Legrand SA (LR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and good morning. I'm very honored to welcome you to this Legrand Capital Market Day that is webcasted live from our premises in Limoges. As you will see, this is really a 360 degrees exercise during which we will go through the Legrand equity story, Legrand strategy as well as how the group is accelerating value creation. The World Executive Committee is there to provide you insights on all those aspects. The event will last 3.5 hours, including 1 hour of Q&A session at the end. For the attendees who are registered, you can already start asking your questions in the chat box that you have on your screen. Otherwise, if you wish to ask your question live, you can do it on the phone at the -- from the beginning of the Q&A session. And one last comment. Of course, this event is organized strictly respecting all applicable sanitary measures. And now I hand over the mic to Benoît Coquart, Chief Executive Officer of Legrand.

Thank you very much, Ronan. Hello, everybody. I'm happy and pleased to be with you today live from Limoges, from our headquarters. We will try to make this Capital Market Day as insightful and energetic as possible, and hopefully, you'll have plenty of questions to ask us at the end of this presentation. So we'll try to show you how we are improving lives of our customers, wherever the space is and we'll, of course, try to demonstrate how we will accelerate value creation. A couple of words looking backward. I believe that this COVID-19 crisis evidenced the strength of the Legrand model. If we look at the main Legrand KPI, financial KPI, they are either equaling or better than the pre-COVID-19 crisis. You have on the screen, for example, total sales, organic sales trend, adjusted EBIT, they're all at the same level or higher than 2019. I have to say that we are not updating our numbers, and those numbers are based on what we said at the end of July when we released our Q2 numbers. Same comment as for the CSR. Despite the crisis, we've been able to deliver above target on 2019, 2020, and that's what we are shooting for in 2021. So I think it's pretty different from what happened during the last financial crisis, and I think it demonstrates the strength of Legrand model. Now it is a bit looking backward. If we look forward now, what will we tell you today. Number one, we will explain to you that we are on the right place to be. We are in an industry which is going to be boosted by a number of very exciting mega trends that you have on the screen. We are in a low-risk industry. We are an industry which will be boosted by secular trends that you know well, demography, electrification and number of others as well as new trends. Well, I don't know if we should qualify them as new trends, but trends that are now on top of the agenda, on top of mind of people, policymakers and industry players, and we are now considered, I think, as a strategic industry. Not only we are low energy intensive, but on top of that we are pretty high today on the agenda of policymakers and our market should be supported and helped by a number of plans. So again, we are in the right industry in the right place to be. Number two, we'll try to show you that we have somehow, sorry to be a bit proud of ourselves, but we have a unique profile with proven strategy, assets and end results. For example, we are the only building pure player. We have a number of players that are bigger than us, but they are a lot more diversified than we are. And we have a number of players focusing on the building sectors, but a lot smaller. We are the only building pure player of a certain size. We have a crystal clear growth strategy, organic, inorganic. We have a strong ESG policy and a strong value creation policy. As you know, we have predictable results, and our profitability and free cash flow are higher than any benchmark you could find. And last, we have an accountable and responsive organization, dedicated teams and strong ability and focus on execution. So we are in the right place to be in the right sector. We have a number of assets which are pretty unique. And last piece, we have a plan which is a good news. We have a clear roadmap to enhance our model and to make the most of the next cycle. We will spend a lot of time today explaining how we intend to boost topline growth with a number of levers that we're going to discuss. We will also show you how we want to foster our assets and processes, and we will, of course, pursue leading ESG journey. We are at the end of our fourth ESG roadmap, and we'll release, beginning of next year, our fifth ESG roadmap. All that will translate into results or achievements or targets that will enhance the value and that will create significant value creation, and we'll have the opportunity with Franck Lemery, our CFO, to give you a bit more color on those targets. We intend to grow our topline between 5% to 10% per year, excluding exchange rate. And of course, we will not internally target the low end of this bracket. We intend to deliver approximately 20% adjusted EBIT on sales throughout the cycle, and we intend to generate -- keep generating significant cash flow, normalized free cash flow to sales ratio between 13% and 15%. So again, we'll elaborate a little bit more on those targets at the end of the presentation, but I believe those targets are very value accretive. This is a team who will make the presentation today. So the Legrand full executive team, some of them being with me in Limoges headquarters, some others being remote from the U.S. or from Dubai. You'll discover them. It's a good mix of experienced people. Some of them have close to 30 years' experience in electrical products and some of them are newcomers and they will provide us with fresh blood and fresh ideas. This is a detailed plan of what we're going to discuss today. We'll start with Franck Lemery giving you a sort of a snapshot of who is Legrand today. So sort of ID card of Legrand. Then Ms. Gloria will try to explain you how we will boost our growth model and add to organic and inorganic growth capabilities. Then we'll give you with the zone leaders practical examples of this strategy with Frédéric for Europe, John for North and Central America and Jean-Luc for the Rest of the World. We'll then focus on back office and HR with Antoine Burel, Deputy CEO and Head of Operations; Karine Alquier-Caro for Purchasing; and Bénédicte Bahier for HR. And then with Franck we will come back to the midterm targets, and we will conclude this presentation and let the floor for the Q&A. Now let's go straight into Part 1, a unique model focused on value creation. And for that, I'm joining Franck Lemery, our CFO. So we will first go through the Legrand business model, then we'll focus on the growth-oriented strategy, talk organization processes and then value creation. Well, it all starts with the products. And amongst all the assets that Legrand have, the strongest asset, the one with the most value, the one which is at the same time the strongest barrier to entry and the strongest leverage we could have is definitely the product offering. We have a very large set of products, more than 300,000 SKUs. And of course, it's a barrier to entry because any competitor that would like to compete against Legrand will have to build this product offering, which took years and years, if not decades for Legrand to build. But it's also a strong leverage that we can use to grow because amongst the 300,000 SKUs, you -- for every single customer, you have one product that can make the difference. And once you have started a dialogue with one customer, where it's a lot easier to start selling and proposing the whole Legrand catalog. So really, we have the largest product offering in the industry, and again, I think, it's the strongest asset that we have at Legrand. We -- I'll not comment on all the slides. For those of you who have 20 or 30 minutes to spare as well as good glasses, I would suggest you to go through those 5 slides which are interesting because those are examples of the products that can be fitted into different type of buildings. So in this page, it's homes. Next page offices, then you have hospitality, then you have nursing homes for the elderly and then you have data centers. So a good example of number of products that we can put in all those spaces. Well, amongst the strength that we have, as I said, we are unique pure player in buildings. We have here the breakdown of our sales: 40% residential, 40% non-residential, 10% data centers, and the building industry will be driven by very exciting megatrends. Again, we'll say a word about that a bit later. Well, in total, we have about 100 product families, not easy to classify. We've tried to classify them into 2 categories. You have what we have called faster expanding segments. Those are product categories or verticals that's going to grow faster than GDP, faster than the rest of our product offering. It's namely data centers, connected products and energy efficiency. They provide us above-market growth as well as access to complementary market and customers, and they represent 31% of our sales in 2020. And then we have the rest of our product offerings, representing 69% of our sales, made of tens and tens and tens of different product families, wiring devices, AV, lighting fixtures, circuit breakers and a number of installation components and so on. Well, the key message on this slide is, yes, we're going to discuss a lot about the 31% of faster expanding segments, but let's not forget what we have called core infrastructure products. They are extremely interesting products. They are growing nicely. They are nicely profitable, provided you enjoy a good market share in the market segments. They provide us with a lot of awareness amongst customers, stickiness with customers, loyalty with customers. So again, let's not oppose core infra and faster expanding. Those are 2 highly complementary set of products, if I may say. And actually, you cannot build the 31% if you don't have the 69%. You cannot be a relevant player in connected wiring devices, connected door entry if you don't have a position in traditional wiring device, traditional door entry. But you'll see, of course, we insist a lot on those 31%. Well, we are in a highly competitive market. We have more than 3,000 competitors, a lot of competitors. We have classified them into 4 different categories. We believe at Legrand that in front of each of those competitors we do have a number of strong competitive advantages. I'll name a few. We are facing a number of specialists, small- to medium-sized companies specialized in 1 or 2 product categories in a couple of countries. Well, of course, those are interesting acquisition targets. But in front of them, we can really leverage our size and especially, when it comes to investing into connectivity, cloud, API, size can make a difference. So being bigger than those guys is, I believe, a strong competitive advantage. Then you have a number of category leaders, world specialists in VDI, electrical cabinet, lighting fixtures and a few others. Big players, big names. We believe that the fact that we are sort of multi-category player, active on many different product families, many different geographies, makes a difference. If on the product category in which they are active, there is a technological change, for example or if there is very negative impact on the economy, well, they cannot rely and rebound using other product families. We can because we are again active on 100 product families and not 1 or 2. Then you have the electrical giants that you know well, coming from the industrial world from the big building, which are, of course, a tough competitor. We believe that one of the competitive advantage we have in front of those guys is the fact that we specialized on small- to medium-sized buildings. So a network of millions and millions of buildings, which represent actually 80% of the number of buildings worldwide, and for those buildings -- the expectations of the customers on those specific buildings are pretty different from the ones of big buildings or industrial facilities. So we benefit from this connection with industry players with industry -- with installed park as well as with this specific positioning. And then last player, high-tech players or start-up that are trying to make inroads into connected product category X or connected category Z, where the competitive advantage we have in front of those guys is that most of the time they specialized on C consumer electronic type of products. We are not C players, and we don't intend to be. We are an infrastructure player. We like when our products are installed into the wall. We like when they are wires, the red and the blue, tubes, walls, circuit breakers somewhere. And being an infrastructure player makes it difficult for those players to enter because you have to have a great expertise of construction techniques. You need to have a large installed park that they don't have. You need to have a number of connections with the industry players that they usually don't have. So you see that we are quite a strange animal, if I may say, in front of all of those competitors. We do have a number of assets to leverage. Well, this slide is extremely important because you are here at the heart of the business -- Legrand business model. You may ask, well, you have many competitors, what is your market share? Well, we are a EUR 6.5 billion or EUR 7 billion company out of market, which we define as being EUR 100 billion. But if you ask other industry players, they could tell you that the market is worth EUR 200 billion, EUR 300 billion and EUR 400 billion. So you may end up saying, well, Legrand has a very small market share. At best, it has a 6% or 7% market share. At worst, it has a 1% or 2% market share. This is not at all the way we look at our market. We don't want to be the one-stop shop selling all products for all buildings everywhere. We want to focus on a number of product categories that makes a difference. I'll take a very simple example, data centers. If you ask a data center specialist, the data center market is maybe worth EUR 250 billion, EUR 300 billion. At Legrand, we are focusing on what we call an addressable market of EUR 10 billion, not EUR 250 billion or EUR 300 billion, but EUR 10 billion. Because we are selecting categories which matter for customers, where we can make a difference and help them solving a problem when it comes to power continuity, reliability, energy savings and other. We are focusing on categories where the technology and products can make a difference. We are focusing on categories where we have a clear path toward being a leader, local or regional leader, and so on and so forth. And we don't pretend to be, again, selling everything to everybody, but we really want to focus on those product categories. So what matters for Legrand is not the total market share that we would have in the total market, but really are we a leader in the category of products in which we play. And as you can see in this slide, we can proudly claim that we have 2/3 of our sales as #1 or #2, where it's different from one region to another, but it's a KPI which we are tracking very, very carefully. Last slide. We are seen for years now as being the best friend of many industry players. So we have a number of benefits we are providing to all industry players, and our world is a complex world. You have distributors, electrical, specialists, DIY, retail, Internet and so on. You have contractors from -- one screwdriver guy to big contracting company and panel builders. You have many specifiers. You have many end users. And of course, we do have to serve all those guys and ladies, and that is what we are doing actively. You have to know that we have, for example, more salespeople than R&D people at Legrand. So we are actively trying to serve and to be the best company to make business with and to have products that are the easiest to distribute, easiest to install and easiest to operate. Now before turning to Franck, I propose you to watch for -- a couple of our customers saying a few words about Legrand. [Presentation]

Hello, everyone. I hope that you are doing well. After the presentation of the Legrand business model, let's focus now about our growth-oriented strategy. Our growth is powered by 2 engines, organic growth and M&A. Innovation is the first and the very first key success factor for innovation. What brings innovation is value-added for the full channel. It's value creation for the end user, of course, thanks to nice designs, thanks to enriched functionality. It's value creation for the installer, reliability of the product, easiness to install. It's also value creation, for example, for our distributors, thanks to our deep offering. Innovation, as you can see on the right part of the slide, applies to the faster expanding segment, but also on our core product offering. It can be quite technological, but also very practical, very pragmatical. So as innovation is an important success factor for our growth, we dedicate quite meaningful resources to innovation with R&D to sales in average close to 5%. Meaningful means, of course, significant. Meaningful means also efficient. And we are optimizing our R&D as Antoine will show you later. The second lever for organic growth is our pricing power, and this pricing is driven by many items. Obviously, the first enabler for pricing is the innovation. There is no commoditization of our product. And thanks to the quality -- the core quality of our product, price is not the main criteria for the decision maker. So the second category, I would say, of lever of our pricing power, it's about our brands, the loyalty of our customers, our leadership position. But on top of all those inherent pricing power, we are organized to leverage to unlock the pricing. Thanks to strong methodology, we have a comprehensive toolbox in order to manage the price. Thanks also to processes, we challenge and update regularly our sales price. And also, thanks to the skills of our organization, we have roughly 50 pricing managers within the organization. So now let's speak with numbers. As you know, sales price has never decreased within Legrand since we are able to track these metrics. Of course, it may have decreased on a dedicated product category in a specific country, but as a whole, for the group, it has always been positive. And in average, since 2010, the growth of the pricing effect is positive 1.5%. The third lever for value creation and organic growth is upgrading the mix of what we call trading up. Trading up, it's increasing the value per unit with the same functionality for the end user. And let's take the example on the right part of the slide once again with a switch. It's possible to turn on or off the light with a simple switch. It's possible to do it with a smart one, thanks to a connected switch. But it's also possible to do it with a wireless and battery-less switch, of course, connected. And then it's very cost effective because it avoids cutting the walls for the cable. And that example, what is interesting to see is that even if the price per unit is 4x the simple switch, it's bringing value for Legrand, for Legrand P&L, of course, but it's also bringing value for the end user and for the installer. Let's now turn to the second driver of our growth, which is M&A. The strategy for the group of M&A is very clear. And by reading the slide from left to right, first, we are operating on a very large, very vast market. Second, we are selecting only the very best company, but only choosing the top 10%. It is still 300 opportunities that we are constantly monitoring. We have regular contact with those companies with those targets, which enables us to close roughly 5 deals per year. All of them, of course, respecting our strategic and financial criteria. And last but not least, our docking process is very industrialized. We have a lot of experience. We are quite a serial docker, and accordingly, we have strong process to totally secure the success of the operations. Second slide about M&A is -- I suggest looking back to the recent M&A track record of the group to share a little bit more about our strategy. From 2010 to 2020, we have acquired 15 companies, invested EUR 5 billion, and it brings to the group EUR 2.4 billion of additional sales. 10% of the acquired sales were in the secular segment, so our core infrastructure products. Here, the purpose, the stake of the acquisitions was about unlocking channel or geographical synergies. 45% of acquired sales were made in adjacent segments. An adjacent segment, it's within -- it is a core infrastructure product, but for product family, which were not part of our portfolio 10 years ago. And here, the purpose, of course, is to expand our accessible market. And the last 45% of acquired sales are in the faster expanding segment, and the stake here was obviously to improve to enhance the growth profile of the group. Now it's interesting to see what are the results of the M&A strategy by looking at few examples. On the slide, we wrap up 3 very different examples. They are different because their rationales were different. It's different geographies, it's different segments, but all of them have provided new leaderships position to Legrand and all of them have met their financial expectations. So those total examples are quite illustrative of the quality of the M&A strategy of Legrand. And one could also have a look at the track record of Legrand, the consistency of our M&A strategy. There have been no material impairment, no material divestment, which means also that our M&A strategy was quite successful. After strategy execution, the group organization is twofold. Front office are local because it is the way the market is organized. Back offices are global because it is the right way to optimize the resources. As far as front offices are concerned, their mission is to design and deploy the best business model to grow profitably on their dedicated territory. They are accountable for what we call a financial performance contract. It's a combination of top line, EBIT margin and cost of capital employed. And accordingly, it includes all the major stakes -- all the major financial stakes of the group, market share, profitability, cash flow generation. As far as the back offices are concerned, for the operation, their mission is to fuel the group portfolio with innovative, competitive, sustainable solutions. And as far as the corporate function are concerned, their mission, of course, is to provide good support to the world group. Of course, the way -- the incentive or design matters a lot to deliver our performance. We have within the group LTI, which is involving a broad base of our managers. Roughly 15% of our managers are benefiting from the LTI. Obviously, the higher in the hierarchy, the higher is the ratio. And second, this KPI has been designed to fit very well with our integrated performance. So to sum up the 2 slides on organization and processes, roles and responsibility are very clear. We have solid management process and a smart LTI in order to beat the drum and to deliver our performance. I will now pause a little bit to share with you a video of Ravi, GM of one of our business unit, which will give you some insight about the item we just shared. [Presentation]

My name is Ravi Ramanathan, and I'm the Vice President and General Manager of the Starline business at Legrand. My primary responsibility as a General Manager for the Starline business is really the profitable growth of the business in the United States and other geographies across the world. Apart from that, I'm also responsible for the successful docking of the Starline business into Legrand and helping maximize the value that the business delivers to Legrand Group. Identifying opportunities for expansion through innovation organically as well as through acquisition. First is, we've had significant growth in the business in the first 2 years after the acquisition and are on track for more this year. Our end markets, especially data centers, where a lot of our revenue is derived, have really benefited in some ways from the pandemic with the acceleration of digital trends across companies, acceleration of the adoption of cloud computing bring increased value from Legrand to further enhance our position across all of the different geographies we play in. We've done this really with the docking process that has allowed us to maintain our customer focus, that has allowed us to really take advantage of synergies, back office and front office and also ensure that our talent base and our brand are well taken care of and cared for. Is very selective in its process when it comes to M&A. As a company, we look for profitable, well-run companies that have leadership positions in spaces that have potential for long-term growth. I also think that we do a good job of considering the cultural fit of the companies that we acquire when making our acquisition decisions and that helps us well in the long term. We really make every effort to preserve the strength of the companies that we acquire and improve their commercial capabilities, brand and other offerings, while also providing the kind of support that's needed with our strong global operational footprint and process footprint.

Okay. After strategy, organization, obviously, now the results. To show the value creation of the group, I will go through sales, EBIT, free cash flow, ESG and of course, the share performance. For sales, EBIT, free cash flow, we compare Legrand with the Benchmark of peers. The period is 2015 to 2020. The methodology is to retain only not-adjusted number, only GAAP or audited metrics. And what the number says in a nutshell is that our growth, our profitability and our free cash flow generation are better than the benchmark. Let's start with the topline. Total sales growth over the period for Legrand was plus 27% when the benchmark is a decline of minus 6%, and organically, we grew plus 3% when the Benchmark is flattish. And as you see in our 2 main regions, accounting for 80% of group total sales, we are overpassing or equaling the Benchmark. Moving to EBIT and free cash flow, the picture also is quite clear. Legrand EBIT and free cash flow are first above the Benchmark, second at quite high level and third, very regular level. So to wrap up the comparison with the Benchmark over the last 5 years, we grew more than the Benchmark. And for each point of growth, we deliver more value creation, thanks to better margins. Looking now to ESG. I know it's quite a busy slide, but the takeaways are very clear. There are 3 messages I would like to share with you: First one is the historical engagement of the group. CSR is really in our DNA since we started engaging this path more than 15 years ago. Second message, second takeaway is that the CSR approach, the ESG approach of the group is quite solid. It's based on well-structured roadmap. It's based on hard commitment. It is based on audited KPIs. And the third takeaway is that our approach is taking care also on the longer term. And just naming a few major stakes for all of us, we have ambitions, long-term ambition for diversity -- gender diversity for sustainable sales and for carbon neutrality. Let's conclude now the chapter on value creation with the shares price evolution. If we look at the shares price since IPO of Legrand, which is really the TSR for Legrand, our share grew close to 400% over the period, which is twice the Benchmark and 15x the CAC 40. On a more recent period, starting end of December 2015, we are above CAC 40 and below the Benchmark. And as a whole, on the 2-period, it's quite nice TSR that we have delivered at 14%, including, of course, dividend reinvested. So that's it for the growth strategy, the supporting organization, the processes and the solid track record as far as the value creation is concerned. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you, Franck. So we are now at the end of this Part 1, which was dedicated, as you could see, to the sort of profile of the company. You have on this slide is what we are used to call the building blocks of Legrand and what makes us different from many other companies. Now I'm proposing to switch to Part 2, which will be dedicated to the numerous things that we are doing to enhance our growth profile. And for that, I'm joining Gloria, our EVP for Strategy and Development. So hello again. A couple of things that we're going to discuss during this Part 2 with Gloria. Number one, we'll go through a number of mega trends that will shape our market and shape the years to come. Number two, we will spend a bit of time talking about what we are doing to enhance the traditional Legrand growth leverage. And number three, we'll spend a lot more time digging into or deeper diving, if I may say, into the 3 faster expanding segments, which are data center, connected products and energy efficiency. Let's start with megatrends.

Thank you, Benoit, and good afternoon and good morning, everyone. So looking into our relevant market environment and underlying drivers of growth, we do really see 3 major, for us, favorable underlying set of trends. So one, secular trends; two, top of the agenda trends; and three, COVID accelerated ones. If we start with one really on this slide, the secular trends, they do show a growing world population with more people living in cities and the growing number rising up to the middle class. So if we just go for a second on the rising middle class, just to comment on one, this is driving demand in household equipment as well as in connectivity and digital services, which all supports our growth path. So if we get into the second and come in to the second slide, top -- what we call top of the agenda trends, we do see the development that buildings of tomorrow not only have to be smart, connected, simple and safe but also really have to be green and support the well-being and health of people living, working and meeting in it. So just to comment on environmental urgency here. As you all know, several governments enforcing climate-friendly actions, setting up laws and boost programs really to reduce CO2 and also driving down energy consumption, we do see in that an important growth field for us in our connected and energy-efficient products also for data center. So coming to the third and going into the next one, what we call COVID accelerated trends, so of course, we all know and we see that digitization has reached really every aspect of our life, be it the way we work, the way we live. So really hybrid workplaces and working from anywhere, becoming the new standard, leading to office layouts being adjusted, which will require an increased connectivity but also our security deployment of digital collaborative tools. So this all will really continue to create opportunities not only for our legacy IoT but also Eliot products and for our data center offers. Benoit will now speak about our growth levers.

Thank you. Thank you, Gloria. So before digging into the faster expanding segments, I'd like to spend a few minutes explaining that we are not inactive on our traditional growth leverage. You know that Legrand has been doing R&D forever. Legrand has been expanding geographically forever. Legrand has been taking care of its customers forever, even though there are a number of things we are doing. Let's take them one by one. R&D. Well, we don't believe that our road map will require Legrand to spend neither less nor more money on R&D. So we can foresee that midterm we should be able to deliver a road map with the ratio of R&D to sales, which would approximately be 5%. Does it mean that we are not active at all in R&D? Of course, not. As you can see on this slide, we have a number of KPIs that we are tracking extremely carefully, namely two: The sustainable offering as a percentage of sales and we have, as a target, Gloria will say a word about that, to move from 70% to 80%; and of course, the firmware and software content of our R&D. And we have today 15% of our teams dedicated to software, and it will be 25% in midterm. Second item, expanding geographical presence. We are achieving 2/3 of our sales as leaders. This 2/3 will not change because it's a sort of rolling target. The more product you launch in a number of additional geographies, the more it tends to dilute these ratios. So maintaining the 2/3 of sales as a target is a good target, but we will increase the number of position themselves. We have today 200 leadership positions, and we'll move this number from 200 to 220, 240, 250, 260. And last item, we will, of course, continue to increase the number of countries where we have Legrand offices because we know that it's a super starting point for the whole Legrand story. To start with the rep office, then a subsidiary, then acquiring a company and then really deploying the full Legrand catalog. Last item, we will continue a number of actions to improve customer experience and intimacy with customers, and digital is going to be a super booster, if I may say. And as you can see on this slide, we have a target to increase our e-commerce sales from 10% to 15% as well as to increase the number of apps used by our end user. So very, very briefly and quickly, one slide for each of the 3 items. So R&D, as I said, in 10 years, we moved from 5% of R&D resources dedicated to firmware and software to 15% -- or more than 15%. And now we are shooting to move this 15% to 25% with 2 kind of priorities. Number one, products. So we want to keep increasing the digital content of our products. This is the Eliot program that I will comment a little bit later. Second priority, what we have called software for building cycle. Let's make it clear, we don't intend to sell software and to become a software player for design and planning or for operating and maintaining. This is not our trade. This is not what we are good at. And we believe that it's going to be a very difficult place to be in a couple of years. So we are really focusing on software and firmware, provided they help us to develop with 2 sort of positioning. For small- and medium-sized building, we are providing our owned developed platform. Very simple example, to operate small office or a house, you can use Home+ Control or Home+ Security, for example, which is an owned developed platform that you are not -- that we are not selling but that will help us to sell a number of products. As far as medium and large building are concerned, the strategy is slightly different. We want to be easily interoperable with all protocols and all platforms. So we are protocol and platform agnostic whatever the building. So those 2 sort of priorities, product and building cycle, will progressively lead us to increase the software and firmware capabilities of our R&D team. Second example, geographies. Well, very traditional Legrand example. We can improve our geographic presence by opening new offices, and this is what you have on the right hand of the slide. We have doubled the number of offices in Africa in 10 years, and we intend again to double them and to move from 11 to 20. Or we can do that by acquiring good leaders locally. Best example I could find is the acquisition of Ensto. Ensto, which is a Finnish company, has a very traditional product offering. It has boxes, conduits, wire mesh, wiring devices or a bit of EV charging station. And clearly, it's a very interesting play because it will triple our size in Scandinavia. So it will make us a relevant player in Scandinavia, and it would help us to deploy the rest of our product offering. And last, traditional leverage in which we are playing, improving the customer experience and the relationship with customer. As you can see here, we moved from less than 2% of our sales made in e-commerce to 10% today, and we intend to move that to 15% midterm. Well, let's not misunderstand what it means. Most of our e-commerce sales are made through our traditional partners. 75% of our e-commerce sales are sales to operational partners, which in turn are sold online, and we are supporting them a lot to increase their online sales. So we are providing them with digital assets, configurators, rich content, dedicated marketing and a number of other topics. And we want this piece of the sales to go fast. Second type of customers, 19% -- 16%, sorry, of our online sales, online pure players, an interesting category, growing fast, focusing on a limited part of our product offering, mostly connected products and flow products, but again, an interesting category too. And then 9% of our online sales are made directly from Legrand to end user, notably on connected products and on the high-end finishes. This is not a piece we intend to develop. We don't believe that it will be a huge business going forward. It's more for us a marketing tool. We are getting a lot of customer insights with our direct sales to customers, but it will not develop fast. So as you can see, R&D, geographical expansion, customer intimacy, even though those leverage are traditional ground leverage, we are working a lot on them and we are trying to improve them again so that they can contribute to boosting our growth. Now let's come to -- we've discussed the fact that we will support it by -- we'll be supported by mega trends. We also said that we will work on the traditional growth leverage. Now let's focus on what we have called the faster expanding segments, which represent 31% of our sales just sort of metallurgical comment. You can see on this slide that when you sum up data center, connectivity, energy efficiency, it is more than 31% and that we have a line overlap. Well, the answer is obvious. There are a number of products that fit into 2 or 3 of those categories. Best example be PDU, Power Distribution Unit, which are the sort of smart strips to which you connect servers. Well, those are connected products used in data center to save energy. So they fit into the 3 categories. So this is the basic reason why we have this overlap line. So 31%, and we intend to move the 31% to 50% midterm. Well, you may wonder why we haven't put a precise date. The answer is that many things can happen. It depends on our ability to find the right acquisitions. It depends on the cycles and many, many things. We have our plan internally. This is clearly directional, but this is our strategic intent. We think that midterm, having half of our sales in faster expanding segments and half of our sales in current faster expanding product is the right balance for Legrand to have the best of both world, grows stickiness with customer profitability and so on and so forth. So a couple of case studies for the 3 categories, data center, Eliot and energy efficiency. I'll not comment any of those before deeper diving into the first one. I propose you to look at a small video. [Presentation]

Let's start with data centers. Well, it has been a fantastic story for Legrand. In 3 years' time, we moved the share of data centers in our sales from 6% in 2017 to 12% in 2020 with a mix of highly targeted acquisitions and organic growth. So it's a very nice story, very nice positioning. We have a very specific value proposal for data centers. Number one, we'll see that we are adapted to all types of data centers. We're not solely focusing on colo or hyperscale or container. Number two, we are really focusing on selling the best technology on a limited set of product families. Number three, we have a high level of local customization and service, notably on our rack and cabinet product offering. And last, we are data center information management agnostic. Of course, if customers want us to provide DCIM, we can. But our promise is to say, choose the best DCIM, the one you love, and we'll be able to connect our product offering. So a very specific positioning. When it comes to our sales, as you can see on this slide, close to 2/3 of our data center sales are made in North and Central America, which represent probably 40% of the market. So we are overexposed to North and Central America because that's where we made a number of acquisitions. As far as the white space versus grey space is concerned, 93% of our sales are made in white space, despite white space represents only 55% of our accessible market. So we are overexposed to white space, and again, it comes from our history. This being said, we have a large set of products, fitting not only into the white space, as you can see here, Busway, PDUs, containment and so on, but also a large set of products that can be fitted into grey space, especially transformers, switch gear, UPS and a few others. So in total, 100 -- more than 100,000 SKUs that can be sold into data centers, including 45,000 that can go to the grey space. So we clearly have as an objective not only to continue to sell and to make inroads into a white space or also to become a relevant player in the grey space. Same comment as for the type of data centers. You have here sort of schematic of the data center market with the size of the market trends, decision makers and decision driver. We have value proposal for each of those data centers. Again, we are not solely selling to hyperscale or to on-premise. We can sell to all those type of data centers. We have fantastic room to grow. As you can see on this slide, our market share is less than 5% -- market share or accessible market, again, less than 5% in Europe, in the rest of the world. And even in the U.S. which again is 2/3 of our data center sales, it's slightly more than 10%. So we have plenty of opportunities to grow our market share in those 3 geographies. And again, when you look at the grey space/white space split, you can see that in all of those 3 zones, we are very much white space focused despite we have, for most of the countries, the relevant offer to become a meaningful player in grey space. So growth priorities, in a nutshell, we will continue to do significant technology investment. We want to provide our customers with the best products for the categories in which we play. You have, on this slide, a couple of examples of products we have launched or we are launching, the Nexpand cabinet, range of UPS and the latest addition to the catalog is acclAIM fiber solution that was launched a couple of weeks back. And we will continue to invest significantly in technology for the benefit of our customers. Number two, we will continue to deploy our platform. What does platform means? Front office and back office platform. Front office platform, we are building up what we call LDCS, Legrand Data Center Solution, teams throughout the world so that we can have a dedicated team leveraging, of course, local people, local assets, local ability to invoice, local brand, entries into specifiers and so on to sell data center solutions. And we now have LDCS teams in about 40 countries, and we have already great success, especially in Europe. And you have on this slide, a couple of good work that our teams did to secure meaningful and significant projects, both in grey and in white space. But platforming also means platforming back office, and we have built our position by doing a number of acquisitions. I think the number of acquisitions we made in data centers probably 12 in the past 10 years, and now it's time to combine those acquisitions together. So take, for example, racks and cabinets. From a collection of catalogs, we have built one catalog, taking the best of each of the brands that we can propose to our customers worldwide. So platform is a key objective. And third objective and third priority, if I may say, finding additional acquisition opportunities. Last acquisition we did in data center was announced a couple of months back. It's a Champion One in the U.S., doing optic transceivers, being on the white space and border to the IT space. We have in our pipeline a large number of data center potential acquisitions. So I'm sure that in the years to come you'll see additions joining the group and reinforcing our plan in data centers. Well, this was for data center. Let's now move to the second faster expanding segment, which is Eliot, connected products. Well, the objective is clear. It's to -- Eliot is a program to connect our existing product offering to enhance customer experience. So today, we have more than 40 product families out of the 100 that we have that are connected and Eliot represented last year 13% of our sales. Again, a very specific, precise, clear, well understood from our customers' value proposal. Our products have to be simple to install, simple to use. We are selling products, we are not proposing recurring service fees. And it's a strong competitive advantage, especially when it comes to selling door entry system, for example, or video phones. We are building cyber security by design, which will increasingly matter for our customers, and we are proposing a full set of products. You can take connected products as an individual solution, if you wish, but you can easily fit it into an interoperable system if you want to have a complete building management solution. It's a very precise value proposition. If we look at the breakdown of sales for Eliot, it's well balanced between data center, commercial and residential, almost 1/3 each. It's geared quite a lot towards energy efficiency. 57% of our Eliot sales are products that are meant to help saving energy, which makes a lot of sense because connectivity has a strong benefit to help to monitor, to report, to compute and to activate. And last, by geography, it's pretty well spread between North and Central America, Europe and the Rest of the World. You have on this slide a couple of examples of products. I'll not comment much because we'll see more. So this slide is important. It's what are we trying to achieve with Eliot and with the connected products. Well, this slide shows a sort of symbolic representation of the market. The blue part, the lower-end part are traditional, nonconnected standalone products, switch, circuit breaker, thermostat and so on. The upper end of the pyramid are complex, expensive, building management system, which today are installed mostly in big factories or big buildings or very big data centers, but not in most of the countries. And we are trying with connected products to, number one, democratize connected building by providing BMS-like solutions to a larger number of buildings, smaller buildings using connected products with hardware that are modular and light, software that are easy to install, easy to configure, easy to use. And we are trying also to democratize connected building by convincing people to switch from non-connected to connected. So we are sort of hitting on the base of the pyramid and hitting on the upper end of the pyramid. And when we look at the numbers, the base of the pyramid and the upper end of the pyramid are growing about like GDP. And clearly, the middle part of the connected functions is growing a lot faster than GDP. So that's a sort of strategic intent to democratize connected buildings. Well, the penetration rate, i.e., the percentage of the Legrand sales we are doing in a category on connected versus non-connected depends very much on the category. We have high penetration in niches. So 100% of the thermostat we are selling are connected. It's a very interesting case actually because we are not in the thermostat category when thermostat were non-connected and once they started to be connected, well, they naturally fell into our portfolio of products. And now we are a significant player in Europe at least in connected thermostat. So we have a significant piece of our sales which are connected in thermostat, assisted living, PDU, video door entry, which is another good example. When we started Eliot program 4 years ago, 0% of our sales of videos doors were connected. Today, it's almost 1/3. So you can see how fast the market is moving. And then we have what we have called mass opportunities, which are product families, which are not yet connected a lot. Two examples being wiring devices and protection panels. Only 2% of our sales are made with products that are connected. And we see that as a nice opportunity because we are mass sellers of those products. We have very significant market share of those products throughout the world. And if we can convince our customers to move from 2% to 10% or from 2% to 20%, the leverage we have on our sales is very significant. And EV charging is also a massive opportunity, not because they're not connected, 59% of our sales are already connected, but of course, because the market should grow extremely fast in the years to come. We have a program -- we have already a large product offering. As you can see on this slide, we do have already a product to connect shutter, to meter energy, to switch on and off the light and so on. And we do have plans to broaden this portfolio despite, I believe, we already have today the largest product portfolio of connected products for residential and small commercial in the industry. Well, the difference between planned and possible. Actually, this is a snapshot of an internal slide. Planned are products for which we have a roadmap, possible are products that we are still thinking about and where we have not yet formally taken the decision to switch. And you see the platform to operate and maintain those products are our own platforms, Home+ Security for security-related products, cameras, for example; and Home+ Control for energy savings and comfort-related products. Same for data center and large commercial. We already have a large range of connected products, some of them with a low penetration rate, but at least we have the products when it comes to UPS, emergency lighting, smart shuttering. And as for residential and small commercial, we have a plan, and we have notified a number of product categories which we like to enter into. As far as operation and maintenance is concerned, you can see that the positioning is different. We don't pretend to offer the one software protocol that will come on everything. Also more as you have to manage your legacy products, but we can propose products adapted to any protocol. You have a couple of examples here, KNX, LoRa, Zigbee, BACnet and a few others as well as compatible with a number of market operating platforms. So what do we want to do as far as Eliot is concerned, 3 priorities. Number one, pursuing geographical expansion. It is a fact that we are not selling all connected products in all countries. So we have a program to roll out our products into a growing number of countries. We have put on this slide the example of user interfaces. When we started the program in 2018, we were selling in 18 -- sorry, in 5 countries. Last year, it was 44 countries, and 2023, we are shooting for more than 100 countries. So progressively rolling out all our programs. Number two, we are launching additional product categories. Well, most of them being confidential. Sorry, I cannot be too specific. But here, you have a couple of examples of categories we have either launched or announced. For example, door lock, which would be a completely new category for Legrand. It should come into 2022, connected door lock. And last, we are working hard to enhance customer experience and Frédéric Xerri, when he will comment on the European case, he will say a word about that by working a lot on app refresh, optimization and progressive integration of a product offering into ecosystems. So we have discussed data centers, we have discussed connected products, and now I'm turning to Gloria to discuss Green.

Thank you, Benoît. So coming now to energy efficiency. We actively support our planet -- support saving our planet and stop global warming, and of course, the need of our customers to reduce energy consumption and CO2. We are very proud that we have been able to save already 10 million tons of CO2 over the past 7 years for our customers. That counts up to 19% of our group sales in 2020, which contribute to that, and we will continue, of course, to push this even further. I also want to highlight the specifics of Legrand here. So our products are really designed for all buildings, be it small, midsized, big ones, renovation cases or new builds and really connect to most of the leading platforms. We do leverage our network of distributors, specifiers and installers and bring measurable payback of up to 35%. So going into the next and coming to key figures. Looking at our portfolio in energy efficiency products, you see we do have really a well-balanced split between commercial, residential and data center and also balanced by geographies. So if we take a moment on those 3 verticals now one by one and going into the first, starting with data centers, we do see that our products can impact the energy consumption of a data center positively on several ends, really leading to significant savings, as you see. Our offers range broadly from measuring and metering solutions, helping monitor and track better to products helping decrease the use of energy, thanks to their design, for example. Further, our offer helps to optimize IT equipment by better leveraging our server capacities, for example. Coming to the second, commercial buildings. Also here, our offer is broad and also well set up to contribute significantly to energy saving needs of our customers. We offer products also here to measure and optimize the use of energy like with our NEMO Green measuring solutions and products to actively reduce the energy use, like with our lighting control and presence sensors. On top, we also have tailored solutions that actively save energy in hotels, just to highlight one. Savings can range up to 35%. So this shows our positive impact on saving energy is quite remarkable. Coming to the last, residential and small commercial. Same approach as for the others. We measure and optimize. We meter and monitor, and we reduce the energy use. Just for example, from measuring your consumption, one can save up to 10%. So leveraging our Eliot program connected offers and many applications are supporting the effective energy management. So with those examples, you see that we really have a large product portfolio in all verticals to drive significant energy savings and reduce or avoid CO2 emissions for our customers. So if we go to the next. So if you really think about fighting climate change, the electrification of transportation is really key to really to tackle this actively and to avoid emissions. So we took the decision to expand further into EV charging, not only to better participate in this high-growth area but also to further support actions around saving CO2 and towards reducing global warming. So really with our latest 2 acquisitions, as you can see here, Ensto and Ecotap this year and with the business we already had, we are really completing our product portfolio and also broadening our offering from a technical and also geographical perspective to drive to one of the most complete ranges, both AC and DC. So all in, EV charging solutions now make already up to 1% of our group sales. So summarizing it, our growth priorities to support our customers around their need to save energy and reduce CO2 emissions are as follows: one, we leverage actions around the stimulus plans and regulations for buildings to become more energy-efficient and less CO2 consuming; two, redeploy further our product launch programs to support those, roll them out and grow them, where really possible, as you can see; and of course, as already mentioned several times, we continue to explore M&A opportunities, which support this strategy. As you can see from our recently done acquisitions, and we can tell you we have a very long target list and a very busy M&A team, and we will continue to make deals or to invest in partnerships wherever possible and where it makes strategically sense. We will now show you a video from our dear customer, Kim Gunnelius, who is the co-founder of Ficolo, a Finnish company, which got rated top climate-friendly data center by Greenpeace. Enjoy. [Presentation]

So what we presented to you was about green by usage, our Scope 4 products, which make 19% of our group sales and help customers saving energy. On top, we have a large offering, which is green by design and process. Here, we talk about reducing our carbon footprint, SBTi aligned targets throughout the whole company, eco design and packaging of our products in line with circular economy and other initiatives to tackle this topic really 360 degrees. Both our energy efficiency programs and green by design and process products make 70% of our turnover. So this not being enough, of course, we have higher ambition. Our ambition is to reach 80% of sustainable sales by 2030. With that, thanks a lot for listening. Hope you enjoyed. I'm giving back to Benoît.

Thank you. Thank you, Gloria. So we have explained how the market should be boosted by a number of exciting mega trends. What we were doing to enhance our traditional gross leverage. We have scratched a bit more into the 3 faster expanding segments, which are data center, connected products and energy efficiency. Well, we have 2 more leverage to -- that should enhance our profile. Number one, we should somehow benefit from a number of trends that will appear post-COVID, and we have named the 2. Number one, assisted living. Homes have been a shelter for all people during the pandemic, and everybody has realized how good it was to be able to stay at home even at the time where you were losing progressively autonomy. Well, we are the second European biggest player in assisted living solutions and a strong believer that this trend should support our business. Second example, work from everywhere. No doubt that it will help and support our residential sales. When you want to remote work, you have to be equipped with network capabilities and a number of other products. And well, we have estimated in the U.S. between a simple code-driven installation for homes and the more elaborated homes fully equipped to remotely work, you can sell potentially 4 or 5x more -- you can do 4 or 5x more sales. But it is less entity, but this is also the case for offices. Yes, we might need less square feet because of remote working and all that. And according to specialists, at worst, if I may say, the number of square feet that could be potentially canceled, it's 10%, 12% or 15% at worse of the surfaces. But most of the specialists seeing that the value per square foot will increase very significantly. And we have done the math, and again, between a simple basic meeting room installation and a more elaborated meeting room which is -- which will help to accommodate many people with sanitary measures, good connection, good video, good ability to plug-in a number of devices and a few others, the value could be multiplied by 10 per square foot. So again, those 2 trends should be somehow boosted, if I may say, sorry for the word, by the post-COVID word. And last, I told you that we were on EUR 100 billion market even though many players could define it in a different way. Well, we think that this market will grow. The sort of core infrastructure products should grow close to GDP or above GDP and faster expanding segments should grow faster than GDP. And midterm, this EUR 100 billion will become EUR 130 billion. Interestingly, we have identified already additional EUR 30 billion of additional categories that we could potentially add to our portfolio. So new categories are categories of products in which we are not playing today, which we see as highly synergetic from what we have today that can be either in co-infrastructure or in fast expanding and that would usefully complement our catalog. So this is very interesting because EUR 30 billion should come from the market growth, EUR 30 billion should come from additional product categories. This has always been at the heart of Legrand strategy to progressively add categories of products. Well, that's what we wanted to tell you today about the many actions we are doing to enhance our growth profile. Now we will see practically speaking, how we are handling that and for that, we will be with Frédéric Xerri, Head of Europe; John Selldorff, Head of North and Central America; and Jean-Luc Cartet, Head of the Rest of the World. And I'm moving to join Frédéric.

Thank you very much, Benoît. Hello, everybody. I'm very pleased to share with you a very nice success story we have in Europe concerning the connected solution. But before that, I propose you to look at the key figures for Europe. So last year, we enjoyed a EUR 2.4 billion sales, representing 39% of the group sales. And as a reminder, on average, we were generating the last 3 years, 21% EBIT margin. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see the split by geography. But let's come back to the success story. Everything started a few years back when we launched the first door entry system connected in Europe, and it has been very successful in many different geographies like France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and we have gained high market share. Based on that success, we have decided to build a complete unique system of connected solution which allows the end user to manage completely its installation. You have seen just a few minutes before a very nice video showing you the features of those systems, and we are able -- and the end user is able to control by touch, by voice or by smartphone. It's a complete installation. Today, we are enjoying 1.5 million users in Europe. 3.2 million devices are activated. And we are leading the smart home revolution, and you see that it's representing already 5% of the European sales in 2020. Below, you see the year-on-year growth, and you can see yourself that it's a very dynamic trend that we keep on in 2021. Obviously, what makes us strong is our capability to be -- to have a kind of dual approach. We are strong in B2C and you see that we are in channel like shops, like Fnac, Leroy Merlin, Amazon and some Apple Stores with our brands Netatmo, Legrand BTicino. But what is key for us is that we are very strong in the B2B part. And the fact that we are strong in B2C also, our brands are visible. The end users are very happy to request those kind of products, and it makes life much easier for the installer. So this kind of dual approach is really an asset for us and allowing us to grow fast. On the next slide, I will go quick on this one, obviously, because this is photos of very traditional product. But in fact, this is the new connected offer that Legrand is launching. You see that from 2018 to 2021, there is a lot of new products that have been enriching this system. Benoît has been mentioning the door lock that we will launch in 2022, a fantastic product, and the new EV charging solution that we will be having also in the offer. So I have to say that we are very lucky at Legrand because we have the capability to propose to our customers a full set of connected product, and this is really unique. When you look at our capability to duplicate the model, well, it started with door entry system, but we took the example of switch and socket, very traditional product. The first range connected have been launched in 2018, as I said, in 3 countries. Now in Europe, we are present in 39 countries and next year, in 43. But what is very interesting is also what we describe below is the capability of Legrand to be everywhere, answering to all standards. And you see that from 6 ranges in 2018, we are now at 13 ranges in 2021. And next year, we will be at 18 ranges of wiring device, embedding this new technology and this capability is very unique also to Legrand. When we speak about technology, it's obviously very important to be able to explain the technology to make it known widely, and this is what we illustrate on this slide. You see that we have been training 30,000 installers until end of 2020. At the same time, we have done mass communication campaign, digital campaign. And we have been reaching a lot of customers in the chain, 52 million impressions on YouTube and Facebook last year. And obviously, this is something we are doing every year to make sure that our systems are known by the maximum of our customers. The best reward is obviously the feedback we get from customers. You see the rating of our 2 apps Home + Control and Home + Security, and you see also the comments, the customers are doing online. This is very important for us to follow that and to make sure that we are always at the top because it's a direct link we have with the customer. And this is -- I mean, my conclusion, and this is very important to understand that we are entering in a new world where Legrand is able to have a daily conversation with the end customer, which is very new through the app. And for smart home, it's very important. We have all their feedback, obviously, but we can speak to them very easily. The first thing we do is that when they connect we create the relation, and this is important. Then after step-by-step, we create loyalty. And at the end, because we are proposing through marketing automation new product, new function, new capabilities, we are able to repeat sales. So this is the end of the presentation, but this is very important because this is the warranty of our success in the future. So thank you very much, and I give the mic to John now. Thank you.

Thank you, Frédéric. Let me start with just a quick summary of what the North American key figures are. As were stated earlier by Benoît and Franck, we now represent a little more than 40% of the worldwide turnover of the group. And I would say, we are a full complementary player in terms of profitability and growth with all the segments that were mentioned. What I'm going to focus on today principally is our growth in energy efficiency. Next slide, please. So it starts with the historical growth -- I'm not seeing the slide. Advance, please. The historical growth in what we characterize as energy code or building code marketplaces Starting with basic wiring devices used to shut off lighting when no one is in the room has evolved over time to now buildings more complex buildings with systems, and that's been a big driver of growth for us. That is shifting with the focus on new mechanisms that look at the building holistically, think about the total carbon footprint and environmental impact of those buildings so that it's about optimization of the buildings, not just, if you will, the construction compliance with codes. So highlighting that for us, next slide, please. A few years ago, we introduced a remote monitoring and management service for our lighting management system so that our customers could connect to us and understand how their buildings were actually performing versus how they were designed to perform. And the advantage here is that we can essentially be an extension of our customers as they actually live and operate in the building. And this has been extremely attractive because many customers have had to reduce their facility staff and yet this is an important dimension for them to manage and operate. So we have grown significantly in the number of buildings we are connected, the number of devices that are connected, and the result is typically we can deliver between 10% and 30% more energy savings than were originally anticipated by understanding how the building was actually operating. So on the next slide, I just want to show you an example of that. In this case, we're talking about a commercial office building in the middle part of the country. It happens to be an engineering firm. But what you see here pictured on the left is the dashboard of real-time data that we are capturing with them that shows how they're actually operating the building versus what it was designed. And in this particular example, by optimizing and making adjustments to the way that the building is actually functioning from a lighting perspective, based on real-world history, we've helped them reduce their energy utilization through lighting by almost 33%. So a nice opportunity and a high-growth direction for us. If I expand that beyond the traditional commercial building, next slide, please, this picks up on some of the trends that we're talking about by Frédéric and others, and that is the connected devices can be used in this way as well. And what's nice is it's not only driven by, let's say, energy codes but it's driven by other interest on the part of the end user, such as it may be related to security or comfort of the occupant or sustainability on other dimensions. And what they use is our base products with communication capability to be part of a network, including other devices, typically using open system protocols, and they end up with an ability to manage that infrastructure differently than they originally designed. So we currently have 22% growth rate over the last 4 years of smart devices that enable that function. Again, taking you to an example of that, is an example with a hospitality company. And historically, turn to the next slide, hospitality companies have been a little hesitant to impose changes in how the infrastructure is operated, let's say, for the guest room because they don't want to have a bad experience. Now by putting smart devices in the room, as pictured on the right, they can not only manage the actual activity in the room turning, if you will, creating an experience when the guest arrives and keeping it not overcooling or lighting it when there's no need but they also get better connection with their client, which translates into better loyalty. So this particular example is from a very large nationwide, actually international hotel chain. And we have been able to work with them and depending on how they optimize their actual installations they get between 10% and 30% energy savings from that installation. Moving forward, the third area to give you an example of how energy efficiency is affecting our business is in the data center space. And it's important to note that data centers today probably represent about 1% of total energy consumption, but it's expected based on the growth and demand for computing capacity that that will approach 3% in the not-too-distant future. So energy is a huge cost, probably the number one cost the data center operators have to be concerned with. Having said that, they're very, very concerned about reliability and performance. And as a result, hesitant to design anything that puts them on the edge of performance for their equipment. And the issue is heat, managing the cooling demand in the building. What you see here pictured is the fact that while the demand is measured in IP traffic, the surrogate has been growing significantly, the demand for energy utilization has not been. And how has that occurred --next slide, please? It's because they buy products like the ones we provide with smart PDUs, with metering capability or now with the additional Starline smart plugs that provide power from the bus way so that they can actually measure the actual usage in the -- at the -- sometimes at the server level and certainly at the cap level. And you can see the growth rates that we've been able to achieve with our product. So moving to an example of how this has been deployed. In this case, the example is one of the top 3 U.S. banks that is a customer. In this particular case, we were able to profile for them the -- their installation. And obviously, the first benefit is energy usage. When you build a data center you build the building and the grey space but then you populate it over time in phases. And so the advantage of having the actual energy information that we provide is that they can adapt to the amount of cooling that they require and the equipment that's required in the subsequent phases. So number one, they get the energy savings of not cooling the building more than it needs to be. And actually, there's a second benefit, which is a significant reduction in capital expenditures because they don't have to buy the equipment to provide that cooling that was originally intended. So really a good example of how this particular customer was able to save over 30% on their overall cooling and consumption and therefore, energy spend. So that's just a little bit of an example of how we've been selling and deploying energy efficiency solutions in North America, and I'd like to turn it over to Jean-Luc to finish his own report.

Thank you, John, and good morning and good afternoon to all of you. First, maybe to start, my name is Jean-Luc Cartet, and I am in charge of what we call internally the APMEASA region, standing for Asia-Pac, Middle East Africa and South America. The perimeter is mainly better known by all of you as the Rest of the World region, representing in 2020 around 20% of the group revenue, with the split detailed in the slide in front of you. So I'm very happy to be with you today and to be part of this digital meeting to give you another view of the way the group is approaching the business of data center. So to move to the next slide, I will reuse a slide presented by Benoit earlier and even rephrase a bit what has been said. But I guess it's important to start with this introduction. So talking about business models in the data center space, I guess it is important, in my opinion, to underline that there is not one single approach for this vertical but as many different roads to market as types of data centers. starting from the smaller on-premise, on the right, that is roughly a private server home to the huge up -- hyperscale, sorry, on the left of the slide. Often at Legrand, we split the market in 7 different types, all having a different business approach, different decision-making processes and even different product offerings. For APMEASA, our estimation is that the segment of hyperscalers, cloud services and colocation providers will present roughly 60% of the total business. And this part, that is dominated by big players like the Gafam or the likes in China is growing faster than the on-premise segment, mainly because many companies are moving from owned facilities to colocation. As mentioned before, the business model is different for each category. But to make it more simple, maybe we can split it into 2 main trends, Colocation and hyperscale on the left, for which hosting and protecting data is, let's say, the core activity of those companies, are basically looking for the best solution for each product category before [indiscernible] therefore, dealing, let's say, with brands and product specialists. And on the other side, what we call on-premise data center. Basically, we are talking about private-owned data center, for example, the banking sector of governmental applications like defense. For those segments, the concept of turnkey solution could be an alternative to the product specialist approach but not the only trend, only for that part of the slide. So at Legrand, we are well-positioned today to answer to all needs, whatever the segment and business models, thanks to a lot of different assets. So among them, we have, of course, the best-in-class products coming from specialized brands like Raritan or Server Tech for PDUs, Starline for busways, mainly for U.S. customers like the bigger Gafam. We have Clever -- product coming from Clever for PDUs and busways, the Chinese big players, SJ Manufacturing and Minkels for racks and containments among other products. Joining altogether, we have today a comprehensive product offering for the white space that has been commented by Benoit. We enjoy, at the same time, good market penetration for some key market in the grey space, like India, Chile, Colombia, among others in my perimeter, but, of course, other countries in Europe as well. We built dedicated teams of specialized, let's say, highly skilled people for each product category and do specially join the group at the time of the different acquisition. Those product specialists are supported by a global Legrand data center solution teams localized in each key market to answer the need of the project coordination as well as key account management. And from the operation point of view, when short time is required we enjoy [indiscernible] local facilities able to propose tailor-made solution, for example, for racks, containment or even panel boards. So moving to the next slide -- I'm sorry, the one you have in front of you to explain a bit this successful approach. This is a smart mix of specialized and corporate brand strategy, specialists in global business approach, global and local manufacturing, and it has been deployed over the years, and we have today a dedicated organization for all types of data center in 16 of the major offices of APMEASA. And as you see in the slide, the strategy is, of course, to speed up the deployment in the coming years. Now moving to the next slide, I want to illustrate a bit this strategy with 2 examples, starting with Singapore, where all recent acquisitions have given us, let's say, a powerful footprint. So we have there the full [indiscernible] PDUs for all big players, whatever duration of the specification, Clever for Alibaba to be clear, Raritan Server Tech for the LatAm, [indiscernible] busways manufactured locally in Singapore for all customers in the data center space. Comprehensive offer of racks, cages and containments, thanks to the acquisition of SJ almost 10 years back, with an ability to answer all specific needs of the market in terms of, let's say, very short lead time. We have several global brands of racks for global key accounts like Minkels for the players like [indiscernible] the colocation company. All the product expert joined forces to become a solid team of data center specialists for the whole Southeast Asia region, and all those assets have driven us to the great growth you see in front of view of 135% in 2020 in the data center space. The secondary [indiscernible] moving to the next slide is the one of South Africa. So you know that the African continent is foreseen today as the next growth driver for data center in the medium term. And the infrastructure will have to serve all the needs of a very fast-growing population, highly connected. So we are talking about around 2.5 billion people by 2050. So today 3 countries are likely to play a major role in the development of the data center in the coming years in Africa: Egypt, Morocco and South Africa. South Africa is one of the last country where we already deployed our business approach, a very similar situation like Singapore, and the result is quite outstanding with, what you see, more than 300% growth in 2020. And now moving to the last slide of my presentation. It's a kind of illustration of the -- next slide, please, of several examples of the data center project in all continents. So you will see that we are present in all types of data center everywhere in the world. It is also important to note that the value of the project starts at EUR 150,000 on the bottom left, up to EUR 10 million for some projects. But of course, this size of project of EUR 10 million is quite, let's say, exceptional or unusual. And that's it for the conclusion. So now a short transition before giving the mic back to Benoit for the rest of the event. And thank you very much. Thanks.

So thank you to Frederic, John and Jean-Luc. We are now heading to the last part of our journey with presentation focusing on Operations and HR. So we will first have Antoine Burel that most of you know very well, Deputy CEO, Head of Operations; then Karine Alquier-Caro, the Head of Purchasing; and then Bénédicte Bahier, the Chief HR Officer. Antoine?

Yes, Good morning, good afternoon. Nice to talk to you. Operations, as you see on the slide, is basically innovation, research and development, purchasing, manufacturing and supply chain. My first slide is about operations organization and why this organization and clear allocation and roles and responsibility drive at Legrand strong operating performance. Let's take the example of the decision-making process for new products for having a good illustration of that. Of course, it is the responsibility of country managers to discuss what product they should have on their catalog and also give their local insight in terms of design, local market ability, price positioning. But when it comes to decide how to develop, where to develop, on which platform, how and where to manufacture, we have a global decision-making process at the level of group operations so that we are able to optimize 3 things. First, the financials, cost and capital employed; second, customer satisfaction, key features of the Legrand products, time-to-market, quality; and third, sustainability. As you may imagine, that operations have a big role on sustainability and CO2 emission. And when the manufacturing part starts -- production starts, the responsibility is transferred to country managers -- country manager where the production site is located. And he becomes responsible for the day-to-day performance of the manufacturing, and it also becomes part of his financial performance contract. Then to sum up, a global management of structuring industrial decision and local management of day-to-day operations activity and performance. I move to the next slide. On this one, I will talk about the 3 main missions of operations, and also explain how those missions are very complementary, which is not so obvious maybe for you. The first mission on column one is to fuel organic growth with a comprehensive new product road map, also innovative and ensure customer satisfaction based on the key features associated to Legrand solution that you can see on the slide. Moving to the second column. The second mission is to drive industrial competitiveness. And for that, we have set at Legrand level what we call the Legrand Way management system, which is for us, the ways of walking, the best-in-class ways of walking and this program is deployed across all the group. And on top of that, our industrial competitiveness is also supported by clear policies in terms of productivity and those policies also are fully deployed across the group. I move to the third column, sustainability. It's clear that operations strongly contribute to the sustainability journey of Legrand. Of course, you can think about that as far as the CO2 emission is concerned, for example. I will come back on that on the next slide about KPIs and targets. And I was saying at the beginning of my comment one interesting takeaway of that is that the 3 missions could be very complementary. Having a strong renewal of products, of course, it supports sales growth, but it also opens the door to many productivity initiatives as far as redesign to costs is concerned, then you can lower your cost each time you renew the product. And of course, if you reduce your material consumption, you not only reduce the cost but you also do some CO2 savings. Then you see the complementary sales growth, productivity and sustainability. Second example, footprint. We have a very active footprint optimization process at Legrand. And this footprint optimization, of course, is driving lower cost, lower capital employed, but at the same time, also reducing our CO2 footprint. Moving on to Slide #3. This slide is about operations KPI to finally [indiscernible] we manage the 3 missions I have just presented. I will not go through all of them, but the key messages are: number one, on the left-hand side, and it was said many times during this meeting, we confirm the fact that we are able to maintain a 5% R&D to sales ratio -- midterm ratio. And at the same time, onboard skills and capability in terms of R&D for fueling the fast expanding segments that have been commented also today. Second, in the middle, you see that we have plans to further improve our operations performance, very important to support group operating margin also lean capital employed. And for example, we intend to raise the level of productivity from 3% to up to 4%. Many drivers. I have presented 2 drivers on the preceding slides, but let me mention one interesting one, which is Industry 4.0. It's very interesting because with Industry 4.0 you have very, very quick payback with very cheap CapEx. And finally, on the right-hand side, you also see that we have very ambitious targets in terms of sustainability. Let me only focus on CO2 emission. Then we intend to reduce our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% by 2030. Yes, drivers are quite clear, reduction of energy consumption, but also move towards green energy. And second, as far as scope 3 is concerned, we shoot for minus 15% by 2030. And here, the main drivers are the shift of our suppliers towards also the green, but also the reduction of the material consumption or other example, the optimization of the transportation. This is for my part. I'm happy now to hand over to Karine, and it's also important for operations because Karine is Head of Purchasing, and purchasing is a major stake of the operations activity.

Thank you, Antoine. Good morning and good afternoon to all of you. We will now talk about packaging in Legrand, and now it is an integral part of the value creation for Legrand model. First, let's look at the figures in our purchasing footprint. You can see on the left of the slide that our purchases represent a bit less than 50% of our external sales, 1/3 for material and components. Therefore, as said by Antoine, purchasing is key in the productivity of Legrand. On the chart on the left, you can see also our geographical footprint in terms of where our vendors are located. Keeping in mind that Asia is a factory of the world, you can see that we have quite a balanced footprint in terms of sourcing. To leverage this cost, we have in Legrand a global purchasing organization. The buyers, corporate or local, have the same objectives in terms of performance and CSR targets. We have a mix of global and local sourcing approach in order to optimize the cost and availability of our components and materials. Now on the right part of the slide, you can see there's a split of what we purchase in terms of materials and components. And as you can see, we have a quite wide spread scope of material and components, which means that we are not significantly dependent from any purchasing family or any suppliers. In order to leverage purchasing performance, we work on 4 main axes. First one, profitability. As said by Antoine previously, we accelerate on one lever redesign to cost, but also maintain negotiation and resourcing actions. Second one, reliability. We ensure through very well-established risk and crisis management processes the availability and the securing of our procurement. Third one, efficiency. We have efficient and working a lot on efficient processes with dedicated global reporting and tools that all our teams in the different countries share globally. Last one, but not least, sustainability. As already mentioned by Antoine, we embed our vendors to achieve our SBTi and CSR targets, especially on decarbonization, scope 1, 2 and 3, which is possible, thanks to a very responsive and professional, efficient organization and tools. As a conclusion, Legrand purchasing team is a mature organization with clear processes and objectives and priority and a clear contributor to Legrand objectives. I'll let now Benedicte speak about -- talk about our human resources and entrepreneurial spirit.

Thank you, Karine. Good morning, everyone, good afternoon. Well, the Legrand team is made of close to 37,000 employees, based everywhere in the world. And the first region in terms of location is the Rest of the World with more than 40% of total head count. If we have to choose the 3 attributes to better define the Legrand people, they are engaged, skilled and performance-driven. We strongly believe that employee engagement is a key driver for our success, and we are really delighted to say that, this year, we have reached 80% of engagement rate worldwide, on average. The upskilling and development of our teams is a priority for us, and we maintain a high number of training hours per employee in 2020 despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic. I will come back later on performance management. And in the meantime, I suggest us to listen to Jimalee Beno. She's one of our general managers. She runs a business unit in the lighting sector in the U.S. Let's watch the video. [Presentation]

My name is Jimalee Beno, and I am the President of Focal Point Lighting and OCL Architectural Lighting. I've been with Legrand for 1.5 years, but I've been in the lighting industry for all of my career. Being a business unit leader within Legrand allows me to be the best leader possible. And when I say that, it's because Legrand allows for creativity and innovation, but at the same time, I have an infrastructure. And when we talk about that, whether it be the IT support, the HR support, just business knowledge and information, I can leverage all of those pieces. We're really focusing on our innovation, corporate and social responsibility and profitable growth. So we have a very sophisticated customer, and those are architects, lighting designers, interiors, and they value innovation, and they reward us with their specifications in these areas when we are innovative. Corporate social responsibility is part of what's in our DNA. And so we always have to be measuring and holding ourselves accountable, whether it's the sustainability goals. We've put a diversity plan in place. It's our opportunity to be a better organization. We are always more creative when we have diverse teams. And so it's important that we keep those diverse perspectives. Our specifiers also share our values in sustainability. The CSR is one of the reasons and our commitment to it why I would never leave this organization. If you think about how some organizations approach corporate social responsibility, they hire a marketing person, and it's about telling the story but not really walking that walk. And at Legrand, it's something that we live and breathe every day. It's a part of who we are, and it's why I'm proud to be a part of this organization.

As part of the global human resources policy, we want our employees to contribute to the purpose of the group, which is improving lives. That's why we make sure to provide them with an adequate and motivating work environment. And this has been recognized by various awards. If we want to select one of them, the Brandon Hall Silver Medal for -- is a great recognition for the launch of our Corporate Learning Academy, Learning with Legrand, which is now available in more than 90 countries and which counts more than 20,000 active users. Our general managers have a key role in the organization. If we come back to the profile, most of them have a sales experience as a background. And as you have seen with Jimalee, a number of them are coming from acquired companies. Their first mission is to deliver financial performance. But what differentiates Legrand from other companies is the fact that they are like local entrepreneur. They have full responsibility for P&L with sales and profitability, including cost of capital employed. But this is not only a question of financial performance. CSR is an important part of the strategic plan including diversity. Gender diversity is a major issue for us in the years to come. And this is one of the 3 topics for which we have set up our targets for 2030. You have the figures in front of you. They have been improving over the past 3 years, but this is a long journey. This is why we continue to work on long-term actions in order to bring down the whole organization to the goals we have set up and to be where we want to be in 2030. An example is the GEEIS diversity label we obtained in 2020 for France and for our corporate policy and which we intend to extend to other geographies. Our diversity policy also covers the following dimensions: LGBT+, minorities, disability and Next Generation. So we have a lot of actions and reasons for all of them. As an example, we have provided support to employees for their gender transition in the work environment. We have a high number of people with disability in our workforce in France, 8%. We commit to offer a significant number of opportunities to young professionals. And we also supported the creation of Employees Resources Group like Legrand Rainbow for LGBT+ and the Black Professional Network in the U.S. And all of this -- and this is really important for us is perceived very positively by our employees. The Diversity & Inclusion dimension obtained 81% of favorable answers in our last global employee survey this year. To conclude with this human resources section, you have in front of you our global employee benefit program, Serenity On, which provides a minimum standard in 3 areas: parentality, health and death or disability. And we are very proud to say that by the end of this year we will cover 100% of our staff, which is not that common for a global company. Well, thank you for your attention, and now Benoit will give you his closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you very much to Antoine, Karine and Benedicte. So before formally concluding this CMD, I'm giving the mic to Franck so that he can give us and give you a bit more color about the midterm targets of Legrand.

Okay. Let me walk you through the financial items of our midterm ambition, starting with sales. Our ambition as far as sales growth is concerned is to grow plus 5% to plus 10% excluding FX. There are 3 major levers for that growth. The first one is the market. The market will be -- will grow on behalf of some mega trends and just to name 2, digitalization and climate urgency. It will also grow because we'll expand our addressable market. Second lever will be to enhance our growth profile, thanks to the many initiatives that we shared today. And just to name one, notably, to grow the share of faster expanding segment from 31% to 50% of our sales. And obviously, the last -- we don't stop a success story and the last lever for our growth that would be to keep on with our bolt-on M&A strategy. As far as adjusted EBIT is concerned, we confirm that 20% is the relevant and sustainable level for Legrand. 20% combines, in a balanced manner, many factors. It combines the leverage from volume, pricing management, spends for organic growth, demanding level of productivity, frugality, cost management, restructuring initiative and of course, the dilution of acquisition. So to sum up, 20% is the right balance for the growth. It's the right balance between appropriate resources to grow organically, and it's also the right balance for a nice profitability to finance M&A. And this 20% of adjusted EBIT margin is converted into a strong free cash flow generation, and we are shooting on the midterm of normalized free cash flow ranging from 13% to 15%. And the way we intend to allocate our capital is quite balanced and is the following: More than 50% of the free cash flow will be invested into bolt-on acquisition, while, of course, preserving the solid balance sheet that we enjoyed. Around 50% payout ratio will enable us to sustain attractive dividend, and there will still be some marginal share buyback on behalf of the good discipline not to dilute our capital because of our LTI program.

Thank you, Franck. Well, beyond the financial targets, we also have, as you know, very ambitious ESG targets. So you have on this slide -- on the right hand of the slide, our long-term ESG ambitions, and we have commented some of them, climate and carbon neutrality, sustainable revenue and diversity and inclusion. And as most of you know, we are also putting an end in 2021 to our fourth CSR road map, and we'll start in 2022 our fifth CSR road map. And I can tell you that we will take very challenging objectives and targets. And this road map will be presented to you, I think, Q1 2022. Well, this is also for me the opportunity to introduce to you the latest addition to our executive team. She has not talked yet because she's a newcomer. She joined Legrand a couple of weeks back, end of August, Virginie Gatin. I would let Virginie say a few words. Before that, just to tell you that Virginie after her first experience in marketing in the luxury industry specialized in sustainability, and she's worked in the sustainability topic for more than 10 years now in international companies such as JCDecaux, HEINEKEN and Mondelez. And she accepted to join the Legrand executive team, Executive Committee, to lead the CSR approach as Executive Vice President for CSR. I'll let you maybe say a few words, Virginie.

Thank you very much, Benoit, and good morning, good afternoon to everyone. As Benoit just said, we'll have the opportunity to talk about our CSR road map and pathway in a few months. But just for now, this is a nice opportunity for me to say I'm delighted to join the Legrand Group. It's really great to work for a company with such an amazing track record on ESG and with a really exciting CSR journey ahead of us. So I'm very excited to be here, to be on board and looking forward to working with the group on this topic. Thank you, Benoit.

Thank you. Thank you, Virginie. Well, in order to conclude, I have not much more to say than I'm strongly -- I strongly believe that Legrand is perfectly positioned to benefit from the next cycle. We are in the right industry. We are in the place to be today. We have a unique profile, and we have a clear road map. So now we are collectively ready to pursue our journey and to continue to accelerate profitable and responsible value creation. Thank you very much for your attention. Ronan?

Yes. So thank you, Benoit. So this is it for the presentation part of our Capital Market Day. As you will see, it will be available in replay on our website shortly after the event. So the question-and-answer session will start in about 5 minutes from now. I remind all the registered attendees that they can ask questions either through the chat, and we have already many, I can tell you, or live on the phone. They have a number appearing on the screen next to the chatbox and don't hesitate to dial the number from now. And we'll be very glad to let you ask your question live to the whole Executive Committee. So thank you, everyone, and let's meet back in about 5 minutes. [Break]

So welcome again, everyone. So we'll start now this Q&A session. And we will start just now with the first question over the phone.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will start the Q&A session by phone. We have a first question from Andre Kukhnin from Credit Suisse.

I've got one broad question about the strategic focus on -- of Legrand. When you started the Capital Markets Day you talked about small and midsized building being the traditional area of focus. And then when we talked about the key growth drivers, then we shifted into what seems to be kind of larger buildings, such as data centers and hospitals. So I just wanted to ask a broad question whether that is leading to a shift of focus for you into larger buildings and hence, larger, potentially higher voltages equipment? And somewhat related to that, when you talked about the opportunity in the grey space in data center, specifically, I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about addressing that opportunity? And how you can do that? Whether that would involve potentially getting into larger UPS systems and -- or systems or like that, that gets you into those areas more directly? If I could start with that, that would be great.

Yes, sure. Andre, so first question. Well, number one, it's not because it's a health-related building or a data center that it is a big building. You have a large number of data centers. You have a large number of nursing homes or small hospitals, for example. So you don't have residential and small commercial buildings and everything else being a big building. You have small buildings everywhere. Number two. It's not because we are coming from the small and big and medium-sized buildings that we are not able to seize opportunities in big buildings, we've already -- I mean 10 years back, we've been able to secure, for example, in Switchgear, the French Ministry of Defense, which was, at that time, the largest electrical work in France. And we've been selling our products in big commercial buildings, big data center and big offices for years. So no, we're not shifting gear. The bottom line is that we believe that our positioning in small and midsized building is a very strong asset because it's a little bit difficult for other players to enter those buildings because the decision-making process is spread between a lot of makers. Because usually don't have one single owner to talk to. Because not a single of those midsized buildings are big enough for you to put in place a dedicated team to serve them. So for many good reasons, it's a very strong barrier to entry. Now we've been pushing to enter bigger buildings for years, if not, decades, and we will, of course, continue. As far as UPS is concerned, well, grey space, you have [indiscernible]. It's not only about UPS. It's about, for example, cast resin transformers. It's about switchgear. It's about power busbar. We do not intend to enter into medium voltage. We believe that being a medium voltage player is not [indiscernible] to sell low voltage. And actually, I don't recall that we have lost a significant piece of work because we wouldn't have a medium voltage piece. Now UPS, or switchgear or busbar are very nice places to be. And even though we are a small player in grey space, I can tell you that on those specific products, we are already a very meaningful player in commercial buildings, in hospitals, in universities and education and so on and so forth. So the reason why we are not yet big enough in data center is not coming from products. We do have the right products in both switchgear, UPS and so on. It's coming from the fact that we are a new player amongst the grey space players. So we need to put our names into the specs. We need to demonstrate that we're able to serve this market with reliability. We are already securing a number of nice orders, and I'm pretty sure that in 5 years' time when we will meet again maybe to give you an update on our strategy we'll be able to demonstrate that we became a very significant player in the grey space. So to make long story short, yes, we are coming from the mid- and small-sized building world, and this is a very strong asset and very strong barrier to entry, but we've been doing inroad into bigger building for decades. And number two, as far as grey space is concerned, it is not changing the business model of Legrand. It is just a matter of time before we can demonstrate a number of success and get to a meaningful market share in this space.

Very clear. And if I may ask a second question on the productivity target going up to 4% per annum from 3%, given that you're keeping the R&D to sales target about the same and at the same time the group margin target has then changed to 20%. I wanted to ask whether there's anything specifics that you plan to reinvest that additional 1% of sales that you expect to generate from higher productivity?

Well, as you have noticed that we said up to 4%. So we are not shooting necessarily for the 4% from day 1. It is an internal objective we are setting ourselves, and we are happy to share it with you all savings that we would do, productivity or other type of savings. For example, the year where we will have higher selling price and purchasing price. All those savings leading potentially Legrand to exceed the 20% EBIT margin will be reinvested into growth with, for example, additional expenses in communication, additional salespeople, targeted price decrease, which might sometimes be necessary and into dilution coming from acquisition. So it's a very important number that Franck pointed out. And don't forget that the 20% EBIT margin target is including each year. Dilution coming from acquisitions, which could be minus 10 to minus 50. So the initial savings we do will be divested into growth. And this is exactly what Franck said. We believe that the 20% EBIT margin, not that it is a magic number, but this is the right balance between value creation and keeping the ability to reinvest into growth. We could very easily be 21% EBIT company, but I strongly believe that it would be at the expense of growth. It means that we would have to do less acquisitions. It means that we would have to reinvest less SG&A into the business, and it would definitely be the expense of growth. So this is the answer. Any additional savings we will do through productivity, pricing, restructuring will be reinvested into gross expenses and dilution from -- coming from acquisitions.

Okay. Thank you. So Benoit, I think before we take another question over the phone, I see on the chat that there are a few topics that are regularly coming from both shareholders and investors and analysts. The first one is regarding the midterm model or the longer term target. They look back on the organic growth and the scope effect of the group, and they would like to know, for while they're looking, what would be the split between organic growth and scope effect in our model on the plus 5 to plus 10? And then the second question is around this concept of sustainable sales. What's in it? You mentioned 70%, how do you bridge it with the 19% of energy efficiency sales? And if you have 70% sustainable sales, then it means you have 30% non-sustainable. And what is it?

Okay. So as far as the first question is concerned, so we are shooting for plus 5% to plus 10% average top line growth excluding ForEx per year. So the first comment I would like to make is that it's a pretty nice target. And as Franck said, if we are doing that with a 20% EBIT and 13% to 15% normalized free cash flow to sales, it will be extremely value accretive for Legrand. Now how does it split between organic and inorganic? If we look at the past 10 years, let's say, between the financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis, let's say, 2009 to 2019, the past 10 years, we had an average perimeter effect of plus 4.2%. And it includes Milestone, which, as you know, was a bigger deal. So with Milestone, it was plus 4.2% Without Milestone, it was plus 3%. It's not out of reach to think that over the next cycle we should be able to achieve more or less the same perimeter effect, let's say, 3% to 4% per year. So having that in mind, when it comes to organic growth, either we are at the low end of our target, 5% all-in and then the organic growth would be more or less 2%, which is what we achieved between 2009 and 2019, or will be at the upper end of the guidance, and the organic growth will be closer to 6% to 7%. Well, obviously, we are shooting to do better than in the previous decade. And we are shooting rather the mid of the guidance or the high end of the target rather than the low end. So in other words, in a nutshell, we are shooting to achieve more or less the same perimeter effect as in the previous decade, 3% to 4%, and we expect to significantly boost and improve the organic growth compared to what we achieved between 2009 and 2019, i.e., 2% per year. As far as the second question is concerned, well, the math is pretty simple. We added all sales related to energy efficiency, what we call -- what Gloria called scope 4, so all products and solutions that are used to help our customers to save energy. And to that, we added product which we see as sustainable by design. In other words, products that do have a product environmental profile, which we are able to give to our customers, saying how much CO2 it will emit, both in the manufacturing phase and use phase. And the combination of that makes us a 70%. What does it mean having 30% of sales returns on sustainable? Well, it's basically 30% of our sales, which do not have a product environmental profile. Most of those being products sold by recent acquisitions. When we have acquisitions joining Legrand, it takes 2 or 3 years or 4 years sometimes before we are able to -- because it takes a lot of time, it's a big budget, before we are able to emit a product and have a profile for that product. So it's not that we have, by nature, product that wouldn't be sustainable by design. It is just a sort of a phase-in issue that we cannot do that very easily from day 1 at the time we buy an acquisition. Keep in mind that when there is a typical acquisition joining Legrand, well, it comes together with 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 catalog demos. So it's a huge work to do this work. So again, I see no reason why we should be sort of structurally with significant portion of our sales, which wouldn't be sustainable by design.

Okay. Thank you, Benoît. So I suggest we take now one question over the phone.

Next question by phone from Andreas Willi from JPMorgan. Go ahead.

My first question is on the 31% of sales in faster-growing segments. Could you please help us understand how fast these businesses have grown organically maybe with the past 3, 5 years so we can better understand the contribution they have already made to organic growth and maybe what you expect these businesses to grow in the medium term? I know you give the 50% target as a share of the total but that's quite difficult for us to work out given we don't really know how big Legrand will be, what the acquisitions will be over time and what the mix is. So that would be helpful.

Well, I can give you a number -- sorry, by 2015, so 5 years back, those 3 categories of products after accounting for overlap represented 18% of our sales. So in 5 years, it moved from 18% of our sales to 31% of our sales, which if you make the math -- and my colleague will tell me if my number is right, should be a compounded average growth rate of 17% per year. Out of the -- of course, it's 17% all-in. Out of the 17%, you approximately have 1/3 which is organic growth and 2/3 which is coming from M&A. So it gives you enough, say, meat on the bone to do your math. I have to highlight that, of course, it was easier, if I may say, in 2015, '16, '17 to do growth on those product families because they were a lot smaller. I recall that -- I remind you that, for example, Eliot, it was 5% of our sales in 2014 and it's now 13%. So this is for the past. So 18% of our sales in 2015 moving to 31% in 2020, moving to 50% midterm. How should we see the growth going forward? Well, we are hinted that those product categories should grow faster than GDP, whereas the core infrastructure products should grow close to GDP. So it gives you a flavor of the growth rate. And it goes without saying that we'll be very interested to do this in these categories of products. So I cannot give you a precise number. It depends on many factors, it depends on the underlying economy. It depends on the number of deals available at that time. But yes, clearly, the 50% is consistent with what we have done in the past and it's a challenging but achievable target.

That was very helpful. My second question on M&A. You mentioned just before the 20% margin target and the annual dilution you get from the continued contribution from M&A. But you should also get margin improvement from the acquired businesses in the past if you buy them at low teens margins and get them to group average over time. Shouldn't that offset the annual dilution from new deals?

Well, not exactly because you have a sort of prerequisite in your reasoning, which is that we are taking all acquisitions up to 20% EBIT margin. Well, it is not always the case. And well, there are companies that are -- that we buy that are accretive to group margins, 21%, 22% EBIT, and we are happy enough to keep them at 21%, 22%. There are companies which are at 12% EBIT, which we're happy enough to take them to 14%, using Legrand techniques, cost synergies, revenue synergies and so on. So we are not taking all acquisitions margin up to 20%. Well, now this being said, it's a mechanical effect that when you buy companies which tend to have lower margin than yours, whatever synergies you're achieving, you are diluting year-on-year your profitability. Is it a problem to shareholders? I don't think so, provided, of course, we are paying the fair price. And with our policy, which is to pay a multiple that are lower than our multiples. As Franck said, to be value accretive, so positive impact on EVA within 3 to 5 years of the acquisition accretive on EPS from year 1. I think that those acquisitions are good ones. But again, the synergies we are doing or the margin improvement we are doing in the acquisitions is that enough to compensate for the yearly dilution, which again is significant, minus 10 to minus 50. I don't know, Franck, if you want to add something?

Yes, yes. Thank you, Benoît. Perhaps complement about the methodology, the dilution we are speaking of is year 1. It doesn't mean that year 2 or year 3, the acquisition was made at 15% EBIT margin. It's down to 20%. So the dilution of new acquisition can last over years. The minus 10 to 40 bps is year 1 for the acquisition.

Yes. Maybe just to add on that part because we have -- I saw the question several times in the chat is do you expect higher dilution from M&A going forward?

No. No. I mean when we said that the target 20% EBIT margin include 10 to 50 bps dilution impact, this is more or less what we have experienced in the past years. The sort of proxy you should have in mind to do your model is that on average, when you are adding 1 point of perimeter impact, you're adding 10 bps of dilution. So no, I don't think it should change. Yes, it is a fact that in the recent months, the prices for acquisitions have increased and you have a fierce war from private equities, SPACS and a few industrials on acquisitions. Now it's our job to do smart acquisitions, wise acquisitions to pay the right multiples. So not cheap but not too expensive. So no, I don't believe that I'm not expecting the dilution from acquisitions to increase or to worsen. They could be a year, which is about 50 -- minus 50 bps, for example. But on average, it should be more or less consistent with what we have done in the past and consistent with the sort of target that we have of having a perimeter impact between 3% to 4% per year.

Okay. Thank you, Benoît. So I think we'll take now another question over the phone, please.

Next question from Gael de-Bray from Deutsche Bank.

I have 3 questions actually. So the first one, and maybe I'll take them one at a time. The first one is about Slide 59, which I think is very interesting, in particular, the mass opportunities for wiring devices and protection panels. So my question is, what do you think the penetration of connected offerings can be for these 2 specific categories in the medium term? I mean how far can it go, let's say, by 2030?

Well, I'm taking my crystal ball, Gael, to give you the answer. I have no clue. What I can tell you is that wiring device or so. Circuit breakers and protection devices, it's really a new product that we launched. We launched it a year ago. So I think that the numbers are not really relevant. As far as wiring devices are concerned, what I can tell you is that for the upper ranges, the range that we have, the upper end ranges, this 2% can be as high as 15% or 20%. And so it starts to be significant. And as it is the case in what usually happens in wiring devices is that functions or finishes that are at the upper end of the ranges, they progressively go down to medium ranges and then to access ranges, which is not negative, by the way, because, yes, you have to sell those functions a little bit cheaper, but in terms of mix, this is a fantastic opportunity. So I think that this 15% to 20% upper end ranges could easily become 25%, 30%, that's what we're shooting for. Now the challenge is how fast these will come down into medium ranges and access ranges, and I have no clue. Will it be 100%? No. Now there's no structural reason why it couldn't be quite fast again, 20%, 25% or 30%. So the leverage on the mix can be very significant, indeed.

Okay. Then the second question is about the drivers for growth that you've mentioned, but clearly, some of them have been around already for quite some time. So if I try to take a step back and look at the prior decade, I mean, Legrand's volume growth has been fairly limited, right? So can I ask what do you think went wrong in the past and can be avoided in the next business cycle?

Well, I wouldn't say that most of those engines were there 10 years back. Again, in 2015, it was 18% of our sales, which is half -- close to half what we are doing. So we have a lot accelerated on those 3 items in the past 4 or 5 years. Eliot is a program which was launched in 2015. Data center, I showed the number. It's an approach we started in 2017, 2018. And energy efficiency, it's about in the same area. So I wouldn't say that those engines were there 5 or 10 years back. I think they are pretty new, and we have constantly worked for 3 or 4 years to reinforce those engines. Now again, to make it clear, are we happy by the organic growth rate that we had between 2009 and 2019? The answer is no, 2% growth per year including pricing, so it means a very limited growth in volume. No, we are not happy with the growth rate. There are good reasons for that. We were not really helped by the economy, especially in Europe, which was a bit disappointing. We had a double dip and stuff like that. Well, so no, we are not happy with this 2% and we are shooting for more, significantly more now. It's good to look at Legrand, it's also good to look at our peers. And if you look at our peers, nobody did really better than us in this decade. If you look at listed peers, you'll see that on this 10-year period, most companies did 0, 1% or 2% growth. So it's not specific to Legrand that the growth hasn't been very, very. So we strongly believe that with investments we've been making in the past 3 or 4 years with the companies we've been -- we had acquired, with the game plan that we have in place, with the product investments that we are doing, we should be able to do more than 2% definitely, significantly more than 2% in the good years. You're not convinced. You're not convinced, Gael. You're not convinced.

No, no. Well, let's say -- yes, partly convinced, but I'm sure definitely that the growth outlook for the company is much better today. So yes. And thanks again, by the way, for the granularity of the presentation, I think today was great. Can I ask maybe a final question on the addressable market size and the scope to increase that to EUR 30 billion. And I guess there are plenty of things you have in mind and you will probably not talk about them today but specifically your intention to launch smart door locks, probably as part of the smartphone revolution. But do you really think this is an area in which you can provide something different? I mean it's also an area where very often the distributors or the channels are different, right? So I'm just wondering about the rationale.

No, no. I understand. I mean, we do not intend to compete a bit scale a big scale against ASSA ABLOY. Clearly, this is not our intent. But by the way, please look at the organic growth of ASSA ABLOY in the previous decade. But we do not intend to compete against ASSA ABLOY. We think that it's a good complement to our connected home offering. And we are shooting for a couple of million euros at the beginning, a couple of tens million euros after a while, not a couple of hundred million euros. And we have a number of customers that are telling us now that we have Home + Security and Home + Control, we would like to have a smart lock because on one app, we have outdoor camera, we have indoor camera, we have connected video phone. Why don't we have door lock so that we can combine all product together and have one seamless experience when it comes to my security. So it's really a demand which is coming from customers. But again, the challenge is to make from a couple of million euros to a couple of tens of million euros, we'll not become one super big player in this field. But it's a good illustration of interesting fields of activities where we could indeed enter.

Thank you, Gael. So maybe one question from the chat. We have this question that we expected a bit that is to you, Benoît, and to Karine, is to get some comments on the short-term pressure we are seeing at the moment on the value chain. How do we assess the situation? How is it evolving? And how long do we think that this challenge will remain?

Well, I understand the rationale behind the question, and well, the difficulty that clearly we'll not get -- give you any specific update. The objective of these CMD is to talk about long-term trends not to give short-term updates neither about the sales, profitability or constraint that we may have. I recall you what we said end of July -- I remind you what we said end of July when we published our Q2 numbers. It was that, yes, we were facing a number of shortages and difficulties, not only for electronic components, but also for a number of raw materials, aluminum, for example, of polypropylene and a few others. And we said at that time that it was a concern that we were well-equipped to deal with this issue that it hasn't led Legrand to stop any factory. That's what we said at the time of the release and the next update will be provided to you beginning of November when we release our Q3 numbers. Sorry to not to be more specific, Ronan, but the rules of the game between 2 publications, we are focusing on midterm, not on short term.

I know the rules. So we will take another question over the phone, please.

Next question from James Moore from Redburn.

Maybe I could start with the faster expanding segments. I wonder if there's any way you can help us understand the profitability, given the different growth rates and I'm thinking about what that means for the mix between the 31% and the 69%.

Right. It's indeed an important question because you may wonder whether moving from 31% to 50% may change the profitability profile of Legrand. Well, number one, part of the answer is in my previous answer. We moved from 18% in 2015 to 31% in 2021. And our EBIT margin was 20% in 2015 and we guided for approximately 20% in 2020. So despite this switch or this move from 18% to 31%, the margin profile of Legrand hasn't changed. Now second, it is more, I think, insightful. The profit margin of Legrand does not depend on the segment. It depends on the market share you hold on this given segment. If you are in your product category, a strong leader, you would enjoy very good market share, a very good profitability whether the product is in a faster expanding or core infrastructure. If you have a low market share, you will have lower profitability. So to turn things differently, in data centers, energy efficiency and in Eliot, you have products that do enjoy your 25% or 30% EBIT margin. And you have products that have or need 10% or 15% EBIT margin. And the driver is market share. And again, this is the reason why we've been investing so much about the fact that 2/3 of our sales have a leadership position because this is a condition to profitability. So in a nutshell, moving from 31% to 50% is perfectly consistent with a 20% EBIT margin we are shooting for provided, of course, we are doing it by developing and acquiring leadership positions. Please, Franck, I think, yes.

Yes. Perhaps an addition. Just to remind also that in 2015, the margin was not 20%, it was 19.3%. So currently, the margins are slightly better. But the most important point is that the growing segment are not changing the margin profile. Now they do about the R&D, the gross margin, the free cash flow, the cost of capital employed and the CapEx. As a whole, the model is working globally on the same balanced way when we had 18% of our sales in the faster expanding segment as it does with the 31% and as it will be with the 50%.

And you mentioned we're trying to ride the cycle at the moment. And I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about how you see the cycle because I can see nonresidential picking up in the U.S. and Europe, maybe not China. But on the residential construction side, where you still have some decent exposure, we've had quite a -- how can I put it, sugar rush market with everyone at home for a year and a bit. Do you see any clouds or risks on the residential side of your portfolio going into next year?

Well, sorry, but this is part of the questions we cannot answer today. This is really short term. We'll give you more insights about the end of 2021 when we raise our Q3 numbers and more insights about what we can see in 2022 when we will release our full year numbers. So it's a bit early. This being said, again, keep in mind the Legrand model. We can give you early signs. We can give you feelings. We can give you internal analysis but we have absolutely no order book. So I'm not sure that we are at the best position to give you really a smart insights about what the market is going to do in 2022. So again, sorry, not to be able to answer this question. It is a bit early. We'll do that in a couple of months or so.

Fair enough. If I could just squeeze one last one in. On your plans for M&A, the bolt-ons, some of the extra growth levers you talk about, are there any particular technology gaps as opposed to market share or regional gaps that you need from here?

No, I'm not a great fan of technology acquisitions. I have to say I'm a much greater fan of market share acquisitions. You have tens and tens of different ways to acquire technology. Of course, you can buy a company. Well, you can OEM a product. You can buy some IP. You can license a development. You can hire good R&D guys. So no, we have rarely done acquisitions because of technology, even the acquisition of Netatmo which was, by many sense, a strange animal. When we bought it, Netatmo had a 0% EBIT margin. So it's not really the type of companies we are used to buy. Even the acquisition of Netatmo was not much technology-driven. It was more to access a large portfolio of existing products or existing market share that it would have taken a bit of time to develop. So I don't believe we have a big missing technological piece. And if we had, it wouldn't be a big concern to acquire it through licensing, hires, partnership and a few other leverage.

So one topic that is regularly coming in the chat questions for you, Benoît. The fact that we are highlighting an increasing productivity, stable R&D ratio, accelerating growth even if the midterm target has not changed, why cannot margin go somewhat higher? And similarly, on growth, lots of positive drivers, but no changes to previous targets. So is there something offsetting all these positive drivers? So that's the first question, let's say. And the second one is the same on this 20% EBIT margin. Does it mean that some years it can be below, some other years above? That's the question.

Okay. So the answer to the last question is yes, slight above, slightly below. So it's not 18%, it's not 22%. But yes, on a given year, it can be slightly above, slightly below. We are not such a precise clock that -- like taxes every year, it will be 20%, 20%, 20%. Now for the 20% EBIT, I answered, yes, we could very easy be a 22% EBIT company in 2 years, if we wanted. And we know the recipe. We stop dilutive acquisitions. So instead of a 3% to 4% primate impact, we have 0. We reduced R&D expenses. We move maybe from 5% of R&D expenses to say to 4.5%. We cut on a number of long-term analysis, studies, investments. Potentially, we divest a few businesses, which are a 12% EBIT. 12% EBIT is a nice EBIT. And at the end, we are a 22% EBIT company. Now it would be done as a expense of top line growth. It's clear. We will do less perimeter growth, less scope, less M&A, less organic growth. And I strongly believe that it would not be a good trade-off for our stakeholders, including our shareholders, we would be less value accretive than in the [ current ]. As far as the 5% to 10% top line growth is concerned, again, you might be disappointed. I think that it's already over a full cycle, quite a nice target. Again, I cannot be clearer than repeating again that we are shooting more for the mid or high end of this target rather than the low end. And this is the internal objective that we have, and this is how the road maps are built at Legrand. Well, it's not like our targets were very old. We made them public in February 2021. It shouldn't be such a surprise for analysts or investors that in September, we don't change them radically.

Okay. So I propose that now we take a question over the phone, please.

Next question from Jonathan Mounsey from Exane BNP Paribas.

So I'm just -- I'm wondering, clearing the retail market and how it might need to evolve over time. So obviously, historically, I think you're very much focused on selling to the electrician. I just wonder, customers seeking energy efficiency gains across the building infrastructure, and I guess that leads to thoughts around ecosystems and connected products. Doesn't that mean that it's more like the building owner or a consultant thereof makes the decision around what to install? And if that is the case, does your sales force have to start pivoting to address those types of clients, particularly in the larger building space, if you want to take share there?

Well, I have to tell you that the vision of Legrand selling exclusively through electrical distributors, mostly to small contractors, simple -- very simple and low face value product is a bit old fashioned. We've been dealing with plenty of different targets for years. We have extremely good connections with big contracting companies. We have very good connections with design offices. We are talking to a lot of end users, not only you and me in our home, but also big buyers or investors in buildings. Now that we have Ecotap as a part of the group, we'll increasingly talk to a charging point operators. So it has been since a couple of years that we have started to diversify our portfolio of product and that we are able to talk to all the makers, whether the buildings are small or big. Well, again, same as what I was saying a bit earlier, our position -- our historical positioning in small and midsized building is an asset because if you want to be relevant in those buildings, you have to talk to millions of contractors. I think in Europe alone, you have 1.2 million of contractors. You have to talk to those guys. You have to be known by all those guys. You need to assess people visiting us there. You have to have product. So it is a very strong asset. But for years, we've been not only taking care of those guys but we've been already talking to design office, engineering offices, big panel builders, big contracting company, end users and so on and so forth. So it's not a concern. We know how to do. We have already secured in the past a big airport project. We have secured big towers. We have secured hyperscale data centers. We have secured Ministry of Defense. We have secured some of the largest universities across Europe, Asia or the U.S. So it's not a concern for us. We know how to do. So it's more an opportunity to add business to the sort of historical positioning amongst the small and midsized building rather than something that would radically change Legrand business model.

Benoît, if you don't mind, what I've heard also in your question was about connected product, does it deserve a different route to market because it would be more complicated to install or to sell. This is not the case. And the beauty of IoT is that enriched functionalities are easy -- easier to install than what they were before. Our mix in DIY, in online for connected product is quite high. So don't think that because it is collected, it is complex and it deserves a different route to market. It's not the case.

As a follow-up to that, on the consumer side, the residential side, if you will. A lot of these connected products are effectively new categories that, I guess, consumers may not be aware of and again, you perhaps, before you were selling to electricians, but now you kind of need to create the desire in the residential space. Would that require then classic marketing spend in a way, say, an appliance company like an Electrolux, someone would have to advertise by billboards, TV advertising, et cetera? Is that a marketing cost that's going to have to increase materially if you're going to properly penetrate that segment and get the kind of market shares that Legrand is looking to?

No. I mean we are already talking to end users and we, from time to time, already do TV advertising. We did it in Italy, in France, in India, in Brazil, in many countries. Well, we may have to spend a little bit more to talk to end user and to specify us, but it will be at least compensated by different expenses that we do to talk to traditional contractors. I can give you one very simple example. Years back, we used to issue 300,000 pieces of French catalog or catalog for the French contractors. 300,000 pieces of a 1,000-page catalog. You can imagine the sort of expenses it was. Well, now we are still doing a paper catalog, but we have switched a lot of those contractors to digital catalog and digital tools, which are cheaper to manufacture. And 40% of our marketing expenses today, 40% for the [ euro ], are digital. So even though it may require a little bit more expenses to talk to end user, and I'm not sure of that because we were spending on TV. I think today, we better spend on social media and in-app marketing, and it's cheaper. It will be compensated by savings, we'll do elsewhere because professional targets are now expecting from us digital tools and no longer physical tools.

Franck, maybe just one final question [ somewhat ] related. So on the sustainability side, I think it was clear listening about the 69% of products which are not the faster growing, but you're still expecting them to grow in line with GDP. So that would tend to suggest that core. On the other hand, the more you're focused on sustainability and increasingly laterally, it will be circularity. Are the potentially elements of the portfolio, which through that kind of lens, wouldn't be core anymore, i.e. they wouldn't be green enough to deliver the kind of overall ESG ratings for want of the better term that Legrand is hoping to migrate across to? Are they just products which are never going to be green enough, maybe good businesses may make good margins for you, but in some sense, you may actually be better off exit in that?

Well, I'm not sure I got the question actually. Maybe you did, Franck.

If I get the question, it was about is a part of our portfolio harmful to the environment and that we should give you, you say that divest or give it up and it would harm our top line. With that, the 30% of our sales, which are not sustainable, should we give them up because there would be damaged full to the environment?

Yes, exactly. It would impair your company's overall BSD rate on the...

No, first, the 70% that will become 80% is not based on, it's our own computation. It's not based on reporting standard, the sort of taxonomy like exercise that would be used by all players, number one. And we are much welcoming if somebody can finally set up a sort of role to compute. Second, again, the 30% are not, in a sense, not sustainable by design. Well, we acquired a company 6 months ago. They are not yet doing product environmental profile. They will, they will. Now why isn't it 100%? It is because every year, we will acquire companies. Every year, we will have companies joining the perimeter of Legrand whose product will not have a product environmental profile. So no, no, clearly not. It's like if you were telling me, well, you have 2/3 of your sales with leadership position, why don't you sell the remaining 1/3, so that you would have a 25% EBIT margin, and the world would be [Foreign Language]. Well, same answer. This 1/3 are products where we have leadership in country X and that we are trying to sell in country Y, so in the beginning, they don't have a leadership position, but hopefully, they will. So I don't believe that it will make any sense for Legrand to divest any of those 30%, which, again, most of the time are products we join, our companies we join the Legrand perimeter not too long ago.

Okay. Thank you, Jonathan. So over the chat, yes, we have several questions around this -- what is the percentage of sales exposed to the EU taxonomy, what gives you confidence regarding the stimulus plans that will help us to accelerate growth given previous programs and so on. So here, they are mentioning the programs after the GFC saying that at that time, it did not really boost the economy. So why are we more confident now on that front? And then the green, let's say, turnover as per the taxonomy rules.

Well, 2 separate topics. As far as the taxonomy is concerned, well, things are not yet completely settled at the EU level. What we can today tell you is that most of our sales will be taxonomy-eligible. From what we understand, the eligibility is -- depends on your NAS code. And most of our products should be the right NAS code. And most of our products from what we understand today should be taxonomy eligible. When it comes to the taxonomy-compliant, it's a different exercise and things are not yet settled and clear enough for us to give you a number just because it has not yet been decided at the EU level how companies, corporates or sales or CapEx or OpEx would qualify to be taxonomy-compliant. I think that investors have a role to play, if I may say. And you should also use your entry at the EU level, and we are doing the same with our professional organization in order to encourage the EU authorities to be extremely clear, simple, pragmatic on this taxonomy compliance topic and not to build something which is going to be too complex. So in a nutshell, most of our sales will be taxonomy eligible as far as being taxonomy compliant. We don't know yet because things are -- it's a work in progress at the EU level. As far as the potential impact of stimulus plan is concerned, well, it will definitely have an impact. I think because of political strategy is clear and because it is now at the top of the agenda of the EU policymakers. You can have a look, for example, at the Fit for 55 recent initiatives, which clearly says -- well, as far as EV charging stations are concerned, I'm not sure that those are the exact numbers, but it should be orders of magnitude, we should shoot for 1 million EV charging station by 2025, 3.5 million by 2030 and 16.5 million by 2050. Well, this is a very practical example of business opportunities that we should be able to say at Legrand and which we are working hard. And one of the reason why we acquired Ecotap. Second, there is also this Fit for 55 initiative. The fact that 3% of the buildings should be renovated every year. Well, this is fantastic. We've been advocating for years, the fact that 1% renovation per year was not enough to have most of the buildings being energy efficient to meet the agenda of the EU, 3% is the right pace. And last, there is an update of the energy directive stating that all public buildings would decrease energy consumption by 1% per year. So it's extremely positive. Now the concern is that too much text, too much update. Now this money should flow into the market. And this is a big, big thing that we are pushing for with our professional organizations. There's a huge complexity at the EU level as far as regulations, directives are concerned, many updates every quarter, many text, many inputs. Now time has come to make this money flowing into the economy. And when it will flow, it will definitely have a positive impact on the market because by managing electricity, we are at the heart of energy efficiency buildings. And I think that it wasn't as high in the list of priorities of the EU policymakers after the great financial crisis was the priority was to do savings, if I may say. After the inflow of money, it is now the top priority for policymakers, and it's a big change.

Okay. Thank you, Benoît. One question from one of our historical shareholder that is around, I would say, we have 2 questions from him, but they are a bit linked is, will M&A be focused on fastest emerging segment only. And are we assuming that our growth targets are embedding market share gains. So I think the question behind is, do we defocus on certain segments, our portfolio of our offering in order or need to be focused on growth?

No. So the answer to the first question is no. There could be very interesting, very attractive acquisitions in more traditional segments. Good example being Ensto that we bought a couple of months back -- that we announced a couple of months back. So no, I think that we will look at acquisitions in a faster expanding segments and we look at acquisitions in core infrastructure products. And even what may seem to be a boring field of activity for some of you, installation products, cubes, boxes, floor boxes, cabinets, could be very interesting play for Legrand, provided they are bringing us market-leading position on which we can leverage. So the answer is no, we'll do M&A all across the board, all geographies and core infrastructure as well as fast expanding. As far as our top line objectives are concerned, yes, we are embedding market share gains. Well, it's always difficult in our trade to give you a precise market growth rate and a precise quantification of the market share gains because it really depends on the product on the market family. But what I can tell you is that internally, we have mid-tier plans to reach zone leaders, operations and frontal functions are committed, which we are reviewing every year, where we are looking country-by-country, product-family-by-product-family at the market shares and that -- those internal plans embed, indeed, market shares.

Okay. Thank you, Benoît. And I think we have one last question over the phone, maybe.

Yes, we have one more question from Andre Kukhnin from Credit Suisse.

I wanted to check on a couple of things you said during the presentation. One was that you have no interest in going into design and planning our asset monitoring performance management software. And you said that you think that could be actually quite a tough place to be in a couple of years. I wanted to ask why you think so of that becoming a tough place to be and why you completely rule that out for Legrand?

Well, because it's too exciting, Andre. This is what specialists called [ redo ] share. When you have a field of activity where everybody has to go, software will hit the world. So everybody want to go there, electrical specialists, software specialists, service specialists. Well, my feeling that it's going to be a tough place. I may be wrong. And even it's a nice place to be, it might be a nice place for others, but maybe not for Legrand. You also have to be aware of your strengths, weaknesses, assets. And I believe that it's not the right play for Legrand, and it is not the area where we have the greatest chance to succeed. Again, I prefer to be in somehow a little bit more boring places, but where we have -- which are closest to our strengths and where we have greatest chances to succeed and data centers, the connected products with again a lot of software and firmware content into it, green-efficient product, the core infrastructure products are, I believe, nicest place to be. Again, for Legrand, all those comments are for Legrand.

Got it. Yes, certainly, some of the valuations in the space point to hype that word. And may I ask on the midterm growth target, you talk about 5% to 10%, but you say excluding economic downturns. And we're in this situation now. We obviously had a downturn last year that just created a low base and as we're looking to bouncing back, enhanced much faster growth in 2021. Can I ask that -- can we expect that 5% to 10% target to be applied to 2022 onwards until the next economic downturn? Can we think about it like that without including the 2021 bounce-back yield?

Yes, you can. And we are shooting to do that every year. So yes, you can assume that even without taking into account year 2021, which indeed will be higher than that, this is still a target we should have in mind. Well, I hope the next economic downturn will not be as tough as a COVID-19 one either as the great financial crisis. You can have downturns, which are softer than those 2 ones.

That certainly makes 2 of us, yes. And just a final one. Something we came across recently is the Connectivity Standards Alliance and the Matter initiatives that you remember of. What's your view on that? Is this a game changer for the industry? And as when we think about these standardization initiatives, they always having come with the risk of driving at least a degree of commoditization of the hardware and breaking the kind of loyalty to single brand when everything is just plug and play. Just really interested in your thoughts on how you view that and where is kind of the balance of risk and opportunities there for Legrand?

You are talking about the Matter opportunity, correct?

Yes.

Which is very exciting. Actually, we are part of it because among the founding members of Matter, you have the Zigbee Alliance. And you may know or not that the Chairman of the Zigbee Alliance is a Legrand guy. So we've been very active in the Matter initiative. Well, Matter, for those who are not aware of this initiative, is sort of creation of one single protocol, which would become a sort of universal protocol for a smart home, so that all connected products could easily communicate one with the other without complex interfacing. We would be delighted if Matter would become such a big thing. It has a huge cost, as you can imagine, to provide products that are Zigbee, [ KNX ], IP. It is difficult as far as customer experience to interface products using cloud and an app, an API. The customer experience between Legrand product and next product to take one example is not as good as it should be because of protocol differences. So we strongly welcome one single protocol in the home. Again, because we don't want to be the one single player proposing everything. Yes, of course, we are delighted when a customer wants a thermostat weather stations, switch, panelboard, indoor camera, outdoor camera, door lock, everything from Legrand. It is a top customer and we invite him twice a year to Legrand. But it happens one time out of 100. Why? Because most of the time, people already have legacy product. And you cannot ask them to get rid of all their products in order to install another products. Why? Because sometimes in some geography, other products have a bigger market share than Legrand. So we have to accept that end user could mix and match Legrand product with X, Y and Z. And what makes the difference is how good, how solid is a product and whether you can have a good experience with this product. And I think that Matter will provide a seamless experience between Legrand product and third-party products that can already one thing, which is to increase the overall level of the connected home. So yes, we are extremely excited about this initiative, and we are part of it through our chairmanship in the Zigbee Alliance.

So now one question from the chat, basically on our ambitions on EV charging. Today, it's more, let's say, a European position. So what are our ambitions? Do we want to be global? Will we be very aggressive in terms of M&A? What is the potential globally speaking and the targets?

Well, today, you have 2, I think, 2 places where this market is really booming, supported Europe and China. We are a bit cautious on China because this is -- I'm not sure this is a market which will be nicely profitable. We'll see. So we are today focusing on Europe. And we have -- and then Frédéric, Head of Europe that you know has accepted to take a very, very ambitious challenge, and we are eager to make these EUR 60 million of sales, mostly in Europe, a much bigger story. So I can tell you that even remaining in Europe -- which is a key message, even remaining in Europe, given the market share that we have, which are still small. And given the numbers I gave you, moving from a couple of hundred thousand today to 60 -- to 6.5 million charging stations in 2030, we have plenty of opportunities for growth. So yes, we'll focus on Europe. Now if we find good opportunities either organically or through acquisitions in the U.S., in Latin America, in India and even in China. Of course, we will say those opportunities. But again, as a starting point, it's -- I think tackling Europe is good enough challenge for the teams.

Okay. One question maybe for you Franck. We have several times this question. Is trading up embedded in the pricing that we disclose every quarter or every year?

Yes. Thank you. It's kind of methodological question. The answer is no. Trading up is embedded into the mix. The way we compute the pricing is we have to have the same SKU reference, the same SKU numbers to consider that as pricing. So if we sell a connected switch versus a nonconnected switch, it's not pricing, it's mix.

Okay. Thank you. One question for you, maybe, Benoît. On the data center and our exposure to grey space. There is this question on the fact that a company like Vertiv made a big acquisition recently on that front. And the question is what are our ambitions on the grey space and notably North and Central America?

What's our ambition, sorry?

North and Central America for the grey space.

Well, we have more ambitions outside of North America in grey space than in North America. For those of you who know well Legrand, you know that in North America, we do not have a position in switchgear, neither do we in UPS or in power busbar. So we have a number of plans to go into the grey space area, but we don't have the full set of products that would allow us to make it a big story. Firstly, we have [ Doff ] has taken the challenge to do a number of interesting things and to leverage the composition we have in white space. So the grey area game plan is rather for rest of the world and Europe, well, which is exciting enough and big enough for us to provide years of growth. Grey space market in the U.S. is probably 30% of the world market. 70% of the world market for grey space is in Europe or in the rest of the world. And here, we have the product offerings, switchgear, busbar, UPS and more. We have all the service capabilities, including people to do presales and post sales. We have increasingly the brand legitimacy because we are able to get big projects. So we have all the necessary product and assets to grow our position. So limited ambitions in North America. We have a lot of ambitions elsewhere and a lot more ambitions in Europe and the rest of the world.

And then the question that comes with it is, do we know what is the market split on our addressable market and data centers between white space and grey space?

Well, I gave the number. I think it's, again, on our addressable market, which is only EUR 10 billion worldwide, it's a 55% white space, 45% grey space. Now you asked the same question to Vertiv, I'm sure that they have a different split and different valuation on the market and the same if you have the question to ABB or whoever.

Okay. One question that is more, let's say, on the -- so still from the chat, I would say, on the historical model of Legrand and our strong relationship or stickiness with distributors and installers. The question is, how do you invest today in this relationship? And do you still invest?

Yes, we do. I mean I'm a strong believer in the fact that electrical distributors are the most efficient to serve the market in which we are. They are extremely eligible about the product. They have a superb service level to serve contractors. They have such a deep knowledge of their customers that the managing credit is not a big issue. They have physical setting everywhere. Some of them have developed a great expertise in terms of e-commerce. So I think that electrical distributors are the best, let's say, play and the most efficient ones to serve our market. So we have a very good relationship with them. Of course, we have tough discussion on price. This is live. But otherwise, we are trying to build with them plans to grow the connected product, data centers and so on. Now we also have to admit that they do not represent 100% of the market. So I think they are gaining market share. That's my feeling. They're getting market share, but they do not represent 100% of the market. So we also have to deal with other customers, which are very respectful customers because the market is made in such a way that you have many players that have a say in our train. So yes, we are dealing a lot with them. And we remain extremely committed to the electrical distribution channel as well as to the contractor channel.

Okay. One question also that is coming regularly. On the margin level we are doing on e-commerce because it's a vertical where maybe it is felt that we are a bit under pressure and that margins are a bit tight on that vertical. So is it true? Is it not true? And again, the question on the margins on the Eliot kind of...

Same answer for Eliot and for e-commerce, margin depends on market share, not on whether the product is connected or not and not on the channel we are selling. So there are products we sell online which are extremely profitable because they have good market share, or those which are -- which have a low profitability. So I cannot -- I don't think there is any structural difference in profitability between e-commerce and physical commerce. So moving up our sales in e-commerce shouldn't lead to any specific pressure nor to specific support to the local margin.

Benoît, if you allow me, the question behind the question is e-commerce is bringing price transparency, and we would suffer for price transparency. But first, as we explained, we have the pricing power and the quality of our products accordingly, we are -- there is no risk of price transparency for commoditization, sorry. And second, the price transparency is [ big ] for Legrand for years. We have very big customers so they know exactly what are our prices everywhere in the world. So if they were to be -- there is no reason that the additional price transparency with the major business.

And if I may add, there is a lot of price transparency for end users. If you have your computer next to you, you can type weather station -- connected weather station, you'll have the Netatmo, local Netatmo and at EUR 200. You have some alternative at EUR 10. Do the same with circuit breakers, [indiscernible] be breaking capacity [ 6K ], you'll have 100 alternatives, of which 95 cheaper than Legrand. So there's always been a lot of price transparency in this market. Now we know that for customers, what matters, it's not only the price, but it's also quality, reliability, availability, ability to be connected to a broader system and so on and so forth.

Okay. So that will be -- the last question before you will conclude the event, Benoît. So as this is the last question it's up to you...

To answer?

Up to you to see how you end the answer to it, but this is the last one.

Okay.

It's more on the M&A part. So we showed that we were quite successful in [ dockers ]. The question is, did we -- did you have any failure at all? And then any significant opportunity that you missed?

Yes, we had a couple of fillers and there are a couple of small companies, very small companies that we did not dock well enough. I have in mind a Mexican company, have in mind a company in Saudi. And I think we have learned a lot, and we know that the recipes not too fair. But yes, we had a couple of failures. Now none of them were big enough for us to have a meaningful impact on the accounts, neither on the top line or on the bottom line. I think that most of the acquisitions we've made were properly docked for a couple of reasons. Number one, because they were the right ones, successful companies. It's always easier to dock a successful company than a failing company. And number two, because we have made close to 200 acquisitions. So we are used to docking processes and our managers, the processes are in place for successful docking. So we had a lot more opportunities and success than failures. Have we missed? Yes, of course, we have missed a few. Well, none of the company that we purchased in our trade in the past, let's say, 12 months were companies that I would regret. So none of them are [Foreign Language] if I may say. I don't recall of a company that would be strategic because it would have helped us to make very significant inroads into the strategic fit that we would have missed. When we have a company that we really want to acquire, we are ready to pay a little premium and we already did. So yes, a couple of failures, but small ones. Yes, a couple of misses, but not strategic ones. Is it all?

You can conclude.

Well, thank you very much, first of all, to the Legrand team. But of course, more importantly, to you, it has been a long event, 3.5 hours. So thank you for your time. Thank you for your support. We will be available for further questions. So please do not hesitate if things are unclear or need the clarification, Ronan, Franck and myself will be able in days to come to bring any clarification. Thank you very much for your time.