 years. The other example is about the single plant. It is attached due to the products and the high level of automation. For that reason, with the traditional approach, we were not able to achieve the volumes requested by the customers. We introduced digital projects and supported both the improvement and planting. And in a few months, we have been able to achieve the production requested, avoiding new investment apart of the positive impact in the P&L of the plan. Clearly, digitalization allows us to improve the efficiency of our plants while reducing the dependence of the human factor in the decision-making. These examples and others reinforce the idea of accelerating the rollout process. However, we realize that the rollout to the existing facilities is complex because of the persistence needed, negotiation with equipment suppliers to get the data of the need to interrupt production to install devices, for example. For this reason, we have decided to work in two approaches. First, to support plants, regions where we can add more value due to the room for improvement. Second, in order to get a massive rollout to implement everything through the new programs. In this way, greenfield projects, born digital and new lines include the Internet of Things and virtualization from the beginning, all this without significant additional costs. The upskilling and reskilling process goes with the projects as it is key for that option. As I said, things do not stop here. Achieving the smart is our goal for the future, and we think it's closer than ever and more powerful than expected. Thanks to the new technologies, communications, edge computing, sensors, the new developments in resources orchestration are opening a lot of possibilities. We hope that the Next Generation UE (sic) [ EU ] funds will give us the possibility to speed up the process of creating the smart factory. We have presented a complete program together with partners. The idea is to develop the whole concept and to promote it throughout the industry in Spain. Besides one piece of the smart factory is already a reality. Combining the experience in digitalization with the best engineering ideas, we have created a concept for flexible assembly. It is able to produce different parts in the same installations instead of having a dedicated one for every single part. It is movable rather than fixed. It integrates logistics and quality together with production, hence, the greater complexity and the need to automate the whole factory, installing the full package of digitalization. We passed from specific and concatenated installations to generic and individual by moving the parts with AGVs instead of fixed robots. Now we invest in a specific installation to every product, and we usually size it to the peak of volume from the beginning. The new concept gives us the possibility to add or remove capacity according to the evolution of the volumes. So we will invest progressively, and the assets utilization is ensured since we can add other products to the factory or move installations from one plant to another if the volumes drop. However, there are more advantages in this concept. The initial investment is almost the same. So there is not a blocking point to introduce the concept the first time. We do not need to invest in a new production line for the second round of vehicles. Also the overlap, when a model changes, can be covered with our new investments. Installations are standards. So in case of new capacity needed, there is no need of engineering, reducing our lead time. In summary, we mitigate the impact of the volumes uncertainty, and we will reduce our capital needs. There is a manufacturer in Spain for concept validation, and we hope to introduce this concept in a program very soon to see our first factory running by late 2023 or early 2024. Finally, the smart factory opens up a warp of possibilities. We think that we can change the traditional operational model, allowing factories to adapt to the new circumstances, whatever they will be in the future. Thanks. Thank you very much.

Ignacio and René have just given us a taste of what's to come in Gestamp's future. And by sharing our ATENEA plan, I intend to do the same. Since its foundation in 1997, Gestamp has been at a constant nonstop growth trajectory. We have grown at 19% constant average growth rate for 22 years. We have increased our workforce at 17% CAGR in the same timeframe, and we have added 91 new plants to our footprint. This performance has been the result of a strong organic push by the whole organization with the added complexity of significant inorganic operations. Our culture has been adapting with all this growth and the incorporation of new companies with their own culture and processes. In 2019, we started realizing we needed to adapt ourselves for the future. We intend to leverage everything that has made Gestamp successful in the past to maintain our competitiveness in the future to come. ATENEA will focus on processes, systems, data, culture and organization to make that happen. Our objective is to consolidate the operational excellence in our plants and transition towards higher value-added corporate functions. ATENEA is the continuation of the transformation plan that we started in Q1 2020. This plan, in addition to the first ATENEA initiatives, will assure our goal of reaching a 13% EBITDA margin in 2022 as we have guided. However, ATENEA goes beyond 2022 and will help us in our continuous effort to expand our margins, but also improving our processes and streamlining them and making them homogeneous across geographies and functions, adapting and simplifying a systems map that has been the inheritance of our growth and focusing on extracting value out of the vast amount of data that we generate. We will do all of this by leveraging the culture that has brought us here with an organization adapted to the future changes. ATENEA addresses and monitors specific projects in our operations to reach our efficiency goals and foster best practice sharing across our divisions. Examples of this will be around Industry 4.0, our quality function, our maintenance function and others. We have specific projects within each and every one of our corporate functions, aimed at providing our operations and decision-makers with better information and more efficient processes to extract it. We are not only focused on efficiency. We are focused on increasing the value of these functions for the whole organization as well as increasing the level of control and clear definition of the strategic guidelines of the group. We will address these 2 areas on top of tubing pillars: firstly, a comprehensive review of our systems map to better serve the organization and a data strategy plan led by a new department. Finally, we will challenge the current organizational structure to find the right one to take Gestamp to the next level and absorb all the changes that we need to implement. We will never forget our paths, and our new culture will have to build upon it in order to accompany us into the Gestamp of the future. ATENEA will involve the whole organization. Work streams will be led by the COO and the Corporate Directors, and we will implement them across the board with the help of the transformation office and the key role of the COO. Some work streams will involve various functions, but some will belong strictly to one department. Every work stream within a department will be divided into specific on concrete initiatives, and they will each have a leader, which can be part of the corporate function from a division or from another department. In the past, Gestamp has not been able to push initiatives globally because they were only corporate led. With this matrix, we want to make sure that everybody has a role to play and the transformation office will act as a catalyst. Our aim is to make Gestamp's change be something for the whole organization to be proud of. ATENEA will be launched in subsequent transformation waves, which will extend over time. Each initiative has been scheduled in a particular wave, taking into account the importance, the urgency and the viability of the action. Our transformation plan is alive. It will require adapting as months go by. Some initiatives will take longer than expected, and others will be easier than initially thought. As of now, we have scheduled 3 transformational waves. The first one, we will start this quarter with the launch of over 30 initiatives. We have also selected lighthouse initiatives, which are quick wins, which will help us generate the goodwill within the organization and help us remain motivated with the program as the months go by. An example of a lighthouse initiative is the rationalization of financial reports that we generate at our plants for our regions, divisions and corporate functions. When launching such an ambitious and long term program, it is essential to have full support of all areas of the organization. In Gestamp, ATENEA has the full support of top management, and all Directors will be responsible for its implementation. We also have an advantage. Gestamp has always been a company of entrepreneurs, which attracted by a high growth company, have found opportunities to grow and make their own paths within the organization. We intend to leverage this and use a leadership that we have at all levels of the organization to promote change and offer new opportunities for people to evolve and grow with us. The transformation office I lead will serve as the hinge between the corporate functions and the rest of the organization. We will be owners of the transformation process by monitoring it and pushing it whenever necessary, challenging the organization towards uncomfortable, but necessary change, and channeling information coming from the organization. We will also promote the need for change and keep up the spirit needed in a complete transformation process like this. ATENEA needs to result in real and tangible change in Gestamp. Hence, we have provided it with a governance model, a monitoring tool and full visibility. We will have a transformation committee once a month in which top management will be informed of the progress of the initiatives and make key decisions. On a weekly basis, we will have a transformation office update and a specific update for every work stream, including all the initiative owners. On-demand workshops between departments will be necessary as initiatives start to roll out. We will have a tool and a team dedicated to measure the progress. In order to do so, all initiatives will have milestones and clear KPIs and will be transparent to the transformation team. ATENEA needs to be fully visible to our organization. We intend to communicate its progress through updates in various formats and a specific incentive plan designed to go along our transformation goals. As I just mentioned, in ATENEA, we will clearly communicate the case for change for the whole organization to get the traction that we need. We will involve all levels of the organization and mobilize talented leaders to take an active role in the process. ATENEA will be divided in transformation waves, which will start this quarter and are planned until Q1 2023. We have full support for the program and the transformation office is ready to start. Some of the projects, including in the upcoming ways are: the full review of the roles and responsibilities of the corporate functions and divisions, and this is a systematic task as after years of M&A and growth, we need to standardize before we can organize; the start of our data strategy plan with the first objective to build a cross-functional data lake; simplifying our client quotation process and finding the right tools for it as a number of RFQs that we receive has increased drastically over the years; applying robot process automation tools in the purchasing and finance functions, which will help us centralize specific processes; designing a new Industry 4.0 implementation plan in the lights of the new European funds; or making a homogeneous set of industrial KPIs aimed to help us better compare and share best practices in the group, which has been difficult before due to our rapid expansion on heterogeneous data. We will continue updating on the status of the plan as we advance in our transformation waves. We have an ambitious plan, but we have everything we need for it to be successful. Gestamp is ready to make the change and face of future. Thank you very much. [Presentation]

ESG is at the core of our business model because we are always innovative, competitive and sustainable. And from the origin of our company being a family business, our principles has always been related to the long-term sustainable development. Today, our ESG strategy covers all relevant aspects of the environment to the contribution to the society and, of course, the corporate governance and is fully aligned and is, of course, fulfilling the most demanding frameworks, such as the one of the European Green Deal and also the ones included in the United Nations 2030 agenda. If we start, in terms of our environmental policy, of course, our most important target is related to our road to neutrality in terms of CO2. I can tell you that we have already signed many years ago and approves our sense based target objectives. And of course, the idea in this case is that we are committed to reduce by 2030. 30% of our emissions in Scope 1 and 2 and 22% of these emissions in the area of the scope three. But of course, we want to speed up to accelerate this transition to the neutrality. And for instance, this year, we have signed an agreement, which is going to allow all of our plants in Spain to run on green energy. But of course, probably our main contribution in terms of CO2 emissions reduction is the development and the manufacturing of components to help our customers to build cars which are lighter. And by doing that, reducing emissions in the case of the combustion engine vehicles and, of course, increasing the range of the pure electrical vehicles. A part of CO2 emissions, of course, we are also working in the area of the circular economy. In fact, most of our raw materials that we are using in our manufacturing are completely recyclable, like the steel or the aluminum. We have a system in place that we are able to really reduce and recycle more than 98% of this kind of raw materials. Referring to our contribution to the society, of course, safety is a very important part of what we do. Safety is a very important aspect of the design and the manufacturing of the path that we are providing to our customers in order to reduce the injuries and the damage in case of an accident. We had a very, very advanced systems of health and safety implemented in all of our plants. And by doing that, we have been able to achieve no fatal accidents since 2017. And of course, in the last year and also this year, we have the most strict protocols in terms of the one if we talk about our culture, we have a diverse and an inclusive culture, we have more than 40,000 employees with 89 different nationalities and '17 different languages. And we have a young workforce with 41% of our workforce under 35 years old. In Gestamp, we are also fully committed in trying to develop our talent. In fact, in '19, we spent more than 28 hours per employee just in terms of training. We have more than 500 apprentices in all our plants in 2019. And also, we have a kind of ambitious development of talent program. And we are making, overall, a very positive impact on the society with more than 5,500 employees working in volunteer activities in 2019, and of course, with more than 300 different institutions benefited from our support. And in the moment of COVID-19, which has been, of course, in 2020, our most important effort, we have been able to donate and to buy from different countries, including China, very important amounts around sanitary material. But also, we have been able to develop and to manufacture part of the sanitary material in our own plants. And last but not least, we have a strong corporate governance. Of course, we have a Board of Directors, which is very diverse, international, and of course, multidisciplinary. We have more than 50% of the Board members are independent. More -- 30% of the members are female. And we have all kind of diverse set of skills throughout the Board. And of course, this Board is working with a very solid corporate governance. We are complying with 93% of all the different regulations of the Code of Good Corporate Governance. We have now incorporated this ESG Committee lead it by an independent member of the Board. We have the same exactly in the Audit Committee and also in the Compensation and Remuneration Committee. And of course, we do a periodical evaluation of the organization and the functioning of our Board of Directors. And we fulfill with all the different policies, which are place by the CNMV in Spain. So just as a summary, we are convinced that we have already a very solid ESG framework due to the hard work and continuous work of all of the teams, but it's not enough. We need to do much. We need to push harder in order to be able to cope with the future needs and the new standards. And the Board of Gestamp is pushing management in that sense. And last week, we have decided to incorporate a new ESG Committee in our Board. This committee is going to be leaded by an independent Board member, César Cernuda, who is today with us in this Capital Market.

[Foreign Language]

Okay. A pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much for joining us in this Gestamp Capital Markets Day.

Thank you for the invite. It's my great pleasure to be with all of you here today.

My first question is that taking into consideration that you have been working for very large and global companies all over the world, how important do you feel that ESG, in general, is going to be for Gestamp in the future?

Well, first of all, congratulations, and thank you so much for the invite. It's my great pleasure to be here with you today and everybody. Certainly, the world we change in has been changing at a speed that we have never seen before. ESG has become a new normal for everybody. We have seen how regulators the last years having bringing new policies and pushing countries and companies to really improve in this area. And I think this is just the beginning of what we're going to see the next years to come. In that sense, I also believe that companies need to not just change, but understand the new society and how we're going to go and contribute. Today, when you go to the financial market, they're looking into the scores. And you have better access based on your positive scores around ESG. In the case of Gestamp, and you know this better than I do, I believe we have been among our peers, one of the first companies to issue a public report around sustainability. And I'm extremely proud now to be your new leader or the new leader of Gestamp on this new committee that we have on ESG.

Yes, I feel, clearly, that's the case, and we need to do much more, and probably to communicate more than other times. But let's go to the second question, César. I think, taking in consideration that Gestamp is, let's say, inside the automotive sector, and this sector has been always in the middle of the problems around CO2 emissions, how do you think we can improve our environmental policy in the long run?

Well, there's no doubt that the automotive sector has always been under discussion around these topics. And it's important to understand what is the role that we play at Gestamp. I believe that we're a key enabler for the change. A matter of, one of my biggest learnings in the last years, as I serve as a Board -- member of the Board, has been the fact that we have been investing a lot of R&D around lightweight vehicles, which is contributing and helping on this plan of CO2-neutral emissions, right? At the same time, I think it's very important to understand what we have been doing, the last 2 or 3 years, investing more and more around hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles. I think, a great example has been the investment that we have made on battery boxes to really help and enable this electric vehicle realization and reality. But that's not enough. As you may have discussed, we have several plants around the world. I think, the decision that we made and the announcement that we made lately, in Spain, where we have decided by 2022, we're going to move all our factories to green energy with the agreement that we made with Naturgy, I think, it's a great example on some of the things that we're doing. And I know that your team is working, and our team is working very hard on doing this, not just in Spain, but in other countries. The last piece that I will say is, this is not enough neither. I think, we need to keep working more and more with our own supply. We have a big supply chain, and we need to ask them as well for their ESG scores and reports to really help on this transition.

It's true. That's the only way to really improve our emissions at the Scope level 3. And of course, as part of CO2 emissions in this area, we are working a lot in the area of circular economy because we have a very good position in the recycling of all the scrap, so this is important. So coming to the -- my third question, César. You know that Gestamp, being over -- is a family business, we have always been very committed to the communities where our plants were located. But in the future, I think, things are going to change because the kind of new purpose of the company is stated by the business roundtable, I think, is moving around the focus. How do you think we can change and adapt our strategy towards a society in order to be aligned with this kind of new challenges?

One of the things that you just said before was about communication and how do we share some of the things that we've been doing and we are doing to help the communities. But let me start actually with the first piece that

I would like to reflect with you, which is I think the world has changed so much that the principle of Milton Friedman used to talk about, where basically, the mission and the value of a company was basically to support and make -- maximize the value for the shareholders had changed. I think, today, what we really need to do. And it's not just to maximize the value of the shareholders, but start maximizing the value for our employees, for our customers, our partners, and more and more to the entire community. That's the new normal. And that's something that I think all of us are understanding much better. Gestamp, we discuss in every Board about the safety of our employees. And that's one of the key KPIs that we have. And that's very important. And the last 18 months has been a great example. The situation that we have lived, which has everybody lived in the world with this COVID-19 was a great example for all of us in saying how we're going to go and get back to work in a place where it's safe for our employees, and safety was the first element of our discussions. I also believe big time in skilling and reskilling. You know my background. You know that I've been working in the IT industry for the last 20-plus years in big multinationals, and skilling is at the core. 18 months ago, there was a huge debate, doubles, where they were talking -- or were talking about the new reskilling and how we can go and ensure that our employees can really adapt to the future. One of the great things that I'm not sure we have done that much communication at Gestamp has been around the Gestamp Academy. I was very impressed when I was at the best country to see the factory and see the practice that we have and how new employees come and train themselves, but also how do we reskill our own employees with some of the things that I see, I think that we have shared today at the Capital day.

Yes, fully agree with you, César. And regarding the corporate governance from Gestamp, it's been a complete experience because we were not a public company until 2017 with the IPO. And I think, we have, since that time, really reinforced our corporate governance from your experience in the Board. But probably, we need to do even more. I don't know what kind of model we need to have, but where do you think are going to be our next challenges in the area of corporate governance?

I think the transition that we have gone through since the IPO, and I still remember the first time that you and me met to talk about me joining the Board, your vision about building a Board that had majority of independents, and it was not necessarily needed. I think it was a 40%. For -- in our case, but been a majority of independents really caught my attention. And I shared this with you today openly, and I feel very proud to be a member of the Board for that reason. The vision that you had on the diversity, and today, we'll talk about gender. And by the way, I think we are about 30% as well, right?

Yes. Yes, we are.

But I will even go further. I think the international experience that we have at the Board, given the international scope that we have at Gestamp, it -- and it was very important. We have a great presence and experience in Asia. You also know that I spent several years living in Singapore. We have great experience in North America, which I spent most of my time now per city in a Board. And as I said, not just gender but more kind of broader in the experience. I also think that the word that both committees, Audit and Compensation Committee, which, of course, are mandatory, have been doing, have been very good. And now this step that we're taking creating for the first time I have summed the ESG Committee, it's a great step forward. And I'm pleased to have been elected to be the President of the Board -- of the committee.

Okay. Thank you, [indiscernible] for joining us today in our Capital Market Day, and good luck in your new assignment as the President of ESG Committee.

My great pleasure and looking forward for many years to come working together.

Okay. Very good. Okay, now with this section on ESG. We are going to conclude this Capital Market Day of Gestamp. During these presentations, in each of the sections, I think we have tried to address different topics. Of course, our recent history, how we have enabled from the IPO to grow, to grow substantially until 2019, how we have been able to face the challenges around the COVID in the year 2020 and how we are going to face this period of consolidation and also focusing free cash flow generation and of course, for the future. Future is very important for us. We had a quite important relevant ambitions beyond 2022. We intend to keep on growing. Thanks to our technology and our products and probably also thanks to opportunities around inorganic. We want to further increase our efficiency because we are going to work a lot in the areas of Industry 4.0 and moving ahead with the ATENEA plan. And of course, we do have, as I stated now, very ambitious targets in the area of the ESG. Nothing more from our side. Thanks for your time. And now our team and myself, we are open to your questions. Thank you. [Break]

Good afternoon, and thank you very much for joining Gestamp's 2021 Capital Markets Day. I am Alvaro Bachiller, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Controlling. We hope that you have found all of the sessions today insightful. Now we will open up the session for Q&A with all of our speakers present.

The first question comes from José Asumendi from JPMorgan.

This is José Asumendi from JPMorgan. I thank you to do the whole thing, I think, very interesting development. I had 3 questions, please. And I just -- maybe I will formulate the 3 of them at the same time. I think that the first one revolves a little bit about -- from your perspective, as we think about the positioning of Gestamp on a global basis, where do you see the largest opportunities geographically to expand? I mean, you've gone through a phase of expansion -- very aggressive expansion over the past year, opening new plants. Which regions do you think offers that opportunity? And then as we think about the the Asian OEMs and Chinese OEMs, specifically, can you share with us some comments as to how you're progressing with business there? That will be the first question. The second question, I thought very interesting developments on the technology side. Maybe Carmen or [indiscernible], maybe you can talk a little bit about which one -- which of those technology developments offer you the biggest or the largest revenue opportunity going forward? Short term or maybe strategically in the medium term? And the third one -- third question, a final one. There are some of your competitors that obviously are following the trend of implementing larger castings in the car. This is a trend that we need to see if it becomes a success going forward or not. But I would love to hear your view with regards to those competitors and the strategy of doing larger castings and what this means for Gestamp in the future?

Okay. Thank you, José, for your questions.

Great. Thanks, José. In the first, referring to your first question around our positioning and where are we targeting? I guess for us, it's clear that today, in our footprint, we are missing a little bit of some exposure to Asia and especially to China, maybe in some extent, in India, but still it's a little bit early. So in terms of geographical position Asia should be, of course, related to technologies, everything around electrical vehicles. And again, coming back to that point, China is also a very important opportunity for us. But probably Europe is also. In Europe, maybe the market is not going to grow, but it's leading with China this move versus the -- in direction to increase the electrical vehicles penetration. So I would say that probably Asia and coming back to your question around the Chinese players, when we did the IPO in '17, we mentioned that we weren't in to increase our position with Chinese OEMs. It's true that we have done a little bit of the job as far as the vehicles that this company used to produce were a kind of, let's say, anti cars. And now they are moving more to more sophisticated cars and also to EV cars so our technologies around the lightweight are more suitable around that. So coming back to this question, I think Asia, EV, and this is our position right now around the Asian OEMs. I guess, referring to your second question, we are mentioning about technologies. And also the question around the big size casted. So probably Ignacio, you can give us much more light on that.

Yes. Okay. Regarding to Tesla and the mega casting, due to the lag of legacy and the development steps that Tesla has done starting from scratch, we have to say it's different from the the solution that we have in our other OEMs. Nevertheless, we are Gestamp. We are developing, especially for the safety cage of the car where you cannot use casting, something similar, which we call extreme sized parts. And these parts are having like the 1 piece door ring, 1 piece floors. They offer to our customers the solution to having a much higher safety increase in the car. But at the same time, the OEMs can save a lot of money reducing their assembly cost. So overall, big assembly parts are a right step in the right direction. Nevertheless, this solution allows to reduce the battery complexity. by simplifying the battery and moving safety features that today we have in the battery, moving them gradually into the body in white. Said this with our solutions, especially this extreme size part, what we do, we are increasing basically our market share in those type of products related with press hardening in the electrical vehicle.

Okay. Perfect. The next question comes from Francisco Ruiz from Exane BNP.

So I have 2 questions. The first one is regarding your outperformance in the market and the future performance. You've mainly been growing double digits in the last 1 year above the market, more or less. Now according to your presentation, you are better prepared. Also, the EV mix will favor you. The addressable market is going to grow 10% figure in the next 5 years. So why are you guiding only for a mid-single-digit growth barriers with the market? And the second question is regarding battery boxes, although Ignacio has already anticipated a little bit, but could you give a little more detail on your battery boxes strategy for the coming years. I mean if you are mainly affecting the mass market or you are going to be more specific on some models or some part of this product?

Okay. Thank you very much for your question from Francisco.

So thank you very much, Francisco. I'm going to start from answering the first question, outperforming the market. I think as you have seen in our presentation, facts saw that we did outperform the market in the past even through very difficult situations. So we did so. Actually, if you take a look to Q1 numbers, we also did it in an environment where there are some supply chain issues with semiconductors. So the past is something that we would like clearly to stress here. But then if you go to the future, you will see that the market is growing from 75 million to 95 million cars, and there is a clear increase in production of vehicles in the following years that only that is going to increase our addressable market by a huge number. If you go to [indiscernible] numbers, it talks about from 52 billion to 82 billion. But I think it's very important also to say that the product that we are sending today and bringing today into the cars, they are the same ones in the electrification vehicles strategy that we are doing today. So we produce body-wide parts, chassis parts and mechanisms. But then in the new EV cars, we will also produce battery boxes like the ones we are already doing in the main platforms around the world, like PPE, MEB or EV. But we are also -- as Ignacio mentioned, we are also increasing the number of products that we can use to protect that battery. So I think this is something that you will clearly see in the coming months, years that we have everything to outperform the market. And regarding the battery boxes, steel is a market, which is difficult to assess. Technology is evolving very fast. But I can give you some kind of rough numbers. Of course, it's not the same to think about the battery boxes for a pure EV that we think about blocking hybrid vehicle. And of course, it will depend because there are some of our customers that they do more in-house. And they are basically buying some single components and others are buying the complete battery. So what we can do for them right now with the kind of prices we have in the market, We could be talking about something around EUR 500 or more for the big parts and a little bit less if we are considering what is needed for the plug-in hybrid. If we think about the future because it's still today, the number of EVs is limited and the kind of systems for the battery boxes are the old ones, but if we really move and think about what is going to be situation by '28, for instance, I guess the market is considering and the consultants are considering that by that time, it will be something around 25 million vehicles pure EVs. And there's going to be something around maybe not -- it's going to be maybe '21, pure EVs and 5 plug-in hybrid. If we take that into consideration, and we just apply what the numbers that I have already mentioned in order to assume what could be the addressable market. For us, we consider that this market at that time is going to be something between EUR 8 billion, maybe -- from EUR 5 billion to EUR 8 billion. And we are targeting internally trying to be able to get -- to catch and probably [indiscernible] or Ignacio will have a lot of things to say around it -- of around 15%.

The next question comes from Enrique Yáguez from Bestinver.

The first question is regarding your midterm ambition. I don't know if you could give us some guidance about the expected EBITDA margins that you'd like to achieve in 2025? And secondly, is regarding the repurchase of minorities. I don't know if you could disclose what amount of money would you willing to place or to -- to invest in these minorities and the specific time frame for acquiring those minorities. And if they will affect your leverage guidance for the year?

Thank you, Enrique, for your questions.

Okay. So if -- I will take the first one. And regarding our midterm additions, I have already stated that even if steel is quite ambitious, the target that we have for 2020 of 13% EBITDA margin we are intending to even increase this margin for the future. And of course, assuming that we will have an overperformance in sales and trying to be able to have a positive free cash flow throughout the years. And in order to do so, of course, we will keep on pushing in our normal efficiency of our plants. But also we have different levers in order to be able to further increase this EBITDA margin. I have already mentioned the Industry 4.0 could be an opportunity, but maybe it could make sense that Patricia could give us a little bit more ideas around what is the ATENEA plan.

Great. ATENEA will help monitor some of these projects to get the benefits that we expect for achieving our margins in 2022 and in the future. Some of these projects are streamlining the organization after a period of high growth implementing automation tools or shared service centers. All projects will have very clear KPIs and will be monitored by my team, our governance model and a tool to ensure that we get the margin expansion for the future that we hope. And as it relates to minorities and thanks for your question, Enrique. The fact of the matter is, as we mentioned in the presentation, one of the key areas of focus is going to be to enhance net income. And in this topic, obviously, we will be working alongside all the lines of the P&L to achieve the guidance that we have provided to the market for '22. It is indeed demanding, but we're going to put all the measures in place to achieve that. One of the key areas will be the selective acquisition of minorities. And in this case, allow me to provide you with more details when we make the announcement public, but also reinforce the fact that Gestamp has been very successful in building up these relationships over time The way that we will proceed will be with less industrial partnerships where we have minority positions. And in terms of timing, we look to already start executing within this year and progressively also looking into next. As it relates to the guidance that we have provided to you, that already includes, obviously, the fact and the acquisitions that we tend to do over time as it relates to leverage. And so in this context, this should be value enhancing for our shareholders.

The next question comes from Bosco Ojeda from UBS.

A couple of questions from me. The first one on the -- I wanted to ask you what's the latest on the raw material situation, inflation of components? You have a good track record on passing raw materials to your customers, but whether you're experiencing any more difficulties also. I find that the -- it might distort quite a lot your revenue guidance, given the quite extreme situation, you need to pass on quite high increase, particularly steel, but others, too. And then whether you -- maybe you could give a bit of color on what do you think could be the unit growth and the price are you experimenting changes on the area of your tooling price? And second question I wanted to ask is about your factories. You made a massive effort of opening factories around the world. for many years now, you are slowing that. I mean can you continue to outperform without opening new factories? And what is your capacity utilization? I can see that in the near term with COVID capacitization is low. But where are you in 1, 2 years? Are you going to be tight or can you easily upgrade partly your factories?

Okay. Thank you, Bosco for your questions.

Okay. Thanks for the question, Bosco. And concerning the raw material, it's true that we are living a situation which is rather strange. Last year, we were all of us very much concerned around demand And now we have problems much more linked to offer. We have, of course, semiconductors, which is not affecting enough direct -- directly, but is impacting the market. But also, we have these kind of problems with steel or aluminum, and we have problems from deliveries that we need to work, and we are working quite diligently in order to sort it out. But of course, there has been a quite increase in the prices of the steel and the aluminum. It's true that, that is going to have some kind of impact in our revenues. It's also true that whenever we did the budget and the guidance in the beginning, we were considering some increase. So far in the beginning of the year, the increase is a little bit higher. We need to understand how it's going to evolve in the second half of the year. But probably the net impact in terms of raw material is going to be maybe a little bit more than we expected in the guidance. So that will have some kind of sale or artificial sales. And concerning the pass-through is like always, but maybe Juan, you can explain better.

I think Bosco, your question is very well received. I mean it's something that is in the market and components and raw materials are growing. But I would like to take the opportunity to share with you that we always dealt with this in the past. We had also years in the past that we had to deal with situations like this, and we were always able to finalize the deals with our customers. So I'm totally convinced this time will be the same.

Okay, Juan. And concerning your second question, it's true that from the IPO, we did a very important push in order to be able to open new greenfield facilities. And it's true that right now, we have already a very good footprint everywhere and a very important part of the growth that we are doing is not by opening new greenfield operations, but by extending, in some cases, more than doubling existing factories. But I think the idea clearly is that part of the assets that we have our generic so we can use them. Of course, we are going to see in the next years to come some combustion engine vehicles that basically are going to be carried over. So there is not going to be to do too much investment. Most investments are going to be linked to electrical vehicles. And we do have capacity available. So that could allow us to grow -- to substantially grow without, let's say, too much CapEx intensity. But maybe Fernando can give us a little bit more of idea of how we have this capacity available. What kind of things we can do in order to be able to really keep on growing the way we are.

Thank you, [indiscernible]. Considering our capacity is clear, you explain our footprint is already. We are, at this moment, we have done many green fields, 15 greenfields in the last years. We have 112 plants open. And now our extension will be regenerating our facilities in order to implement new projects. New projects linked with the development of the electrical vehicle and probably premium vehicles and with a focus to optimize our CapEx. Our base is done, but we need and we are going to continue to enhance our operations. I think very important -- Gestamp has an important knowledge, an important know-how, and we have to promote to mobility where there is opportunities in the next years. And with that, link it with research and development products and also the Industry 4.0 rollout, I think we have a good base in order to increase and to have a profitability in the next years.

The next question comes from Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank.

It's a bit of a follow-up question on the capacity and CapEx that was just raised. As you have elaborated, you did a lot of greenfields in the past. So there's capacity to grow in the future. But looking at your free cash flow targets in '21 and '22 and then looking to the targets thereafter, you're going from above EUR 200 million to only positive. So should we expect CapEx to increase in 2023 quite drastically considering that you probably want to build the Chinese footprint also more on EVs? Or is that a misinterpretation of your targets and how they are stated? And is there a specific cash conversion target you would like to achieve in the midterm in case you communicate on that? And the second question will be more on the 2025 ambition. I think the margin expansion towards 2022 with the restructuring program and the efficiency programs is understood. After that, will margin improvements be rather driven by operating leverage, so essentially only on additional volume. Or is it also a specific mix that will enhance the margin, say, be it more out stamping or regional mix? Or could it even be the past that did you finalize it with mixed materials, et cetera and the flexible capacity or production that you are targeting? A bit more color on that would be appreciated.

Thank you, Christoph, for your questions.

Okay. So I think your first question is a little bit coming back to the idea of the CapEx. It is true that we have been, let's say, moderate. If we compare the extraordinary cash flow that we have generated in 2020. But I think it's important to consider. And I think Carmen has explained really well how we could be able to generate in such a difficult year give this kind of special cash flow. But in the future, of course, we are targeting that we are going to generate free cash flow. But these kind of special efforts in other areas, like, for instance, in working capital, maybe are not going to be so supportive. But that does not mean that we are intending to increase our CapEx. In general terms, we are assuming that we should be able to grow the same way we have grown from a very important part of our history with a CapEx around 7% or 7.5% of sales. So this is '19, where we had a lot of opportunities, and I think we were brief enough in order to take this opportunity from the customers and really move forward. So we do have capacity, as mentioned by Fernando, to really grow without investing. And of course, there are going to be investments to do maybe in China and probably the areas that we are going to invest more. But as mentioned, most of the combustion engine vehicles there going to be a lot of them which are going to be carried over. So not too much CapEx is going to be needed. So most of the CapEx is going to be, let's say, focused to the EVs and some kind of specific target. So in terms of cash conversion target, we usually...

Yes, we're -- I think, as you have seen, we have provided a free cash flow target. This is for the first time. 2019 marked an inflection point for Gestamp in terms of delivering that neutrality and positive cash flow. 2020, despite a very challenging environment, and as explained by Mr. Riberas, we were able to achieve a considerable amount. It is true that the focus is going to continue to be on free cash flow generation for this year and next. It is a clear target that we have. And we will work around all the levers and pillars to improve that. On the context of our cash conversion at this point in time, it's not a target that we are providing you, but as a guidance for 2022, we expect to generate more than EUR 200 million.

Okay. And concerning the second questions around our margin to -- from '22 onwards, I think as mentioned before, I think we already are expecting to have a very important jump by 2022. But we are also very optimistic to further enhance. And there are going to be opportunities. Maybe it's true that some of the products that we will do and so technologies a little bit more in terms in capital, we already have deployed this capital, so maybe we can get better EBITDA margins. That is true. But I think it's very important to emphasize again that there is a very, very important room to increase our efficiency and increase our EBITDA margin the levers that I have already mentioned. But I think maybe [indiscernible] could give us a little bit more detail of what we can do, how we could be able to do much more with less.

Okay. Thank you, Paco. Thank you, Christoph, for the question. Yes, for sure, Industry 4.0 is a clear lever to improve our competitiveness by improving our efficiency in our factories. We're introducing different layer of software intelligence that allow us to control better the processes, to allow us to, as you just said, to do the most with less. So for sure, we will contribute significantly to give guidance we present today. But for the future, once the rolling out of Industry 4.0 in all of our plants is ready, we will contribute even more.

Good. The next question comes from Alvaro Lenze from Alantra.

Congratulations on the first Capital Markets Day. I have 3 questions, if I may. The first one would be on your midterm targets. You mentioned that about 90% of your targets in terms of revenues to 2023 are backed by your already existing order book. If I recall correctly, there was some similar guidance back at the time of the IPO, and that did not actually materialize further down the line. So I wanted to know what level of visibility do you have on these revenues? Or how confident are you on that -- this time, these orders are more visible? Maybe I don't know if you have more guarantees than you had back in the day? My second question would be on your capital allocation. With your guidance, leverage would be falling below 2x already in 2022, and that's including the potential buying out of some minorities. And you mentioned in the past that 2x was your target leveraging -- a level of leverage at which you felt comfortable. So assuming that you continue to outgrow the market and expand margins and get a positive free cash flow leverage presumably continue to go down. So I don't know whether you would like to step up CapEx or maybe focus more on M&A or maybe -- and has shareholder remuneration to bring that leverage back up to the 2x mark or whether you would be happy having a lower leverage? And my last question would be maybe long-term trends or midterm trends. The outsourcing has been one main source of growth for the body-in-white industry for other suppliers. Now with the significant decline in auto production that has been significantly below the expectations that were maybe 4 years ago for the production that we would have today there's personally a lot of spare capacity. So I wanted to know whether this has slowed down the trends in outsourcing or whether do you see any changes there? Or whether outsourcing is still a trend that can continue to contribute to growth for your industry and for Gestamp?

Okay. Thank you, Alvaro, for your questions.

Okay. Thanks. Concerning your first question around our sales. It's true that we always try to be a little bit conservative when we are giving it happen in the previous years and even in the first quarter that maybe we could be able to do a little bit better. I think it maybe is a little bit misunderstanding in kind of the guidance that we did in 2017 because at that time, we provided some guidance, which were basically in absolute terms. And now we are always talking about over performance of the market. So I think from my point of view, if we really compare with many things we mentioned at the IPO. I think a part of some problems around our financials that we were not able to perform basically around sales and positioning with the customers, we have really outperformed what we said in 2017. And we feel comfortable about the future positioning is good, our level of CapEx with all set is very comfortable. So we could be able to really grow the way we have set. And clearly, more and more consolidate our position of leaders of the market. So if we go to the capital allocation, it's true that we have stated in some cases, and we have done that, that we intended to have a leverage below 2. I even remember that 1 or 2 years ago, the financial community was maybe stating for even something more than that. There is not a magic figure in our head, but we are going to be below this 2x leverage. It's true that in the future, we are going to be able to generate more. So probably the kind of organic model that we are doing, maybe we can speed up. If there are opportunities, like mentioned in EVs or in China, but there could be also opportunities coming out in the area of M&A. I think, as I have already explained, we have a good track record of doing these kind of things. We are not right now considering to do so. We don't need them, but it is possible that some customers will face problems with other suppliers and we have a track record to support them in this kind of situation. And maybe there could be some kind of consolidation of some competitors in areas, like, for instance, in China or in Japan. So there could be opportunities for us. Of course, I would love always that the problem will be that we have too much cash. But in any case -- and your third question is the -- is the one related to the outsourcing. Spare capacity will eventually run out. I mean we see today a production of vehicles around the world that will catch up clearly and investment CapEx is not something our customers are really deploying in in-sourcing. So that's number one, I think spare capacity will run out. I think also we see our customers and most of them very focused on connectivity. I mean they are changing the business model they have. So they really need to focus on that investment, and we are the right partner to keep taking what they have to outsource. That's #2. But number 3, we also see newcomers that you all have in mind. They have high appetite for growing and they have a lot of liquidity. They don't have an industrial background. So I honestly see ourselves like the perfect partner with the right product, the right technology, the right footprint and the right background. So I really see a clear opportunity of increasing outsourcing trends in the future.

The next question comes from Victoria Greer from Morgan Stanley.

A couple of more questions, please. Firstly, on the 2022, your free cash flow number that you've given us of over EUR 200 million. If I take EBITDA at about 13% margin, that's about EUR 1.2 billion to help CapEx, or about EUR 650 million to help interest. About EUR 180 million and then tax around EUR 70 million, it gets me to about EUR 300 million. Could you walk us through anything that I missed in that bridge and just to start off with? Second question around CapEx and depreciation. Yes, thank you on the point about the 7% CapEx still being the right level as you see it from 2023 onwards. That's quite helpful. Can you talk a bit about how we should be thinking about modeling depreciation is around 1x CapEx in absolute terms about the right way to be doing it? Yes, that -- those 2.

Thank you, Victoria.

Thank you, Victoria. So in terms of free cash flow, as we have guided, it is our intention to generate more than EUR 200 million. As you know, we want to make sure that we deliver on the targets that we are providing to the market. This is obviously a change, as I mentioned earlier, in profile. The math that you were doing is about right. Probably, there is some other concepts that may play obviously into that free cash flow generation that give us obviously the visibility to be above EUR 200 million. Obviously, we have not guided to EUR 300 million. It is also true that we want to be comfortable within reaching those targets, even though some of them are demanding, and we still have uncertainties that remain. And with the current visibility that we have. But I would not go to the EUR 300 million level because as we mentioned, the rationale for our target gives us comfort to be above that EUR 200 million. As it relates to CapEx and D&A, and as Mr. Riberas mentioned, it is our intention to continue to moderate that CapEx intensity to those levels of 7% -- 7.5% maybe more on a longer term. And that also in the context of decrease in those investments should also moderate our D&A contribution in terms of our financials.

The next question comes from José Maria Cánovas from JB Capital. Okay. So maybe while we figure out the connection with José Maria, we'll jump on to Anthony Dick from ODDO.

The first question I had was on the market sizing and growth that you listed in your slides. It appears to me that these are the same numbers that we used in the [indiscernible] 2017 presentation, whereas the LVP numbers are, well, the latest numbers. And so I was wondering if you could maybe confirm that. And if you don't think that you should account for the lower LVP scenario, because looking back at the original [indiscernible] presentation, they had 113 million units, and now LVP is at 96 million units. So that's my first question. And my second question is on free cash flow. I was wondering what kind of working capital you were factoring in for 2021 and for 2022 free cash flow? And also what kind of factoring? And because it seems to me that your working capital is quite low today. So I was wondering if you expected any working capital reversal over the next years, maybe also beyond 2022?

Okay. Perfect, Anthony. So just to make sure your first question is around market size and what [indiscernible] was assuming in terms of LVP figures at the time of the IPO versus now? And then your second question was on working capital, the impact in -- on free cash flow in 2021, 2022 and the usage of factoring, right?

Yes, that's right.

Okay. Thanks for the question. It is true that it is easy to do a good bridge between the figure we provided in the IPO that we -- there were figures provided by [indiscernible] and refer to -- from 2015 to 2020. Of course, in terms of the number of vehicles at that time, the expectation was that the amount of vehicles are was going to be completely different. So I think what we have tried is basically to match what were the assumptions at that time in terms of outsourcing and what could be the relevant market. At that time, for instance, we were not even thinking about the battery box as a specific product. So there are many changes all around. I think probably the most important change from my point of view, that at that time, we're expecting an increase of the outsourcing for the market itself to move to a kind of 50% outsourcing and in-house production. That was the idea because the ratio in terms of outsourcing was close to 41% or 42%. Right now, we are right now targeting in the numbers of [indiscernible], a very important increase of the rate of outsourcing more than we expect at that time. It's true that EV has completely distorted the market because now much more models in the market compared with the total amount of vehicles to be sold because we had, at the end of the day, different combustion and on different EVs, but the number of vehicles are the number of vehicles. So it's not really very easy to do the bridge, different amount of cars in absolute terms, completely different due to the introduction of the EV. And I would say that probably the rate of outsourcing, I think, is the good news is the trend that we were considering at that time is even higher, assuming the data from [indiscernible]. And maybe, Carmen, you can go on the second one.

And as it relates to free cash flow, and as mentioned during the presentation, it is a priority for us. We will achieve that through EBITDA generation, CapEx moderation and an active management of our working capital. It is indeed true that during 2020, we were able to obviously achieve a free cash flow balance that was supported by a strong working capital management. We put in place a number of measures to optimize our inventories and obviously have a strong management around our receivables and payables. As we had anticipated, obviously, it's challenging to maintain this type of working capital levels. And we will indeed make our best efforts for 2021 as it relates obviously, to get to a slight neutrality in this concept. But as we look into 2022, I think, it is in the context of the overall guidance that we have provided. And obviously, depending on how you are modeling, you would see through that there should be an impact as it relates to working capital, and there could be potentially some reversal. All in all, our focus is to generate free cash flow and to achieve that threshold of more than EUR 200 million. To your other question in relation to factoring, as you know, this is a way for us to finance cheaply and that we have used in the past. You should assume that we probably will be maintaining similar levels to what we had seen in 2019 and '20 as referenced.

Next question comes from [indiscernible] from JPMorgan.

A couple of questions for me, please. The first one, coming back to the future trends in the auto industry. And the new business models that we are looking at. We've had companies like Arrival come to the market with innovative manufacturing techniques and production methods. There's a lot of focus on the use of lightweighting, composite materials and reducing the dependence on steel and aluminum and the high tooling costs that OEMs have to go through. We've also had OEMs like Hyundai and Kia invest in these companies. What does this mean for Gestamp going forward, please? That's the first question. The second question is coming to the topic of North American profitability. This has been a topic that we have discussed over the years. Back in 2017, this was again a region that was expected to hit 12% EBITDA margins on an ex IFRS basis. Can you just share some details again in terms of what happened there? And why shouldn't this region deliver superior margins to the group average based generally on the healthy customer mix as well as the product mix and overall personnel costs being very flexible in the region? Those are my 2 questions.

Okay. Thank you, [indiscernible] for your questions.

Okay. Thanks for the questions. And concerning the first one around this new materials. I think it's related to what is going to be in the future, the kind of cars that we are going to see in the road. As of today and unlike it happened in the previous year, steel -- high-strength steel, aluminum has been really the dominant part. But probably in the future, we are going to see an increasing use of this, but this is going to be related to the kind of cars. And maybe Ignacio, you can give us more light on that.

Yes. Thank you, [indiscernible]. So we'll see in the future a different mobility concept that's true. And basically, this different mobility concept for the normal long-distance cars as well as for the most urban vehicle will have different technologies. And we have to take care in the development of our technologies to provide to the OEMs, the right technology in both of the areas. And in this sense, what we see is fiber technology, for example, coming in the urban vehicles, more city cars, taking care about these solutions. We're developing such kind of technologies on a new center that we have developed, dedicated for EV technologies. But on the wide scope of technologies, we see the normal EV cars will have less fibers. But overall, we need to have these technologies developed and we are trying to have on a minimum 3-year plan, the possibility to adapt to these things.

And referring to your second questions around North America, it is true that at that time, when we did the IPO, we had, let's say, a problem which was related to our big push in North America starting in 2015 in order to double our size. It's true that probably at that time, we underestimate the problem and we had also some problems on the team. I think since then, we made a very important short-term actions and also midterm actions. And now we feel comfortable that North American region is going to come back to normal. You mentioned that we -- in '17, we have stated that North American operations should be in the 12% ratio. At that time, we will not consider an IFRS. So this 12% is not 12%, it will be more than that, close to 13%. But today -- and today, the way we see it is that North American operations by '22 are going to be probably at their average in terms of profitability, so probably very close to this 13% EBITDA to sales. But I think, Fernando, maybe you can give us a little bit more light on that.

Thank you, Paco. I think after some years that we have these difficulties, we are in [indiscernible]. We have moved a step for where we are in another level of maturity in this region in this division. It is clear that we have launched many projects in the last years. But now as we have already explained, our footprint is already done. Our projects have been launched. We are giving support and improving and our management, our local management and also giving skills from people, from other regions that are going to the North America is our priority to solve this and to have the same level of profitability that we have in other regions. For that, we need to enhance our operations and also to base -- to have a good basis, having a standardization as a logical and introducing our best practice that we have in other regions, in other divisions. As we already mentioned, with our footprint. With the project launch with product, and that we have a panel that is done with our research and development. And given all the potential that we have behind all the Industrial 4.0 that I think that we are in the level and we will, in the future, in the level of other regions.

Great. So I think we've been able to fix tech issues with José Maria Cánovas from JB Capital.

So 2 questions from my side. First of all, I was wondering if we could touch a bit more on semiconductors. So how is this affecting you even in an indirect way? And are you including any decline in sales in your guidance due to this issue at the OEM level? And my second question would be regarding the margins that you expect for your greenfields. If I'm not wrong, In the past, you were pointing to margins in the range of 15%. I don't know if it is still the case. And my question is, are you including this 15% margin to be reached at the greenfields in your midterm guidance? Or is this something that will come from 2023 onwards?

Thank you, José Maria. I'm going to answer the first question about semiconductors. I think yes, this is the topic of the year, right? But I think we have to differentiate very clearly between 2 messages. The first one is that this is not a demand issue. It is clearly a supply issue. We see the demand, the underlying demand really strong. We see the dealers with no cost, inventory is very low. So I think it's important because the message is that the demand is there, and it will come. That's number one. It is true that we saw even if we -- as we mentioned, we are not directly involved, but we saw in Q1 the market according to IHS, losing 1.4 million cars. And it is also true that Q2, it's clearly becoming a little bit worse. But I think -- and I've been talking to most of our OEMs yesterday, we had a call with one of the big premium. I think we can say that we are touching the bottom. It is clearly Q2 should be the most difficult one. And all our customers are foreseen much more stronger H2. And I think we will see it in Q4, and I have to say, I'm pretty optimistic about ending of the year and starting in 2022. Okay. And referring to the -- to your second question, I think when we had the IPO and when we were talking about greenfields, I think we mentioned that as a general rule in our CapEx decisions is that we always wanted to target this 15% IRR. And I think at that time, we were able basically to explain that we have some technologies, which are quite intensive in terms of capital. So in order to get a 15% IRR, we need to have an EBITDA even higher But there are other kind of plans that to reach this IRR, maybe the EBITDA to sales margin is not so high. So I think in most of the cases, With our greenfields, we are targeting the kind of returns that we were expecting whenever we took that decision at the time. It's true that we suffer in some extent, with some delays from customers volumes and also some problems in some of them because of the accumulation of launches. But whenever we are going to the, let's say, to the normal zone, of volumes, we have been able to really achieve the target. Usually, our greenfield operations, as you know, well, takes a little bit more time until we are able to obtain the returns. But then whenever we are doing, usually, we do better returns that we are -- when we are thinking about brownfield operations on difficult kind of operations or projects. So the target in order to ask for these new projects of a return on investment of 15% is still there.

Okay. Perfect. So I think we have one quick last follow-up question from Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank.

I've been a bit too slow in asking it before. Again, on the flexible production and flexible capacity management that you target to implement in your plants, could we assume going forward that whenever you will set up a greenfield operation using that technology, you would need smaller plants overall just size-wise? Or is that not really the case because you have the same amount of lines just that you can run every product on every line, so to say?

Okay. Thanks. Well, at the end of the day, it will be dependent. Usually, we try to have our plans suitable in terms of size to the kind of needs from the customers. Here, when we think about flexible manufacturing, we are trying to focus in the fixed assets related to assembly, which usually are very much dedicated to 1 single project. If we really are able to implement this flexible manufacturing will mean that we will have a kind of assembly assets that are much more flexible. So if the volumes are moving from 1 product to another could be able to adapt quite quickly, but also they are possible to really follow for the second cycle. So that is going to give us much more opportunities. It's not related, let's say, to the size. I think the most important factor in order to really move ahead in this is just to really finish the model that we are basically doing that in the pilot plant that we have in the north of Spain. But to be able also to convince this -- our customers that this is a kind of a new system. And whenever we have a visibility, we can give them this very important advantages. And I think this is going to be a win-win, and probably we are trying to move what should be one of the standards of our industry in the next years to come.

Perfect. Thank you all for your questions. We hope that the Q&A session has been helpful. Please feel free to reach out to myself or to the IR team if you have any additional questions.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.