Renault SA (RNO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for being with us. Thanks to the Renault team. Jean-Dominique, thanks for coming. It's an important day for the group, that's for sure. This is -- this company, as you know, has gone through a challenging time over the past few years, I would say. It has experienced one of the deepest crisis in its 123, 124 years of existence. But thanks to what its people have achieved, we are here today to talk about development. After 2 years of, I would say, strong strenuous efforts and sacrifices also, everyone sees from the number that the Renault Group has been able to recover. So the Renaulution works, as we say internally, and it actually works faster than expected. You remember that -- probably that it consisted in 3 phases: the resurrection, the renovation and the revolution. We achieved the resurrection, that's my statement today. We are now within out of the emergency room and probably quicker than what many experts would have believed at the beginning. This year, to prove that, we will achieve what was our initial 2025 profitability targets. By the end of the year, we'll have also generated at least, I would say, EUR 2.7 billion of cumulative free cash flow since 2021. So more or less the target we gave for ourselves by the end of 2023 initially. And very important, thanks to the strong effort of our technical team, our R&D CapEx envelope is already now below 8%, which put us into the game, and that was our commitment a couple of years ago. So in a nutshell, with a lot of work and determination we are able to -- we were able to put the, I would say, the company back on track despite, as you know, a horrible environment. And be reassured, and I want to say that strongly, be reassured for each one of us, there is no going back. There's no going back. Let's talk about the Renovation phase, second one. This was the one linked to the market introduction of a new range of products. I would say it's also very well underway. Not all is visible yet from the outside because you always need 3, 4 years, but it will be soon. And it will be more impressive than what you expect, I can tell you. The new brand-driven organization is already working. We can see it from the results. We transformed the Renault, Dacia and Alpine into accountable business units each focused on its go-to-market strategy and measured on its own P&L. We also created Mobilize to address the new mobility challenges. And this reorganization for us was a first step to better align the group with our customer expectation and to focus the teams on performance. At the same time, we did the job to optimize our footprint and reduce our capacity by 1.2 million units. So next year, even with very conservative market assumptions, we will be above 100% utilization rate in our plants on average. We didn't have even fresh products because, as I said before, it takes 3, 4 years. But now they are coming one after the other. We have prepared probably what is we consider being the best lineup of the Renault Group in the last 3 decades. Between 2022 and 2025, we will launch 25 new models. This new lineup is going to position us in the heart of the most profitable and relevant segments, and it will support our ambition to have one of the best environmental footprint in the industry. Half of those products will be in the C-segment and above. Half of them will be pure electric. Because of that, should the market remain below pre-crisis level, we think we have to be -- we have the potential to be an anti-cyclical player. We did the job on downsizing, as I mentioned before. So we don't need to push the metal. So no risk that we go back to square one, to old, value-destroying practices. We don't need and we don't want. I want to state it very, very clearly. The message from my side is pretty straightforward. We will deliver in the second phase exactly as we did for -- during the restructuring phase. Now let's -- it's time to talk about the Revolution. It's time to talk about how we want to take the opportunity of many disruptions happening in our sector to run faster and higher than today's leading company on the growing value pools. We want to make Renault Group the most progressive of the incumbent OEMs. I think at what Ayrton Senna once said, you can't overtake, you can't overtake 15 cars in a sunny weather, but you can when it's raining. As you know, a series of revolution is reshaping automotive in depth. The EV and digital revolution, the shift from selling cars to selling mobility services and the urge to make our industry sustainable. For 140 years, the job of the OEMs was to manage a relatively stable value chain that were 4, 5 years of product development, 7, 8 years of manufacturing and distribution. The ongoing revolutions are driving the emergence of at least 4 additional value chains like branches growing from the trunk or tree. So you have the EV; the software value chain, the mobility value chain, including financing and energy services; and the circular economy value chain. This means potentially more money to be made. Some experts or many experts talk about EUR 200 billion in the Renault Group's geographical perimeter. It's more than twice as much as today. It means growth, something that we haven't experienced since China emerged as a giant automotive market. This is like moving from playing soccer and then suddenly turning to pentathlon. You need a completely different organization. You need to reimagine your business model to succeed. And that's what we will do. And we will do it before the others. Now if you don't want to only want to run behind the ball, but instead performing, riding, fencing, cycling, shooting and swimming, then you need something more. I would argue that you need different training, different diet for each one of the sports. For each one of them, your performance would also get measured differently. Now you have 2 choices. You have 2 choices. You can decide you can take one athlete that performs in all the disciplines. He has the chance to win one medal, the pentathlon medal. It's actually pretty prestigious. But usually, this kind of multidisciplinary sportsmen don't break any world record. Or you can decide that you're going to specialize 5 athletes under the same flag, each the different talents, different training and different diets with the objective of winning 5 medals and potentially breaking a couple of world records. For us, the choice is pretty clear. And this is the second one. This is the first principle leading the Renault Group's metamorphosis: focus, specialization, independence and accountability. In addition, we are convinced that the new automotive world will require a horizontal and ecosystemic approach. This is the second driving principle of this metamorphosis. Traditionally, OEMs did everything by themselves through vertical integration, as you know. Only sometimes they delegate innovation to Tier 1 suppliers in a classic commercial relationship. Scale and efficiency have been the mantra for the last 30 years since I've been working in this industry. Actually, I'm not naive. This approach will always be relevant in such a capital-intensive business. But it works at its best when demand is stable or growing and when technologies mature. Then what you do is to look at optimizing what you know. And you synergize with many people that are doing the same things because the technology is available to a lot of people. What happens when your world becomes volatile and the technology unpredictable, as probably will continue to be the case in the automotive industry in the next 10 years. You care about designing organizations that are more compact with the agility to master volatility. That's our theory. And you focus people on scouting for the next big thing. Today's challenge, like digitalization, energy transition, they actually cut across traditional boundaries between industries and also between functions within the organization. So no single player can claim to have all the solutions alone. For example, take the charging station issue. We need to work and share business with public authorities, electricity vendors, [indiscernible], motorway service areas, et cetera. We have never done that before, never. So we were focusing on the start of production of the next model. That was our life. So the second characteristic of our times in automotive is that we are working on new technologies that have not yet reached maturity. You may invest billions in battery factories, for instance, but it will not prevent someone from coming up a few months later with a game-changing solution. You have to throw everything away. In the same vein, while the auto product, the car product cycle is around 6 years or 7 years, in software, it's measured in months or weeks. So to survive and to succeed in this environment, agility and the ability to innovate everywhere in our organization becomes the new mantra. Finally, carmakers need more cash than usual to keep up with the pace of the ongoing technological shifts, being forced to do everything at the same time. At Renault Group, we believe that we must learn to play horizontally. It means adopting a collaborative approach every time that this is possible with key actors in each relevant ecosystem, EV software, I repeat, mobility ecosystem, for example. To do what? To co-invest, to codevelop, to co-create. There are many advantages actually of this horizontal approach. First, you share investments, and it allows you a full coverage of the different value chains while ensuring optimal capital allocation. We invest strictly on what matters to secure our business. We strike the right, I would say, balance, neither doing everything ourselves, nor delegating innovation to others or simply buying it. So I take an example, the first 3G iPhone 15 years ago is a very good example. It was a puzzle of expertise coming from multiple sectors, from Samsung, for the microprocessors, down to the Department of Defense for the GPS. Thanks to the horizontal approach, we lower financial risks, we cover a wide range of alternative technologies while being always ready to pivot swiftly to the one that might become dominant. We work with other industries to address transverses challenges across the traditional silos. We make our organization, and this is very important, open to learn and adapt. And we expose our workforces to the challenge of dealing with the unknown. In a nutshell, we focus on strategic agility and we foster innovation. It's been 2 years now that we've been practicing this horizontal approach. The net that we have started to weave will be one of the most powerful assets of the group for what comes next. So we are convinced that the moment has come to provoke a metamorphosis from the bottom of our structure within the Renault Group organization, a step further in the direction of what we started 18 months ago, now that the fundamentals, I would say, are pretty solid, to focus more compact teams on future value-creating businesses opening the capital selectively to access to cash and know-how. The good news is that we have already started this revolution. In 2019, Renault was, in my view, a complex matrix organization with at least 4 dimensions: functions, regions, brands and the alliance. The result is that you had often 4 people on the board at least. So responsibility was shared and scattered. We started to unbundle this in 2020 by clearly giving responsibility to the engineering on product cost timing and performance of the product, and we gave the 4 brands the tools to pull the whole organization towards the consumer, focusing them on profitability and on customer satisfaction. And as you know, it worked. Now it's time to go to the next level. So just to tell you, in 2019, which was more or less a normal year, we generated EUR 150 million of cash at the end of the year. In 2022, which is definitely not a normal year, thanks to the new organization, we will generate probably more than EUR 1.5 billion of cash. So 10x more. And now we are structuring ourselves by focusing resources on businesses that will go further. In time, they will be able to put us constantly above EUR 3 billion cash generation per year. This is the concept. It's very simple. So organization drives value creation. Today, we turned the Renault Group into a, I would say, next-gen automotive company to capture value across all new profit pools emerging in our sector. We do it by creating independent businesses focused on structurally more profitable activities, open to external investments, each built around the homogeneous set of technologies, each one of them with its own governance, P&L and transparent sets of KPIs. This business are Ampere around the EV and software ecosystem, Alpine to attract affluent and current [indiscernible] consumers around high-end EV platform and racing technology. Mobilize is there to specialize on new mobility and services, including financing. And The Future Is NEUTRAL is the company we created a few weeks ago focusing on circular economy. And finally, we don't forget where we come from, Power, we call it as a proxy for the traditional core business of the Renault Group. It will continue to develop innovative, low-emission ICE & hybrid vehicles under the Renault, Dacia and LCV -- Renault LCV brand. Each one win their dedicated organization and with their dedicated governance. So to reinforce and project this part of the business into the future, we create a leading worldwide supplier of ICE & hybrid powertrains technology. This is Horse, it is what we call a Horse. It is a future-oriented story, not a legacy one like a lot of newspapers wrote into the past. Don't worry. On top of these businesses where, I would say, real life happens, the group will become lighter and it will be simpler. And they will keep mainly 5 responsibilities: First, giving strategic orientation and long-term planning. So in other words, thinking, which is also important. Second, supporting the units on business-agnostic tasks. Third, coordinating and scaling where it makes sense. Fourth, promoting innovation across businesses through expertise centers. And finally, keeping all the parts together, including the relationship with the alliance. There is another thing making this exercise of corporate engineering the one that I'm presenting to you today one of the most advanced in the recent history of our industry. We have the ambition to be the first, at least in our sector, to create at the level of the group a digital twin of the whole company and put a digital layer between the group and the businesses. We have decided to invest in 6 IT platforms completely connected that will allow us to manage all the processes from product development to end-to-end logistics system through data, thus designing a kind of a 4.0 management model. It will enable speed in decision, transparency in our analysis and breaking the silos. To do it, we partner with the best in their respective fields from Dassault Systèmes to Google to SAP. And this project, very important, are already running. This is not about buying software suites. These are in-depth strategic partnership. Nobody has done that before with such a holistic approach. So the Renault case could become for them also a blueprint for collaborative business development. Let me give you some example. First, we decided to completely digitalize the product development process to reduce times and costs. That's why we partner with Dassault Systèmes using the famous 3D experience platform. We are the first OEM to go so far. It represents at least a 4% -- 4% yearly productivity increase in development. Second, our industrial metaverse is powered by a software developing partnership with Google. We have a control tower allowing real-time management and AI-based decision making. I know that all of this looks a little bit like science fiction. What you probably don't know is that Renault Group is already operating that way. [Presentation]

[Foreign Language] plan B and even plan C. So that's why we want to be good at both games. So playing EV and software on one hand, and playing ICE & hybrid on the other hand. That's why -- that's what Power is all about. ICE & hybrid sales, actually still have to reach the absolute peak when you look at focus from specialists. By 2040, they will still represent the majority of light vehicle global sales. In addition, price parity between ICE and EV will not be achieved before the second half of this decade at least. So there is another challenge to overcome for EVs. It's about CO2 emissions from cradle to grave perspective. So going electric is not always the obvious choice. In countries with high-carbon intensity electricity, a smart hybrid car can be more than 10% more efficient than an EV if you look at the cradle to grave. Tech markets like South America or India, I'm afraid that it will take decades for infrastructure to be ready. In the meantime, who can pretend that there won't be any technological breakthrough towards ultra-low emission ICE? I think nobody. So the carbonizing is certainly one of today's most exciting challenges in our industry. And believe me, we are very motivated to take it up and exploring innovative approaches. That's the mission of the Power team. Power is the -- basically the foundation of the group is the trunk of this ideal tree. It's true today and it will be also in the future. We are talking about actually 3 teams: First, the Renault brand uplifted for a global challenge. Then comes Dacia brand, very important. And then third, also very important, the LCV business. Finally, alongside Power, we are creating Horse, as I said before. This will be a global ICE & hybrid technology leader. It's not a carmaker. It's a powertrain technology supplier, serving clients, both in Power, but also outside of the Renault Group. So let's start with this one. Horse will design, develop, produce and sell all powertrain components and system with state-of-the-art technology. With Horse, we give a future to our combustion engine technology because we give it scale, combining the forces of 2 key partners, Renault Group and Geely. From day 1, it will be addressing no less than 8 customers, including Nissan, Renault Group, Mitsubishi, Volvo Cars, Geely and Proton. With EUR 15 billion turnover and more than 5 million units, we actually double our scale overnight by doing this. So I'm very happy to announce that today, and I want to express my warmest thanks to Li Shufu for Geely's team collaboration. Horse will be full-fledged and global. It relies on 5 R&D centers in Europe, China, South America, with a total of 2,000 engineers, 17 plants supplying engines and transmission for more than 130 countries. And a total of 19,000 employees across 3 continents. In a world, Horse can address all customers worldwide. It will have a complete portfolio of technologies on all components, from engine to gearboxes to HEV systems. It gives Renault Group the opportunity, and this is important, to increase its market coverage from 40% to 80% worldwide, thanks to the geographical expansion and thanks to product complementarity of the 2 ranges of the 2 manufacturers. Horse will also extend its scope from powertrain supply to low emission complete system and solutions for OEMs. To do that, it will develop its technology portfolio in the field of alternative fuels and e-fuels, seeking cooperation with a potential partner in the energy industry. Horse will showcase prototypes running on alternative fuel with the potentially better cradle to grave footprint than BEVs in many, many geography. That was for Horse. Now let's talk about the Renault brands. Renault, very important in the core of the system. Thanks to a completely new uplifted and global lineup, the Renault brand is mechanically going to grow in the next 5 years. The good news is that even if the combustion engine, Renault will continue to grow. Even the combustion, let's say, engine range will continue to grow in volume and in margins worldwide. Renault will be the first brand, of course, in our portfolio to become fully electric in Europe in 2030, but it will also be the last to remain ICE & hybrid due to international and global presence, especially in South America, in India, in South Korea, in North Africa and other countries where electrification trajectory will be actually slower. Between now and 2030, ICE & hybrid sales of passenger cars for the Renault brand will grow at least by 2% per year on average. That's also an opportunity to create more value. We will do it by uplifting the brand towards new customers, more progressive and more modern, in all geographies. Our product mix and lineup will keep improving. In 2030, we will have managed to increase our net revenues by 20% and our contribution margin by 30%. Now we move to Dacia. Dacia business model, as Denis Le Vot knows very well, is pretty unique and very difficult to copy. In its combination -- it's actually a combination of 3 things. First, an engineering focus on design to cost by the people that did the $5,000 cars in the early 2000, the Logan, if you remember. Second, an industrial footprint in countries combining benchmark cost competitiveness, but also high quality standards, because the cars are all important to Western sophisticated markets. And an agency-like distribution model without the cost of other volume OEMs, fully leveraging the Renault brand network. So I would say that Dacia is one of the group's golden nuggets. So double-digit profitability on the podium when it comes to personal and smart customer choice in Europe, this is the reality. And one of the only European mass market brands growing in a depressed sector. And of course, we have a plan. We have a plan to keep it growing and improving. First, Dacia will boldly enter the C-segment, where margins are at least twice as high as where it plays today. This will give Dacia the chance to double profit pool coverage from EUR 15 billion to EUR 30 billion in the current perimeter, geographic and increase turnover per unit by 50%. We do it clever, using our B-segment platform for C-segment cars. This is the Dacia, I would say, magic potion. We apply it to the Bigster, and we will apply to actually other cars. We want to take it a step further on the technical and manufacturing side, applying it to up to 2 million cars per year versus 900,000 today across all the brands. So that means that, that platform will turn on the 2 million volume every year on the different brands, including obviously Dacia. We do it by extending one platform to 4 plants on 4 continents on 7 models and 3 brands. And thanks to that move, we move the center of gravity of our global sales from the AB segment currently in the group to -- actually to the C-segment. Dacia hypercompetitive and flexible platform are also the perfect base to play the smooth transition to EV until 2035 in Europe. Dacia will contribute to reinvent ICE through cooperation with Horse, developing smart hybridization and alternative and synthetic fuels. That's the mission. It will also be a customer, obviously, for Ampere in the battle to deliver lower cost and accessible electric vehicles. On top of that, Dacia will increase its cost advantage versus competition to 15%, from 10% to 15% in 2030, according to our calculation. But Dacia will remain Dacia. It only gets bigger. And it will shoot for a 15% operating margin by 2030. Now let's go to LCV. The LCV market is again a different sport than passenger car. Very demanding professional customer looking for superior level of durability, reliability and, obviously, pragmatic design. Now after 100 years, we became pretty good at that. Look at the video. [Presentation]

Good. So today, in this sector, we are a leading brand in Europe, 14% market share, over 5 million Renault vehicles in the car park, more than 600 specialized dealers and more than 300 converters. It's a full-fledged organization, actually probably not a lot of people know, with dedicated assets accounting for almost 10,000 employees, of which 2,500 engineers, 4 plants, 1 specialized R&D center and one of the freshest lineups in the market by 2025, 2026. So when I came to Renault, I remember, I challenged the team, as I try to do all the time, that's my job. But LCV has always been a profitable segment for Renault, accounting, I would say, for 20% of our earnings. You have been good at it for a long time. But actually, in the last 15 years, more or less, we have always done the same. But the world is changing. New players are coming. You know them. Last-mile delivery segment is booming with a growth of -- in double-digit growth every year. 30% of the park will also need to be replaced to comply with the CO2 regulation in Europe by 2030. So why don't we do the Renaulution also here? That was my question. Today, we come with the ambition of creating an independent, self-sustaining LCV business. We are going to propel this business into the future by integrating 2 game-changing projects into the LCV perimeter. These 2 projects will potentially enable us to leapfrog incumbent and newcomers generate -- generating big, big values for us and for our customers. The first game changer is about addressing the hydrogen mobility challenge. We do it with the player that has the best full hydrogen ecosystem in the world called Plug, it's an American company. They shared our enthusiasm to address the challenge of hydrogen mobility for the LCV segment. With Plug, we created Hyvia, a joint venture for hydrogen carbon-free mobility covering the entire value chain. It offers the complete ecosystem from green hydrogen refueling station to fuel cells to vehicles. We combine Plug's expertise with our industrial and engineering assets including, the Re-Factory 2 for the refurbishment of second life of the cars. And we have big ambitions. Hyvia aims for 30% of hydrogen LCV market by 2030 in Europe. And it targets a EUR 1 billion cumulated order intake by 2026. The second game changer in that space is what we call the FlexEVan. This is a revolutionary concept that will be in the market in 2026. It will have the length of a small van, let's say, KANGOO; the cargo capacity of a medium van, let's say, a Trafic; and the turning radius of a city car, let's say, CLIO. It's the base to cover all the segments in the future from medium, but also small, one day, and large. It's a modular electric skateboard platform. It will be upgradable all along the life cycle, especially the battery. We also could integrate the midrange concept with hydrogen fuel cells. FlexEVan will benefit from the first application of the software-defined vehicle concept at Renault. We are making this product with one single obsession: reducing the total cost of usage for our clients by 30% compared to traditional vehicles. So the average cost of usage, that includes buying the vehicle, fueling, servicing of a typical EUR 25,000 to EUR 30,000 van is, over the life cycle, EUR 100,000 of cost for the owner. So the math is pretty simple. With FlexEVan, you save more than the price of the van because of the competitiveness in TCU. And all of this is only possible thanks to the SDV technology. It will allow real-time, end-to-end operation monitoring and data-driven fleet management. But we will not do FlexEVan alone. We will partner with an OEM to set up, which I cannot announce today, to set up a dedicated venture design as a start-up to ensure speed, frugality and innovative mindset. This is the so-called Flexis. Flexis is the new company. And we are already engaging with logistic operators and big fleet customers to potentially collect preorders. Now let's go to Ampere. Ampere is the first EV and software pure player born from an OEM disruption. This is the company that will develop, manufacture and sell full EV passenger cars with cutting-edge software technology under the Renault brand. Ampere is the way to reenergize the Renault brand in the new era of electric and connected cars, projecting the own brand into a new dimension, and it's ready to start from day one. I will explain. Ampere is a dedicated business, bringing together around 10,000 employees. As a full-fledged OEM, Ampere will be able to concentrate on the EV and software sports, which is very different from the ICE & hybrid one. A new central and very expensive component, the battery; new performance drivers such as range and chargeability instead of horsepower and emission; new supply chain to organize with different raw materials and different geopolitical issues; new connected and software-oriented customer touch point to set like planning and battery health certificates. Ampere is natively a tech company. Half of its 3,500 engineers, that means 30% of the population in Ampere, will be specialized in software. Ampere is, I would say, autonomous, but it's not isolated. We see it as a front runner within the Renault Group, opening the way for the whole company. Before 2030, Ampere full lineup of 6 electric cars will be ideally positioned on the fastest-growing segments in Europe. Ampere will be a growth story. We plan to reach 1 million EVs produced for the Renault brand in 2030, 2031. And we will cover 80% of the EV market profit pool with those cars with over 30% compound annual growth rate in the next 10 years. And the successful launch of Megane Electric is a very encouraging first step. What will make Ampere unique is that it offers the best of both words. It has a solid shoulder of a legacy OEM. It allows Ampere to operate under the Renault brand and benefit from 120 years of experience in car making, 15 years of experience in EVs. But at the same time, Ampere offers the growth perspective of a pure player, thanks to a lean organization and a focused management attention on EV and software challenges. There is nothing similar in our industry today. Ampere is not PowerPoint. It's actually supported by 3 technological tech backbones, high-tech manufacturing; outstanding EV value chain coverage, I will explain; and commands and control of the software-defined vehicle technology. Let's start with manufacturing, Jose. Electricity is based in France is already one of Europe's major EV production boasts with the capacity today of 400,000 units. It's highly competitive. First, the plant needs less time than the worldwide EV leader to make a car, and you know who I mean. Second, it benefits from an ideal ecosystem. 80% of the suppliers are less than 300 kilometer away, 2/3 of our customers are within 1,000-kilometer range. We are shooting for our ecosystem to be as competitive as Eastern Europe in France by 2025, at least. The second tech backbone supporting Ampere's ambition is Renault Group's coverage of the EV value chain. We invest just the right amount and partner with the most relevant place. We did the job in the last 18 months. This way, we gain access to know-how, control on cost and performance and secure supply. And actually it works. Three years ago, we covered only 10% of the EV value chain. Now it's above 30%. And we will reach 80% well before 2030, as expected at the beginning. In addition, we localize most of our EV value chain in Europe to secure the supply chain and achieve our decarbonization targets. Three years ago, as I said, we covered 10% of EV, it's going to go very, very quickly. In -- yes, it's going to go very quickly towards, I would say, 80%. I will talk to you now about the software-defined vehicle technology. This is Ampere's third asset. It's actually a game-changer. It's like a smartphone on wheels getting better every day. That's the concept, you see it from the chart. It would leverage a global open ecosystem of third-party apps developers. They will come up with a variety of services that we would have never imagined. What is unique is that we are building it in a horizontal way, as I mentioned at the beginning. And we do that with the best technological partners, Qualcomm and Google, in a relationship that goes far beyond a mere commercial one. Let's start with Qualcomm. With Cristiano's team, we codeveloped the high-performance computing platform powered by Snapdragon technology. It is the foundation of the software-defined vehicle, giving it the ability to evolve over the years. We initiated this partnership around Megane Electric. Now we take it actually to the next level, with Qualcomm's intention to invest in Ampere. The second partnership is with Google. We have already gone a long way together with Google. Renault engineers leverage the Android OS to expand innovative features for the cockpit of the electric Megane. Now we are partnering to codevelop a car OS based on Android automotive beyond infotainment. Again, we will be the first one to do that. Let me explain how it will make the difference. We share the cost and continuously benefit from state-of-the-art technology in a field that moves, I would say, very, very fast. Second, we lower the development cost by 25% and the development time for more than 5 years, which was planned initial what is necessary, to less than 4. We also reduced execution risk. Teams of proven ability are already in place at all 3 partners, with more than 2,000 engineers working on the core aspects of the SDV today. And there is more. With Android, we benefit from the power basically of a standard, able to attract the world's biggest community of software developers. Ampere will find always more Android plug-and-play soft bricks off the shelf to develop new features faster and cheaper than the others. So we wanted to work with the best and the best wanted to work with us. The SDV will be, for sure, a new source of value for Ampere for its clients. Improving the car all along the life cycle will result on an impact on residual value. We estimate at least 2 or 3 points, only 2, 3 points will make an impact on the business case. Second, our clients will remain, and this is very important, linked to our aftersales system during the entire life cycle of the car. The more they stay, the more money we make, we know it. It's a pretty simple algorithm. This is a revolution, something that never happened before in the history of automotive. And finally, the software-defined vehicle opens further opportunities, significant R&D cost, the ones as we said, and new revenues, thanks to the new services or data monetization. I would like now to move to one of my favorite topics, Alpine. Two years ago, Laurent, remember, we were in a dead end with the brand. No new car in the pipeline. Depth was almost empty. The engineering team of the Renault's [indiscernible], a very talented group of engineers, had no support and direction from the management more concentrating on, I don't know, doing volumes with mass market vehicles. Formula 1 was considered -- not considered as an asset, but as a cost. It actually was a mere line in the marketing budget. In only 2 years, we changed everything. We created what is already de facto, a full-fledged, high-end car company by bringing together top notch engineering, high-quality manufacturing with unique flexibility, this is [indiscernible], selected distribution with 140 dealers by the end of this year and, of course, an ambitious racing program, putting Alpine at the pinnacle of motor sports, the things that gives you prestige credibility with the connoisseurs and I would say also mass media awareness. Let's look at the video. [Presentation]

So we can already feel the change. Our entry in Formula 1 has dramatically, I would say, boosted Alpine brand's awareness. I think webbuzz is skyrocketing with almost, I don't know, 40x more followers. [indiscernible] is flat out, and can't produce more cars. We have sold limited additional Porsche, doubled the price in a matter of seconds to online collectors. And the Formula 1 team is now valued at the same level as our best competitors. But the best part starts now. To take Alpine to the next level, we are developing a complete lineup fully electric by 2026. But then, we will reveal the next 810 electric, 2 new models, a hot -- small hot hatch, compact hot hatch, and the C-segment plus Crossover. And on top of that, 2 D and E segment cars will pave the way for expansion to new markets beyond potentially, let's say, beyond Europe, potentially in North America and in China. Alpine targets 50% of its sales outside Europe by 2030. Alpine is an asset-light company designed as a start-up with full autonomy, agility and tech-focused capability. 1,000 engineers accounting for half of the team, so 50% are technical people, mastering chassis development and hybrid and EV powertrain power unit development. A top-notch factory, the manufacturer of [indiscernible], with a unique expertise and the Formula 1 team ambitioning to become a championship contender, right, by 2026. Alpine can also count on the assets and the know-how of the group, including the Ampere EV and the software tech asset I mentioned before. That was for Alpine. I would like now to talk about another very interesting topic is Mobilize. So among the new territories opened by the ongoing automotive revolution, the emergence of new mobility, I think, is one of the most intriguing, let's say. It opens us huge opportunities. We know that between 2020 -- this year and 2030, the market value for financing, mobility, energy, energy and data server will actually double in Europe, okay? So it's a fast-growing market. What we are speaking about is a very, very new playing field for car makers. And we designed Mobilize especially for that. We created around our [indiscernible] renamed Mobilize Financial Services. This is actually one of the best financial captives in the market, 4 million customers, EUR 3 billion revenues, around 50% penetration, plus 53 Net Promoter Score. So it's a very, very good company and the heart of the system. They are the foundation on which -- the rest of the business Mobilize can grow and develop mobility and energy services. What makes Mobilize different from any other automotive brand is that it comes from the service to the product. So it's actually an automotive brand where you start from the soft to come to the heart and not the other way around. It's a kind of a Copernican revolution. Some call it like vehicle as a service. This model generates, we know, 3x more revenue during the whole life cycle compared to classic sales. And it will do that, let's say, on very profitable businesses with double-digit margins. That -- this is what we see as we are working on Mobilize now for a few months. The vehicle as a service is a package of, I would say, 3 bricks. First, financial service, like insurance, payment, financing. Energy services like charging. And of course, mobility services like fleet management, maintenance and repair contracts. Second brick is the aggregation of these services in a one-stop shop for retail customers, fleets and mobility operators, so the platform. And third, which is very unique, okay, is that we are developing purpose-designed vehicles that are making really the change compared to other initiatives around the industry. Mobilize, I have to say, moves very fast. I will give you a couple of examples on the service side. First on financial service. Mobilize growth will be powered, let's say, by, I would say, mostly by the growth of Mobilize Financial Services. The development of an operational leasing would be a key enabler for us. So holding the vehicle assets to be subscribed to Mobilize clients as part of a fully integrated service package. We expect this business to hold more than 1 million vehicles by 2030. And very important, we are looking at the cooperation in that space to find even higher scale. So maybe I found some partner in the room. About energy services now. We recently announced the deployment of 200 fast-charging stations in our dealers' premises in Europe. They are all positioned less than 2 minutes away from the highway exit. And they are distant between themselves 150 kilometers. By the way, this is also for me, a very good example. And now you can keep the dealers and the distributor in the loop even in a world that is changing very, very quickly. And this is actually the intention of the Renault management to continue to partner with our distributors and partners. I think the President of the Association is in the room, I don't see, I think it's more or less. Mobilize is moving fast because it's horizontal by design and leveraging, I think, pretty powerful ecosystem. For example, it's linked to another initiative that we created together with other, I would say, legendary tech company. It's called the Software Republique. Those partners are Thales, Atos, STMicroelectronics, Dassault Systèmes and Orange, where we are taking together the challenge of new mobility, trying to cut across, let's say, the industries and trying to do the things together. Now I would like to move -- almost finished, to the, I would say, the fifth sport of our ideal pent-up. This is a circular economy. Circular economy, in our understanding, is likely to generate double-digit growth and profitability, both. That's why we created The Future Is NEUTRAL. We announced that, I think, 3 or 4 weeks ago. The Future Is NEUTRAL is the first 360 degrees circular economy enterprise in the automotive world. This is a fact. It is an open platform working for the entire automotive ecosystem. To OEMs and suppliers, it offers a unique, I would say, procurement platform. To individuals and dealers, it provides affordable and eco-friendly parts and services as well as responsible vehicle disposal. And for everybody, individuals and company as well, The Future Is NEUTRAL proposes certified training and consulting services. And thanks to it, we are reaching unmatched coverage of the circular economy value chain. We are already covered in the past 50% because Renault was pretty much engaged into that kind of segment. And now we are taking new speed, aiming for a 90% coverage of the circular economy value chain by 2030. I want to end my presentation with the ESG. I want to say first that, when we took -- discussed about the [indiscernible], we actually took the, let's say, the challenge to put the ESG at the core of everything what we do, okay, very clear. And we go further really than ticking the boxes to fill extra financial report. We designed ESG as a level of performance, profitability and value creation. That was the assumption at the beginning, and we have a lot of example which obviously we cannot cover today. But some of them, yes. Each business now is in a position to play its sport with its own ESG endgame. Power promotes low-carbon solutions worldwide, including new fuels. Ampere and Alpine lead the all-electric race and skill transformation. Mobilize pushes for second and third live services for vehicles and batteries. And of course, The Future Is NEUTRAL, leads the move towards circular economy. So I think that the set of all these means goes directly in this direction with substance and technology. I think we will deliver ESG [indiscernible], it's part of the tradition of the house. For example, Ampere is set to be an ESG front runner for the entire group. Nothing will hold it back, I think. It is ready from day 1, 100% electric, relying on assets that are on track to be completely decarbonized very soon. And the metamorphosis of the group will foster, I think, also transparency and accountability. So we bring ESG somehow closer down to earth at Renault. Of course, ESG performance of the newly created business already benefits from the group transformation and the very ambitious target we set in the last years. Take decarbonation, for example. We're heading for carbon neutrality in 2040. And worldwide by 2050. With the board, and this is important, cradle-to-grave approach. So we look at that. We always said ESG as a booster for the group performance. When we reduce the carbon footprint, for example, of our European plants by 35% in 2025, it will also reduce by 30% the energy required to produce a car. It's the same story for the supply chain. To lower by 30% our logistic carbon footprint worldwide, we are creating local supply ecosystem. This, in turn, lowers the cost. 30% less kilometer traveled by each part, save, I don't know, EUR 50 on logistic cost per vehicle, stock saving in the hundred of the [indiscernible]. That's the way we look at it. And finally, enhancing renewable energy coverage supports, I'd say, independence and decarbonization. And very important, it also saves money. Finally, the automotive revolution is also about skills transformation. We accompany this shift inclusively. For example, we launched the ReKnow University last year. We'll train 15,000 employees by 2025 in electrification, in circular economy, in data, in software and cybersecurity. It's actually a unique initiative, and we want to open it to the entire industry. Doing this, we accelerate the transition of thousands of people towards the new value chain and we also drive revenues. The idea is actually to make ReKnow University a financially sustainable unit. Now it's time to see how this metamorphosis materializes into number. So now Thierry talks cash talks. Thierry, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Luca, and a very good morning to all of you. Now I'll show you what our revolution means financially speaking. As you've understood, what we're doing is reengineering the group from the bottom. We're simplifying the organization by aligning the company along 5 clearly defined businesses, which will be fully accountable for their results. There'll be nowhere to hide in efficiency, costs or lack of performance. Power, Ampere, Alpine, Mobilize and The Future Is NEUTRAL, will be reported as 5 full P&Ls. It will bring full transparency to the teams, to our business partners and to you, analysts and investors, since this is also the reporting structure that we aim at releasing once our projects have been rolled out. It will help you understand Renault Group more easily, better evaluate our performance and cash generation drivers. Speaking of performance, we've come a long way in the last 2 years by focusing our commercial policy on value, slashing our costs and improving our capital efficiency. These are what we call the nonnegotiables now. And I'm here to tell you that we will not go back. In fact, we're going to accelerate the way forward. First of all, we replaced always more with always better, replacing volume with value as the North Star guiding our commercial policy. We focused on retail, the most profitable channel. It now accounts for more than 70% of our sales, 15 points more than 3 years ago. We benchmarked the pricing of our models to the closest competition and we closed the gap. We reviewed the discount scheme with our dealers. The results are clear. We increased our net pricing by 24 points since mid-2020. This is self-help, and we will not reverse our efforts even if the market slows down. In fact, this is only the beginning. While we stick religiously to the successful commercial policy, it's our product defensive that will be the key value driver in the years to come. Our C-segment will accelerate. At the end of Q3, C-segment and above represented 41% of our sales, up 12 points from where we were 2 years ago. In 2025, we should reach 50%. This is key financially, not because we're banking on huge volume lift from the new launches, but because, as you know, C-segment vehicles command twice the margins to the B-segment in value. On the Renault brand, after [indiscernible], Megane Electric and [indiscernible] that you already know, we will launch a 7-seater in 2023 and a coupe SUV as well as Scénic in 2024. Being sister cars of [indiscernible] and Megane, these models will come with even lower entry tickets and higher revenues than the cars that they are based on. They will deliver better profits and better return on capital employed levels. By the way, these launches are either electric or hybrid. Over 60% of our customers today who pick electrified vehicles also pick highest trim levels, further boosting our margins. The C-segment will also represent 40% of Dacia sales by 2030, thanks to the launches of Bigster and 2 other vehicles soon to be announced. These models will be based on CMF-B platform. Dacia DNA, C-segment revenues, B-segment cost, this is the recipe to 15% consolidated our profit for the brand. This is not to say that we will not continue to develop our historically strong B-segment. We look forward to the launches of Renault 5 and Renault 4 in 2024 and to the continued success of our Duster and Sandero blockbusters. Finally, with an average transaction price of around EUR 75,000 per vehicle today, Alpine's growth will also strongly contribute to the group's mix improvement. I'll give you more details about this in the presentation. As you can see, all the brands will contribute to further boosting our commercial value. The second lever was about fixing our cost structure. Between 2019 and 2021, we reduced our cash fixed cost by more than EUR 2 billion and lowered our breakeven point by over 40%. Of course, squeezing fixed costs the traditional way will always remain my dirty hobby. But we're activating all the other levers available. Variable costs are now one of our biggest opportunities and are especially important given this environment of high inflation. Diversity reduction will continue to pay off as the new vehicles hit the road. From 2,400 parts in an average vehicle mid-2019, we reduced our diversity by over 40% to 1,300 parts today. Gilles Le Borgne, our engineering leader, has set up a new target to get to 3-digit numbers on the new EV generation. This will lead to lower development costs, higher volumes per part with our suppliers, lower inventory, higher profit and aftersales. It has multiple financial benefits. Secondly, we're building a sustainable supplier ecosystem. We're firmly convinced that by making our supply chain local and sustainable, we will improve its competitiveness. Electricity is a good example of what we want to develop. The fact that from 2024, around 80% of the parts of Renault 5 and Renault 4 will be sourced within 300 kilometers from our plants represents a cost reduction of EUR 50 per car and a 20% CO2 decrease. On the powertrain side, and I'll come back to this, thanks to increased accountability, technology and scale, the Horse project will deliver over twice the annual productivity that we're currently achieving, generating over EUR 2.5 billion of savings during the '23 to 2030 period. Last but not least, digitization. Luca mentioned the benefits of our partnership with Dassault Systèmes. Another great example is the partnership we signed with Google almost 2 years ago to monitor the energy efficiency of our plants. Today, we're the only European OEM to have 100% of its industrial machines energy consumption tracked in real time. Energy represents roughly 2% of our cost of goods sold. Thanks to this, we'll reduce consumption by vehicle by 30% by 2025. All in all, our continued efforts on value and competitiveness will be key elements to enable us to improve our automotive operating margin by 3 points over the '22 to '25 period. Finally, we improved the way we manage our capital. We reduced our R&D and CapEx spend in percentage of our turnover by over 3 points since 2020, reaching our target of 8%. We did this without compromising the future development of the lineup. On the contrary, we now develop our models at 40% less cost and with 25% more speed than we used to do in the previous generation. We also looked at areas where we could free up cash to put it to a more effective use. For example, we redeployed over EUR 0.5 billion of cash coming from divested Renault Retail Group assets towards productivity actions. All in all, this has already resulted in a ROCE improvement, which moved from minus 9% in 2020 to high single digit this year. The next step in our capital efficiency journey is about looking at our key value chains, like we did in EV and in software, and making the right decisions on where to invest, divest, how and with who. Partnerships are at the center of our DNA. They'll become the cornerstone of our future profitability. Believe me, we know partnerships. We've had 22 years of practice with the alliance. This low capital intensity revolution, combined with our margin expansion, aims at boosting our return on capital employed to over 30% from 2025. I'd like to further explain why our partnership approach is key to our future financially. The industry is undergoing unprecedented transformation that requires significant capital. To face this challenge, our approach will be based on 2 key principles. First, we've built a base plan which is self-financed and secured by the strong free cash flow generation from our operating businesses. Renaulution is self-financed. But we also pursue partnerships or external fundings to accelerate innovation or competitiveness and reduce capital requirements. Like start-ups do, but with discipline and on selected parts of our value chain. This approach also allows us to enter revenue streams that provide structurally higher margin rates than core automotive. It also reduces the risk we take in the way we approach new technology investment. Partnerships will fuel the revolution. The smarter we are, the more effective we will become. Long-term return on capital employed will be the key decision criteria for all major decisions. Central to our revolution, Ampere and the Horse project are key examples of this approach. While the energy transition is certain, the technology behind it is evolutive and it will require investment and will not happen overnight. Having a smart plan to underpin the change financially will be key in the industry. Ampere and Horse combine 2 key levers: accessing external capital and partnering with the best to optimize our future. Let's start with Ampere. First of all, thanks to our experience, Ampere has designed to generate cash as early as 2025. Secondly, by further attracting external investors and partners with a solid business case, we have an opportunity to give Ampere the means to accelerate its future development without drawing heavily on the group's financial resources. Our approach here has been unique because it's focused on looking for partners who can play a key role in the future of the EV ecosystem. Qualcomm's intention to invest in Ampere is a perfect example. Qualcomm will bring technology, resources and funding. Thanks to partnerships like this, Ampere is expected to grow by over 30% per year on average during '22 to '30. But we'll keep R&D and CapEx at around 11% of our turnover on average. I guess that one question that's on everyone's mind is whether the alliance will participate to the project or not. As regards an equity investment, as you know, Nissan is currently evaluating the possibility. More about this soon. What is already certain is that the alliance will bring scale to Ampere as it does to the rest of the group. The operational and financial carve-outs of Ampere are currently underway and will be completed in the summer of 2023. We're working with financial advisers with a view of a potential IPO in which Renault Group will keep a strong majority ownership. Market conditions provided, this IPO would occur at the end of 2023 at the earliest. Let's talk about the Horse project now. From a financial perspective, Horse is a complete slam dunk for us and for our partners. Not only do we provide a clear path for the group to seamlessly manage the energy transition, we also gain in productivity, reduce our fixed costs and investments and improve our balance sheet. The Horse project will bring, as I mentioned, a benefit to our profit and free cash flow as early as 2024. It will bring over EUR 2.5 billion of cost savings over the '23 to '30 period. The future entities' capital structure will lead to the deconsolidation of this activity from Renault Group's financial statements. However, keeping a high stake in the entity will ensure that the group retains a significant say in key strategic decisions. It will also enable Renault Group to benefit financially from the future success of a strong cash-generating business, uniquely positioned in the ICE powertrain markets for the years to come, whether it's through dividends or future capital gains. While Ampere and Horse have been at the center of attention outside of the company, internally, these 2 projects have led us to open our minds to new and innovative ideas in other fields and to think maybe a little differently. Let me share with you a couple of examples. The first one is The Future Is NEUTRAL. The Future Is NEUTRAL is opening up its capital to outside investors with a view to co-financing investments of around EUR 0.5 billion between now and 2030. EUR 300 million to scale up its existing businesses and EUR 200 million to launch new ones. Secondly, we've chosen a unique approach to develop the software-defined vehicle horizontally. Luca has already explained the benefit of our strategy with Qualcomm and with Google. Another key example is Flexis. Flexis will be a dedicated company with relevant partners to create a next-generation LCV. Thanks to this structure, we'll be able to share the development funding. This means a very significant reduction of the investment cash out for Renault while enabling increased customer coverage, allowing the business to deliver more than double the volume that we would if we were to go alone. Last but not least is Alpine. The success of the A110 and the popularity of Formula 1 have already made Alpine a very valuable brand. The estimated valuations of other F1 teams that have circulated in the press recently can give you an idea of the value of this activity alone. We also have a clear ambition for Alpine sports car activity to grow and to expand. To support this, we're considering commercial partners and investors, which should enable Alpine to expand its range to the D&E segments and achieve over 50% of its turnover outside of Europe by 2030. So if we take a step back, how will our business look like financially in the future? We're creating a uniquely balanced portfolio of activities, each one of them brings unique and complementary financial ingredients to the table. But Power, Ampere, Alpine and The Future Is NEUTRAL and Mobilize also have one thing in common: a relentless focus on margin and cash. This mindset translates into clear guidelines for each one of our 3 businesses. Power is and will remain the heart of our business model. It's our foundation for the period of the plan. Power's margin rate is expected to grow by 3 points over the '22 to '25 period. Most importantly, Power will also be the central pillar to the group's cash generation. Ampere brings profitable growth and innovation with low execution risks. It aims at reaching around 1 million electric vehicles produced in 2031 and over 30% of CAGR over the '22 to 2030 period. After a limited cash burn in '23 and '24, we expect Ampere to be breakeven in '25 and to bring 10% profitability in 2030. Alpine offers international growth, focusing on a high-end offer with attractive revenues per car. With a 40% revenue CAGR from '22 to '23, we target revenues to reach EUR 2 billion in 2026 and to be above EUR 8 billion in 2030. From a profitability perspective, Alpine is supported by its asset-light model, should be breakeven in 2026 and generate double-digit margins in 2030. Alpine is a high-end sports brand with global reach and high-end margins. I think we've all seen the value that, that can bring recently. Mobilize is a rock-solid financial services company, offering recurring services revenue with high margins. In total, Mobilize revenue is expected to grow by 8% per year on average between '22 and '25 and 14% per year on average between '25 and '30. Mobilize will continue to strongly pull the group margin rate up. Mobilize Financial Services will deliver the consistent high double-digit profit rates you've come to expect, while the Mobilize beyond automotive activities are expected to bring double-digit margins post 2027. In fact, part of margin of Mobilize beyond the automotive business already generates double-digit margins today. Finally, The Future Is NEUTRAL will develop in large part through partnerships. It will, therefore, not be fully consolidated in the group's financial statements. However, we expect it to reach more than EUR 2.3 billion in revenue and an operating margin above 10% by 2030. I want to make this clear. The evolution of our portfolio is a complete game changer. From having roughly 25% of our turnover in businesses that generate either 10% growth a year or 10% of profit, with the changes that we're making, we will be at 30% of our business that achieve both in 2025 and 45% in 2030. In a nutshell, the complementarity of our business portfolio, translated into margin and cash, will drive substantial benefits for Renault Group's financial performance. Today, Renault Group is entering a new era with a strong financial outlook. Powered by the focus on our operating margin, free cash flow and return on capital employed, our financial outlook is ambitious but also realistic in the light of the current macroeconomic environment. First, on operating margin. From above 5% in 2022, which, by the way, used to be the guidance for 2025, we target to be above 8% for 2025 and above 10% for 2030. Secondly, for more than EUR 1.5 billion of free cash flow expected in 2022, we target to generate free cash flow of over EUR 2 billion per year on average over the period '23, '25 and above EUR 3 billion per year on average between '26 and 2030. Finally, as I already mentioned, on return on capital employed, we target to rise from high single digit in '22 to above 30% at group level from 2025. These ambitions will translate into return from our stakeholders, so I wanted to communicate a clear dividend policy. First, we plan to resume the dividend payments in 2023 for the full year 2022, subject obviously to Board and general [ SMB ] approvals. It's a clear step into a new era. Then as we make progress towards our first priority, which is to return to investment grade, it will gradually grow in a disciplined fashion with a goal to reach 35% of group consolidated net income parent share in the midterm. Returning to investment grade will give us more flexibility in the allocation of cash that we generate. We aim towards a balanced allocation between reinvestment in the group and rewarding our stakeholders. As regards to the part that we reinvest in the group to fuel our development, we intend to selectively pursue financial investments in line with our ecosystemic approach, but limiting to a 15% to 20% of our automotive free cash flow and obviously subject to very high return thresholds. The remainder will fuel our organic developments. Rewarding our stakeholders will occur as a first step in 2 ways: First, a dividend, which I've already mentioned. Secondly, we want to associate our employees to the performance and the equity growth and ambition to see their ownership grow to as much as 10% of our capital by 2030 by launching dedicated stock-based incentive programs. The future developments of Ampere, Horse and other potential external investments would obviously be taken into account for these allocation rules as well as their application. Over time, our goal is for each entity to be self-funding. In the meanwhile, it's important here to reaffirm that despite the reengineering of the group, the existing bonds will remain under Renault SA, the issuer of the industrial activities of the group. Looking forward, each business could contemplate the use of its own financial instruments, depending on their needs and on their strategy, of course. So to wrap up, our financial revolution can be characterized by 4 key principles: first, enhanced accountability and transparency, both internally and externally; secondly, continued financial discipline on our operational nonnegotiables. thirdly, accelerate the performance, thanks to smart partnerships and investments to drive growth, margins, free cash flow and return on capital; and finally, more improved, predictable return to stakeholders. With this comes the end of our financial principles and outlook, and I hand it back to you, Luca, for the conclusion. Thank you.

So thank you, Thierry. So before moving on to the Q&A, I would like to add a few words. So today, as you have seen, we commit to one of the most sophisticated and progressive projects of corporate reengineering in our sector, having, I would say, the courage of embracing the change and getting prepared for it with new ideas, adapt the organization and also clear commitments. I think that incumbents have been much criticized in the past for being too shy to recognize that the world is changing. Here, you have a bunch of people, including myself, that are bringing, I would say, a very precise answer to it. The last years were difficult for everyone. But at Renault Group, I think we managed to consistently over deliver on each one of our promises. And I hope that this reassures you on our effectiveness as a team. We are people who do what they say. We are people who do what they say. I also want to say a big thank to the Renault Group team. After playing a couple of tough championships together, I can say it's one of the best teams in the sector and certainly one of the most motivated. Now it's -- I think it's time to look at the Renault Group from another perspective and under a new light. Finally, you have probably noticed that we have talked very little about the alliance. Today's topic is focused on Renault Group and our strategy. It works by itself. And beyond that, the alliance opens yet further opportunities. For a few months, we have been working with Nissan and Mitsubishi on very, very concrete projects with the idea to reboost the alliance under the leadership of our Chairman, Jean-Dominique Senard, [indiscernible] we are determined to give it a strong future and a new chance. We are in a very positive dynamic with a constructive mindset. That's also why we want to be altogether to tell you more when we are ready in the weeks to come. So today, please, during the Q&A, let's concentrate on Renault Group strategy. And now I think we need a couple of seconds to set up the stage for the Q&A, and I will be open to your questions.

So now it's time to open the Q&A session. We will first take questions from the room. But if you are connecting on the webcast, just raise your hand, and we will also take your questions. So we will start with Pierre-Yves Quemener from Stifel, please.

Yes. Thank you. Very clear road map through '25, 2030. But first on 2023. How should we think about your profitability and free cash flow next year, given all the challenges ahead in terms of energy costs, labor costs and uncertainties regarding volumes. That would be my first question. And the second one is, in a world where volumes are very hard to call, at least the trends, do you think you are today rightly sized in Europe? Or maybe you are still too big?

I'll start with '23. Thanks for the question. Look, I think, first, a couple of things I would say though. If you look at the operational improvements that we've made over the last 2 years, they're really self-help. So it's not about capitalizing on market circumstances, et cetera. It's about fixing our cost structure, first and foremost, reducing our breakeven point, so that we no longer have the incentive to go do the bad thing and push metal, as Luca mentioned previously. From a pricing perspective, it was about aligning our cars to the pricing of the competition. It was about reviewing our discount schemes with the dealers. It was about going to the right channels. So this is not something that we're going to change, okay? So first element. Second element, I think what's important for us is we have a massive generation of new cars that are coming online right now. You've seen the first launches with their impacts this year with Jogger with Megane E-TECH. Now [indiscernible] is hitting the showrooms. All these programs have been very successful, in fact, have had performance that exceeds the expectations that we had from them. 2023 will be the first full year for all of these cars. First full year with Jogger, first full year with Megane electric, first full year with [indiscernible]. Then we'll have a 7-seat car coming up next year. And then going into 2024, we'll have the next [indiscernible] vehicle. So for us...

We'll also have CLIO phase 2.

We'll have CLIO phase 2, you're absolutely right as well. So for us, it's -- that's the key lever, right? And for these cars, in all transparency, we're not talking 10% or 20% price improvement versus the prior car. We're talking cars that make unitary profit that's multiple times the cars that they replace, okay? So it's a massive lever for us. In addition to that, I would say, our order book remains very, very strong. So we do stress tests and we look at what would happen if the demand continues to drop. And in fact, with a 20% reduction in demand, we're not coming back to a normal level of order book before well into 2023. So in a way, we've got a security coming from a very strong order book. That being said, it's clear that we're going to have headwinds from a cost perspective and, in particular, from energy, et cetera. But we feel very comfortable that price and productivity and model mix can more than offset these impacts. So we look at '23 in a positive fashion and certainly not with the view of going back financially, either on profit or on cash.

Maybe a short answer to your second question, but maybe I complement what Thierry was saying. Actually, we were expecting the -- with the components coming back and the possibility to produce and to deliver cars to actually see our own demand going down, it's actually going up. So I mean, everybody talks about recession. It's like everybody wants to create some kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy that the thing is not working. But in our case, it's actually going up. So that means that we enter 2023 with a very solid order bank, and we'll have to deliver cars and we will sell cars because they are coming new products that are normally do volume and Astral, but also normally, the facelift of the CLIO is always a major event for Renault because it's always been like our bread and butter in the past. So I'm -- it's tough. It's a tough environment, we know. So we stay very prudent in our assumption. But to answer to your question, we assume a very conservative market level for 2023. And without -- even with this, we know that in average we are beyond the 100% capacity utilization in Europe. So it's just a matter of getting the parts, right? And hopefully, this is going to get better in 2023. So we will continue to work. If we see there is a chance to rightsize, we'll go down, right? But what I can see, with very conservative assumption, is that we are above 100% already next year.

Next question from George Galliers-Pratt, Goldman Sachs.

The first question I had was around Horse. Obviously, Renault has a very strong historic expertise in internal combustion engines, and you're now putting that into a 50-50 JV. Is it reasonable for your shareholders to expect that you will receive some financial consideration as part of this arrangement, namely specifically a cash consideration for it. The second question was on Ampere. How dependent on a successful IPO is Ampere if it's going to meet the targets you've laid out for both the midterm and the longer term? In the event that the IPO has to be deferred due to market conditions, can Ampere still meet the objectives and the financial targets you've laid out?

Yes. I mean you can comment both.

Yes. So on Horse, in the first stage, no. So it's a contribution of assets from the 2 parties. However, we -- let's say, we'll strongly pursue opportunities to bring further partners in this organization, which then, at a later stage, could contribute cash and bring cash to the group. What I would say though, importantly though, as I mentioned, it brings productivity. So it's a game changer for us from a cost perspective. Even though we're going to buy engines and powertrains from a supplier, thanks to the scale and the technology that the 2 partners bring, we're actually going to pay less than we did to manufacture our engines and gearbox coming -- going forward. And I mentioned the figure of EUR 2.5 billion of savings over the period of the plan. So that alone, just through the mechanics of scale, is a huge financial benefit for us. Then afterwards, absolutely, we'll try to see if we can find external partners to join the party. I think you've seen -- we've expressed what type of partners we think would bring added value to that organization. And then as I said also in the presentation, this is a business that will generate cash structurally, and we'll own a portion of it. So there's a dividend stream.

That's for a long time.

For a long time, absolutely.

So maybe I can say one thing on the Horse. It's like a guy that is doing engines in an OEM will always find a customer. So he's not particularly motivated, right? Because you always sign an engineer to fit your engine. But when you jump into the swimming pool where you have to go in the market and sell to others, then you can -- you got to deliver productivity costs. So there is also a psychological effect of being somehow serving a larger portfolio of customer. This is also very important. It's very, very important. And on the -- we think from the discussion we had with different, let's say, potential investors that especially the oil and gas industry has all interest at engaging with people that are controlling the hardware. Because if you want to reinvent combustion, okay, and bring ultra-low carbon fuel, even for products that are in the market right now, then you need to cooperate with people that are doing the hardware. And that's -- so potentially, this would be the next step for Horse, but we're not ready right now to announce anything. But it will be a very interesting construction.

And then on Ampere, as I expressed in the presentation, Ampere already exists. So it has the manufacturing footprint. It has the technology. In fact, in the short-term range that we're rolling out for Ampere, most of the investment is already behind us. So we have quite a limited amount of cash burn. Nothing close to pure EV players that you can see out there that start from scratch. So we can absolutely develop Ampere without access to external capital. However, as you've seen, our approach is to map out the value chain and see where we want to invest. Having external capital bring in some additional resource. Will be an opportunity for us to capture a bigger portion of that value chain over time. We can still grow the business on our own. It was self-funded. It was already this way in the previous version of the Renaulution plan. Since then, we're rather ahead of the curve. But obviously, the IPO is an opportunity to accelerate.

We now have a question from [indiscernible]

First question, could you give us more details on your plans regarding Alpine? And could an IPO be under consideration in the mid to long term? And second question on OS, could you give us more color on the financials, especially on profitability, these kind of figures today and probably longer term within the new structure?

I answer part of the Alpine story.

Yes.

Okay. So I mean, you have to look at Alpine as a combination of, let's say, the racing activities, which have a value, especially the Formula 1. But also racing is for the automotive industry, was a little bit like defense is for the general industry. So it's the place where you experiment, you push the boundaries, et cetera, and then you move that back to serious production. We did it with the E-TECH. the E-TECH comes from the original hybrid of Formula 1. It's just an example. So I think we have a core of high-tech capability, with 50% of the people are engineers, so it's a tech company. And what we try to do, we take advantage of the discontinuity of transformation to electric to actually position Alpine as a high-end EV player with a full lineup, from small hot hatch city car to premium D- and E-segment cars, all electric and we try to develop the thing, let's say, globally because that was the original idea when we painted the car in blue in the Formula 1, was to prepare for some years the brand to be well known around the world. Because you have like I don't know what is the number, Laurent, it's like 50 million people looking at GP every or more? Yes. 50 million people every other week looking at us. And so you see the awareness level of Alpine. That was like a niche brand only known potential in France like this, right? And this is the preparation to get, let's say, aware but also credibility and pedigree. So we think that the combination of this, the EV, leveraging also alliance platform like CMF, BEV, CMF-EV plus other things that we are coming up with gives Alpine an advantage because it's an asset-light model, okay? We will be able to deliver double-digit thing and growth, let's say, mechanically because we want to make it -- I don't think we gave volume target for Alpine.

We gave revenue target.

So we have the potentially 5 or 6 cars to make Alpine a relevant player on the high end of the EV. This is still [indiscernible] of yesterday. And yes, so I think we can make a very, very good story. I mean you look at the IPO of Porsche, which I, of course, know very well. I mean, in a way, it's kind of heritage, sports, electric, yes. I don't have to add anything. You know it better.

Okay. Next question is coming from the press, Gilles Guillaume, Reuters.

Sorry, we didn't address the question on Horse. Just to finish. I mean, look, I would say, Horse, the way it's designed is to be cash generating. A lot of the investments in Horse will be at least a regulatory investment that's taking place today with Euro 7 will be behind us soon. So the investment level, it's going to reduce over time. And structurally cash generating, we're talking a business that has EBITDA double digit.

Okay. So this time next question from the press, Gilles Guillaume, Reuters.

Guillaume from Reuters. Regarding the change of profile of the company, carmakers have long been very jealous of their own technologies. How will you ensure in the future then with multiplying so much the partnerships that you will remain in control of the different texts of Renault? And another question regarding Nissan. I understand that you will make announcements in the coming weeks, but the fact that there is not a single word on the common projects today, does it mean that Renault is getting ready to do without its historic partners?

Now on this one, I was clear before the start of the session. So let's talk about Alliance when we already talk about it. I think it's important also for us, even in a marriage, to have our own hobbies and our own life, okay? I think it makes the relationship a little bit more solid and balanced. So one of my target was to find a way to get a strategy for Renault that works properly. So we need -- my job is to make sure that Renault can walk on its own legs, okay? But of course, nobody here doubts about the necessity to continue to nurture the relation with Nissan and Mitsubishi also for the future. That's for sure. Yes. The way -- the question is, how are we going to do it? But this is some intensive discussion and negotiations we're having right now, which we will probably unveil when we have a clear understanding from both sides. So on the technology side, I'll probably ask support of our lead technical boss, Gilles, but this kind of idea that you have to own the technology, et cetera, what does it mean owning the technology, right? And especially when, let's say, the technology we have been working so far is a mature technology where you optimize, you have a marginal gain. But now the real story is to create new technology. And our bet is if I do something on semiconductor centralized electronic architecture, and I do that on a garage in [indiscernible] along with 3 engineers, it will be -- I guess there are more chances to learn and to do stronger things if I do it with Qualcomm. It's kind of pretty easy concept in a way. And so we're trying to partner with the top guys in the world to actually find solutions for the technology of the future. So what we're trying to do here is to actually innovate, right? So innovation, you can even talk to university professors, et cetera, et cetera. They all are in a network. They all exchange because they have to innovate. And that's what we do at the corporate level, right? So Gilles, do you want to add something? Please.

It's working. Okay. Well, to make it short, collaboration, We have a lot of cooperation going and we have announced some of them today. But at the end of the day, we bundle all the -- all this collaboration is unique products. So of course, we will have the rights and the IP will be shared on all each and every collaboration, and we will be able to bundle this collaboration in unique cars. And at the end of the day, what matters is the car. So to me, it's faster, it's cheaper. It's, I would say, worldwide, as you saw. And then we can assemble kind of unique cars, that's what we are aiming at. So no problem in terms of IP, collaboration is faster and quicker.

I mean take example of the man-machine interface of the Megane electric, okay? So what we decided is that we would go on Android-based concept and we did it with Google. But it's not that the Google guys, they sent us a USB stick and we put it into the thing. We worked 3, 4 years. And you have hundred of engineers in the south of France that develop integrated, this thing develop some services, some functional that only the one that controls [indiscernible] can do. So and the result is this thing is probably the best man-machine interface system in the all volume industry. This is a fact. I'm not saying this. These are specialists, people that journalists that know what they're talking about. So the good thing is a customer can buy a very good, let's say, infotainment system, that works perfectly, smoothly with his mobile phone. Because remember that 70% of the mobile phones you have in the pocket, they work on Android. So what counts for us is that are we bringing a new good product to our customers because this is the only way to make money, if you have good solutions.

Next question is from Thomas Besson, Kepler Cheuvreux.

I have a few questions as well. First -- sorry, I mention Nissan. You talked about the JV.

You don't have to apologize.

No, no, you didn't want us to talk about it, but it's not about the Alliance. You set up this new JV with Geely this morning which is a positive surprise. Some of the IP that you bring was understood to be partly owned by Nissan. Can you confirm that this has been cleared with Nissan before you set up the JV and this is not affecting your discussions with them or everything else we'll know when you're ready to speak about it? The first question. The second, can you explain us, understand a bit more what you plan with the structure of [indiscernible]. So you say you want to keep a strong control of it. So I guess that's 50%, 60% of it. You have already a cornerstone investor. We understand that both Nissan and Mitsubishi would begin to invest in it. So I mean, to some extent, you could say the external value of the business is validated by these cornerstone investors. So do you really need to have an IPO because the free float would be substantially limited, even lower than for Porsche or other businesses that we have seen. What would an IPO bring to the party if you have so many people already interested as partners? And finally, more of a structural question, not just for you, but for making cars in Europe. Energy costs are going to be higher for a very long time. So how does it affect your view of your capability or anybody's capability to make competitive BEVs and competitive batteries in Europe with energy costs that are going to be a multiple of what they are in other regions? So do you think we need, as some of your peers I think we need, maybe a bit more protectionism for auto assembly in Europe?

Okay. So let's say, the -- of course, -- of course, the -- when we created this partnership with Geely, we looked at all the elements. And remember that from a pure powertrain point of view, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Renault, unfortunately, deviated a lot, okay? So what we are putting into the perimeter of Horse is something very different than -- it's not a Nissan and Mitsubishi technology, okay, because you have E-TECH, et cetera, et cetera. So you look at this opportunity, and that's what we did. Now the IP discussion for me is not a religious discussion, it's a business discussion, right? For IP, you can pay if needed, yes? And remember that we have IP from Nissan and some of our, I think of Mitsubishi. But they also have a lot of IP of Renault because we did the thing for 20 years together. So we can proceed on this. And this will be one of the discussions that we will try to clarify with Nissan and Mitsubishi in the next weeks. Because we actually have to, let's say, discuss and solve legacy IPs but also in the way in the future we want to share that and trade that, okay? So let me stop here because you're bringing me always back to the Alliance when I want to talk about Renault.

Yes. On Ampere, it's a bit early to have an open discussion about the capital structure. You're absolutely right, Renault will keep a strong majority. It's the future of the Renault brand. So there is no question of losing majority or deconsolidating that business. So that's the first thing. On the rest of it, as we said, we're trying to find cornerstones that fit in the ecosystem. So that -- it's not cornerstone for cornerstone, it's cornerstones really sort of deep strategic people that can bring something to the value chain. We're actively pursuing more cornerstones. The Alliance is a potential incremental investor. Even with the cornerstones that we're pursuing and a potential investment from the Alliance, we feel that there is sufficient space to have a float that will be attractive on the market.

I mean we know the rules of the game when you do this kind of thing, right? So we know we had to leave a substantial part floating. We know it. Although you actually recommended also both from companies that leave a very limited floating but -- into the IPO, but that's another story.

Then there was the...

I mean the energy cost is a big challenge. Let's say, in a way, this thing is a challenge. But I think long term, that will give us somehow a leverage to make our operation more efficient, okay? Thierry was saying that the work that has been done on the industrial side, we are today probably, because of what we did on the -- what you call metaverse or digital twin, whatever you want to call it, makes -- puts Renault in the position to be the only OEM in Europe that can measure real time, the consumption of even the drill that has been 2 minutes before charge with the battery that the operator is using on the line. This is the level where we are. So we can measure, we can measure real time across all the plants on the planet real-time the energy consumption of the small piece of the whole system. Because of that, even before the energy crisis came, because we had to reduce costs, we were already from 2021 working hard. And I think that Jose, with the team, probably they will get to more than 10%, I would say probably 11%, 12% energy consumption reduction despite the increase of the volume in production, et cetera, than 2021. And we are actually -- we said today 30%, but we'll probably hit -- our target is to hit 40% energy reduction from now to 2025. We do it by a lot of initiatives. I will mention you one because it's more linked to Ampere. Electricity [indiscernible] will be the first plant in Europe to have deep geothermal energy coming from the ground that will actually move the old plant. So when you are under pressure, you tend to find solution. And maybe in the long run, we will be less dependent from different sources that you cannot control and much lower in consumption. So I see it as a positive challenge. In the short term, of course, it has impact on the cost of the thing. But yes. Does it answer to the question or...

And we will now take a question from Philippe Houchois, Jefferies.

Yes. I've got 2 questions, please. The first one is on the logic of the IPO for Ampere. I know we've seen Porsche, great success, but not so much for the parent company. We see no benefit to the valuation, and I can have a long list of examples of that nature. If I think back being a shareholder of Renault over the years has been a painful ride, if you would to agree with that, sorry, it's been a painful ride to be a shareholder of Renault. And I'm just trying to understand, are you telling us you'll do a cash call on and ask the shareholders to contribute cash to Ampere? Or could we think that as you look at other sources of capital, if you in the ones that are still on the balance sheet and probably badly utilized could be a source of funding and we could actually become shareholders of Ampere without taking cash out of our pockets given the history? That was my question. And the other question is more on the industry. And you mentioned, Luca, that no software has a life expectancy of a few months and in cars 7 years for a number of decades now. But then battery is going to have a life of maybe 20 years. And I'm just wondering, as you look at the Ampere structure and how you try to reinvent maybe part of your business, how you manage these different time horizons and how you rethink the way cars are developed so that you can balance the normal [indiscernible] don't have to last 7 years, they can last longer or less? And how do you reduce powertrain, how you rethink the way resources are allocated to car between software, the [indiscernible] and the energy sources?

The first one. Okay. Look, on the logic of Ampere, and I say the logic of Ampere first because I think you have to look at the project, not specifically the IPO. So first, the first reason we're doing, hopefully it's clear, is we think it's a different business altogether. So it needs to be separated. It needs to be run with the right level of autonomy, have its own processes, et cetera, et cetera.

[indiscernible] on the second question.

For example.

It's a different sport.

It's a different sport.

Different value chain and...

So that's the first thing, right? The second part of doing the IPO, it's an opportunity to access external cash. It's really as simple as that. It's -- we've explained how we want to develop it. By getting external cash, we can just accelerate investment into the value chain. Now if you think about being a shareholder of Renault, we're not doing Ampere as a financial scheme to boost the share ownership of Renault, we're doing it for the first 2 reasons that I mentioned. What we're trying to do to boost the shareholding value of Renault is improving the performance, it's doing better cars, it's reducing our fixed cost, it's all the performance drivers that we've talked about today. That's what ultimately is going to drive the value, right? Now that being said, if you look at the parts of our portfolio today, it's hard to think that there's not some level of undervaluation of some of the assets that we've got added in the business. So if by doing the IPO we have an opportunity to give more transparency to that and potentially unlock some of the discount that we've got at the group level, great. But again, that's not why we're doing it.

And the other question is, I try to answer. I mean the question would require a very complex answer, but I'm going to try to answer in a simple way. Ampere is designed as a pure player. So for example, we will separate hardware engineering from software engineering, as simple as that. So it's more in the world of this. In a way it is organized, okay, with 35% technical people. It's closer to a Tesla, et cetera. It's born like this, right? So that's what we're doing. And of course, we'll have to learn on how to separate the cycles, et cetera. But I think we're going to make it. I think it's about practicing every day a new sports, but we have a good element. I mean the manufacturing base is very strong. It will be very pure, only doing that. The software people that we have in the South of France are the people that we're doing like for 15 years mobile phones and then we're integrating to the things that they know how to do it. So I think we have all the ingredients. And then we have to practice. And the partnership will, I think, boost our ability to learn from this new world, will probably give us a speed into the thing. And we will share the pain and the risk for sure, but we are completely aware of it. That's exactly why we're doing it. This is the reason why we're doing it. These are recognizing that this is a different sport.

Okay. Next question will be on video, José Asumendi, JPMorgan.

So I'll just [indiscernible] the question one by one. Three items, please. The first one, Luca, can you speak a little bit around Ampere, what makes you so confident around the business model, how you want to set up and how you want to create this path to breakeven in the coming years. So a little bit about the nuts and bolts of setting up the business and getting breakeven. And then second, third, Thierry, can you comment a little bit around the CapEx requirements for the battery and the light commercial vehicle business? Some comments around CapEx. I'd also love to hear that, looked like you presented very interesting margin progression for the brand in the coming years. A proportion of revenues will Dacia contribute to the core business by 2025 or '26. Can you give us some magnitude of the revenue contribution you will have from Dacia in the group. It sounds like there will be a mix improvement there.

You want me to comment on Ampere?

Sure.

I mean the first thing I want to say is that Renault, and that was my decision, Renault started a long time ago doing electric cars. And then probably there was -- for whatever reason, there was a little bit of a hesitation and many other players actually took the space that was Renault's space, but we never stopped doing them, okay? So when I came here a couple of years ago, I recognized that this was one of the strengths of the company because of the work we were doing in the Alliance, with the platform, because of our competence, because there were hundreds of thousands of cars running around and the knowledge of the battery, the relationship with LG. And so we decided 2 years ago to really boost the thing and focus and get back to our leading position on the EV game, okay? And this is a number of decisions from deciding to source cobalt in Morocco because we want to be sure that there are -- the old supply chain is completely defendable in a way, okay? Two, what we're going to do on third life of the battery or repurposing of the battery, the re-factory and the whole thing. And so we look at the whole thing. So I consider that Renault is today one of the OEMs better positioned to actually serve the way of EVs that comes from -- especially customer demand but also will be forced by regulation accelerated. This is a reality. Now Ampere, when we're talking about 1 million car in Europe, we are not like talking about a small player. This thing will fight against the Volkswagen in terms of volume in Europe. This is the reality, okay? And that's what we want to do. We have a very strong base. We are separating the engineering, putting the engineering in Ampere, so specializing engines that already most of them do these things. we are organizing a plant and trying to turn the whole electric north pole to pure EV, cleaning up the thing. We made a decision like to turn Cléon into 100% electric motor production, let's say, plant. We were doing combustion engine there. The deal with Valeo allows us to really scale and share -- and have a complementary range of the thing. We resourced the casing from Serbia to one of the plants in the north. So we have done the job, and now we are ready to create a real leader on the EV. And going back to the point where Renault was a strong player on the EV, I think it is the right time. And I don't know what I have to say, Jose, but we have -- I think by the end of 2023, we probably will have 80% of the investment on Ampere already done because we did CMF-EV with Nissan, Mitsubishi, because we are investing on the small electric platform, what we call CMF-BEV. So we are ready. It's just like combining the components and do the transformer, like that's what -- where we are. So the car will come. Megane is out. You have SCÉNIC. You have Renault 4, Renault 5. [indiscernible] and other things that will come. But now, not in 2030.

And on the CapEx requirements for Ampere and for battery in particular, it's -- I think it's a perfect illustration of the approach that we're taking, right? We're not putting EUR 20 billion on the table to build the Jogger factory. We have a partnership with Envision in which Nissan has a stake, okay? That's going to build batteries close to our ecosystem and [indiscernible].

It's actually in the plant.

In the plant. We have a minority investment in Verkor that will do the same, produce batteries for us, without us having to have the cash outlay on our own. We did a JV with Minth for the battery casing activity, again in the same area. So that's our approach, right? We're trying to keep the CapEx level as low as possible. From an entry ticket per car perspective, it doesn't cost more for us to develop a new electric car than it does a new ICE vehicle because we have that experience, because we've been making electric vehicles for 15 years now. So it's a like-for-like thing. There will be more investment in Ampere because that's a business that we want to develop. However, you can see that we're guiding around 11% of R&D and CapEx for Ampere, which is higher than the average level of the group, but still a pretty reasonable level. In fact, it's the level we were at, at the total group a couple of years ago. So we're trying to have this balance to keep it relatively low. On LCV, I think there's 2 parts of LCV. There is, would say, the core part and then the 2 new ventures that Luca mentioned in the presentation. On the core part, a lot of the investment tends to be behind us. On the 2 new parts, the investment is quite significant, and that's why we're doing a partnership. LCV investments tend to be higher than passenger cars because the LCVs have more versions. And typically, they have a longer life cycle and so on. On FlexEVan and on the Hyvia areas, that's one of the reasons why we decided to partner with someone else with whom we can share the investments and share the...

And the technology.

And the technology. And then on the Dacia question, it's roughly 20% today. I think what's important is that Dacia is going to continue to grow. It's growing today. It's one of the only brands today that's growing in a very depressed market, thanks to the crystal clear value proposition that it has, right? And I think we explained what we were going to do from expansion of the range there. So more to come on Dacia. Definitely a key lever to our profitability.

Next question from Albertina [indiscernible].

Just wanted to -- a couple of questions. Come back to the Alpine IPO question. You had a look at a very long silence, full of meaning and significance but hard to write. Are you considering an IPO of Alpine longer term down the road? I didn't kind of understand whether that is the case or not. And the second question is jobs. You cited the jobs, how many people will work for Ampere, how many people will work for Horse. That's a few thousand people, but not as many as the over 100,000 that the group has today. So how will be the jobs allocated within the group? Will there be job cuts in France and outside? Is there any thinking along those lines? Just what will the implications be for the job? And then just a bigger question. Philosophically, when you have a crisis, for example, a chip shortage, one thing is, if you are the CEO of one company, one group, one strategy, it's easy to be reactive. Is it as easy to be reactive when you are splitting in separate businesses and will have other investors? How do those -- how do you see things moving forward when a huge crisis strikes? Do you think it will be easy or the same or maybe more complicated and decision-making could take longer? Probably not, but just curious about that.

No, Alpine -- I mean, Alpine, we still have to align all the pieces. That's why we haven't been -- let's say we've been clear about our ambition but not precise on how we want to do this. So I don't think -- I think the first priority for us will be to get some partner investor that can help us boosting and enabling this kind of plan rather than going into an IPO scheme. But give us the time, because this plan will require a lot of energy from the management to -- and we probably need some time to execute one after the other. So we're trying to take the things and put them in the right order. Priority will be to create Ampere and Horse. And then we will attack one of the things -- one after the other, okay? And this is important because we want to be able to execute properly each one of them. What you have to keep in mind and I hope that you value that is that we are taking a completely different approach. So we are opening up, we're partnering, we are allowing some investors that make sense to get into the capital of some of the units. So that's what we have to retain from today's conversation, is that we change the way we proceed. And we will do that one after the other. So there is potential also for Alpine. But first, we have to prove that the thing is solid, right? So that is solid, that it grows, that we have the products, that we have -- I think there is a great chance to see Alpine becoming a growing business because we have been [indiscernible] I can't that today. On the job side, I mean, all of this is not a restructuring exercise. This is a development exercise, right? So we are not here to propose a plan to cut jobs. On the contrary, probably I think there will be potentially opportunity to create jobs, high-value-added jobs. It is clear that we are trying to give to France a certain centrality into the system because it makes sense, because the same thing to the Germans in Germany or the Japanese in Japan and the Americans in America. So they actually consolidate their, let's say, domestic operation. That always have a very important role into the equation, okay? And honestly, when you look at the situation in France that as a team we found, that was not very glorious. I had issues everywhere. In [indiscernible], we don't know what to do. In [indiscernible], we didn't know what to do. in [indiscernible] and the way there was a question mark, et cetera. So I have tried to organize a plan that will bring all this operation on the higher parts of the value chain because new business are coming. Think of the [indiscernible] story. I mean I remember when we went with Jean-Dominique the first time to tell these guys that we wanted to turn the plant into a circular economy thing, they looked at us like this, like they were completely crazy. You go now to [indiscernible]? And the people are proud to do what they are doing, right? So we had to reinvent a lot of stuff. So I repeat, this is not, let's say, a job cutting exercise. Honestly, I don't want to share the numbers because I kind of -- I'm not particularly proud of it because our job of people like us is to create opportunity. But honestly, the restructuring of Renault was a very brutal exercise. As you like numbers, and you like to check, check how many people we were 3 years ago and how many people we are now. I think we did the job. Now it's time to position the people on the right jobs. When you create a group that is lighter, that is doing, let's say, coordination, making decision on what makes sense, and this answer to your second question, the group will stay very, very strong because it will be -- it will do arbitrage, it will do long-term orientation. We'll have the time to change. We will have expertise centers that can share expertise with the other units, et cetera, et cetera. But the real life of the thing happens in the business. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to push people down into the units. So closer to the business, closer to the performance, measured with a set of transparent KPIs that nobody can discuss. I used the expression of the policeman no place to hide because it's financial guy, but it's actually closer to where the thing happens. So we can create a lot of jobs. We are doing the decision on who goes to Ampere, who goes to The Future Is NEUTRAL. I can tell you that there are a lot of times we are finding opportunities for people that were hidden in this big pyramid of Renault, like any OEM, at the second, third and fourth level, and we are giving them top jobs because they are more roundish, yes? So that's -- this is what is happening. So it's not about cutting jobs. It's about pushing the people close where the business is, right?

Yes, the question on chip shortage and which we are looking.

No, that's what I said. I mean, in terms of governance, I mean, there are 2 criterias from a financial point of view that we look at. It's the cash and it's ROCE, right? Yes? So it's very simple, we will always decide by looking at that, okay? The other one being the satisfaction of our customers, okay? But this is not -- it will bring them result. But this is what we look at, okay? So the group, if we have a very transparent and factual management of the business, also through the data, okay, so the tools that will help us to decide, then the criteria is very clear to everybody. If I have to give more ships to Dacia because it makes more money, et cetera, et cetera, I'm going to give it to Dacia. That's actually what we do today. That's why we're driving the results like this.

In fact, when we have a crisis like this, the first thing we do is we build a small dedicated team to attack it and we do a war room. And so it's an illustration of how having dedicated teams to specific topics like that is actually more effective. And if we try to manage the chip shortage with the usual processes, we don't get there, so we isolate a group of people and dedicate them to this. And this is exactly in line with what we're trying to do with the realignment.

We now have a question from Stephen Reitman, Societe Generale.

Thank you very much for this presentation today. And first, I'd like to endorse as well what you say about the quality of your user interface you've introduced on your current generation models on the Megane and even in Astral, it is actually very, very impressive comparing to a lot of what's out there in the system. I have two questions. First of all, you made a comment about the efficiency already that you're achieving in your electricity, which you were saying is as good as anyone else one might think of in the industry. So I just wonder if you could give us maybe some KPIs in terms of how you're measuring that and to give some proof points on that. And the second thing, you were talking about, I think, within Power, obviously, you were talking about the margin expectations you have at Dacia, over 10% at the moment, significantly increasing that as well. And you also mentioned the profitability or your LCV business. So are you planning to give information and give data in future about the profitability also of the Renault brand, where it is today maybe and where you think it might go in the future? You mentioned about improving the contribution margin on the vehicle and the revenue that you need to achieve on that. But where it is today and where it might be in the future?

Okay. So electricity, so basically, we are -- we think we are able to maybe not at the ramp-up because you need to fix and train and fine-tune the thing. But we think we are able to produce a car below 10 hours, 10 hours. So look at what the other declare, and you will see that we are not at the level. We are better than what the others are saying, okay? This is one thing. And we will probably, compared to today, especially on platform like CMF-BEV, which is, for us, the big challenge. So we took the challenge of producing a small compact City BEV in France, okay? So the whole team has been working very, very hard to achieve -- and it is driving a lot of decision, right decision, and this project is very efficient. Actually, we will be the first one to be in the market from the big OEMs with the small pure BV small car platform in Europe. So if you want to democratize EV, you don't do that with big cars, et cetera. You do it with small car in Europe because it's 25%, 30% of the market. And we will be in the market at least 1 year before the others with a very, very competitive platform. So I think we have a 35% difference between the cost of Megane and the one that we're bringing, okay? In terms of transformation value, the manufacturing cost of this, because of all the projects, the volume, what we are doing, the decision, the fact that this becomes a pure EV thing, we can slash transformation costs by 50%. So you will see in the north of France a 3-digit number when it comes to transformation value. And that's our target. That's what we're working for. And did that answer your question?

And sorry, on the visibility by brand, I think we've given today quite a clear picture of the way we're going to measure the performance of the business. So we're going to stick to those 5 P&Ls, and that's gradually how the external reporting will evolve over time. So there's no plan of giving separately data from Renault on a recurring basis. Obviously, Ampere has a big portion of Renault. So as Ampere grows, you will see by proxy, at least the EV part of Renault. What I can tell you is that Renault was a loss-making brand a couple of years ago, and it's a profit-making brand today, automotive COP. So it's moving in the right direction. And all the elements that Luca explained in terms of uplifting the brands, et cetera, are going to enable us to continue that journey.

So our commitment is that we bring the Renault brand at the level of the best competitive in terms of profitability. We were losing money a couple of years ago. We are in the game. We are profitable now. So with the -- if we have the right mix of products in terms of segments, et cetera, we continue like this, I think we can. We can put it in the game. Right?

Next question from Luca Ciferri, Automotive News.

Flexis is starting as a cooperation with another automaker that you cannot name today that will develop...

I didn't say automaker, I'd say OEM.

Okay. Yes. That is starting as a joint vendor. But given that over time, all the electric vehicle should be electric, it's fair to say that over time, Flexis will become Renault like commercial vehicle are, and that's the question number one. Question number two is on Alpine. I think you're expanding substantially the reach and also the size of the Alpine range. With the Renaulution plan, you said that Renault was stopping with C+ cars. So you're saying here will come the crossover and an e-crossover. I suppose with architectures that we will get from your partner that is investing in Horse.

In fact, I said Renault would stop to CC plus, I didn't say Alpine, right? So let's say, of course, Alpine is probably, if you think about it, the -- it's a tough game this one, and I know it pretty well, having also worked for premium brands. But I think Alpine, if we grow it, if we have the right ingredients and technology, which we might have is actually the first opportunity, serious opportunity of the Renault Group to grab some space on the [indiscernible] market, let's put like these, people that are ready to put money on cars because historically, we have been trying to do that with Renault 25, it started like before the war with Renault Astral like I never worked at Safran and Versatis, and [indiscernible] it never worked because the Renault brand -- Renault is a proper brand. It's a kind of an inclusive brand. And then you cannot stretch it. But Alpine is a different story, okay? And that's a great opportunity strategic -- and that's basically the plan. Now where we're going to get the platform, I can't answer today, Luca but yes. But we'll get a platform. I mean we have also platform, the Alliance that have been developed. So we have some options.

Okay. Next question from Julien [indiscernible]

Free short question for me. First, about Ampere IPO. Why can of multiples or valuation you think you can reach knowing that as one of our analysts suggested you will have a liquidity discount. That's the first question. Second, regarding your reorganization, I guess we'll have CEO, [indiscernible] since you want to give a great level of autonomy to each of this division. Who will be the CEO? Do you have already some ideas about that? And my last question is about the return on shareholders. You mentioned ordinary dividend reaching 75 -- up to 35% of net income from what would you start? I mean, what is the beginning. And would you open the way the door, sorry, to order distribution buybacks, special dividend, if you get some extra cash?

Most of that for you.

Yes. Okay. I'll start then. On the Ampere IPO, look, I think it's not for us to put a value on the table. I think it's actually from a lot of people in this room to tell us what Ampere should be worth. But for what it's worth, it's a low risk, high growth, a lot of the investment behind us, 1 million vehicles by 2030, double-digit op profit venture. So potentially, we think that -- and we're interested in getting everyone's point of view on ops valuation. On the CEOs, it's also too early that will be our CEO for Ampere, CEO for Horse, 2 separate companies. too early to give the names. And then on the dividend, as I said, our first priority is to return to investment grade. It's very important for us for our borrowing cost for the health of the company, et cetera. So the speed at which we'll come back to the 35% that I mentioned will depend on our ability to secure that. So the dividend payment will resume in 2023, but obviously, we will start at a level which will not endanger our path towards investment grade. And then in terms of returning value to shareholders in a different way, share buybacks, it's what you do when there's no other option, right? So not close to it, but we're in a dynamic of growth of trying to capture a bigger portion of the value chain of trying to expand our business with ideas. And so we're not running out of ideas just yet.

We'll now switch to get questions from webcast. So Alex [indiscernible]

I've got 2 questions. The first question is regarding the OS units. I would just like to understand the way the deal is being structured with Geely. I understand this is probably with [indiscernible] I suppose. But I'm trying to understand, would you share with us the number of units that you guys have versus the Geely units because it's -- I mean, to be fair, I'm a bit surprised that you're not getting any cash consideration or any EV consideration. Because to me, the Geely unit is probably close to 1 million. And I mean, anywhere between EUR 750,000 and 1 million and you're probably in the range of EUR 3 million to EUR 3.5 million, something like that. So I'm a bit surprised that you're not getting any cash. And still on OS, I'd like to understand what kind of margin are we talking about? I mean, I suppose it's not going to be a high-margin business, but are we talking about mid-single digit margin? Is it something that would that be reasonable? Or am I too far from where it is. That's my first, I would say bulk of question regarding Horse. And the second question, very quick. Free cash flow, a very ambitious and great target EUR 2 billion per year. If I look at my 2023, to be honest, unless there's a big contribution coming from working capital, I can't get EUR 2 billion without 8% margin in 2023. So am I missing something there? Those are my 2 questions.

Okay. So on the structure with Geely, it's a 50-50 structure with co-decision making on all key topics. The valuation of the different pieces supports the 50-50 split, which explains why there is no cash consideration at least at this stage in the partnership. So we've done, as you can imagine, a lot of due diligence, both ways to come to this situation. But our view is that this 50-50 partnership is totally justified by the assets that are contributed by each party. On the margin of Horse, I think it's attractive from a cash perspective because it's structurally cash generating. From a level of margins, as I mentioned previously, I think over time, it needs to be sort of a low double-digit EBITDA type of profile over time. And then from a free cash flow perspective, look, I'll leave it up to you to do your own calculations, but we'll have free cash flow improvement in '23 versus '22 that will come from operating improvements, not from working capital or anything like that or mobilize financial dividends, but from operating improvements.

We stay on video for the next question from [indiscernible]

Can you hear me?

Yes, we hear you.

My name is [indiscernible]. Can I ask about the question on the negotiation with the Nissan and Mitsubishi to invest in your new Ampere company. It's not clear from Nissan's perspective, what the benefits are to join this Europe-based EV company. And would you explain the importance of these 2 partners join you and how you are persuading them to invest in Ampere. One more question. I know you're not comfortable asking about this a lot, but sorry, I'm journalist so, it is broadly understood that Nissan is in exchange for this negotiation to demanding you to lower the share the 30% share you have on them? And simply, are you ready for it? And do you think the French government will give the approval when you decide to do so?

So thanks for the try. I will not answer your second question. I can answer to the first one. I think if you want to stay in Europe, you've got to produce electric cars. It's very simple. And within the Ampere, let's say, you actually have 2 platforms or at least one platform that has been totally developed with the Alliance. This is the CMF-EV platform, okay? And then we have another platform that the small one that will also be produced there. And Nissan intention is also somehow to jump on that platform, okay? So you have products into the thing. It's going to be the best, let's say, one of the best manufacturing poles to -- in Europe to produce electric cars, very, very competitive. We have always opened the door to Nissan for all this project, actually. We always say that it's their decision whether they want to enter because it's Nissan's decision. But we are trying to make the, let's say, the proposal very, very attractive to them so that they can jump and participate to this project, which is a fantastic project. What can I say more? You have to ask a question to [indiscernible], but we are here to do business, and we want to attract Nissan and Mitsubishi to the game. It makes sense. We don't do it -- we don't come from a, let's say, a political point of view. We come from the business side. It's very simple. We can offer a very, very competitive platform. And by the way, the discussion we're having, for example, on the next-generation small car, by go in the right direction. So if you're in and there is a potential in upside to invest in this kind of thing, I mean, you do it. You don't make it too complicated, and add I don't know whatever speculation on whatever governance science fiction thing, you just do the thing because it makes sense. And the door is open. I hope it answers to your first question. The second one, I said, sorry, I don't want to answer to this kind of question today. We will do it at the due time when we will do it together.

So we will take the next question on the webcast from Daniel [indiscernible]

Can you hear me?

Yes, we are now.

Maybe first on the Revolution plan. It looks like the combined guidance of Ampere plus Power indicates high single digit, something like an 8% growth to the end of the decade. How does that split into volumes and inflation and pricing in your mind? And then the guidance also seems to indicate that Ampere by 2030 will be at a higher operating margin than Power. And if I get that right, what's the -- what are the key drivers behind that ambition? And more broadly, Luca, maybe on the strategic plan, of course, the strategic plan has kind of a hockey stick to the top and the right as you does as well. I think probably plans like this need them. But how much of that is kind of the growth in the sector, right? So how much is the profit pool for you that you're addressing expanding? And how much is it you taking share from competitors within that revenue pool that you're addressing?

Which one?

Which your -- the third part of your question is on which part specifically?

Kind of your entire business, right? Because Luca, on the building, you said there's a substantial opportunity for you opening up. That's why you are diversifying. I'm just wondering, right, in that strategic plan and the growth you're seeing, how much of that is you capturing the market opportunity? And how much of that is you competing against other OEMs in that space for the pie?

So on the portion coming from volume and versus pricing, I mean for us, and specifically on Ampere, initially, it's -- a lot of it comes from volume, right? It's the launch of the new cars. So today, in Ampere, there's only one car. It's Megane electric. And so by '25, there will be SCÉNIC in addition to Megane Electric, Renault 5 and Renault 4 and potentially B-segments. So a lot of the profitability improvement and Ampere is actually volume leverage just as the new cars come online. Each one of these cars, though, taken in isolation would be relative to the group's margin today. So we're not talking just bringing new cars with a low profitability. It's a segment that commands higher margins. Which brings me a little bit to the second part of your question is why does Ampere come with a higher profitability level than Power. I think it depends highly on the range that we're addressing with Ampere. The average revenue per unit is higher on Ampere. There is a higher content of services as well that's attached to that business model. And there is a lower cost of distribution on the electric vehicle side. So structurally, Ampere has a path to a higher profitability than Power.

And the other thing is also on Ampere, we are designing Ampere from scratch. So we're going to put in terms of cost really the minimum necessary to run the business to focus on the high value-added things. So I'm not going to put like engineers to do body development, I can keep it at the group. But what is relevant for them, the battery, battery management system, the casing, et cetera, that will be on Ampere. And it makes sense. So we're going to design the thing as light as possible. And in fact, when you look at 10,000 people to do 1 million cars with the turnovers of -- I think it's a very good ratio.

And then on the third part of your question on the hockey stick. My view is a little bit different. We're saying we're going to improve by 3 points in the first part of the plan and 2 points in the second part of the plan. So I would say it's like an inverted hockey stick almost. But as I mentioned in the speech, what is clear is that gradually, we're moving the portfolio towards parts of the business that are sectors that grow more with structurally higher margins. So as we enter energy services and data services and mobilized as we enter other services in Ampere, et cetera, we are shifting the business model to having a bigger portion of our portfolio in areas that are structurally more profitable, okay? So I would say the first part of the plan is a lot driven by continued performance improvement on our side and launching the new vehicles, et cetera. In the second part of the plan, we start getting the fruit of the transformation of the portfolio that we're operating. Hopefully, that answers your question.

Maybe one follow-up, if I may. You just mentioned that the distribution cost within Ampere would be lower. Is there a different distribution plan for the EV only side of the business?

Different distribution of Ampere.

No, because, of course, we might have moving forward, new ways of selling cars, et cetera. But for me, it's very clear. I count on the collaboration with our distribution partner, okay? So I think there is a way for us to lower distribution costs by also taking out an unnecessary cost into the distribution, but still keeping our dealers, our salesmen, et cetera, et cetera, in the loop because they are one of the assets of incumbents, okay? And take the example of Dacia. Dacia is half sometimes 1/3 of the distribution cost of any volume competitor because it works marginally on, let's say, the assets of the Renault brand because we focus completely on retail because we have a very transparent and straightforward and controlled pricing policy because we don't do discount [indiscernible] So the story of the agency is actually motivated by 2 things. One is it's nothing more, it's nothing very sexy. It's just that you reduce theoretically, the margins to the dealer, so the distribution cost. And the second one is you kind of control the price, okay? But that comes at a high price, which is you have to bear the bloody stock of the cars. So when you do 10,000 cars, it's okay. But when you do 2 million cars, it's another game, believe me, because it just take, I don't know, 2 million cars, you have a stock of 3 months. You have, I don't know, 750,000 cars multiplied by 25, I don't know, 20,000 or 30,000. It's lots of money in working capital. And this is also what the role of the dealer is because you spread this thing amongst thousands of people that bear part of it. This is the reality of the story. I am always been a very big fan of doing the things with the dealer. It's possible. We will involve them into our new businesses. The example of the charging a supercharger into the -- is a good example. We are investing. They have the place. People will come and charge in a place that they know where they will be reassured when the thing will be maintained. [ FCI ] or mobilized financial service will finance to the dealer, the investment thing -- it's an example, but there might be hundreds of examples like this. I think that the dealer network is an asset, especially now, I think that the Renault dealers are very motivated. We went through very, very hard times. We are coming back. And I see, for example, the level of customer satisfaction into the dealer network, both sales and aftersales. We're going like this. And this is their credit and this is nothing more important in the car business and to make customers happy and not only in the car business.

Thank you, Luca. Thank you, Thierry. This Q&A session has come to an end. Any last words? So we're going to close this conference. The IR team, the press team remain at your disposal if you have any further questions. And have a good day, everyone.

Maybe I'll say a big thanks to all the people that prepared the presentation and organized all of this thing. I hope you enjoyed it. And yes, let's see each other as soon as possible. Thank you very much.