Rexel S.A. (RXL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this Rexel Capital Market Day. Two years after the launch of our Power Up 2025 strategic plan, we felt now was an excellent time to update you on our progress. Firstly, because we now see the effects of what we have launched 2 years ago, and I trust you will be impressed by that. [ Secondly, ] because 2024 is a good year to talk about Rexel's true underlying potential as it is clean from the strong tailwinds we benefited from previously. And thirdly, because we are ready for the next level, as we mentioned in the title of this presentation. We are indeed confident that we have established a strong platform delivering consistently at a higher level of performance on all parameters than the old Rexel. And we think this platform is solid enough to allow us to shoot higher with accelerated growth, high profitability and most importantly, more value for our customers and our partners. If I had to summarize in one word, the main difference between the presentation you're going to see today and the presentation from 2 years ago, this word would be confidence. 2 years ago, the Power Up 2025 strategy was a plan and an ambition. And today, it is a day-to-day reality for us. Internally, we have delivered on all topics in all countries. And externally, electrification has proven a solid reality and a powerful underlying trend that is here to stay, even if it -- if that can sometimes be stop and goes. So our goal today is to share with you a little bit of this confidence that we have in our strengths and in our future. Here is our agenda today. I would like first to reflect on our journey, which led us to build a faster, stronger and better Rexel. Then the team will detail with you what our winning formula is, and there is obviously no magic formula, but it would be too simple. But understanding better what makes our success is important when it comes to understanding our future. Then I will take back the floor with [indiscernible], our VP of Strategy, to tell you about the way we see our strategy in the next few years. I will do it in words and Laurent will have the heavy responsibility to finish and to translate that into figures. And then we'll have time for questions that I'm sure you will have many. Our speakers today are a large part of the Executive Committee of Rexel; Laurent Delabarre, our CFO, whom you all know, Sabine Haman, our CHRO; [indiscernible], in charge of Strategy; Isabelle Hoepfner, our General Counsel. But today, she will speak more about sustainability in which she leads the effort for Rexel. Thomas Moreau, CEO of France and responsible also for Italy; Robert Pfarrwaller, CEO of Austria and responsible also for Switzerland and Germany; Roger Little, responsible CEO of the U.S.A. and also overseas in Canada; and Guillaume Dubrule, the Chief Digital Officer of Rexel. So I would summarize Rexel's recent journey in 3 words: faster, stronger, better. Faster expansion of sales, stronger structural profitability and better performance when compared with the underlying market. Faster expansion of sales first. You know the figures of the recent past with an impressive 13% top line growth in 2022 and 2023. It compares to 1% growth in average between 2010 and 2016 and 3% between 2017 and 2021 when the company was starting its transformation. When you look into the various components of those 13%, you find that 1% comes from what we would call core volume, excluding the electrification categories. This is relatively similar to what we would have seen in the years 2010 in the old Rexel, and that is not surprising. What has clearly changed in the last few years is a 2% of additional volume linked to electrification trends, PV, EV, heat pumps, industrial automation. This is a very meaningful addition even though I think 2022 and the beginning of 2023 were particularly high. Then we have 6% of price. 2022, 2023 was a very high inflation period in which we demonstrated once again our ability to pass through price. And finally, 4% of M&A net of divestments. We will come back to that, but with 14 acquisitions, we were able to add consistently 4% every year to the top line and to do so in a value-creative way. As a consequence of that, our turnover jumped to close to EUR 20 billion after having been around EUR 13 billion during a decade. What is interesting to note on this graph is that we achieved this growth while in the same time, dividing by 2, the number of countries in which we are operating, 38 in 2014 and 19 today, with in particular, the divestments of Spain and Norway in the last 2 years. Our strategy here is very simple. Where we are present, our ambition is to be meaningful and excellent. On the profitability side, and here, I'm switching to the stronger parts. We also progressed in a very impressive way. Between 2019 and 2023, that you see on this graph, our EBITA jumped by 180 basis points, which, for us, is a big evolution. As a reminder, before 2019, we had fluctuated historically in the 4% to 5% range. It's interesting here again to take a closer look at the how, to sort out the self-help from the market help. On this slide, we have tried to give you as much indication as possible about that as this is obviously the #1 question we get in roadshows. We have broken down the 180 basis points into 5 building blocks; gross margin improvement, productivity, portfolio management, growth and mechanical net inflation impacts. And above each block, we have detailed the action plans, which led to the improvement. And below each block, we have listed the market factors, which may have also helped. If I take the first block, for example, gross margin. It's obviously a topic on which we have worked a lot. We have gone to more database pricing models, pushing us to be competitive only where we need and tailoring the pricing metrics to the exact profile of a given customer. We have concentrated our suppliers to be more important to a lower number of them. We have started to charge for advanced services, and we have also extracted synergies from the acquisitions that we have made with a lot of them flowing through gross margin. On top of those many self-help projects, it is possible, although not proven, that we may have benefited from a slight tailwind market effect due to the low availability of products. If I take the second and third blocks, productivity and portfolio management, here, it is obviously only about self-help. Growth is a drop-through on the impressive organic volume growth figures we were talking about in the slide before. Some of it is market related as we benefited from what I would qualify as exceptional conditions and a good market environment. But we also made intentional efforts to make the most of this environment through market share gains and focus on the right subsegments of the market, the accelerating subsegments. And then the last block has to do with the fact that the top line inflation, which we saw in the previous graph, 6% per year in the last 2 years, was faster than our cost inflation. A few remarks on this important graph. The first one to say that there is no dominant contributor here. It doesn't come from one effect that would have contributed to 180 basis points. Each block is between 30 and 50 bps. The second remark is to say that there is more self-help than market help. It's difficult to analyze precisely, but that is my strong internal belief. Third remark to say that the self-help program you are seeing are not finished, and we'll continue to deliver, but we will come back to that. And the fourth remark is to say that the market factors -- in the market factors, some of them probably are here to stay in the midterm. If I take electrification, for example, very clearly, and even inflation, you could make the argument that in a world of quick electrification, higher inflation than in the past may likely be part of the mix. So I really wanted to take the necessary time explaining the graph in details as it is crucial to understand our current performance and very helpful to think about the future. Another KPI, I wanted to talk about, is return on capital employed. We don't talk about it that often, as we tend to focus on EBITA, which is very close to that in short-term external communication. But it is obviously an important success metric to consider, especially because, as a distributor, we have a structurally lower operating margin, but compensated also by lower assets. And when you look at the ROCE calculation over the years, you see that we are now in strong value creation territory with ROCE at close to 14% and I have to mention here that we are restating the LBO step-up, which frankly has nothing to do with today's Rexel. If you have questions about that, they will be follow on at the end of the presentation. This good ROCE performance comes from the operating profitability, obviously, but also from a strong attention to all the rest of the balance sheet. We have a super strong discipline when it comes to working capital, CapEx, M&A criteria, and it pays off very clearly. So switching to the better part, I would like to start with our recent delivery performance. We say what we do and we do what we say. We set ourselves reasonably ambitious goals, and we tend to achieve or sometimes overachieve. This is very important for me and for the executive committee. And I'm saying this also because I know that it was not historically the case with Rexel, so that's a difference. Obviously, the future is not always easy to predict, but for what is under our control, we take a pride in delivering and being fully transparent to the market, and I wanted to highlight that. It has been true recently for our yearly objectives, as you can see on the left part of the slide. And when it comes to the Capital Market Days, you can see on the right part of the slide that we are on track to achieve our 2025 goals, even if 2025 is not there yet. And I wanted to finish this part of the presentation, talking about Rexel performance versus the market. It's obviously an important topic. But as you may know, there is no reliable available data out there, which would allow us for a perfect comparison. Nevertheless, you can see here 2 graphs. The 1 on the left is a comparison to a basket of listed suppliers with the same methodology as the ones that we had been -- that we had used in the 2021 Capital Markets Day. Here, you can see that we have slightly outperformed the group in average over the last 6 years. Now those comparisons are not always perfect, not the same geographical mix, not the same product mix and part of what the suppliers are doing, which tends to go direct because it's always been historically the case, but the aggregated figures are nice to see nevertheless. And on the competition side, as you know, only one of our competitors is listed. And in many countries, there is no official measurement of market share. But we can still make fairly reliable internal assessments based on pieces of data that we collect from several sources. And you can see on the right, the results on our top 10 countries without the names. And I'm quite satisfied with our recent evolution as we progressed in 9 out of 10 countries, with 6 clearly increasing in market share. It must be that we are doing something right if our customers are able to switch distributors for that. And this is an excellent transition to our Chapter 2, which is about our winning formula. So what exactly is there in our model, which is allowing us to make a difference. This is what I would like to dig into, with the help of my team, in this section, which we have called our winning formula. You'll see that this winning formula is not a magic formula, but more a combination of good strategy, hard work and good execution on a certain number of topics. And if you get the formula right, there is indeed a way to create a meaningful gap with some, if not all of the competitors in this business. So there are 5 specific topics, which are key in our mind to making the difference, and they are listed here. Engaged and customer-oriented teams is the first one and the most important. Technology is the second one, including digital, AI and automatization. Adding value through services is the third one, and it is growing in importance. Fourth topic, sustainability, which is becoming more and more important for our customers, especially the European ones. And fifth, value-creating M&A as we have demonstrated over the last 3 years. There is not one parameter alone, which will make the difference or it would be too easy. On each topic, there are several distributors, including us, who execute at world-class level. But what our real strength is, is to be consistently committed on each 1 of the 5 blocks, and to be able with those 5 blocks, to create a combination which is unique and differentiated. We will detail what we are doing and what plans we have for the future on each one of those 5 topics. And let us start with ingredients; #1, people with Sabine Haman.

B2B business distribution is fundamentally a people business. That's why engagement is key to employee retention, driving Rexel's superior business performance, which leads to increased our market share. Each year, we carry out an employee satisfaction survey. And as you see, we have a high level of participation and engagement rates of 81% in both case. Yes. Thank you.

One more. One more.

And that's it. What's important for us is what we learned and what we do with the results. In the spirit of continuous improvement, each country develops and implements a specific action plan to improve each year. That was the case in 2023 with a participation rate improved by 11 points and the engagement improved by 1 point. We also have highest scores in responsible company and the companies that act ethically. This reflects our Rexel initiatives, for example, on sustainability, training programs on compliance and ongoing communication about our business strategy. We maintain high scores on our customer focus and on the articulation with -- of our strategic vision. We've just launched our 2024 employee survey, and we look forward to increasing our results in all these categories. Our world is changing faster than ever before, transforming jobs and skills requirements. Developing our people is a top priority for business performance. And here are the few highlights. First, 98% of our employees have received on-the-job training and on our strategic priorities such as electrification, digital and cybersecurity and sustainability. In April, we launched Skill Up, our worldwide learning platform for all our 27,000 people, that features more than 2,000 training modules. We also are investing in the development of our all top 150 leaders. And we have created a global program for our 500 top managers. All these initiatives make us well prepared to face challenges for tomorrow and helps us build a bright future of Rexel. Now I will pass the floor to Guillaume Dubrule, who will lead us to explain our digital journey to excellence.

Thank you. Let's now cover how Rexel is becoming tech-driven in its operations and how we intend to go further. First of all, you know that we are strongly convinced about technology as a way to go faster and to differentiate. In the past, Rexel has shown it. We have invested most of the time ahead of our industry, for example, on predictive AI, and we will come back on it. These investments are paying off, but we believe we can even continue to widen the gap on many digitization aspects and that's what we want to cover together today. First of all, why do we do digital? You can see it on the right part of the graph. Of course, there is a lot about the outputs of digital, internal efficiency, differentiating factor against competition, added value for our customers, and you're well aware about it. But another very important part is that digital is a catalyst of full-fledged operational efficiency. And actually, this is where a lot of value also comes from. Let me guide you through a few examples. For us, pushing high digital sales implies, first of all, to have a strong offer plan with favorite suppliers ranked and that you actively push forward. For example, in France, whenever you go in a branch, you have around about 3,000 to 5,000 SKUs available same day. And whenever you order on the web, you can have 30,000 SKUs delivered day plus 1, more than 100 SKU -- 100,000 SKUs, sorry, delivered day plus 2, and around 2 million SKU available on the website. The second aspect to push the digital sales is that you need consistent pricing policy. You need a segmented pricing, and you also need a quick enough process to onboard new customers very rapidly in a matter of minutes basically. And in Germany, we have created what we call a digital branch, meaning a full digital onboarding, quick onboarding for our customers that would only transact online. The third pillar is to have a robust supply chain because, of course, we need to fulfill this customer promise that we give, especially on the day plus 1 and day plus 2 promise. This is why we are investing in supply chain and our most recent distribution center investment in the U.K. is a good example for it. It's a way for us to make sure we can fulfill the day plus 1 promise within the London metropolitan area. And the fourth part is adequation between our sales processes and the digital value. Of course, it calls for adaptive sales incentives, for example, to make sure that the full structure is actively pushing for digital. We are doing it across the board and more specifically recently in the U.S. And of course, all of this has a link to profitability, which you see on the left part of the slide. We strongly believe that digital and profitability go hand in hand. Of course, it's not a one-to-one correlation because our market positioning are very different, different market shares in our country, different customer habits, et cetera. But what we observe is in each of the country we are in, the more digital, the more efficient. This is why we will continue to be very intentional on digital sales moving forward. We have delivered, for the first time ever, we are above 30% of digital sales at Rexel. We have gained 20 points of digital over the past 10 years. And more recently, over the past 5 years, we gained 13 points, which means that the trend is actually accelerating. And we don't see any ceiling to digital penetration midterm. There is a clear path to 50% digital sales at Rexel, and this is what we are aiming for. To get there, we will continue to enhance the omnichannel experience for our customers, and we are very concretely doing it. For example, in the last 6 months by launching a fully new mobile application for our customers and renewing our search engine, and you know that the search engine on our web shops is used in about 80% of the sessions our customers are having. So having one of the most efficient search engine from a B2B standpoint is critical for us as a differentiating factor. Now besides digital sales, Rexel has also been an early adopter of artificial intelligence, and this was actually already 5 years ago back in 2019. We made strong choices. We in-sourced talents. So we have around about 100 internal people around data science, data engineering in central teams. And we developed a few key algorithm aimed at our most important business processes. I see 2 main takeaways about this. The first is that our past investments are paying off and especially the best investments we did in predictive artificial intelligence. The second one is that it puts us in a great shape to catch the generative AI wave, and we have started to do so. On the first point on predictive AI, let me highlight 3 examples for you and with some years after how they are paying off. The first one is commercial efforts. You remember that we launched, in 2019, alerts to predict what customers have a likelihood to churn basically not to be customers anymore, 6 months down the road based on hundreds of parameters. It's now live in more than 8 countries. And it's actually bringing close to EUR 50 million, 5-0, of additional sales every year. So from a profit standpoint, it's very clearly paying off. The second part is inventory optimization. In our 3 main geographies, we predict the best assortment that we can have in the branch, both in terms of the SKU we handle and the level of inventory we should hold. The order of magnitude it brings is around 3% increment on the sales we have in the branches, meaning around 0.5% to 1% on the full country because branch sales are usually 20% of what we do. And the last part is artificial intelligence-based pricing. We have, as Guillaume stated it, made a huge leap in the last years when it comes to database pricing. More than 75% of our countries have advanced pricing capabilities and more than 30% are on artificial intelligence pricing. All of this puts us in a great spot to catch generative AI wave. More recently, we have refocused 30% of our resources on -- 30% of our artificial intelligence resources specifically on generative AI. And we are digging into 3 aspects. One is internal efficiency, especially on sales force effectiveness. I will come back on it in the next slide. Second one is about customer satisfaction. And for example, just at the beginning of the week, we launched for the first time GenAI-powered Chatbot in one of our countries, Switzerland, and we intend to have many more in our other countries. And thirdly, it's about employee experience. And in just a matter of a few weeks, 6 to 8 weeks, we rolled out to 20,000 employees worldwide, our internal version of ChatGPT, Rexel GPT. Specifically on 1 key function for us, inside sales, what does it mean? Inside sales, it's representing close to 9,000 employees worldwide. It's the first employee category at Rexel, and it consists both of employees we have in the branches and employees we have in call centers and project houses dealing with request for quote, request for proposals, phone calls and e-mails from customers. We have already used digital and data a lot on this aspect. And more specifically, on the order part, we have digitized all the PDF we receive attached to an e-mail when a customer says, I would like you to pass this order, attached a PDF. This year, the digitization of PDF for Rexel will amount to close to EUR 1 billion of sales, meaning 5% of our turnover. So we are already doing a lot in digitizing with, I would say, regular digital and data capabilities. But generative AI is opening a new chapter because when you take, actually the first time-consuming task for our inside sales, which is answering to request for quote and request for proposal, most often, it's unstructured data. It's e-mails, it's phone calls where the specificities are detailed, et cetera. And with GenAI, you are able to dig on unstructured data. We will do so. We believe there is much more additional time savings for this population, and we intend to reallocate it to additional sales opportunity and as well to efficiency gains. And at last, digital experience, of course, goes hand-in-hand with top-notch supply chain experience. So supply chain is a core focus for us. It's 25% of our employees working in supply chain, and we plan to continue to invest and develop in supply chain for 4 main reasons; #1 is increase our level of service, having more goods delivered day plus 1 on our key metropolitan areas. Once more, it's the case in London more recently. Second, it's a way to consolidate around our preferred suppliers. In a regular distribution center, we will hold between 20,000 and 30,000 SKUs. And of course, we would focus on the suppliers we prefer and on the supplier we have the best agreements with. And in many of our geographies, including U.S.A., we have a path to continue to consolidate around it. Third part is gaining productivity in our operations. That's why we automate our distribution centers. And lastly, it's a way to gain market share. And one of our most recent distribution center opening in Germany, in the Frankfurt region, specifically has this ambition. So since the last Capital Markets Day, we have walked the talk in supply chain. We have opened 8 new distribution centers, 5 of them are automated with best-in-class solutions, and we have doubled the number of robots that we have within the Rexel world. Medium term, we will continue to develop on supply chain. Our plan is to double the amount of distribution centers that we have automated. We will reach more than 500 robots across the Rexel world. And of course, by raising the level of digitization, we will also be more efficient, for example, through accrued usage of EDI messages when it comes to inbound processes in our distribution centers. So all of these actions on digital and on supply chain will, of course, lead to a better customer service, which is a good segue to what Guillaume is going to present right now.

So after people and after technology, let's move on to the third ingredient of the winning formula, advanced services. Services, it's our DNA. All what we do is about services, obviously. But what we are experiencing since a few years is that the depth and the complexity of the services we bring to our customers is increasing strongly. Although it requires work on our part, we see that as a very positive evolution as it allows us to differentiate through added value rather than through pure price competitiveness. So we will spend a little bit more time on this topic with Thomas Moreau, Robert Pfarrwaller and Roger Little to give you an idea of the granularity and the diversity of what we are doing end market by end markets. But before doing that, let me take a step back and tell you why services are becoming important. This historical role of distributors is easy to describe, and it is maybe close to what you still have in mind, by the way, logistics, price, credits. In the recent period though, most of our customers have faced 2 challenges: scarcity of labor and complexity of topics. Scarcity of labor is a common theme in many industries, but for our customers, it is acute. And it means less electricians available. So for the electrician that they have, our customers are being more and more interested in seeing them focus their time on electricity work and to save them time on all the rest, which is where we can have. The second trend is complexity. Here, we are talking technological complexity with new technologies arriving every year on the market through the electrification trends. But we are talking also organizational complexity with the needs of end users going way beyond having just an equipment that just works and add to that the sustainability requirements, which are adding another layer of requirements to be taken into account. And because of those 2 trends, our customers are counting more and more on us to help them beyond our historical role. And you see here on the bottom of this slide, examples of their new needs. Because of that, we have created a rich portfolio of services, which we classify in 3 categories. The first one is what I would call the basic level. And this is a historical one. The second one, the must-have services are additional services, which start to be differentiated, but are often offered as a part of our global glaçage. They help us differentiate and escape the price competition. And in the last level, we are talking really advanced services, which we sometimes provide ourselves and sometimes with the help of an expert third party. Those ones really create substantial value for our customers. Not all customers are elaborate enough in their calculations to use them, but when it is the case, we clearly create a unique value proposition, which means that, in many cases, we are able to charge separately. As you can see on the slide, there are a few new stickers here. This field is extremely active with new services added every month to our list. This is one of the areas where the size of the group is playing a big role, allowing us to transfer good ideas very quickly from 1 country to the next. And this is what we are going to dig in into with the team now. And to get into the details, we need to do it end market by end market as the requirements of our customers are quite different, especially when it comes to services. You can see that in the bottom boxes of the table where we describe the typical needs they express. And as you know, we have 3 main end markets with relatively balanced weights. 46% of our business is in the nonresidential space with a particular emphasis on this market in North America, 28% is in the industrial space, and 26% is in the residential space, more on the renovation side than on the new construction side. Thomas Moreau will talk to you about the first market; Roger Little will speak about industry; and Robert Pfarrwaller will address the residential markets. I should mention that although each one of them has a specific geographical responsibility, the examples that they will take are not necessarily from their cluster of countries, but they are going to approach it as one global market. So Thomas, the floor is yours for the first and biggest market for us, nonresidential.

Thank you, Guillaume. So I'll be discussing about what kind of services we deliver on the nonresidential market and how these services can give us a differentiating position on the market. Just as an introduction, let me just present you the market, the nonresidential market. The nonresidential market is estimated to a total value of EUR 90 billion turnover revenue, and we generated, in '23, EUR 8.7 billion turnover with -- in Rexel, representing 46% of our sales. We have 2 main type of customers in this market. We have contractors and integrators; national, local or regional; different sizes, different expertise, and we have end users. We are addressing several major segments on end user in the nonresidential market; commercial buildings, office buildings, industrial buildings, retail, hospitality, data center and health care. End users have 2 way to purchase -- two reasons to purchase, either it is for their maintenance needs or and more and more for their project investment on electrification, which require repetitive solution or customized architecture. Therefore, you can imagine why service needs vary with these 2 type of customers and why we have to invest in these 2 types of services -- in these services? Here, we will present 2 major services. The first one is advanced logic services for contractors and integrators mainly referring to installation constraints on project side or technical complexities, and we will address the electrification turnkey solution for end user referring to solution design, installation and financing support.

[indiscernible].

Not yet, Guillaume. Just to show you that we are delivering this kind of services, different domain of expertise here. You have, for instance, for Sydney, you have the lighting issues, and the lighting infrastructure we work on and the retrofit. You have the energy efficiency or you have contractors complexities on logistics in the data center. Let's review some example and some key success story we have developed, we have succeeded today. I choose, among this list of examples, 3 topic I would like to address with you. The first example I will address is the American one in FlexSet assembly in the U.S. The second one, I will address, is the BMS pre-configuration, building management system configuration, which is a key story, a key topic in the energy efficiency movement. And I will address the topic on energy efficiency with end users in France. Let's address the Mayer example, the Mayer is the best example. I mean maybe. The first example is the service provided by Mayer in the United States for switchboards. This service target contractors who lack the team to design, to manufacture, to cable and to deliver their electrical panels. Here we act really as a panel builder, addressing our installers time constraints and skill shortages. We work very closely with our manufacturer here with Schneider Electric, allow us to develop the most efficient and the most competitive panels on the market for our customers. The second example, we are providing to our contractors, is the building management system. Building management system is the first strategic part -- step towards energy efficiency. It means the capability to measure and to pilot energy usage in their buildings. It's a fast-growing business, but it's also a complex business where competencies are low on the market, and where we support our contractors to develop their competencies to develop this business. So Rexel develops several things. We develop an easy to qualify building management system solution, making it repetitive and competitive, thanks to a simplified configurator, to define the most adequate system for each configuration. The solution is then pre-configured and preprogrammed by Rexel expert team, and we deliver the solution preprogrammed to the contractor for installation. It is drastically, of course, reducing the time required for installation for our contractors. Parallel to this service in building management system for our contractors, we also provide a service to end user. The reason why we deliver this service is because our contractors have limited capabilities on sales, commercial capabilities. So it's not only a question of compensate expertise's limits of our contractors, but because they have limited capabilities on commerce on sales, we support them to sell the solution to end users. So Rexel has developed a turnkey solution to support energy efficiency and electrification transitioning project on nonresidential end users. Thanks to Rexel design offices, we help customers to optimize energy costs and to meet regulatory requirements -- and European -- decree in Europe on commercial business we have to deploy. Rexel deploy energy platform data, energy audits to build customer investment plan. In different domain, in the building management system, in HVAC, especially on electrification of heating and ventilation, in EV charging stations for electrification of vehicle fleets and on photovoltaics, where we develop green energy solution and auto consumption solution, okay? So this business is a growing business and the way how Rexel is supporting end users, and we are supporting contractors is key to be -- to follow the dynamic of this business. So last comment is regarding an example. We have many examples of success we have realized in the past months. The last example is Loxam, a rental company with 180 locations, 280 branches in France that wanted to reduce its energy cost. And Rexel deploys the energy data platform, and we then deploy their BMS system, and we subcontracted all the installation to our contractors. So we are not only a designer, but we are a provider of lead to our ecosystem to our contractors. I leave the floor to Roger to present to you our services in industry.

Thank you, Thomas. Good morning. It is my pleasure to be here today to discuss how we interact with our industrial customers across the globe. Industrial customers make up about 28% of our revenue. As with all of our customer segments, we strive to provide the best possible experience and service to them. We serve our industrial customer base through 3 core pillars: the value-added soft layer referring to software or analytics and data. Second, assembly in Custom Solutions, such as manufactured control panels or automation solutions. And thirdly, and probably most importantly these days, industrial -- energy management to help meet the carbon needs of our customers. While these 3 pillars do not represent all our customer needs, they do demonstrate the ways in which Rexel services a very diverse customer base globally. This slide highlights a few examples of how we service our industrial customers' increasingly complex needs as well as a typical project that they may ask us to assist them with. Starting in the U.S., we recently aided the modernization of an electric -- hydroelectric site by evaluating the installed base and upgrading the automation equipment to future-proof the site as well as provide advanced software, communication and analytics capabilities. Modernization of the automation equipment also resulted in a very robust cybersecurity increase at the site, increasingly important at such sites globally. In Germany, we modernized an automotive production line by designing and preassembling an automation system tailored to the customers' needs, certainly reduce their time to market and their upgrade retrofit time. In France, we upgraded a production line in a canning facility to enhance the machine reliability and product quality, ultimately improving the energy efficiency of the factory as well. As the industrial market grows, so does Rexel. We continue to adopt our approach so that we meet the customers' needs. In 2023, we accomplished EUR 5.5 billion in sales in this market. And the market served at a total value of EUR 80 billion. Our goal is to continue to grow with the market, but also to continue to adjust our expertise to address an even greater percentage of the available market, therefore, increasing share. I'd like to highlight some additional examples of how we use those 3 pillars of service to address the needs of industry. First, within the soft value-added layer, we offer cybersecurity assessments, implementation of digital twins. Digital twins are digital representations of a physical object within a network environment. They can be used in dynamic simulations of this physical environment to improve manufacturing efficiency and lead to better outcomes for the customer. Assembly and custom solutions for electrical controls, automation and panels are provided for a wide range of customers, and we'll discuss this in some detail in a second. And finally, energy management is provided through a variety of services, including energy audits, specific to government regulations, reduction of carbon footprint through solar panels and EV charging and retrofits of outdated technologies such as lighting and even motors. So here, you'll see an example of a value-added service in the soft layer. Rexel's industrial-focused cyber team assessed vulnerabilities in industrial systems and upgraded software and hardware to address the weakness of the existing systems. Our deep understanding of the operational technology, or OT environment, and our partnership with industrial-focused cybersecurity players, drives value for our customers by bringing together the best solutions to meet their specific needs. Services like this have resulted in not only the revenue from the service itself, but also the sale of connected industrial hardware, including CPUs, sensors, I/O systems, inverters, motors and security devices, totaling over EUR 125 million in 2023. Rexel has over 70 automation engineers dedicated to aiding our industrial customers in their cybersecurity needs. These highly skilled engineers marry their understanding of cyber and IT with the engineering and OT world to create seamless solutions for our customer base. Custom control panels and assembly have become an increasing and healthy growing market segment in our industrial offering. In 2023, [indiscernible], a division of Rexel Atlantic in Canada, serviced over 50 unique customers. Our customers, many of which are multinational, value that we save them time by designing, assembly and even programming these panels. We offer custom panels that range from the very basic electrical panel to very complex plc and process control panels. We partner with leading suppliers such as Schneider, Rockwell and Rittal. Rexel Austria is a great example of how we help our customers achieve their energy goals. Their energy efficiency competence center focus on solutions tailored to industrial and facilities management. They offer energy-efficient products and applications, sustainable strategies and cost optimization. This competency center is a one-stop shop for industrial energy needs and process optimization. They are industry-leading experts in regulatory compliance within the EU and have key partnerships with leading hardware providers. A typical customer achieves upward of 50% savings when they're working with the Rexel Austrian team. I will now hand over to Robert to explain how we add value to our residential clients.

Good morning. Thank you, Roger. I have the pleasure to give you now some insights into the residential sector and the added value we provide for this customer group. To explain you in greater detail who our customers in the residential sector are and how we support them with our services, I would like to give you then an overview of who is behind this customer group, what projects they are working on, what the needs are, and finally show some of our added value to these customers through some use cases. Residential customers make up around 1/4 of our sales. They are the bread and butter of what we do, and they're mostly small and medium-sized independent installers. First is the need to maximize productivity, which took a new importance, given the labor shortage, that we are currently experiencing, particularly in Europe. Furthermore, given the diverse range of activities, these customers require assistance in creating expert solutions that streamline their work and generate additional income. This customer group is usually a generalist. Let's now take a closer look at this customer group and the market for residential installers. Typically, projects for these customers, [indiscernible] always add value range from fast material delivery for repairs, standard electrical installations for new constructed homes or renovations up to more sophisticated ones like they are shown here. Renovation of heating systems and residential apartments, combining also heat pumps and smart thermostats or eco-sustainable launches which includes also smart home solutions, like moving appliances, energy management, lighting and up to energy storage. But the last example, full renovation of individual houses, which includes and also lighting, heating, all kinds of electrical equipment up to renewable energy, storage and charging for e-mobility. This example gives you an idea of the broad range of activities of individual installers and also their many different needs. We, as Rexel, offer the expert solutions for all of the different kind of applications through our specialists, supporting our customer designing the right solutions and value proposition for their customers. We will focus on 2 of their needs in more detail. But first, a few market figures. Currently, Rexel has a turnover of around EUR 5 billion with this customer group. Also, we have already a solid position, we see further opportunities for growth in this market, given that the total addressable market is up to EUR 50 billion. Persisting and helping them maximizing their productivity and providing expert solution, we are sure we can increase our share of wallet with them. Let me now present some use cases that meet the needs of the residential customers. Rexel provides a wide range of software solutions to increase customers' productivity. Examples of these include software solutions, for example, from Esabora in France or Comtech Austria, which help our customers better manage their business, but we also support our customers by simplifying access to subsidies, for example, through the SAFIR program in France. We also offer our customers different services, expert solutions for their renewable projects. pvXpert Expert is a software for planning and modeling PV systems, which we currently offer, for example, in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. In France, on the other hand, we have MAVISUN, which helps our customers kitting and installing residential PV and solar systems. Last but not least, in the Netherlands, we offer training through the WASCO College on topics such as energy efficiency audits and building electrification. Let me go now please in more detail and look deeper at the need to maximize productivity. Our customers want a service or software that can help them save time on administrative tasks. In other words, residential installers want to focus on installing instead of administrative and office tasks. Our solution for them is Esabora, a software that simplifies all administrative tasks. From quoting and invoicing to project planning, personnel management, inventory control, Esabora offers a simple solution in one single software application. Rexel can support residential installers with this software by accelerating their processes, while at the same time, decreasing complexity by having one platform for all data and the direct link to the Rexel webshop for purchasing. Esabora, for example, has currently 12,000 users and is sold as a Software-as-a-Service business model. Let's now turn our attention to the need for expert solutions. The market for PV systems has experienced rapid growth. However, not all of our customers have the expertise and the time to design all the systems themselves. This customer needs a software that helps them design photovoltaic installations and calculate at the same time the necessary metrics. Our solution is pvXpert. Our customers as well as our specialists can manage all the necessary steps for the installation of a PV system with this software, from planning and calculating key metrics up to ordering the components, pvXpert can cut the planning time for our customers down to approximately 20 minutes, usually a couple of days. The software also enables our users to calculate the system's profitability, and additionally, customer can easily order components directly from the Rexel webshop with just a few clicks. Over 17,000 projects have been designed using the pvXpert, and there are currently more than 300 active users. pvXpert is sold as a Software-as-a-Service business model. I hope I was able to give you some insights in to the Rexel's value-add services for residential installers, and I'm going to hand over to Guillaume, who is going to explain to you our next journey when it comes to services. Thank you.

So you have seen with all those examples, the breadth of the additional services we were offering. We could have lasted longer, a few more hours, but hopefully, we made the point. And you learned about things you didn't even imagine that Rexel was doing. And in reality, when I joined Rexel 3 years ago, I was surprised by the extent of what we are doing here. And this is an incredible asset in a world where our customers will increasingly need our assistance to perform better. We really see a form of collaboration ramping up where installers, distributors and suppliers can team up and go beyond their traditional boundaries to improve the global efficiency of the system. And this is something that we'll continue to develop. On basic services, as you can see on this slide, we will continue to do our job, and to do it at a world-class level, especially through the use of technology, as Guillaume was developing in his part. On the must-have services, we estimate that today, 50% of our customers waited by size, use them, and we want to push this figure in the midterm to 70%. And then the last category, advanced services, regroups many of the examples that we have just described to you. Not all customers will need those services. But here, again, we can do more, and our ambition is to almost double what we are doing in this category. Progressing this dramatically will not happen naturally. It will require intention and action plans. But we think it's an important priority for us for many reasons. It creates customer satisfaction. It creates more stickiness, and this is what, in the end, solidifies our EBITA margin. It allows us to expand our market share. In many cases, I see us being selected in a [indiscernible], for example, despite not having the lowest price, just because we are able to provide all of those services and because our customers know how much value they get from that, and they're able to calculate it. They are not -- they are very smart about that. And last but not least, we can, in some cases, charge separately for those services. And then it creates additional turnover. But as you understand, this last part, which represents approximately EUR 100 million is only the emerged part of the iceberg and we see much more value for the company than that in pushing for more services. Now I will ask Isabelle to join me on stage to explain our progress on the fifth ingredient of the winning formula, which is sustainability.

Good morning, and welcome to you all for a ride through our sustainability journey. It is effectively a ride because in sustainability -- thank you, Guillaume, nothing can be accomplished in 1 day, especially when you're talking about carbon reduction, saving the planet, next generation's future. And furthermore, in sustainability, nothing can be accomplished alone. Especially for us, our role, being in the middle of all the interaction, is to keep the ecosystem moving and be the preferred partner to make sure our suppliers develop their innovation and to help our clients be ready buying them and be aware of the next generation of sustainable products. So talking about our clients, what do they tell us? They tell us that sustainability is no longer an option, or a buzzword. They have clear requests and commitments from their own customers. If they work in the public sector, for example, more and more public bids will require a certain level of efficiency and in urgency efficiency products. In the private sectors, new buildings or renovation increasingly must integrate sustainable products. In addition to that, as you can see on the slide, our clients have their own commitments to fulfill, especially on Scope 1, 2 and 3. More and more are committed, as we are, to carbon reduction goals. And as you all know, all calculations on carbon reductions are interconnected, meaning that what we do to reduce ,help them to reduce. You will also see when [ Noah ] presents later on that the electrification trends will -- are and will, by the way, continue to come with net zero agenda and regulation in every country. Most of you are aware of the CSRD in Europe. You also have new regulations in buildings such as the EC Directive by 2030 net zero buildings. You also have a lot of tax and public incentive that our customers can benefit from and their own customers can benefit from. And even in the U.S., where usually people say that the country is less mature, Scope 1 and 2 might soon needed to be reported and state and county laws very often impose standards on sustainability. So anticipating all these changes has a value for us and for our customers. And I will not ask, I could, how often you have read or heard this morning around the nice green tree in the other room, from my colleagues sitting here, the words, energy efficiency or sustainability. I guess it would be at least more than 50 times. Thomas presented the open project that we have. He talked about Loxam, our client who's clear aim is to reduce his energy efficiency. Roger talked about the energy efficiency audits we have in Canada, the specific competencies we develop in energy management in Austria. He mentioned Capitol Light, our subsidiary in the U.S., which is specialized in designing and retrofitting lighting. Robert mentioned the offers on energy storage, heating improvements and the PV expertise where we grow constantly our expertise on the subject. Guillaume mentioned that service is our DNA so is sustainability. So the mix of both is clearly a good success for our customers. And still talking about them, what we have decided to launch to help them more as the sustainable selection. It happened last October. It is a tagged offer of products that strongly contributes to energy efficiency. So on a regular basis, we talk with our suppliers, we see which products could be concerned and based on clear and verified product data, we add new products to the basket. Once added to the sustainable selection basket, the offer is pushed in our branches and on our webshops. And because we wanted to impact massively we have decided to launch this offer under 1 brand, the same day in our 19 countries with a portfolio of [ 1,000 -- 100 ] products that we continuously revisit. In some countries, the sustainable selection already represented more than 10% of the turnover in 6 months. But for us, what really matters is the fact that each country progresses on the discussions with suppliers and the amount of product data we can receive since they are key for any contribution to carbon reduction that they work on their offer plan, hand-in-hand with our suppliers and with our customers to push more sustainable products, also making our customers aware that some products are more energy efficient than others, and they have a role to play in installing them. So this is a whole mindset of guiding changes by guiding choice. And in the same trend, we keep proposing other services such as carbon tracker that you already saw 2 years ago and My CO2 Impact to help our customers assess their own consumption and the carbon emission of the product they buy and sell. They are already launched in most of the European countries and a lot of customers in France have already been early adopters. These tools are designed according to the client's need to pilot their CO2 emissions. And on the other part of this slide, you have our new baby currently scaling in France, which is named ECOBOOST. This is a tool which is similar to the one you can see in the food industry. And it helps you know how efficient the products are in terms of ranking from A to E. What I would like to emphasize here is that the contribution of these tools to assessment of carbon emission helps our customers, but it also helps us because the algorithm behind that, that we proudly developed by ourself, help us to have a precise analysis of the carbon emissions per product. So thanks to our customers, we improve ourselves. And as I told you, it's a loop. No one is alone in there. And if our customer needs us on our sustainable -- on their sustainability journey, so do our suppliers. So moving to the next slide, I wanted to present to you 1 example that we have. Our suppliers, very often, push sustainability in the way they think about how to manufacture their products. They are looking for less emissive raw materials, less emissive processes, and another part on which we can highly contribute is recycling. This is an area where we have a role to play in and you might have seen recycling clearly mentioned in the must-have services part. So this what we wanted to share with you is a short video on a project that we have in Canada in our Kingston facility. It's a wire facility where we partner with Nexans on copper recycling. This project dates back a few years. We have now established clear processes on collecting, on processing and shipping back copper and monetizing it. Everything starts with the right product, the right place and the right partner and here we are. [Presentation]

So we already have a lot of great initiatives like this one that we let bloom mostly country by country because we think it's the right scale to act quickly and in an efficient way. I will now move to how we, at Rexel, internally, in addition to our customers and suppliers, help to move the transition forward. Indeed, there is no way we can be trustful and talk to our customers and suppliers on sustainability if we are not ourselves deeply convinced and committed. At the time, where talents are key and rare, sustainability is a strong argument to motivate and retain the best of our teams. When we interview people, they very often mention that they feel we are deeply helping the fight against climate change. We train our teams. We communicate a lot about what we do. And very often, they -- we involve them in a lot of action we proposed. You can see on this slide, the excellent rates we have on the training and also the excellent feedback we had from our annual internal survey that Sabine already talked about. It shows that our employees definitely considered that they work for a company deeply committed on the subject and especially where they have a role to play. The second bucket is how we get organized and challenged? We get organized through a large community of sustainability leaders in the countries. And for me, having these people accept into their role to do sustainability is a strong sign of commitment to the group and a strong belief and a strong trust to our clear strategy. And then the strategy is also shared with the Board of Directors. They help us address the right subjects, and they bring us also good practices from other companies. The third bucket is the one of incentivize and assess. Nothing goes without that. So a significant part of Guillaume's variable compensation is linked to achieving sustainability targets with defined objectives in reduction carbon emission and deployment of Scope 3 road maps in the countries. We have similar objectives for our top managers in the LTI plan, making sure that everybody in the organization is committed to the long-term commitments we have. And we have issued 3 sustainability-linked bond with objectives on carbon reduction on all our scopes. We feel that these operational pillars are key to our strategy to fulfill our commitments, to which I will move right now. Just as a reminder, we are SBTI validated 1.5-degree trajectory, Scope 1 and 2 minus 60 in 2030 and net zero in 2050, Scope 3 minus 45 in 2030 and net zero in 2050, both are in absolute values and both are highly ambitious if you compare Rexel with the rest of the industry. You see where we are now. There is still a way to go, and the last mile will be challenging as it is in any sport race. What I can tell you is that we have organized ourselves, and we have clear road maps. On Scope 1 and 2, we identified 4 levers, which are building efficiency, commercial fleet, logistics fleet and EV. We follow them country by country with a very financial approach on the investments to be made and the effect of these investments on our carbon reductions. On Scope 3, we have a clear road map per country, focusing on different levers such as improving the nature of the data we get from our suppliers, again, it's key. Adjusting our plan, and training our people to better buy and better sell. All of that should help us reach the finish line. And to conclude briefly, as this is an Olympic year in France, we wanted to share with you our ranking medals, which we are very proud of because they underline the strong effort of our teams and our deep conviction towards sustainability. We do better than the sector's average in all these rankings. We are the only net zero electrical distributor validated by SBTI. And we just received our EcoVadis gold again. We feel that we were pioneers in this industry in terms of sustainability, that we are still leaders and we are truly committed to maintain our leadership. And since our winning recipe is not complete, I will hand over to Guillaume for the last ingredient, M&A.

Thank you, Isabelle. I will finish with M&A, which we have resumed successfully over the last 3 years. In our world, M&A is not just a nice to have. It's almost a must have. Consolidation in North America is a great opportunity that will not happen twice. And in the fast-changing world of electrification, using M&A to accelerate our march towards fast-growing segments is a very efficient way to push our strategy. So M&A is important from a strategic point of view. And this is why I am especially proud of the fact that we have executed well over the last 3 years with strategy and discipline. And this is what I would like to elaborate on in the next few slides. And what I thought I would start with is a table explaining in a way why we do M&A. We don't do M&A just to grow the size of the company. We do it because we believe that 1 plus 1 is more than 2. And the reason why it is true depends on the type of acquisition. For a consolidation acquisition in our core space of electrical distribution, as you can see on the left part of the slide, the value is often going to be brought more by Rexel, the bigger of the 2 parties. In our experience, when we acquire a smaller company, we can quickly create value through digital or database tools, in particular, pricing. And then there is everything which has to do with critical mass, more efficient logistics, back office optimization, weight with vendors, but it doesn't mean that the acquired company doesn't bring something. First of all, local presence, reputation and talents as we select only high-quality companies. And then almost always, good ideas that we didn't have before and that can be used somewhere else at Rexel. You don't need to be big to have good ideas. And I can tell you that we have been surprised positively by this contribution numerous times in the last 3 years. And when it comes to the other type of acquisitions in adjacent spaces we are less familiar with, like WESCO last year in HVAC and Talley this year, so the value provided by the acquired company is more important as we buy a name in a space where we are not known, a relationship with suppliers and more importantly, talent and expertise. What Rexel brings is size, ability to invest maybe a little bit more and a little bit faster for development, global coverage, allowing us to push geographical expansion. In all cases, and you can see that in the line -- in the purple line at the bottom of the graph, we pay a lot of attention to 3 things: people, values, and value creation, and we do that with extreme discipline. And the results of these policy so far are really satisfactory from my point of view. When you look first at the 14 acquisitions on the left, EUR 1.6 billion of additional sales were added in our existing businesses and EUR 1.1 billion in adjacencies, knowing as we will discuss later, that acceleration businesses, as we call them, represent 30% of our sales today, so slightly more on phases on that, which is normal. In terms of geographical choices, we stayed true to what we had said in 2022 and have invested slightly disproportionately in North America, almost EUR 2 billion additional sales out of the EUR 2.7 billion total. What is also quite interesting is to look at value creation. Here, we show 2 figures. One is a very simple and clearcut one, which compares simply to the 2023 reported EBITA of those acquisitions and compare that to the price we paid to acquire them, some in 2021, some in 2022 and some in 2023. Here, we are not talking the typical synergized, the multiples that we publish in press releases. We are talking hard reported 2023 figures compared to the price paid. And the result is that we acquired for 6x EBITA to be compared to our own multiple, which those days is between 7x and 8x. And remember that this takes into account some acquisitions that we made in 2023, on which we have obviously not yet delivered the synergies like WESCO. And same very clean calculation on the ROCE side with exactly the same definition you saw earlier in our presentation. And here, we find 11% ROCE this year in clear value creation territory, once again penalized by the fact that this takes into account late 2023 acquisitions. And if we were to remove the H2 2023 acquisitions from the calculation, the result would be 14% right at our average ROCE. I should mention that those calculations are only about acquisitions. They don't include the very positive effect of divestments that we have made at the right moment and at good prices each time. So in conclusion, I would say that we have built a very good M&A practice, very processed in terms of fueling the pipeline, investigating thoroughly the business cases and sometimes more often than not saying no, which is healthy. So now we have spent the first part of the Capital Market Day talking about the past and then the present, what we are doing to create our results. We will now talk more about the future, but I would like to start by saying that a big part of our future is already embedded in what we discussed in our present and what we discussed about the winning formula. Because, as Guillaume said, we can do much more in digital and artificial intelligence. As Roger, Thomas and Robert said, we can continue to grow services, and we will continue to grow services. As Isabelle said, we have a clear sustainability road map and this will become an increasingly differentiating factor. And we have started a very efficient M&A engine, as I just mentioned, which will continue to deliver. So we know where we are going from an internal standpoint, and this is exciting. But what is even more exciting is to talk about -- also about our market and how it is transforming at high speed. So it's still me. It's probably not the first time you hear about electrification and secular trends in our markets. But because you've heard the story several times, doesn't mean it's just a story. In fact, it's just the opposite. Repetition just means that all players in our space, suppliers, competitors and customers are thinking the same way and seeing the same things. Trends are real, electrification is real, and we are at the center of it. And because we talked about electrification already in our last Capital Market Day in 2022, I tried on this introduction slide, to make the effort to highlight the main differences compared to how we were seeing the market at the time. Firstly, and this is not really a difference, the medium-term electrification trends are fully confirmed by all studies out there, including the ones issued the most recently, not 1 month without a new one. Secondly, and this is interesting, more secular trends are ramping up in our space every year. They were initially mostly about energy savings and then renewable energies, electrical transportation and heating, reshoring, electricity grid modernization and now data centers and AI. We are not talking one trend, we are talking 10 different trends going in the same direction, but initiating from different root causes. Thirdly, the last 2 years were quite interesting, especially in sustainability-related trends in Europe, an incredible end of 2022 and start of 2023 and then a slowdown and a wait-and-see situation, which is lasting until now. The learning of that is that because the secular trends are new and fast-growing, they can be much less smooth in terms of growth patterns than our traditional business. Fourthly, and I will elaborate about that more, the consequences of those trends are to expand suddenly our [ share ]. And you'll see that our strategy is taking this into account while still being selective when it comes to going after those new opportunities, and this is the fifth point. And finally, it is interesting to note that North America and Europe are different when it comes to secular trends. More [indiscernible], more infrastructure in North America, more PV heat pumps, EV and in general, sustainability-related trends in Europe. The results in terms of figures is the same in both zone, a tailwind which should help us accelerate in the medium term. So let me give the floor now to Nour Mejri, who will talk in more details about secular trends, giving a few figures, which are always quite impressive and more importantly, talking about the drivers behind the figures.

I think it's important first to lay down the foundation of why we strongly believe that this is a strong trend for us. All megatrends convert to the same conclusion, electrification of everything is a reality, and even if there are bumps down the road, we strongly believe that this is a long tailwind for us. Let me illustrate by 3 megatrends that we foresee that have already a massive impact on our business. First, decarbonization. As you know, to reach net zero, renewables will need to account for about 30% of energy supply by 2030 and even 70% by 2050. This is the only way, the only way to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. And this is already a massive opportunity for Rexel electrification. From the other side, let's talk a little bit about energy demands. Consumers, you and me, are looking for energy that is greener, more reliable, more digitized and more controllable. Consumers are also becoming prosumers. They want to consume, produce and store their energy. And what we see here is this is a market and an opportunity for us that will grow double-digit growth in the next years. As you can see, this can be illustrated by the growth in PV heat pump, but also electrical chargers. Finally, and last megatrend, energy resilience. Substantial investment in grid modernization have happened, and as you know, since recent geopolitical tensions as well as the COVID crisis, what happened is that significant grid modernization investments will need to double and get furthermore in the next 10 years. But this is not just a trend. This is really a movement that is backed by at least 4 main drivers. The first driver is regulation and net zero agenda. So countries have explained and expressed strong movement towards net zero and to achieve net zero by 2050. To achieve that, governments are increasingly drawing up clear road maps and trillions of euros, dollars and RMBs are invested in order to electrify the world. Governments are also reviewing their regulatory framework. And as Isabelle explained it. For instance, the EPBD is pushing a lot on energy efficiency for building. This is not just a trend, but really a reality. And last but not least, and I'll go into that in the detail, the increase of electrification is driven by better technology. Products and solutions today have better payback, especially for PV, EV chargers and heat pumps, and we'll have now a closer look on this payback. Today, our customers are looking, as I said, for products that are providing greener, more digitized and more customized customer experience. But they're mostly looking for products that provide an optimal return on investment. We, at Rexel, are proud to distribute products and solutions that contribute to energy efficiency while providing a great payback, which is, by the way, and as you see in the slide, getting lower and lower every year. The improvement in payback is driven, of course, by better technology, economies of scale as demand is growing, but also innovative manufacturing processes from our suppliers, coupled with strong governmental support and subsidies. All these factors really mean that the payback of those solutions are going to be divided by 2 to 4 in the next 5 years. And here, Rexel plays an important role in raising awareness to our customers about this payback. And Robert explained it well. how we do it with PV Expert Solutions, for example, designing and calculating with and for our customers the payback of the PV installations they do. But it's not over. Beyond electrification, we see new supporting trends that are opening further opportunities, especially in North America. And today, I'll talk about 3 main new trends. The first that you know the most, I think, is restoring. As we all know, the COVID crisis was a wake-up call for our economies where supply chain resilience became a must. And in North America, in particular, industrial mega projects are grabbing headlines, especially in critical sectors such as semiconductors, health care, battery manufacturing. To give you just a concrete example, more than $930 billion are being invested worth of mega projects in U.S. and Canada alone, which represents 3x the normal average rate. This is a massive opportunity for us in order to push and work and partner with our clients in the industry sector, but also provide custom solutions in industrial automation. The second trend is around data consumption. All of you have phones and are consuming more and more data, storing data, analyzing data. And what we estimate is that the total data center workload, meaning the consumption and storage, will double by 2028 with the emergence of artificial intelligence, but also generative AI. This is also a major opportunity for Rexel to further develop its Datacom and data center business, and Roger will explain later how we build on that trend with our recent acquisition of Talley in the U.S. And finally, and as previously mentioned, increased investments in grid organization are expected to accelerate in the next years. Most of you know this already, but hundreds of billions of dollars are poured in the U.S. currently in order to modernize the grid. This is a great opportunity for us to further boost our utility business and also opening new areas of growth. I'll stop here with 1 message to keep in mind, which is, we have the electrification trends that are fully confirmed, but we also have new trends that are opening new areas of growth for Rexel. And I'll hand over now to Guillaume in order to explain how these mega trends translate into concrete strategy for growth.

Thank you very much, Nour. The consequences of the trends that Nour just described are the expansion of a world of opportunities. We don't need a blue ocean because the blue ocean is opening in front of us. HVAC is becoming electric. EV charging and local renewable energies are booming and some adjacent markets in which we were already present are accelerating, such as Datacom and security, grid improvement, industrial automation. So to the size of our core electrical market of EUR 220 billion, we estimate that we can add EUR 120 billion additional of adjacent opportunities. This is a cautious assessment, which takes only into account the distributed part of those new markets. And this is obviously very exciting but agility and selectivity are key when addressing those opportunities. They are key because in those EUR 120 billion, not everything will be interesting for Rexel. Some submarkets will grow faster than others, and some will be closer or further away from what we are comfortable with. So we have 3 criteria in mind; one, the underlying growth potential of the adjacency with select in a given country; two, our ability as Rexel to bring something to the party, either through common customers or projects or through optimization of operations; and three, when it comes to acquisitions, the availability of good companies at the right price. We want to navigate on this set of opportunities using those 3 compasses. And once again, we want to be quite selective, but also diversified enough as sometimes the regular growth patterns of those markets are easier to absorb when you are present on several of them. This is the theory, but the theory is already becoming a reality as this line explains opportunity by opportunity, highlighting how we intend to go after each one of the subsegments we are interested in. In Datacom, the acquisition of Talley will help us grow our presence without paying crazy high multiples. In utilities and grid modernization, we are building on what we have already developed in Canada, and we will seize opportunities in the U.S. if they come at the right conditions. In Industrial Automation, we are already strong in many countries, but adding more services, especially in software and integration is a way to go for us to even increase our added value. In photovoltaics, the key is to bring expertise to our customers either organically or through acquisitions, like we have done last year with the small acquisition that Robert was talking about in France. In EV, differentiation is all about service, and we have made a very interesting acquisition a few years ago in France again. In HVAC, we will be selective, targeting all the countries where the market is solidly growing and where contractors tend to touch both specialties, HVAC and electricity, which is not always the case. And in security, an interesting space, we intend to consolidate where we are already strong, like in France, with the recent and pending acquisition of [indiscernible]. All of that is probably a little bit too detailed, but I wanted to leave you with 2 ideas. The first 1 that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. And the second one, as highlighted on this slide, that North America and Europe are different from this point of view. Today, those activities outside our core business that we have called acceleration businesses represent almost 1/3 of our business already, as you can see on the first column. This is more than the 23% of electrification that we used to report in the previous years as we have added utilities and Datacom and security. And the logic of adding those segments is always the same. Those are opportunities, which have come to benefit from long-term secular trends and therefore, growing faster than our core markets in the midterm, while also being relatively disconnected from their cycles. And here, I'm cautious enough to say relatively PV, for example, holds better when construction in general is doing well, no doubt about that. But the correlation is weaker as there are more parameters at play, and this is the old points. On each segment, we have added in the third column, our qualitative evaluation of potential midterm growth. We have also given an assessment of the synergies with Rexel core business, one very important parameter, and we have given finally an idea of what we call the add-on effect, which is, in summary, the amount of additional business, those topics can trigger, but I'll get into more detail in the next slide. And last column, our main countries have presence for each 1 of those businesses, and you see once again that we are selective. Datacom or our utilities, for example, will not be interesting or possible everywhere. On the next slide, we are double clicking on those 2 columns of the previous slide, synergies and add-on, to explain what we are talking about with examples and figures. On the synergy side, the most interesting opportunities usually come from common customers or additional services easier that we could sell -- easier, for example, that we could sell our range of electrical products to new customers coming from an adjacent market or that we could do the opposite, sell adjacent solutions to our existing electrical customers. This is true for products, but it's also true for services. And this is what the examples that you see here are all about. The add-on concepts may require a little bit more of an explanation. In many cases, projects related to those adjacent categories will trigger additional business linked to the direct or indirect balance of systems. It can be the cabling, also modernization of the main electrical switch board. It can go as far as requiring a total reengineering of electricity in the building. And here, you get an order of magnitude of what this can represent on top of direct sales. We are talking about on 3 examples. Those are internal evaluations and they should be taken with a lot of prudence. But they're interesting nevertheless in terms of order of magnitude. And what is even more interesting to understand is that the more you progress on electrification of everything, the more reengineering of the full electrical system it is likely to require. Adding 1 EV charger in a building can be done without much additional work. After all, it's just a big electrical plug. But if you want to add 50, you will probably have at some point to consider redoing the whole electrical systems, the electrical cabinets, the main power supply, the smart management of power during the day. So as time progresses and as electrification progresses through the market, we will see more and more of that. I would now like to zoom on 2 particular opportunities, and because both of them are in North America, I'd like to call back Roger.

Thanks, Guillaume. The first adjacency I'd like to highlight is our Datacom business. This business ranges from the traditional structured cable business, of which our Nedco banner in Canada has participated in since the beginnings, to the wireless broadband and security space. The hyperscale of data centers in North America also makes this segment very attractive to us. Several of our existing customers, especially large installers, operate datacom divisions. The largest consumers of datacom like telcos and Internet service providers also require electrical equipment. We are pleased to confirm that we have closed on our latest USA acquisition, Talley Inc. this week, in fact, Monday. Talley was a 40-plus-year California-based distributor of wireless broadband equipment. Their revenues are over USD 350 million with a strong margin and EBITA. They're currently operating in 11 states across the U.S. and service large wireless providers as well as a very large network of installers, over 500 installers in fact. Their vendor partners include best-in-class of the North American datacom suppliers. And we see very strong bidirectional synergies as we move the Talley business under the Rexel USA umbrella. And another great market that we entered into through acquisition 3 years ago is the utility sector. Rexel Canada acquired the WESCO Utility business 3 years ago, as mentioned. We have successfully taken that business and become a strong #2 across Canada by adding additional product offering and as well as services like personal protective equipment, testing and certification. The aging grid, increased consumption due to electrification and the EV charger business are all net positive for the growth of the utility business for several years to come. Back to Guillaume.

So as I said, those acceleration businesses represent today 32% of our business. And we think that in the medium term, the proportion is going to go up to 40% through organic -- accelerated organic growth and also through some acquisitions. And this is an ambitious target, but we think that it's going to be the case. It's already shaping the business, and it will continue to reshape our business. So now comes the time that you've all been waiting for, which is the time for figures and how to translate this strategy, those strengths into figures for the future. And I would like to call Laurent Delabarre, our CFO, to do that.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning to everyone. I will close this presentation by translating our action into an upgraded midterm financial target beginning with sales. As Guillaume and the team have highlighted, Power Up Rexel has enhanced its growth potential in recent years and will further capitalize on its strong fundamentals. We expect to see sales growth trend continuing and even accelerating, targeting an annual sales growth midterm between 5% and 8%, supported by our 2 growth pillar, organic evolution and M&A contribution. The organic part will bring between 3% and 5% to medium-term sales growth. And the difference with the previous Power Up '25 guidance is that this new midterm ambition is on a normalized inflation environment and is, therefore, more aggressive in terms of volume. And this organic ambition is driven by the 4 main factors; first, base volume that should account for about 100 basis points; second, base inflation, that will normalize to historical level from '25 onwards and will contribute between 100 to 200 basis points; third, the acceleration effect that Guillaume has just presented. These 6 high-growth categories, representing 32% of sales in '23, should bring, on top of base volume and price, an incremental contribution of between 50 to 150 basis points per year going forward once we pass the 2024 transition year, which we see as an outlier after very high comparable base in '21, '22 and first part of '23. And finally, on the organic part, we are confident that we will further outgrow the market by around 50 basis points per year, driven by our added value services and growing use of digital and AI then will come the second growth engine, M&A that has already proven to be a regular growth contributor and a source of value creation in recent years. Over the medium term, we anticipate that M&A will bring 2% to 3% per year in incremental sales, given the numerous opportunities that have been highlighted today. And we will continue, of course, to be very selective in our approach and very disciplined in terms of financial criteria that I will detail shortly. So now let's move to our medium-term ambition and profitability, which has already achieved a step change in the past few years, giving Rexel a much more resilient profile. As shown by Guillaume at the beginning of the presentation, Rexel has become a structurally more profitable company, with adjusted EBITA margin over the last 3 years significantly above past historical level. And in '23, as you know, we reached an all-time high EBITA at 6.8%, and we now target that Rexel will reach a margin level above 7% in the medium term. And yes, indeed, we see further improvements through a broad variety of factors presented by the team today, namely enhanced efficiency through the continued digitalization and automatization of our business, notably through the rise of AI, better margin from sales of added value services and solutions, the use of more data-driven processes, including for pricing, synergies derived from our selective acquisition and the continued turnaround of some countries whose profitability is lower than the group average. And this ambition also include reinvestment in a very disciplined manner in various differentiating factor such as expertise, value-added services, digital and AI as well as in competitiveness when necessary. And all these actions should further enhance Rexel's resilience and contribute to making it a structurally more profitable company. And as I mentioned, one of the drivers of our enhanced profitability is both the continued turnaround of less profitable countries, coupled with the ongoing improvement of the most profitable one. We have updated this chart from the last CMD. And it shows on the left-hand side of the slide, that in 2019, 70% of group sales came with an EBITA that was below 7%, with only 30% in sales carrying higher profit margins. And 4 year after, in '23, we had more than reversed that split with 74% of group sales now delivering margin above 7%, thanks to the implementation of country-by-country action plan. And let me illustrate in the following 2 slides the potential for margin improvement in those 2 groups of countries. So we'll start by highlighting the potential of our underperforming countries. And currently, 6 countries are posting low-single-digit profitability, Germany, U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Finland and Italy. And we have action plan in place in all these countries to translate higher sales growth and action plan into EBITA margin improvement. It includes such measures as leveraging recent investments and achieving productivity targets, streamlining operation, better leveraging digital and ensuring the team are onboard with this transformation. And on the right-hand side of the slide, you see more specifically example of 2 key countries whose operations are being improved, Germany and the U.K. In Germany, as already discussed by my colleague, we're gaining market share through the profound transformation of the organization, rolling out add-on services. And more recently, we have been growing the business footprint, notably thanks to a new automated distribution center in Frankfurt. In the U.K., we are continuing to improve the supply chain. With here also new DC in the London area, stepping up also digital and rolling out our AI solution. Each of these 2 countries, we see a potential to increase profitability by more than 200 basis points in the coming years. Let's now move to our largest country, U.S., which continued to progress towards excellence as already presented by Roger. You see in this slide the values [indiscernible] through which we have grown and improved the business since '06. First, let me highlight our very strong track record in M&A, starting in '06 by Gexpro, adding Platt in 2012, Mayer in '21 and Talley more recently. But we also went through a deep transformation starting with significant investments in the business and a shift to a regional organization. And while this transformation has already translated into better customer service, market share gain and improved profitability above 7%, we still have room for further improvement. There is a clear untapped potential in this country. And while further capturing the growth in accelerating segment such as Datacom, there is a significant opportunity to improve operational excellence in every segment, including digital, supply chain, pricing management. And our mission is to see U.S. increasing midterm to around 40% of group sales from 27% back in '21, in '21, yes, with higher profitability. And this would put North America at roughly 50% of the group sales. Let's turn now to earning per share, a new KPI that we were introducing in our set of guidance taking into account our financial performance as well as our share buyback programs. Here too, Rexel has already achieved a step change in recent years. The graph shows how EPS through 2020 was reasonably stable at roughly EUR 1 per share year after year over the period. And beginning '21, we saw a sharp acceleration reaching EUR 2.7 per share in '23. And our medium-term guidance is to improve this growth rate to a high single digit, leveraging all levers described in the presentation to boost top line and profitability, but also through strong financial discipline and share buyback. Turning to free cash flow. As you well know, the Rexel model has been a steady cash generation engine as shown on this slide, and we are upgrading our mission on that front as well. Leveraging our strong track record with a regular overachievement of 60% conversion guidance. We are now upgrading the objective to an average free cash flow conversion of 65% in the medium term, resulting from a combination of continued discipline on working capital and further tight management on our CapEx. So let me now turn on to our capital allocation. Since the launch of our Power '25 plan, we have managed to achieve a good balance between investing for future performance and providing attractive returns to shareholders. The pie on the slide breaks down our use of cash over the 2019-'23 period with about 2/3 going to investment and 1/3 returned to our shareholder. And we aim to maintain that good balance going forward. And on the shareholder return front, we intend to continue to pay out at least 40% of our recurring net income in the form of cash dividend, and we will also continue buying back our shares at a pace between EUR 50 million to EUR 150 million per year, depending on our M&A opportunities. And at the same time, we aim to also continue to invest in future performance with, on 1 hand, the CapEx growing in line or below top line growth with a good balance between digital and footprint optimization. And on the other hand, as mentioned previously, continuing M&A investment to add 2% to 3% in incremental sales. And with that, we want to keep a healthy balance sheet with a net debt-to-EBITA after lease of circa 2x. And as largely explained by Guillaume, another key growth and value creation engine for us is M&A. We believe that there are numerous opportunities ahead of us, and we'll continue to be very selective in terms of what we are looking for and what are the financial conditions for a transaction. In terms of priorities, we maintain our strategy to balance our investment between bolt-on and adjacencies business. With bolt-on, it will allow us to consolidate in market, which we are already present and to extract synergies. And from a geographical point, the U.S. is clearly our priority, as you know, it is still a very fragmented market. Mayer, BucklesSmith & Horizon have been a good example of this in the recent past. And with adjacencies, the idea here is to accelerate our development in fast-growing industries, such as sustainable solution, Datacom, digital, service. This is very much in line with our most recent acquisition, WESCO in the Netherlands and Talley in the U.S. We have developed a strong know-how in acquisition and integration on which we intend to capitalize. And in terms of financial criteria, we keep the trick objective that have been achieved with the recent deal, which are first EPS accretive in year 1; second, deliver a return that is above the weighted average cost of capital by year 3; and third, deliver the targeted synergies within 36 months. And our M&A policy is mostly focused on acquisition, but we do not pull out some limited further divestments, business segment or [indiscernible] through which we look at such moves is whether the strategic value justifies turnaround efforts. The net effect between acquisition and small disposals should translate into incremental sales of 2% to 3%. So let me conclude this financial guidance overview by focusing on our historical trend of dividends. In the past, we delivered a consistent dividend, reflecting the increase in our results. And indeed, the EUR 1.20 paid in each of the last 2 years was 3x what we paid in 2016. And in addition, in '23, to maintain that level, we increased our payout ratio at 43%. And as said in the previous slide, so we want to keep the dividend policy of paying out at least 40% of recurring net income. So in summary, you have seen in this section that Rexel has consistent, clear and ambitious targets to deliver profitable growth and value creation for all stakeholders. And with that, I hand back to Guillaume for his concluding remarks, before opening the floor to questions.

So in Part 1, we shared the impressive results of our transformation. In Part 2 of the presentation, we explained how they were obtained, and how we would continue to build on our strengths, in particular, technology, services and sustainability. In Part 3, we discussed the acceleration of the market, and our strategy to benefit from it to the maximum in particular, through smart M&A. And in Part 4, we increased all of our financial targets for the midterm. I don't want to sound ignorant of the current macroeconomic conditions, which are obviously less good than last year. But when I look just a little bit further at what the potential of further development of Rexel is internally and externally, I feel excitement and confidence. Excitement because of both the number of opportunities in front of us and the possibility for us to really make an impact on our market at the moment of deep transformation. And confidence because we have built over the last few years, all the muscle, which are going to be more successful. It's just a question of executing. And confidence because execution is what our 27,000 employees are motivated about, pushing strongly behind the team in front of you to make things happen career excel to the next level. Thank you, and we'll now get ready for the questions.

Will it be possible to ask 3?

Yes. We know to drill.

So the first one, you talked a lot about services in the beginning. But then on the M&A, you didn't have anything related to services. Just wanted to understand, is this more about organic investment? Is it something that you would consider doing a significant move to increase it?

No significant move, no. But when I talk about adjacencies, it can be products, and it can also be services associated with that. When you look at the 14 acquisitions that we talked about, some of them were in what we could call services. For example, the acquisition of LTL in Canada 2 years ago, was in the utility space, but it was really very much about services. LTL is a kind of certification laboratory, providing certification of safety equipment to the utilities, which is something that we are adding to our portfolio of products that we sell to the same customers. You could take also the example of Freshmile that we acquired a few years ago in France, which is 100% about services for the EV charging stations. So we will do that. But for me, we will do that more in a small or maybe midsized way because what we want to do is to acquire expertise, to acquire good IDs. And then it's our job to extend that to our base of customers. We will -- when we go to services, we will look very much about -- at synergies and synergies with our existing customers. So what you will see is smaller acquisition in terms of services. We don't have in mind to expand big scale into a new branch of additional services, but we think that it's a very important part of our organic growth with a few small acquisitions.

And then the second one regarding, I think Laurent mentioned right at the end that divestment is not a big part of this, but there are still 6 countries that are tracking below your ideal margin. So what's the process when you divest countries in the past that you go through? Is it you give them a number of years, some of you accept are inherently lower margin given their mix, how should we think about...

[indiscernible] Daniela, but it's not -- there is no mechanical formula for that. What we want to have is a plan, a credible plan and a momentum. And if you take the example, for example, of Germany and the U.K., which were mentioned here. In Germany, we have a very clear momentum. It was one of the countries where you had these green dots saying that we are gaining market share. We are gaining market share, and we know very well in our world that every turnaround story starts with that. So we have good momentum. We are investing to further expand to gain critical mass and the success will be at the end of the road, no doubt about that. In the U.K., we are investing also. We are a little bit earlier in the process, but we are investing and what we are doing in terms of logistics and in terms of making digital possible in this country where digital is quite important is really putting us on a path to success. And we have good signs of that in the London area where we have put our new distribution center. So we have the momentum. And as long as we have the momentum and we have a credible path to profitability, we will continue to pass because at the end of the day, having the critical mass is also something which is important for a group like Rexel if you have a credible plan. When we are talking about Spain or Norway that we divested, for different reasons, I felt that we didn't have a credible plan. We had a plan, but it was not credible enough. And so for me, that's a little bit the threshold, and it's my job as a CEO to assess that. I have to say also that when Laurent is talking about perimeter adjustments, it's not necessarily a country. In each country, we have different types of businesses, and it may be a part of a business or a former acquisition that we have made and that we are not completely happy with in terms of synergies with the rest of the business. So it may not necessarily -- you shouldn't look at it necessarily because that's what -- the way we did it in the past as one country.

And then final one. You've mentioned you're getting closer to half of the profitability coming from the U.S. You've put a lot of effort there. I'm sure you see how the suppliers over there trade and their multiples. Did you ever discuss internally whether dual listing would make sense?

We discussed that several times. We discussed that several times in terms of dual listing. We made the decision several times not to do it because -- I mean, first of all, when you look at our main competitor, and when you look at their multiples, their shareholder base, et cetera, they have the same multiple, the same -- not the same shareholder base, but the same multiple at the end of the day. So the fact that there would be a premium in doing dual listing is not absolutely obvious. And in terms of -- and I don't want to get to technical, but in terms of double accounting, double reporting and all of that and all the SG&A, which is needed to do that, it's a big effort. So for all of those reasons, we decided in the past not to do it. But it's a question that comes back on the table in the Board from time to time. And we reexamine it every time. And as we are going to become, as you say, at some point, more than 50% of our sales in North America, I'm sure that the Board will ask themselves the questions again.

So it's more a U.S. listing than a dual one at the end.

It's Martin from Citi. The first question I had was just on acquisitions. You've given some very good metrics there in terms of the low multiples you paid and the good returns you've got, but I guess the environment is getting more competitive now, particularly in the U.S. I mean you mentioned consolidation doesn't happen. You're also going to have more than once. So you've got kind of this big opportunity in front of you. How do you make sure that you win an M&A and that you don't overpay? I mean, what's the competitive landscape like when you're looking to buy these acquisitions in the U.S.?

Look, Martin, first of all, what we benefit from is to -- is from being strategic and from the synergies that we can deliver. I mean, we -- I don't think that we mentioned that this time in the presentation. But usually, when we make a consolidation acquisitions, the level of synergies that we can bring is between 2% and 3%. And when you're considering the usually low margin of a distributor, let's make it 5% for a traditional distributor, adding 2.5% means adding 50% of value. So when it comes to competing with private equities, for example, we have a head start. The second thing is, when you're talking about, especially consolidation in the U.S., when you're talking family-owned company or employee-owned company, what makes sense for them is obviously the price, but also the path to the future, the strategy and the values of the company. I don't want to sound romantic about that, but when your grandfather has created a company, you want it to be in good hands. And in several cases, it has allowed us to escape the pure price competition. I won't mention the cases, but that's something that we can bring also. Roger, that is sitting here, spends a big part of his time, discussing strategy and establishing relationship with possible acquisition targets. And it doesn't always work. I mean we are not the only strategic acquirer here. So there is competition on that. And the competition, I would say, is maybe getting a little bit more intense, but not that much, but the prices are increasing a little bit. We don't acquire at 7x EBITA like Rexel, for example. But that being said, it plays a big role also what is a project that you are able to bring to the company and to the employees. And by the way, it's also a very interesting criteria for success because when you buy a company, you want to buy also the people, and it's very important in our business. And if those people are not engaged with you, if they are not engaged with the project that you're proposing to the company, then the risk is a little bit higher in terms of integration. So that's the way we do it. We don't always win, frankly. I mean, our failure rate is relatively high in the U.S. It's more than 50%, and that's good. That's what we want. It means that we don't have to pay. We don't get into bidding walls. Sometimes we increase a little bit, but we don't get crazy. Because at the end of the day, we want the right targets at the right price because we are very conscious about the return on capital employed that we can deliver. And the figures that we have given now that we have 3 years back in terms of track record are quite convincing.

And if I could have one more technical question just for -- on the financials. On the growth, you've talked about 100 to 200 basis points of inflation. Obviously, copper is higher now than it was last year. What have you embedded in terms of the copper price in terms of your inflationary outlook inside growth?

We didn't bet on copper. So it was done with a quite stable copper at the time we prepared those...

I would say, it was a few months ago, so it's...

Before the huge...

It's not [indiscernible]. No. I will let you continue to give the mic.

Yes. Yes, on the second row here.

It's Alex Virgo, BofA. Two questions. One, on growth. I wondered if you could just reconcile the wait-and-see comments with the acceleration -- sort of structural acceleration, and you talked obviously a lot about the KPIs that are embedded, the internal goals that customers have to achieve. So just talk a little bit about that with respect to this wait-and-see comment that you've made and maybe bridge that into a comment on current trading, if you wouldn't mind, please, Guillaume. I'll slip that one in there. And then second question on margins. Is it fair to assume that we are seeing higher margin described to must-have and advanced services and the acceleration businesses? Are there any differences in terms of margin profile of those, just so that we're trying to get a sense of how we should factor this into the models?

Yes. So electrification business is in a wait-and-see situation. I mean, first of all, what I'm calling wait-and-see situation is very focused on a few topics, which are photovoltaics and heat pumps in Europe. And as you've seen in this presentation, we are not just focusing -- when we're talking about secular trends, we are not just talking about photovoltaics and heat pumps. We are talking about much more. We are talking about the grid modernization in the U.S. We are talking about reshoring. We are talking about datacom. And that's -- the good thing about those secular trends is they become more numerous every year, as I mentioned. Now when it comes to sustainability in Europe, I would say, it's fair to take the years '22, '23 and '24 together. Because in the years '22 and '23, you had a high price of electricity, but [ scarce ] of electricity supply due to the Ukraine war, which pushed many people to advance probably their investment decisions in terms of photovoltaics and in terms of heat pumps. And I think we are seeing the reverse effect of that this year. But that being said, when you look at photovoltaics, last time I looked, in terms of total kilowatts installed, it's still higher than 2022. So the growth rate is quite high. And when you look into the future -- when I look into the future, I'm reassured by several things. First of all, there is evidence of global warming. And the evidence is quite physical. And we will see that this summer again. It's getting a little bit hot in this room, by the way. But it's -- we are going to see that in the summer again. And this is going to be a constant reminder of what the urgency is to act on that for European populations. The second thing is the populations when you pull them and there was a recent poll from Veolia done about that. They are fully conscious of that and they accept that. So it's not that, which is a political debate. The political debate that we see in some countries is really about [indiscernible] and affordability, it's not about the end game. It's really about something else. The third thing is when you look at this space compared to a few years ago, compared to 10 years ago, for example, there are many differences. First of all, there are many additional drivers. Private companies have net zero agendas. I don't see them slowing down on the net zero agendas. That's a big driver. Governments, local authorities in terms of what they purchase and what are the requirements in terms of purchasing also have a net 0 agenda, and they are not slowing down on that. The payback of those technologies is now existing without incentives. It may be a little bit longer depending on the price of electricity and do you have or not incentives, but it's existing 10 years ago, sometimes it didn't exist at all. So that's a big change, and that gives me a lot of confidence, all of those drivers together that -- and I don't talk about regulations. I mean, Nour was talking about the EPBD regulation. That's another thing. European regulations are pushing year-after-year countries to continue to progress on that. So there may be temporary backlashes and wait-and-see attitude because incentives are changing, et cetera. But I'm 100% confident that in the midterm, those trends are going to continue to progress at a fast speed. And once again, it's not even talking about the rest of the trends, the ones which are more specific to North America about infrastructure, about reshoring, about Datacom, which are not impacted by your question. You asked -- you slid in a question about the current trading. I have nothing to say about current trading and not a word to add or to subtract what we have said in the past. We have said -- we have given a relatively cautious guidance at the beginning of the year. We have said at the beginning of the year that H2 would be better than H1, especially because of base effect. That's what we saw in Q1, that's what we continue to see. The figures, when you look at them compared to last year, year-over-year, they are improving because of the base effect. So it's a mechanical effect. So we are still in the same environment that we talked about when we issued our results in Q1, no better, no worse. And the third question was, Laurent, you made note of that...

The margin differences between the...

There is no margin different -- there is no real margin differentiator between services and the rest of the business or between acceleration businesses and the rest of the business, and let me explain why. On services, you have -- as you could tell, you have 2 types of services. You have the services that we charge for separately, the most advanced services. And usually, we make good margin and it's fairly relative to what we do on those services because we don't have to build inventory. We don't have to commit assets. The SG&A is not there because we subcontract, et cetera, et cetera. So it's good margin. But as we mentioned, we are not talking billions of those new services. And for us, in our mind, it's very much about stickiness, adding value to the customer and making sure that we can secure the rest of our margin also. So because on the other parts, there are also services on which we are breakeven or maybe in some cases, we lose money. I will give you an example. I mean, I think 3 years ago in 2021, my predecessor, Patrick Berard, talked about the H+2 delivery system in Paris. At the time, it was an ID. We had just invested in an automated distribution center close to Paris. It was an ID. We started to charge the customers for that. It didn't work so much. We gave it for free to a few customers that were very good. It worked better. And we ended up offering it for EUR 2, I think it's still EUR 2 per delivery in Paris, delivery into our house by bike. Those days. Bike is the best way to get deliveries into our house. And actually, right now, I'm happy to say that it's ramping up and it's really getting to be a differentiating factor for our customers, and we see more and more customers being hooked to that. Do we make money with delivering with EUR 2 in Paris by bike? I let you imagine the answer. We don't make money on that. But that being said, what we gained in terms of customer satisfaction, in terms of stickiness, in terms of the ability for them to pay a few cents higher when they buy from us is something which is very valuable. So overall, when I look at services, I look at those ones which are advanced with high margin. I look at those ones on which we accept consciously to be breakeven or even in some cases, to lose money. The mix is more or less in line with what we are doing. In terms of acceleration businesses, because they are high growth, they are also high competition. There are many people interested in that, and you see start-ups. You see competitors, you see many people wanting to get in that and which forces us to be also focused on the right segments of customers, the right mix of products and the right services. If I take photovoltaics, if we were to do distribution for big solar farms, we would make 1% or 2% of EBITA margin. That's the reason why we don't do that. Country by country, we find the right segment of customers. It can be residential, it can be small nonresidential building, et cetera. We find the right mix of products. Usually, we try to insist very much on accessories, sometimes batteries, sometimes inverters to be able to gain more margin. And we want to focus on the right services, as we mentioned in our presentation. So overall, I would say that, yes, maybe industrial automation is slightly more profitable. Maybe EV chargers taken as an independent opportunity is slightly less profitable. But overall, in average, those acceleration businesses are providing growth. They are not providing additional profitability in terms of gross margin. But when you have growth, obviously, you have [ drop ] through on the growth. So it's providing in the end additional profitability, but not because of the gross margin.

Next question? Akash?

It's Akash from JPMorgan. I got 2, and I'll ask one at a time. The first one I have is on digital margin -- digital sales and margin. So on Slide 17, you showed how your digital margins and penetration looks by countries. What I want to understand a bit more is, if you look at your journey in digital transformation, when, let's say, if your sales from digital goes from 15% to 30%, is there any way to quantify how it boosts your margins? So -- basically, we can then figure out when you go from 31% to 50%, how much margin improvement or uplift we should see from digital? So that's number one.

I would love to be able to answer that. I mean for me, personally, it would make my job easier. But I will let Laurent try to give you a little bit more color on that, if he can. But I wanted to come back on this slide that you talked about. On the left part of this graph, you had our global EBITA profitability of the country. It was not just digital margin. It was a global EBITA profitability of the country and you have the digital penetration. And there is a broad correlation. It's not a precise correlation as Guillaume was mentioning, there is a broad correlation. And why does it happen? And it's exactly what Guillaume said, but I will just repeat what Guillaume said. It happens because of 2 things. There is one thing which are the consequences of digital. And for example, we get productivity from digital. When we have our salespeople being able to focus on something else, we get, obviously, productivity from digital, usually because we are in a growth mode. We don't reduce the number of salespeople, but we gain more customers and we gain more market share because of that. And that we can more or less calculate and the order of magnitude of what we can bring through digital because of that is something like a 1% contribution on productivity every year, something like that. Maybe more in the future if we add Generative AI, et cetera, but it's not super meaningful in reality. It's something which is interesting to offset the growth of our -- of the inflation of our OpEx. But what is more interesting was the top part of the graph on this slide, which is that the reason why we are pushing digital also is because digital is a great incentive for the company overall and for our country to become excellent at other things. Because when we get better at pricing because we have to be better at pricing to be able to turn to digital, then it forces us to have database pricing and to be smarter and to gain a little bit of additional margin. When we get better in logistics, that's a little bit the same. We get better logistics. We automate, for example, let's take the U.K. We automated the distribution center close to London. And we automated the distribution close to London in part because we wanted to get digital because if you don't deliver day plus 1, you're never going to be successful in digital. But because we did that, we gained productivity. We gained better rebates with suppliers because the suppliers now have to deliver only to one place rather than to 20 places before, et cetera, et cetera. When we rationalize our assortment to go digital because you cannot have 100,000 SKUs with different suppliers from one branch to the other, everything has to be available in every place. When we do that, we also gain margin. And what I want to say is there are the direct effects of digital, which are one thing. And there are the indirect effect of digital, which is that it forces us to be a good organization on all aspects, and that is very important. Laurent, do you want to add something in terms of calculation?

No, no, but high digital is a reflection of fundamental pillars well in place. You mentioned it of our plan, customer knowledge, logistics, a good web shop as well. And while all that is in place, it has good upside on all lines of the P&L from the top line, and we see an example with the Algo churn. On the gross margin, and we have algos on pricing as well and on OpEx with untouched orders and process and we get some more productivity and also on inventory with our branch assortment tools. So Akash, sorry, lots of words, not many figures. We didn't give you the magic formula between digital penetration and EBITA, but there is a correlation for sure. And we -- and that's the reason why we continue to push very much.

Second question I have is on your new service models. So you talked about that in quite great length. The question I have is more on the cost side, so do you need to invest in building these capabilities? And will it be some additional costs that we should think about? Or is this something that you can do leveraging your existing capabilities? So how shall we think about cost before you see potentially returning to...

No, you're absolutely right to ask the question. The good news is that we have already invested in new services because what we are talking about is not a drastic turn in our strategy. As you can tell by the portfolio of services that we have presented to you, we have already invested very much in the last 5 years in those new services and the additional costs are there. But you're right. If we want to offer services, if we want to offer expertise, we have to have experts. We can subcontract for some services, but for many of them, it goes with hiring a few people who are a little bit more detailed about what they know, about industrial automation when it comes to services in industrial automation, et cetera. And -- but usually, we make sure that in the way we charge for services, we at least pay for that. Even when I'm talking about unprofitable services or barely profitable services, we pay for the additional SG&A we have. It's not very meaningful. You're not talking hundreds of people because usually, you're talking 2 or 3 people that can be materialized on a given country. They cannot be materialized at this stage between countries because of language barriers. But usually, you have a small team for one given country, which does that. And for each one of those services that you were talking about that you saw, it was a little bit the case. So yes, there is a slight additional cost, but yes, also, it's relative in terms of margin, in terms of once again of stickiness, ability to charge, et cetera, et cetera. And at the end of the day, it's relative to the overall EBITA margin of the group, for sure.

[indiscernible].

[indiscernible] ODDO BHF. I have 3 if I may, and I will ask one at a time. What do you need exactly to reach the upper end of your guidance for organic growth? So the 5.5% of organic growth, if you strip out 2.5% of M&A. Is it only macro related?

No. No, no. It's not macro related. It's -- in fact, it's written in the graph in the bars and in the uncertainty in the bars. You need electrification to go fast. You need M&A to go fast. And you need inflation to be on the high side. I mean inflation may be a little bit macro-related. We try to stay away from predicting inflation, and that's why we made -- we said, 100 to 200 basis points. So this one is macro related. I don't know what is going to happen, and I'm not in the business of predicting that. For the rest, electrification, it's a little bit macro related. But at what speed will this debate about affordability versus budget of the states versus urgency of climate change, et cetera, settle. That's something that is, because those are young markets, it's a little bit difficult to predict precisely. So we need electrification to accelerate, which it will, but to accelerate in the upper end of what we said on the graph. And there is the M&A also, which is between 200 and 300 basis points. And here, it's mostly about targets. We won't do M&A for the pleasure of delivering what we said in the graph. We will do M&A if we find interesting targets in interesting markets and value create conditions. And I would almost say that I'm quite confident that we will do between 200 and 300 because we delivered that over the last 3 years and because the field of opportunities is big. But if we don't find targets and if one day -- if 1 year, we are at 0 or 100 basis points, we will be at 0 or 100 basis points because we don't want to spend the money of the company to do things which are not return -- which we are not providing return on capital employed. So that's a little bit how we see that. But Delfin, the reason why we didn't give a precise timeframe when we said midterm, which is, as we answered to several of you, 3 to 5 years, but we didn't give a precise time frame for one good reason because -- which is that the timeframe depends on the macroeconomics. I don't know when the construction and industrial markets are going to rebound. We have all read economic newspapers, et cetera, but what we know how to predict is how we are going to be able to deliver, but not really the macroeconomic context. So the macroeconomic volume context is embedded in the uncertainty and the duration. And I would say the rest of the uncertainty is either the uncertainty on inflation or the uncertainty on the trends and on the M&A. I hope I'm clear enough.

Yes. In Germany and the U.K., you see a potential to improve by more than 200 basis points of profitability. After that, will the profitability of these two countries be in line with the group's one?

That's a very good question. I think -- I wouldn't say differently for the two countries. I think for the U.K., yes, absolutely. When I look at the profitability of some B2B merchants in the U.K., they are good and they are not abnormal. So there is a potential to be profitable in the U.K. for other people, and if for other people, why not for us. Germany is a little bit different. When I look at the profitabilities, what I can know of the profitability of competitors in Germany, it's usually a little bit lower. There is a specific topic in Germany, which is a profitability on the cable, I'm not going to get into the details, but because of the specific situation of Germany and Austria, we don't make profit on the cable -- on the [indiscernible] part of the cable. And so because of that, it's a little bit dilutive to margin. And the competitive structure of Germany with many family-owned competitors makes it a little bit more challenging to reach the same kind of levels as the ones that we have in France, in Belgium, for example. That being said, it's a market which has the potential to be at a very decent level of profitability. You had a third question, Delfin.

Yes, I have. Coming back to your sustainable section that was launched last October. How did you do your selection of 100,000 products? What type of criteria did you use? And did you have suppliers that claimed that some of their products should have been included in this basket.

Maybe Isabelle, you can answer that -- that would be the right person to answer.

So on the first part of your question, so there is one basic element that everybody needs to have is to have signed the supplier charter. That's the minimum requirement. And then we chase three other elements, either the product by itself belongs to what we call an energy transition category like EV, PV, HVAC, or we have a specific label dedicated that we have selected that were recognized as an efficiency label, or it's a best-in-class of its category. I mean you can have all the three elements, but if you is to have one of the three that all the proceedings have been validated by a third party, which is the Bureau Veritas. And yes, we constantly have supplier asking -- knocking at the door, asking to have their products inserted into the selection. So this is why I said that it is constantly evolving in terms of products, but also in criteria. So we're thinking, by the way, of secularity maybe at something we could add. So it's 6 months old, and it's a daily job to make it stay awake.

But let us be clear, the criteria are strict. It's not just is Isabelle deciding that this supplier is half friend. And because of that, he is agreeing to have more SKUs. They are strict. They are debatable and they are debated, but they are strict at any point in time.

Yes. Eric from CIC. I got two questions. The first one on the word you used for your objectives about midterm. You mentioned as well that 2024 will be a transition year. So should we consider that the midterm period start in 2025? And the second question on solutions and services. Could you communicate on the sales generated thanks to value-added solutions and services overall at Rexel level.

Thank you, Eric. On the first question, when we say midterm, it means that what we have in mind is the mid-cycle potential of Rexel in terms of profitability, in terms of top line growth, et cetera. 2024 for me is not a mid-cycle year. But you could, for example, take '22, '23, '24, '25 and maybe you would get to some kind of values like that. But it's a little bit the spirit we had in mind. We didn't have a spirit of saying, okay, it's from '24 to this date. It's more about the mid-cycle potential. Then -- I mean, if you take '24 and you take a full cycle within that, at some point, you're going to get to the targets because that's what we have in mind, really. In terms of services, I think I mentioned it. I think the order of magnitude of what we are charging for services is EUR 100 million, maybe a little bit more than that, but it's not substantially more than that. We are not talking EUR 1 billion. But as I think we made the point several times, it's not so much about the margin brought by those EUR 100 million. It's very much about what it means for the rest of the margin on the EUR 19.4 billion, which are remaining and which are using those services. And that's the reason why, by the way, we gave the figures in terms of utilization of the services in terms of number of customers weighted by size using them and not in terms of sales because that's what counts at the end of the day. When you have a customer and he may buy EUR 50 million during the year, and he may use services for EUR 100,000. But if he uses the services and if he becomes -- if he becomes dependent on that, I mean, I shouldn't say dependent, but if really those services are providing a value, there is a big chance that on the rest of the EUR 50 million, you're going to be able to deserve a slightly higher margin. And that's exactly what we are talking about.

It's Alasdair from Bernstein. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about your strategy to penetrate the utility market, maybe specifically in the U.S. Just I suppose kind of organically but also inorganically. And just whether there's a kind of beachhead acquisition that you can make there?

Sure. we will try to do both. We will try to do it organically. We will try to do it inorganically. I have to say that the utilities business, on which -- I mean you have seen the example, we have been quite successful in Canada, but also with two acquisitions. Utilities business, it's about skills and services, but it's also access to very specific suppliers. That's one thing. And it's also trust with the utilities because if the utilities are going to do business with a distributor, it's because the distributor is going to provide them with a service with no mistake. Then that's a question of trust. And that's the reason why growing organically is not that easy because you need to get the trust of the suppliers and you need to get the trust of the customers. So we will try to do it in the U.S. because we have already all the competencies and we have some access to suppliers through our presence in Canada. Is it going to be extremely successful tomorrow? I don't think so because exactly of what I was talking about. And it's true that when we look at acquisitions, usually, our willingness to pay a slightly higher multiple is greater when those acquisitions are exposed to attractive markets, like, for example, utilities or it could be the case in data centers. So that's a little bit the answer. We will try -- I'm not sure we will be successful without acquisitions at some point, but we will progress for sure. But are we going to be successful big time? Are we going to displace the leaders in this space just through our organic efforts? I don't think so.

And I was wondering, just a follow-up question, but maybe you could explain in more detail the difference between advanced pricing and AI pricing and maybe the further incremental, I suppose, efficiency gains because AI pricing, I think you flagged was 30% of sales, advance was 75%. So it looks like there's still a good runway on the AI side. So maybe you could help us there.

Maybe, [indiscernible], you can take the mic and give an answer to that.

Thank you. So yes, the main difference basically between the three categories is how specific you are. There is a complexity behind the term of algorithm, et cetera, but stating it simply, it's how specific you are. The first part, when we say 75% is database, it means that we still have 25% that is simple cost-plus pricing. Then when you move to what we call advanced data pricing, we are talking about segmented pricing. You take the different customer categories, willingness to pay on each, and you move away from cost plus. And then the 30% that we have through artificial intelligence, it means it's basically not a simple process that you and me could describe. It's hundreds of parameters taken into account. It's sometimes real-time adjustment, et cetera, so much more complex in terms of algorithm behind it.

Okay. I think there was another question behind, I don't know.

Yes. Just one follow-up for me, please. On data center, could you remind us your exposure to data center, your ambition? And is there a way for you to fill [indiscernible] gap between you and WESCO in the U.S.?

First of all, in terms of gap between us and WESCO, last time I looked at their growth or profitability, we were slightly better than them. But that being said, in data centers, it's true that we are less exposed, I think, to data centers than WESCO [indiscernible]. But what is interesting is that we are exposed, and we are exposed quite substantially to data centers and in particular, to the electrical part of data centers, and in particular, in the Southeast region, which happens to be a big place for data centers through our major acquisitions from 2021. And the order of magnitude of what we have in terms of sales linked to data centers this year is EUR 500 million, I think, Roger, if you confirm?

Yes.

So that's our exposure to right now.

It's Max from Morgan Stanley. Could you just talk through your decision to upgrade the free cash flow guidance? What do you see as the biggest opportunities? I know it's not the biggest amount. But if you could just talk us through what are the biggest opportunities on cash? And do you see that kind of 65 as the ceiling? Is that kind of -- should we think of it as an average? How should we think about it?

So first of all, 65 is not a big upgrade. It's an upgrade, but it's not a big and meaningful upgrade. But Laurent, if you want to give detail.

It's a level that we feel reasonable, especially in terms of working capital as a distributor. I mean the quality of inventory and the level of inventory is very important. So it will be easy to increase that conversion by reducing the trade working capital we are very cautious, and we have a lot of goals also and processes into the credit side, and we are quite confident. And on the inventory, we run on average with 60 days plus or minus 2 days, which is a good level. So on the trade working capital, we think we are good level, and we don't intend to go further down. And on the OpEx, we are slightly down compared to our 0.9% CapEx level that we had in the past because that's what we experienced over the last 2 years, time to execute the backlog of project of investment is, I think, what we need going further. So that is contributing to helping the conversion. So continuous improvement in working capital, in CapEx, maybe in percentage slightly less needs, and also, to be honest, we delivered slightly higher than 60% in the last few years.

Just a follow-up on your data center revenues. Will it be possible to split this EUR 500 million revenues between hyperscale and non-hyperscale given one might grow much faster than the other?

You're getting too technical for me. Roger, do you know that? We are mostly exposed to the electrical part of that. Let me go back to you at some point. We will look into that and we will tell you.

Will Mackie, Kepler Cheuvreux. One on the cash flow relating to the CapEx. I mean against the backdrop of stepping up your investments in automation, distribution centers, IT, how are you able to just maintain a steady CapEx ratio, which is your plan? I would have expected it would have gone up at least for a while to facilitate your growth? Then I'll follow with the second.

Look, I mean, in terms of what we are seeing about automation of distribution centers, we are only saying that we are going to increase by 5 additional automated distribution centers in the next few years. And when you think about it, it is not that expensive to automate a distribution center. It's a few millions. And so -- so it's not a super big investment. When it comes to digital, I would say that the bulk of the investment that we have made was a few years ago when we started our digital journey. Then -- now the additional investment is very much about OpEx because the size of what we are delivering in terms of size of the data that we are handling, et cetera, is getting greater, but it's not so much of about CapEx anymore, it's a little bit about CapEx but not that much. Historically, we had 2/3 on digital and 1/3 on footprint and now it's more balance, not exactly 50-50, but closer to that. And at the end, it's what we need in our [indiscernible] right level, yes. We are slightly decreasing, but we were at 0.9% guidance of CapEx in the previous Capital Market Day. Here what we are saying between the lines is 0.8% or less. It's not a big, big difference.

And then I wanted to pick up on a comment you made about the U.K. market structure and the competitive landscape compared to Germany. I mean when you look across the countries that you have within the focused on. I mean, what proportion of the revenue would you say is in markets where you're structurally challenged due to fragmentation or different market dynamics, which would perhaps bring into question the long-term viability of those regions in your portfolio?

Look, if there were countries in which we were structurally challenged, I would say that we would already be out. And Spain was a typical example of a country where I thought that the profitability, the structural profitability of the country, combined with our size, didn't allow us to be profitable to the level that we expect from a Rexel country. That being said, for the rest, for all the countries which are in Rexel's portfolio today, there is a continuum. I mean, some countries have a high profitability potential because of the structure of the market, because of the appetite of the customers, to services, et cetera, et cetera. Some of them have a lower potential. And the average of all of that is Rexel. So it's difficult for me to give a threshold. The threshold for me is a threshold at which we take the decision to exit.

I think time is out, maybe a last question, if there are one. Usually, when we say time is out, maybe a last question, there is no last question. So thank you very much. Thank you very much for your attention. I hope you got additional information on Rexel today, and I hope we were able to share our confidence in the midterm future of Rexel. Thank you very much.