Schneider Electric S.E. (SU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation] [Interpreted] Good afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, great pleasure to be here in person with you after 2 years of virtual meetings. So welcome to the Schneider Electric AGM, I hereby open the 2022 combined AGM, I'd like to tell you that this is a public meeting. It is broadcast live. And you can also have a catch-up on the company's website. According to the provisions of 19 Articles of Incorporation, I will chair the meeting as in my capacity as Chairman of the Board. And again, I'm very happy to chair this meeting with all of you here today. Next to me is Fred Kindle, who is the Vice President of Schneider Electric, and who is our Independent Lead Director; Hilary Maxson, who is our CFO; and Ségolène Simonin-du Boullay, who is the Secretary of the Board. I am going to set up the AGM Bureau for as tellers, we have Mr. Paul Marouzé, who represents Amundi Asset Management, and Mr. Claude Briquet, representing the Schneider shareholding fund. They represent the shareholders and attendants who will have the largest number of voting rights and who accept their duties. I would like Ségolène to perform the duties of Secretary. Also with us is Alexandre Resten and Loïc Wallaert who are the company's statutory auditors; Olivier Peronnet, who represents Finexsi, the merger auditor. Also with us are the directors, Nive Bhagat, Cécile Cabanis, Rita Felix, Fred Kindle, Linda Knoll, Jill Lee, Anna Ohlsson-Leijon, and Bruno Turchet. Also with us are the members of the Shareholders Advisory Committee, and I will take this opportunity to thank the members of the committee on your behalf for the work that they have been doing and the advice that they've been providing us with in order to improve our communication with our individual shareholders. We have a headset to your disposal because we have simultaneous interpreting available for you in French and in English. We are an international company. Of course, we have Channel 1 for English and Channel 2 for French. Now I'm going to give the floor to our Secretary, and she will give you all the legal announcements. Ségolène?

[Interpreted] Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, good afternoon. I'd like to remind you that this meeting was convened today on first convocation of prior meeting notice, serving as a notice of meeting was published in the BALO on March 20 this year, while the notice of meeting in [ Journouise Speciale D'Associate ] was published on the 16th of April. The shareholders represent 386 million shares. The definitive number of shareholders of this meeting gathers more than 25% of the share capital. The members of the bureau will please certify the attendance sheet by signing it. The meeting will -- is invited to rule upon the simplified agenda that appears on the screen behind me. And of which it had the opportunity to take note before and in the convening documentation in accordance with usages, the documents relating to the convening of this meeting are on this table. The provision of article R.225-812, 83 and R.225-88 of the French commercial code relating to shareholder information were complied with and the documents covered by articles R.225-89 and 90 of the same code were made available to shareholders on time. We ask the assembly to allow us not to read the Board of Directors' report given that the shareholders had the opportunity to read it before the meeting. The legal formalities have been completed, and the shareholders meeting will now officially start.

[Interpreted] And our transformation during the COVID years during everything that has happened. The consequence is the acceleration of Schneider Electric, and we'll explain how the acceleration has been conducted. And finally, we're going to explain the unique model adopted by Schneider Electric. First, performance in 2021, a record high, which is quite beneficial, profitable for our shareholders. This is the snapshot at the end of 2021. Sales, EUR 29 billion, high, a record high, 128,000 people worldwide, 2 businesses. Energy Management and Industrial Automation for the purpose of energy efficiency and in managing resources to fundamentals, which are decarbonation, owing to electrification and efficiency owing to digitization. All that is supported by 2 platforms, EcoStruxure, Internet of Objects, and the software suite that enables us to give meaning to the data that we collect in our facilities. Finally, there are 4 basic markets that you're familiar with and the principles of our operational model that I'll remind you of later on in my presentation. So I'll take it a little bit further in detail regarding performance in 2021. As I said, top line, record high, EUR 29 billion, organic growth of 13% against a complex environment in 2021; operating profit, EUR 5 billion for the first time and above 17% of sales, 1 year ahead of the commitments that we had made a few years earlier. Net profit up over 50%. EPS EUR 6.13, up 30%, and operating cash flow up 20%. So you see that performance has achieved a record high across the board. Now regarding 2021, while that year was extremely hit by COVID. So if you want to go back to a stable apples-to-apples comparison, you have to go back to 2019. So these are the numbers compared with 2019. Now 2019 was non-affected or even non-infected year, if I may say so. So even with respect to 2019, which was a very good year for Schneider Electric. While our sales in 2021 grew 7%, operating profit up 19%, and net profit rose over 30%. So even when compared with 2019, the performance is quite sparkling indeed. And of course, we should not forget the profitability for our shareholders, shareholder return. Our shareholders who invest, trust us, support us through all the complex turbulence. Here, you have the total shareholder return for Schneider and its top 11 competitors worldwide. And while Schneider is first, TSR over 50% over 1 year, over 200% over 3 years, which allows us, based on this performance, to offer you in this AGM and there will be a resolution, a dividend per share of EUR 2.90. EUR 2.9, up 12% from 2020, which spells 2 years of dividend growth at Schneider Electric. So if you try to get a comprehensive view of 2021 and the past few months as well, I wish to underscore the fact that all this has been achieved in an extremely difficult environment, a very complex backdrop. So we had to make very difficult decisions. First, Ukraine. We are supporting our 500 people, their families and the temporary workers who are working there. And Schneider Electric has been providing financial support and supplying equipment as well to reestablish energy in the country. Secondly, we made a detailed decision, it took us 2 months to make the decision to transfer the ownership of our operations in Russia, which is something quite substantial to the employees of Schneider in Russia. So we signed a letter of intention for the transfer of ownership. In the coming months, we're going to have to make this materialize. The second thing is that we all experienced -- was -- due to COVID, we completely -- well, we used our multi-regional organization. We made the most of digital and in distance facilities. We found new ways of working and new management and leadership approaches. Another crisis has to do with logistics disruptions and component shortages. Today, we are deepening strategic relations with our suppliers in order to achieve greater performance with them. We are redeveloping products. And again, we are setting up the more regional strategies because against the complex backdrop, it's easier to handle things locally. So if you take those 3 crises, which are concurrent that we had to handle at the same time, the environment is quite complex. In spite of that, we have demonstrated resilience and performance, which can be seen as remarkable. Now first of all, you know that the world of energy is undergoing significant transformation. Let me try to summarize this. In the past few years, we've all discovered and Schneider has this at the top of strategy for 20 years, the challenge of our generation was climate change. And climate change is 80% due to emissions and emissions is 80% due to energy. So climate change is about -- is what we have to do at Schneider. And to summarize it, well, it's quite simple. We have to go 3x faster and 3x stronger. Why should we go 3x faster? Well, because climate change is an area where all the buildings that are being erected today, all of the plants that are being erected, all the cars that are being manufactured which emit carbon will be here for the next few years, and we'll continue to pollute in the coming years. All the buildings, plants, and virtuous cars that are being set up on the market today will reduce carbon footprint in the many coming years. So the fight against climate change is a fight that does not start in 2030. It starts now. It has to do with the decisions we will make from now to 2030. So we have to go 3x faster than what you hear about in the theories or they're in the commitments that are shared here and there. So 3x faster, again, because if you take a look at the coming decade and if we wish to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 degrees, well, today, you have the sum of all the commitments of all the companies and all the countries. And we're looking at 3 to 4 gigatons of negative emissions, fewer emissions to be on the 1.5 degree trajectory, it should be 10 to 15. So it's quite simple compared with what we do to do. Well, we have to go 3x faster, and we have to do it 3x stronger. At Schneider Electric, we have dedicated teams who work with global experts on all this. And we have worked for a long time on -- with an approach that makes it possible to supply energy to over 1 billion people who don't have access to energy in the world and to cut carbon emissions by 2 to be on the 1.5-degree trajectory. And in the end, there's one way of doing using current technologies, and it can be in snared here and a very straightforward tripping. The priority is to save and to consider and think circular that's 25% of the solution. But there is a problem. We're not going fast enough. We have to renovate what we do 10x more. And since it can be done with conventional traditions in order to accelerate, we have to go faster. It has to be 10x cheaper than with conventional technology. So we have to use digital. So the disruption that has taken place in telecommunications and other areas must also be applied to what we do in the area of energy. The second challenge, decarbonation means the elimination of combustion and therefore, means electrification. Collectively, we must prepare for a world that will be far more electric, dramatically more electric. In other words, the share of electricity in our energy consumption will be multiplied by 2 or 3 in the next 30 years. This is the second fundamental transformation. The third transformation is to ensure that this energy production will be carbon-free, with renewable hydroelectricity, wind energy and so on and energy storage as well. Now there's been a faster and faster movement in the COVID years, but -- and that is driven by a number of factors and packages that are set up by governments by corporate commitments. There are 1,400 major corporations in the world that have made carbon neutrality commitments with a given time line. And in their ecosystem, they are embarking thousands of medium and small companies. And I think that the real change came -- has come from you, investors. Because in the past 3 years, you entrust -- well, you hold the corporate officers responsible for financial performance and for nonfinancial performance as well. So here, I've tried to model what the transformation would look like. And you know that we have 4 basic markets in Schneider, and there is a submarket which is residential. We all live in apartments and houses, of course. And most of us live in an environment that was created in the '80s on average, right? Now if you take a look at such dwellings and you look at a dwelling that is either erected or renovated using digital and electric technologies that exist today. Well, today, you can erect the same type of house with the same level of comfort without having to renovate the whole building just by using active technologies. And by so doing, you can divide your energy demand by 2 or 3 energy. Fossil energy consumption can be brought down to 0, notably gas. Gas which currently finances countries that are involved in threats to Europe, and you can also reduce carbon emissions by a factor of 4 to 10. These are not future technologies. These are current technologies, existing technologies and they are marketed by Schneider and other players on the market. So rather than explain all this, I'd like to show you a video that explains quite at what we do. Video, please? [Presentation]

[Interpreted] So the shift on the market, the shift in our client needs towards an all-digital, all-electric world has had obvious consequences on Schneider Electric on your company. Even more for Schneider Electric because we are one of the -- well, the technological leader in this transformation. And if you look from 2003 to 2021, you can witness the transformation. We went from EUR 1 billion to EUR 11 billion in digital technology. So we more than multiplied by 10 our sales there. We multiplied by more than 3 in electrification and electric mobility. We are the global leader of electrification. And between 2003 and 2021, the share of our sales linked to sustainable development with our clients, making systems more energy efficient, reducing carbon emissions, making systems more intelligent, making them smarter and increasing renewable in the mix went from 5% to 70% of our sales, of our turnover. So this transformation of our world was really translated and even more into our figures. And Schneider Electric specializes in finding integrated solutions for our clients to make sure that efficiency and digitization are within reach. This is what we call 4-level integration. First of all, energy and digital for more efficiency, energy efficiency and process efficiency, total connection and transparency between all of our objects so that they all be connected to the general framework so that everyone from their smartphones or control room can have access to all the elements of their installations, of their setups. Once the data is connected, there is the possibility of plugging in new layers of software to have an integrated management of the life cycle of installations of facilities, thanks to what we call the digital twin of those installations. And finally, the last level since installations are connected locally, there is the possibility to connect them at an international level globally so that our clients can manage not facility by facility, but can manage their own, all their assets globally. So this 4-dimension integration based on our Internet of Things platform and our AVEVA software suite, we are the only company who provides these solutions at this level. Let me give you one example. We've talked about the residential market. We've talked about the building industry and the consequence of the footprint and the consequences for the future -- the industry of the future, you might know that 40% of our sales come from the industrial segment. And we use digital twins in this market to connect all the elements. And this provides users, managers, facility managers, all the data, all the elements of everything that's going on to improve the safety and security of people on the ground and to ensure the traceability of all elements who enable their recycling. And as we know, 25% of the energy consumption of the industry is electricity. But 30 years from now, it will be 80% of processes who will run on electricity. So from a very practical standpoint, we currently are working hand-in-hand with many industrial companies around the world to buy equity stakes in their processes and to transform them and to make them move from carbon to electricity. So we are on the verge of a considerable transformation of the industry and of our sector. So what does this imply for Schneider? Well, as we said during our Investor Day in December last, it means accelerating growth based on 3 pillars. First of all, the acceleration of our basic markets, then we know that we'll have to start reaping the fruit of the new layers of value that we've created for our clients on the basis of our fundamental markets in the field of services, software and advice. Finally, as you know, over the last 15 years, we have implemented a business model that is without peer. And that is really suited to the current state of the world, a multipolarized, multiregionalized world. Then let me go back to the first element, the acceleration of our basic market. Electrification, digitization and sustainable development. These are the 3 markets. I've just explained to you in the previous segment, why these markets are really booming. If you're looking at this graph on the right-hand side, the average growth on our markets -- I mean, the easiest way, the most reliable way to measure them is to take the average of our main competitors. Over the last 5 years, our markets grew by about 2% per year. Good news. The good news is that over the last 5 years, Schneider Electric grew twice as fast, drawing strength from our cost structure and from AVEVA and our global positioning. Now in the 5 coming years, we believe for the reasons that I've explained earlier on that these markets will grow twice as fast as before. So in light of that, over the last 15 years, we have created what we call layers of value for our clients that just did not use to exist. First of all, these services that allow us to support and assist our customers, our clients once we've put together a project during the whole life cycle of these operations. And let's take a look at a video with a major industrial company you're all familiar with called ArcelorMittal. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] As you see, our services make for longer-lasting facilities that way we don't have to replace. The elements replace the facilities. We can ensure longer life cycles and ensure and hence circularity in the management of these facilities. The second layer of value that we bring on our more conventional markets is digitization. As you've seen, we have installed sensors to develop analytics. What you've witnessed over the last 15 years is the creation of a unified software portfolio, AVEVA, that allows our clients to create digital twins from design to construction to operations, thereby doing away with 2 complexities in the life of our clients. The first one is to ensure that the digital twin will indeed follow the whole cycle. The second complexity is that any project of our clients will be very complex. There's a travel dimension, managing the process, managing the energy and managing the fact that it is all set within a building. And on the market, there is no other software suite that allows our clients to follow all these dimensions at once. But we provide this. We provide a single package to do this. The digital software, a database, an algorithm, user experience and a single catalog of software. Proof of this success and the attractiveness of our value proposition is the number of assets under -- of machines -- of appliances that we have to host on our cloud, the management of which we host on our cloud. So we stand at 6.2 million products or assets that we have to host that is plus 50% over last year. I'd like to share another video. I think it's in English, but it's subtitled in French anyway. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] So the software portfolio works with Schneider processes, but with all processes in the market, and it already makes for almost 10% of our sales, which in itself makes it one of the largest industrial software companies in the world. The third layer of value that our clients is advice. Two kind of advice. First of all, regarding their decarbonation effort, you remember the number of companies about 1,400 decided to go towards Net Zero. They need a partner to do so. Schneider Electric provides them with solutions to decarbonate their businesses. And we have on average 100 million tonnes of CO2 saved each year for our clients. The second type of advice that we provide is on digitization. Throughout the world, we have a number of plants, about 200 of them who are pioneers in the field of digitization, and we work alongside a number of industrial companies to digitize their processes who would benefit from the experience that we've gained at Schneider. Let me remind you again that in 2021, we were ranked by Gartner as the fourth best supply chain company in the world or supply chain organization rather in the world. And this is a great service that we provide to our clients around the world. So these activities, advised software services, they represented 50% of our turnover last year at Schneider Electric, they explain partly why we are out doing the market in terms of growth. And in 2025, we want to bring this to 60% of our overall turnover at Schneider Electric. Finally, I would like you to see that this accelerating growth is due to a model that we've been implementing, which is really unique. And we've been implementing it over the last years. It has forming characteristics that you need to take away. First of all, we are an integrated company. This means that we -- our mission basically is to make our clients' life simpler. And so we need to implement complex solutions on their behalf. But it's very difficult for us because we need to organize ourselves, our digital efforts, our supply chain, our software package in a way that is provided into a sort of a single package to our clients. So internally within the company, we need to ensure that we can attract talent, which is the most important thing for any company, and we need also to ensure that we can draw synergies from all the businesses and activities and operations at Schneider. Second characteristic, we are the company in our segment in our industry that relies most on partnerships. We develop our technologies with our -- with other partners, but it's particularly true in the field of production. We rely on the services of supplier providers -- supplier partners, sorry, and it's true also for commercialization, the marketing, we work alongside with installers, with integrators, with the company specializing in the implementation of systems to bring those to the market. Finally, one very differentiating element, which is very often talked about. It is the fact that we are a decentralized company. We believe that this is a global world out there and we believe also that with the rise of economic prosperity around the world, each culture around the world is rising, and therefore, we need to adapt that much more to local circumstances and local context every year. As you know, we have structured our company around 4 hubs. North America, Europe, China, and 2021 was the year of the creation of the Indian division. The Indian Hub, we have more than 30,000 people there, more than 5,000 R&D staff, a lot of them working on software. And more than 90,000 points of sales. We're operating more than 500 cities in India. And as I said, 2 years ago, we acquired Larsen & Toubro, actually, the merger is happening successfully as we speak. Fourth, characteristic, it's the integration of ESG criteria to all levels of the company. At Schneider Electric, we want to be an impact company. We want to have a positive impact on society. And we've decided to organize ourselves around 5 different trusts if you will. First of all, we want to be a high-performing company. If you are not efficient as a company, as a business, you have to make difficult decisions with adverse conferences on the environment. Second of all, we want to make sure that our rise on debt, our purpose is fully in line with the climate challenge. Third element, we want this to impact all the dimensions of ESG and for all segments of the company. And finally, something that is very strong for us, we want to ensure that this is a global commitment, but that there will be a breakdown of those commitments at the local level, and we want to make our local managers accountable on these questions locally. Let me take one example. I've mentioned one of the commitments in ESG, which is to reduce our carbon footprint. Obviously, at Schneider, we have made the commitment to be carbon neutral on our own, parameter on our scope in 2030, on the complete scopes of Scope 3 in 2050, but we are also helping our clients to save 100 million tonnes of CO2 per year. In 2021, we have launched an operation with our 1,000 larger suppliers to support them and help them reduce or divide by 2 their carbon emissions in the 5 coming years. But we have also made another commitment because we make more than 40% of our sales in emerging countries. We have committed ourselves to bring its green electricity to 50 million people who currently do not have access to electricity at all. Therefore, we have committed ourselves to train 1 million young workers to different professions in the field of electricity. And finally, we are offering our investors, a company which derives 70% of its income from sustainable development. And by 2025, we want to bring that number up to 80%. So we commit ourselves to gaining 80% of our income from sustainable development-linked operations. In addition, we keep working on the -- our relationship with our stakeholders and the foundation of that is trust. Our clients come to us because they trust our company. Our people work here because they trust in our company -- they trust our company. And as investors, you invest in Schneider because you trust us. Local governments and -- want Schneider to invest with them in their regions because they trust us. And so we want trust to be central to the questions of FX, to the safety of our employees, the topic of cybersecurity, obviously, the quality of our services and with everything we do for sustainable development. The second element which we're involved in day in, day out is offering differentiating proposals to the new recruits. I've always been convinced that the true wealth of the company is its employees. And we want the people who come to work for us to be motivated by values to work for a purposeful company, why do we do things, how do we do it. They want to have access to the most inclusive working environment in the world with diversity at the forefront of our recruitment policy, gender, origin, geographical origin. So in order to work in a very respectful environment. So this concludes my presentation for a very full 2021 year. I would like to turn to Hilary, but before I would like to thank her because she is going to speak in French today. Hilary is North American. She is American. And so I think we can clap to encourage her. So I'm very proud of the French language, but I can tell you that it's a very different language, especially when it comes to speaking about finance. So thank you. Congratulations. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] Thank you. Thank you, Jean-Pascal. Dear shareholders, good afternoon. I am delighted to be with you today to comment on your company's results for the past year. I'm going to give you some information on the performance of our first quarter 2022. First of all, let me talk to you about trust, a fundamental value for Schneider. It is essential to our environmental, social and governance commitments. Trust is at the heart of all Schneider Electric interactions with its stakeholders and all relationships with our customers, shareholders, employees, collaborators and the communities in which we operate. That is why in 2021, Schneider transformed its principles of responsibility into a charter of trust, the group's code of conduct, reflecting its commitment to ethics, safety, sustainable development, quality and cybersecurity. Moving on to finance. Okay, let's talk about finance. I will start by going back to some key financial elements for 2021. 2021, a new excellent year for Schneider with as Jean-Pascal said, a record sales number of EUR 29 billion, plus 12.7% like-for-like. Our net income is also strong at EUR 3.2 billion, up 51% compared to the previous year. Thanks. We have reached our objective in the EBITDA -- adjusted EBITDA 1 year ahead of plans. Free cash flow is strong, EUR 2.3 million, plus 51%. Thanks, of course, to our excellent operating performance. And thanks to the focus we've put on costs below adjusted EBITDA. Free cash flow is lower than last year due to the increase in working capital in order to serve our customers. And all of this translate into an increase of our ROCE to 13.5%. I will talk about this in more details later on. All year long, we compared ourselves to 2020 and 2019 -- 2020 and 2019, as Jean-Pascal showed earlier. And we still have a good momentum, finishing at more than plus 7% in sales compared to 2019 for the full year. In products, we delivered more than 16% compared to 2020, 3.5 points due to price and more than 11% compared to 2019. In systems, we finished at more than 9% compared to 2020. And we can now -- we are now stable compared to 2019. As far as softwares and services are concerned, they represent 18% of our sales number. We ended the year at plus 7% compared to 2020, same compared to 2019. Energy Management business generated an income of more than EUR 22 billion sales number with like-for-like sales growth of more than 13%, and we grew our EBITDA margin by 140 basis points like-for-like. This double-digit revenue growth in all regions was supported by specific measures on prices all year long, despite supply chain pressure. This mainly during the second half of the year. The residential and small building market is still our -- among our most active markets. Demand for the group's offerings in nonresidential market is also good, with a recovery in hotels and commercial buildings, in particular, data centers and networks are showing double-digit growth with a demand which is quite strong. Long cycle industrial markets are still experiencing difficulties, particularly in the mining and oil and gas segment. The Industrial Automation business generated a sales number of almost EUR 7 billion plus 10.7% compared to the previous year. The business posted contrasting results with a better performance for product and systems offering and -- which are smaller than the hybrid and process markets, which nevertheless experienced a strong recovery in demand towards the end of the year. Sales growth has also -- was also supported by price taking measures throughout the year despite pressure on the supply chain. Discrete markets experienced strong growth in many markets, including packaging and material handling and everywhere. Process and hybrid markets remained challenging, impacted by a slower recovery in the mid- to long-term -- to long-cycle industries. Also, the second half of the year saw a strong development of the demand, particularly in the -- in consumer goods and oil and gas. We grew our EBITDA margin for the business by 90 basis points on a like-for-like basis. Now let's talk about the performance of our gross margin over the past few years. We ended the year with a gross margin of 41%, a record in 15 years. Thanks in part to a positive scope with the addition of OSI and a like-for-like impact of only minus 10 basis points despite inflationary pressures. The first reason for this performance is price. We achieved a very good price performance on products all year long. And it even speeded up during the second half of the year. We ended the year at EUR 612 million, which means a positive net price, EUR 41 million. Productivity also remained positive despite a significant increase in freight and electronic components of EUR 161 million for the year. Productivity before the effects of inflation in freight and electronics ended at EUR 325 million. As for the mix, it increased our gross margin by 40 basis points due to the continued focus on pricing in our systems business, especially in this environment with a major inflation. As far as the rest of the income statement is concerned, as mentioned before, we delivered like-for-like growth in our adjusted EBITDA of more than 23%, EUR 5 billion and an expansion of our adjusted EBITDA margins by 140 basis points on a like-for-like basis, we ended the year at 17.3%. This record margin level was driven by both businesses despite inflationary pressures and component shortages. The good margin performance in the context of cost inflation was the result, of course, of revenue growth combined with, in particular, an improvement on our SFC to sales ratio. Now let's talk about our net income, including the scope of consolidation and currency effects, our adjusted EBITDA is up by more than 27%. Restructuring costs amounted to EUR 225 million for the year. Amortization of acquisition related intangible assets increased as expected due to the acquisitions completed in 2020 and 2021. In financial expenses, our net cost of debt decreased slightly due to lower interest rates. We also had a lower foreign exchange gains and losses due to the implementation of some tools that support our treasury team. And our tax rate remains stable at about 23%. We continue to evaluate the impact of upcoming tax reforms on our tax rate, this, in the coming years, obviously. All in all, therefore, our net income was EUR 3.2 billion, up by 51%. Our adjusted net income is up 30% and adjusted earnings per share are at EUR 6.3, both at record levels, thanks to our excellent results. Our operating results were strongly reflected in our operating cash flow, which reached a record level of EUR 4.5 billion. Expected our working capital increase to support the demand. Our day -- the remaining inventory increased by 15 days due primarily to strategic stockpiling to manage upstream pressure and lead times to better meet customers' demand in a difficult environment. We expect some reversal in 2022 this number of days, even if we are still focusing on how to serve our customers in the best possible way. Free cash flow was at the end of the year, EUR 2.8 billion with a conversion rate of 87%. As I said during our Investors Day, we expect free cash flow conversion to be at 100% throughout the cycle. As Jean-Pascal mentioned, we remain very focused on return to shareholders. Given our net earnings and our results per share, we are, therefore, proposing a dividend of EUR 2.9 per share this year, plus 12% for consecutive year. I will conclude the analysis of the income statement and the balance sheet with a quick -- a few words on the debt ratio. Now at 1.2x, net debt to adjusted EBITDA is returning to a more normal level after the completion of the acquisition of OSI via AVEVA at the beginning of 2021. The quality pledges we reflected during this presentation can be translated into a profitable investment for our shareholders. This graph here shows what the return -- it shows what the return on investment would have been if you had invested EUR 100 at the beginning of 2017 compared to the same investment in the CAC 40. EUR 100 invested in Schneider in 2017 represent today EUR 240, whereas EUR 100 invested in the CAC 40 at the same time is worth today EUR 155. This means that an investment in Schneider as represents 1.5x more than an investment in the CAC 40. Now the first -- the sales number of the first quarter of this year. We had a very good start of the year with revenues of EUR 7.6 billion plus 10% on a like-for-like basis, well balanced between prices for about 6 points, and volumes, 4 points. The quarter was characterized by the same strong themes seen in the fourth quarter of 2021, continuing global supply chain constraints mean that this is not yet reflected in the top line. However, we have seen a sequential reduction in supply chain impacts during the first quarter of 2022 compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. All this is fully associated to our actions on prices to counterbalance inflation. Both businesses contributed to the strong performance. The Energy Management business ended the quarter at EUR 5.7 billion, plus 10% compared to the previous year. And the Industrial Automation business at plus 19 points compared -- plus 9% sorry, compared to the previous year. Now let's talk about some specific points about the dynamics and expectation for 2022. First, we see a strong global environment in our segments and footprints and in both businesses. However, we anticipate greater uncertainty in global supply chains due to both the impact of the conflict in Ukraine and problems in China. We have -- our hypothesis is a gradual lifting of the lockdown in Shanghai with industrial capacity returning -- resuming, I would say, sometime in May. Globally, we continue to anticipate sequential improvements in component shortages during the second half of 2022 in part through our redesign efforts, and because we have been able to make the most of our multi-hub organization, we also expect supply chain constraints to ease all around the world. We also expect to see increased inflation at least over the quarters to come. We will go on with an agile pricing policy, and we still expect net prices to be positive for the full year, including the impact of transportation and electronic components. In this context, we do confirm our objective to have an increased EBITDA of -- with a growth rate of plus 9% to 13%. As far as capital allocation is concerned, our priorities remain unchanged from what we explained during our Investors Day. In particular, we are committed to investment-grade credit ratings as a priority to guarantee reliable access to capital markets even in those times of economic uncertainty. This gives us the flexibility to maintain and even accelerate our strategic plans at times when other companies may not be able to do so. Two comments. First, we are still planning to complete our EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 2 billion share buyback in 2022. As you know, we are proposing today, and you will vote about that share buyback limit of EUR 250 in order to support this program. Then we also are on the right tracks to achieve our asset disposal program of EUR 1.5 billion or EUR 2 billion by the end of the year. And of course, our focus is still a progressive dividend. It is a priority for us. I would like to conclude talking a little bit more about the medium term objectives and ambitions that we detailed in our Investor Days in November. First, between 2022 and 2024, we expect a strong growth of plus 5% to plus 8% on average and a continued expansion of our margin, plus 30 -- up to plus 70 basis points per year. We expect this growth and margin expansion to translate into an acceleration of our free cash flow over time, with a free cash flow of approximately EUR 4 billion expected by the end of 2024. We have raised our long-term targets with an ambition to grow revenues by an average of 5% or even more on a like-for-like basis over the economic cycle with the possibility, obviously, of increasing our margins and cash flow in the near future. As you know, dialogue with our individual shareholders is fundamental. The vectors of this dialogue for us is our Shareholders' Advisory Committee. And we have a lot of exchanges and discussions with them. We let them meet management. We let them visit some of our state-of-the-art sites. I imagine that you have a lot of questions. So use the Shareholders' Advisory Committee to ask questions, those questions. It's excellent for us. It's an excellent channel for us. Now let me thank you, and let tell you how Schneider's teams are all committed to meeting challenges ahead of us. Jean-Pascal, you have the floor.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much. I am so proud of the Chief Financial Officer of Schneider. Before I give the floor to Fred Kindle, who is going to speak not in French but next time maybe, Fred will be speaking about the work and the dynamics of the Board and the committees, and he will speak of his role as Vice Chairman and Independent Lead Director. But before that, I would like to briefly speak about the Board of Directors, and I would like to ask whether we could have a shot of the people in the front row. Schneider has one of the most diverse boards in terms of backgrounds and skills. Each director was chosen by the Governance Committee. Applications were submitted to the shareholders based on expertise experience, mindset, compatibility with the corporate project. Therefore, I think it's fair to say that we have an excellent Board of Directors who has a very global view of things. Today, I would like to pay a tribute to 2 directors who are going to step down from the Board. The first director is Fleur Pellerin, who joined the Board in 2018. She has provided us with a great deal of experience and knowledge about France, and Asia and in the world of start-ups, notably in Korea. And I would also like to extend thanks to Willy Kissling, who has been on the Board of Schneider Electric since 2001, 21 years of outstanding contributions. In the past years have been indeed quite significant in terms of transformation, Willy Kissling has provided us with a great deal of industry expertise. He's also helped us with all his connections all over the world, and he was a very valuable person because he provided me at least with a great deal of wisdom, advice and guidance. So thank you so much, Willy. And I'm sure that we shall remain in touch. Yes. Please put your hands together for Fleur Pellerin and Willy Kissling. I would also like to pay tribute to Nive Bhagat, who will join the Board. Her nomination will be submitted to you later on. Nive provides us with significant experience in IT and technology, more broadly speaking, and of course, considerable international experience. She sits on the executive board of Capgemini. So she knows all about the workings of French companies. And now I would like to give the floor to the Vice Chairman and Lead Director, Fred Kindle. Thank you very much. Fred is very tall as you can see.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. Unfortunately, I do not speak French very well, and I do apologize. And therefore, I must speak in English. I'm very happy to be here today in person, first time after 3 years with the pandemic all around us, and have the opportunity to talk to you about the subject of governance. We have prepared a few slides and would like to spend a few minutes just discussing a few select items. Let me start with the first chart that you have seen before, Jean-Pascal, talked about it already. It's about Resolution #3, it's about the dividend proposal. What you see on this chart, as I mentioned, Jean-Pascal has already talked about, it is the, I would say, very strong performance of your company as it concerns total shareholder return on the one hand to see the respective figures up there. And also with regard to the dividend proposal. So we are able to propose again, an increased dividend for this year of EUR 2.9 per share. And of course, we hope that defines your approval. With that, let me move on to a different subject matter. It's the matter of our auditors. You may know that in the past, we have been using 2 auditors in tandem in cooperation with each other. These are the 2 firms of Mazars from France from here as well as Ernst & Young. And as we are required by law, the term of Ernst & Young is coming to an end and we've to replace this firm by another. We have done a careful evaluation now proposing today for your approval the continuation on the one hand of Mazars as one of the auditing firms; on the other hand, of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mazars is a firm that has been working with us for many years and understands our operations in very much detail. So we very much appreciate them continuing. PricewaterhouseCoopers on the other hand, is a very global firm, a firm with reach in all different territories of this world geographies. And of course, they will be very complementary to Mazars. So this is the proposal to continue forward from today onward. Let me move on to the next subject, which is the Board. You see a picture with all the faces of the Board members after today's AGM, assuming that defines your approval, I think I don't need to dwell on the individual faces on this chart. What is most important, if you have a look at the right-hand side, this is actually a highly competent board, a board with a lot of different people with a lot of different areas of expertise and backgrounds and nationalities. It's 45% female. It's 82% independent. There is included 10 different nationalities. Some of them, unfortunately, don't speak French yet. And it's also a working board, not a sitting board. And you see this for instance, by the fact that we had an attendance rate of 97% in the last year, obviously, mostly done in a virtual fashion due to the pandemic and also due to the fact that we have 5 different committees, much of the work being performed in the Board is not just in the Board session, people sitting together in 1 big room, but it's actually done in the committees. And these 5 committees, as you can see in the right-hand side, they deal with different subject matters that relate to the company. On this chart with the 14 faces, you see 3 highlighted, and those are the 3 that are coming up for election, that is renewal or new election to the Board. Let me quickly talk about them. On the next chart, you see, first of all, on the left-hand side, a picture of Linda Knoll. Linda Knoll is an American Board member of ours. She's been on the Board since 2014, Linda has had a distinguished career as a high-level executive, especially as an HR Director with large-scale companies like Fiat. So she's an expert when it comes to HR questions, but she's also an expert when it comes to leadership in large-scale companies within a global context. Linda has been running as a chairperson the HR and CSR Committee and assuming that you find your approval, we continue to do so and also continue to serve on the Governance and Remuneration Committee. On the right-hand side, you see a picture of Anders Runevad. Anders will, of course, be here, but he happens to be the Chairman of another company that again happens to have their AGM exactly today. So I think it's a perfect excuse, unfortunately, not to be here today. But Anders joined us in 2018. He is a Swedish origin, and after several successful years with Ericsson in Sweden in the telecom industry, he became the CEO of Danish-based Vestas Wind Systems. This is the largest producer of wind turbines. So Anders brought into our company the knowledge, the expertise in the alternative energy field, which obviously is very much at the core of what we are doing as well. He's been on the Board since 2018. He served in several committees and assuming he's going to be reelected, he will continue to serve in the Governance Committee as well as in the Investment Committee. Very happy to see both of these people continue in our board. Let me switch then to the third person, Nive Bhagat, who is with us today, first time in-person. She's been in Board session as a sponsor before, and hopefully, you're going to elect her into our Board. Nive is very welcome person to our Board because she brings in a new level of expertise, experience, know-how that we haven't seen before. Nive is originally from India, and you've heard Jean-Pascal talking about our acquisition there, about our strength of operation in India. So we need someone to have special expertise when it comes to this geography. On the other hand, Nive's been a trained accountant. She never worked within accounting because her interest very quickly led her into the field of information technology. So early on, she started -- after a few years with accounting firms, she started to work with Infosys, one of the world-famous IT companies out of India. Later on, then joined CapGemini. Again, a global IT-related company with origins here in France and has had a distinguished career, and today, she is the CEO of Global Cloud Infrastructure Services. So assuming, again, Nive will be elected into our board, she will be joining not just the Board, but also sit into our Digital Committee, which makes perfect sense. With that, let me switch the topic again. The next chart is about Resolutions #7 and 10. It shows you the different components that add up to the total compensation paid to the Directors. And because there's nothing really that new about it, I'll try not to talk about individual components. You see how they all add up to the outcome, which is then the [indiscernible] paid per director. It's basically a concept that is driven by the amount of work that is happening in the committees and in the Board. You see the individual figures on the right-hand side, and you see the total outcome, which is just short of EUR 1.8 million. That is a total fee being paid to the Directors of your company, and of course, we hope that defines your approval again. Staying on the topic of compensation, but now looking at the compensation of our Chairman and CEO, and this is what is called the ex-post votes that you're casting today relating to Resolution #8. It shows in actual figures, the total compensation that is being paid out to Jean-Pascal Tricoire, our Chairman and CEO. Again, structurally, no change to the past. So I don't need to do a lot of explanation how this is all being built up. Let me just point out a few most important points. The fixed compensation is EUR 1 million a year, the same as it has been for many years actually now. The annual variable compensation is driven by a formula that is based on measurable distinct criteria. They are the same as in previous years, and they then compound to achievement rate. In this case, it was 153% and the 153% then yield an outcome of just short of EUR 2 million. That's the short-term bonus. And besides the other comments on this chart, let me just point out that we handed out 37,900 shares -- performance shares that is in the form of the long-term incentive plan. So they're also tied to the company performing well, and of course, if the company was not performing well, the value of that would decline significantly. That is all included in Resolution #8. Again, we ask you to approve that. Now switching gear from looking backward, ex-post evaluation of the compensation of the Chairman. Let's look forward what is going to be our policy moving into the future. The gist of this chart basically says, we are not going to change our policy at all with a few notable exceptions. So our policy stays to pay competitively, to pay for performance, to link the pay with the shareholder performance, to have a long-term aspect to it, to be fair and measurable, all meaningful reasonable criteria. That all stays the same. There's 3 changes that we're introducing for your approval today, and all of these 3 changes relating to making this policy a bit more stringent and also more transparent. Let me quickly talk about the 3 points up here in the boxes. At the bottom left-hand side, you see a comment relating to the TSR criterion. We talked about TSR before. This is a total shareholder return depending on how the performance of that is, there's going to be more or less payout. The change now is that this is becoming more stringent, we compare ourselves to a panel of peer companies. We compare ourselves to the CAC 40 and other things, but when it comes to the panel of peer companies, there's not going to be a payout unless we meet the median. So we need to have at least an average performance. Otherwise, we're not even talking about paying out something. That's the first thing. The second thing in the middle is about the earnings per share, which is another criterion used for determining the payout. We will be disclosing the actual criteria that we are applying in this respect, post factum. So once it has happened, we will disclose to everyone, including our shareholders, investors and proxy advisers, what criterion we have been using in order to enhance the transparency. And the third one, on the bottom right-hand side, is about the so-called cap regarding to the long-term incentive payment. This payment is limited. It can reach a maximum, but this maximum is defined and it cannot go beyond that. And the maximum is defined as twice the sum of fixed pay and variable pay. So whatever the performance is, even if it was stellar, once this cap is met, that's the limit. That will be it. So these are the 3 changes in the -- not the new policy. It's the old policy, but with some adjustments. I think these are adjustments that are very much favored by investors and by proxy advisers. Continuing with Resolution #15, the long-term incentive plan. This is a means, a mechanism that we have had for years, and almost like in every other AGM, we need to ask for your approval again because we want to issue this plan again in order to incentivize, not just top management, but the larger management. You see it mentioned on the right-hand side, there is 3,500 beneficiaries of this. So this is not just top management, this is also middle management. In order to be able to do that, we need to have your approval. This is very important to incentivize them so that they achieve our strategic goals, which are included in this list here and also to make sure that we have a competitive payment that can retain our people. On this chart, you find actually 3 resolutions included. At the top, the 14th resolution relates to the share buyback. Our company has used the means of a share buyback for years, and we want to continue to do so because it may be a good investment of our money. However, the share buyback can only happen up to a certain maximum share price and because the company has been doing so well, this level has been breached. We are above that. So unless we change that, we cannot do any more share buybacks. So in this proposal, we ask you for an approval to continue with the share buyback program, albeit with a maximum share price up to EUR 250. That gives us some leeway that we can execute in this mechanism without hindrance. And then at the bottom, you see 2 further resolutions. They relates to a shareholder ownership program. So this is not for management, but this is for the general people working in our company. They want to invest as well. They want to have an opportunity to also participate in the success of the company, and these 2 resolutions are basically about them. It's 2 Resolutions because one is for the French companies and the bottom one is for companies outside of France. This relates to about 61,000 people. So it's really a mechanism to integrate the big majority of the people working in our company. Then let me come to the last chart of my presentation. It is a more formal item. It's an item that has not a lot of economic significance. It's about the merger absorption of a company called IGE+XAO. We, at this point, already own almost 87% of this company and would like to fully own the company in order to be able to fully integrate it and create some efficiencies and really use it as a fully operational company of ours, which we feel is very important. And in order to do this merger absorption, we need to have the approval of the shareholders. That's the reason why this resolution is included in today's AGM. I think this is as much as I wanted to speak about today. Thank you very much for your attention. Apologies for not having done it in France. There is hope that at some point, I may learn it as well. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you, Fred. I would like to mention that we are very fortunate to have Fred as our Independent Lead Director because on top of his very diversified industrial background, Fred knows our industry inside out. He has worked in it for a number of years. We used to be competitors, and at some point, we decided to work together because we really had the feeling that this industry could really play an instrumental part in overcoming the challenges that I mentioned in my introduction. Thank you, Fred. I would now like to call Loïc Wallaert to the stage. I would like to mention one thing. We have 2 Auditors with us, but it is the last time for them because both of them have accomplished their mission at Schneider. They were demanding companions, but also very supportive ones in our transformations in our endeavor, so Loïc, thank you very much for this last shareholders meeting.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, thank you, and good afternoon. I have the pleasure of introducing on behalf of the college of auditors the 6 reports that we have established for your benefit. These reports have been established, have been made available online on the website of the company. Here is a summary of those reports. The regard on opinion report on the annual accounts and a report of opinion on the consolidated accounts, 1 on the regulated conventions and 3 parts on the issuance of shares and/or securities. In both our reports, we certified without any reservation the annual and consolidated financial statements submitted to your approval. We also exposed in these reports the highlights for the account auditing. For the annual statements, it is the assessment of the securities and the debts or the receivables attached to those. For the consolidated accounts, we have retained 4 topics: the assessment of the impairment goodwill -- goodwill impairment, the assessment in the balance sheet of the development spendings, the recognition and recoverability of deferred tax assets, and finally, the determination of the fair value of acquired assets and retained liabilities in the framework of the Larsen & Toubro operation. We also confirm that our reports give all other information in line with the regulation. Now regarding the fourth resolution of your general -- of your shareholders' meeting, we have a report on party -- on related part agreements. No new agreement was authorized during the year. No agreements previously approved by the Annual General Meeting remained in force during the year. Finally, as regards the extraordinary part of your general -- of shareholders' assembly -- shareholders' meeting, we have 3 reports regarding resolutions that have to do with share capital. The first report deals with the project to distribute free shares for beneficiaries -- to beneficiaries that your Board of Directors will determine. We have no observation to make regarding the information given in the Management Board report on this operation. We have also drafted 2 reports regarding Resolutions 16 and 17 regarding shares and share capital. It is about the issuance of actions with the suppression of the preferential right of underwriting. Since the specific conditions have not been established, we have not voiced an opinion on this. So regarding the proposal to do away with the preferential right of underwriting that is made to you. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, Mr. Chair, thank you for your attention.

Loïc, thank you. I would like also to thank [indiscernible] because the two of you worked with us in a very demanding manner, and you always urged us to always do better. So thank you for this partnership. So I would like now to turn to Olivier Peronnet. He represents Finexsi, the Finexsi Consultancy with BMA -- BM&A represented by [indiscernible], they have been appointed as merger appraisers with the assignment of examining the terms of the merger with IGE+XAO, and they will summarize the content of their reports.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders. Indeed, we have been appointed by the Court of -- Tribunal of Commerce of Nanterre as merger appraisers with my colleague, [indiscernible], regarding the merger of -- with IGE+XAO. We have drafted 2 reports that are available for you. And if there are no objections, I suggest that I summarize them quickly. The first report is for your shareholders' meeting. It regards the value of the contributions that the company is going to receive from IGE+XAO. The assets transferred will be booked at the net accounting value, the value of underlying assets of IGE+XAO. It is below the value of IGE+XAO. So we have concluded that the EUR 38 million figure is not under evaluated, and so this corresponds to the increase in your share capital augmented by the merger bonus. The second report has to do with the fairness of foreign exchange parity because each shareholder will receive shares in exchange of the contribution. This operation follows the takeover bid by your group, which gave it more than 83% of the shares and more than 87% of the voting rights. So the share that is to be emitted is 0.06% after the merger. Our assignment mostly has to do with the assessment of both companies and the merger. To do so, we have used many different criteria regarding the listings of the 2 companies throughout time. They actualize the current treasury position -- cash position. The comparable transactions, including the offer price of EUR 260 and the listing price of Schneider over the same period of time. The parities coming from these respective values vary between [ 1.14 and 1.17 ]. So the parity 1.67 Schneider shares lead it to -- so 5 Schneider shares for 3 IGE+XAO shares seem like an equitable transaction.

So we can now move to the Q&A session. We are fully available with Hilary Maxson and Fred Kindle for those of you who have questions. But before that, I would like to inform you that we have received 10 written questions. All of our answers provided by the Board of Directors are published on your company's website. For a proper conduct of the debates and to be able to answer as many questions as possible in the allotted time, I kindly ask you to ask your question quite briefly and to ask only one. Thank you. So beforehand, I'd like to turn over to Ms. [indiscernible], representing the Shareholder Advisory Committee responsible for taking up questions from shareholders. Thank you.

Before I ask my question, I would like to thank you for organizing this meeting in the real world, I would say. So important for us to have contact with you, with your team. It's a very -- it's a preference criterion, I would say, for future shareholders who want to be part of the financing of the company. So my question is about China. You said that your hypothesis is a partial opening up of Shanghai this month. There is also, unfortunately, a progressive lockdown of Beijing at the moment, and some experts think that the Chinese population is going to decrease in numbers. So what is the perspective for you in this country? What about the outlook in China?

Thank you for this question. This is a very interesting and very important country, obviously, because this is the second largest country in terms of business for us behind the U.S. So regarding COVID, I think we have to imagine what is going on in China as basically the shock that we've experienced in Europe and in France during the first wave of COVID in 2020 with long lockdowns, just appended all of our operations and daily lives with a lot of businesses shut down, but we know where we are today. Measures are being relaxed as we speak in Shanghai. Our reputation is good there. We are on the so-called white list. So we are amongst the first facilities and factories to resume work, but we're talking about a region of several tens of millions of people. They have to exit the lockdown, and they have to start up again. So it will take time. I hear you about Beijing and other regions in China, but again, I really do think that the best comparison is the second quarter of 2020 in Europe. Schneider was back to growth as early as the third quarter of 2020 in Europe back then. So this is what we are counting on. So a negative quarter in China this year, but we are still hoping that China -- and counting that China will be growing in 2022 for us. We have very responsive, very dynamic, very involved teams in China, and we're certain that they will do their utmost to catch up. Now regarding the Chinese demographics, I mean it's not the only part of the world with -- which is aging. You also know that China has really changed completely its birth policies, it's mortality policies over the last 5 years. So I mean China is a country of contrast. You have the population which has living standards close to those that we have in Europe and half of the population which is closer to developing country living standards. So the 700 million or 800 million Chinese people who will join the Western living standard, so to speak, provides a market for the coming years, obviously. Also, let us not underestimate China's commitment to decarbonate this economy. Once again, it will be a great market and a great outlook for our company. So I think cyclically, the situation is difficult, but in the long term, I think that the landscape in China is very positive for all of our operations, all of our businesses, decarbonation, digitization, electrification and the modernization of the industry, which the Chinese have really latched on, if you will. Mr. [indiscernible], you have the floor.

Like my colleague said, I wanted to underline that it is important to be -- to organize a physical meeting. So it's very important for shareholders to be able to meet you in-person. I have a question about HR. For 3 quarters of company managers pulled by Deloitte said that recruitment constitutes a threat for companies basically for the coming years. This is amplified by waves of resignations which we have seen, especially in the U.S. So I have a rather concise question. Do you find it difficult to recruit in the countries where you operate?

Thank you for your question. I think we were ahead of the curve, I guess, in Schneider because we've always believed that recruiting and retaining the good people was the precondition to our success and a good service to our clients. Great people make a great company as we're used to saying it at Schneider. My last -- my work over the last 36 years at Schneider and over the last 18 years at the helm of this company has been to put together the best teams. This is probably the most riveting thing about what we do. I mean the idea is not to recruit the same people. The idea is to recruit people that fit all positions. If you recruit goalie the way you recruit a forward, you're in for a rough time. So this is what has made us strong in the past and what will make us strong for the future. Basically, we are laying the foundation of future skills, and we've always considered that this was our utmost responsibility. So -- and if you raise the bar of the people you want to bring on board, it's always been difficult. Is it more difficult right now? I'm not even -- I'm not certain. I think that there will always be more challenges in this field, the diversity of skills that we want to bring -- that we have to bring on board regarding services, software, consulting because this is what we provide. Our ability to overcome supply chain difficulties, especially with electronics means that we always have to raise the bar in terms of recruitment. And as a company, I think we have a huge role to play in training. Meaning that your company, Schneider Electric, before me under the Chairmanship of Henri Lachmann and also myself, we have doubled the number of apprentices. During the years of COVID, we have 600 trainees. We have 70 Ph.D. students across France, and this is something that we are doing around the world because you have to realize one thing, the world that I described earlier on, it's not theoretical. I mean we are living with technologies that weren't there 10 years ago, and these are technologies that have not been the -- studied in the conventional syllabus of engineering schools because they just did not exist. Again, 10 years ago. So our role is to work with engineering schools to ensure that the right skills are taught and to ensure that they will have access to a very broad audience. And so I mean the COVID years have been very difficult on the youth. They haven't been able to go to school. They were -- they had to stay at home. They couldn't get a job because recruitments were frozen, and we need to ensure that they will be higher, not necessarily at Schneider, but within our industry and beyond. So it's a permanent challenge. And something that makes me proud, I was talking about the values at Schneider, a purposeful company, an inclusive company, and I would say, a determination to make people -- to empower people and to make them accountable at the local level, that way we have less staff turnover. We have less people leaving Schneider. You have -- I mean I've been at Schneider for 35 years, and I'm almost a newbie in a way. So we have a lot of talented people who have been here for a long time. And let's not forget one thing. I mean there is a lot of talk about cross-cutting abilities, cross-cutting management, but the very first and most important thing is knowing your job, knowing your profession, being good at what you do. And this is exactly what we've always nurtured and what we have to keep nurturing. So by doing -- by recruiting by training with training providers and onboard Schneider, we have people who are passionate and expert at what they do. So we have quite a lot of questions. Sir, you've raised your hand, the fourth row.

Mr. Chair, I have a question. You've carried out 2 unfinished takeover bid, and you said that you had bought 83% of the equity stakes of IGE+XAO. And for the other take of a bid, you only acquired 83%. So there remains about 17% up for grabs. So what about that? You are also partnering with ArcelorMittal. So are you considering working with more large companies like this?

Regarding the acquisitions of software companies, I will mention again that our IV is now 100% part of Schneider Electric. And as far as IGE+XAO, an upcoming resolution, it will actually suggest that we buy all of it. So we've done that for our IV, and it's going to be finalized with IGE+XAO. So I did not fully grasp your question about ArcelorMittal, but we're not buyers. We're not trying to buy them.

Chair, I would like to echo what was said before, namely that organizing this physical meeting is always something that we treasure. I would like to react to what you said about the leak of talent, and I would like to thank once again Henri Lachmann for identifying you, training you and trusting you. He, therefore, enabled you to fulfill your whole potential.

I also thank him. So I would like to echo your thanks.

I have also formatted in as well, but also, congratulations to you, and you have also emulated his exceptional capacities. So my question is, how are your strategic choices impacted by your CO2 ambitions? [indiscernible], you said that the free cash flow has been impacted by the working capital requirements. Is this situation specific to 2021? Or is it something that is going to continue in light of the turnover prospect of the company. Finally, do you have incentives in place to improve the working capital requirement picture?

I'll take the first question. Our purpose, again, is governed by our contribution by our sense of urgency regarding the need that we have to reconcile the idea of progress for all because it's not theoretical. You have between 1.5 billion people who do not have access to energy. We might experience that soon in Europe. So not having access to energy is not having access to a decent life. So that's the first step. And we also know that the more energy we provide, the more CO2 we emit in it, so the more threatening we are for our planet. So we have to apply the recipe to ourselves, and it's not new. For the last 15 years, we've had 3-year plans to improve our CO2 emissions, to improve our sustainable development efforts. So this is, again, a permanent performance with our clients. So the 2 are connected. Our commitments in terms of sustainable development leads to environmental performance for our clients, and it leads to also the availability, if you will, of our technologies to the benefit of society at large. It's fully coherent, and we apply that to our suppliers. We apply that to the communities we work with in where there is a great need of green energy, and we also use this method with our investors. I think this is a great solution and our positioning at the national and international level is unique because what we've implemented, it took almost -- it was almost 20 years in the making, and we did it much before the others. I can tell you that we are all passionate with lowering -- with saving energy and decarbonating the environment. Proof of that is, take a look at the talks that I gave back in 2003, 2006. Back then, I already talked about energy savings, energy efficiency and decarbonating the energy use. Back then no one was interested in those topics, it was only 3 or 5 years ago that the world started to realize what we're up against. Now I would like to add one thing. We're in Europe. We are at the heart of Europe, and we know that we have a major energy issue on our hands. We are going to have to phase out fossil fuel. Fossil fuel prices have been rocketing of light. We're going to have to electrify our processes, and we are going to have to save basically the energy. So everything that we've been doing are solutions to those problems. So obviously, we have to do it. So we have to move. And this crisis that we have in our hands today is a stark reminder of what we should have been doing for a number of years. So as far as the cash position and the working capital requirements are concerned, I'd like to turn to Hilary.

I'm going to speak French -- English, sorry. Free cash flow for the year of 2021, you're right. Like I said, that we had a bit of a retrenchment in the free cash flow, all based on our working capital. You can see, we actually had a record cash from operations. But in terms of working capital, because of both an increase in demand as well as the supply chain issues and shortages, we strategically chose to increase our days outstanding of working capital and inventory in order to both have a level of strategic stock on hand as well as when we receive components that are in shortage to be able to very quickly turn it into finished goods and deliver to the customers. So in 2022, we would expect probably a limited reversal of that increase in days, but because we expect the shortage situation won't be totally finished at the end of 2022, we would expect that we won't reverse in entirety. So this year, you can see we had a cash conversion rate of only 87%. We do expect over the course of the normal cycle that we should always be around 100%. Maybe not every given year, but on average, we'll average out to around 100%.

Any other questions over here? Then we'll move on to the other side.

[indiscernible], I'm an individual shareholder. Yesterday, Mr. [indiscernible] at the Air Liquide AGM showed us a very interesting table and all companies should apply it, especially when it's good news. He gave the market cap of Air Liquide from EUR 15 billion to EUR 75 billion during his term. In other words, it was multiplied by 5. On Wikipedia, I looked at the description of Air Liquide, and I think it's a very relevant table. I look the same thing for Schneider Electric, it's not quite as clear. I think it would be worthwhile. So that's my suggestion. Now I have a question. Do you have any idea of Schneider Electric's market cap when you came to the helm?

Yes, I do recall. Well, Air Liquide is a very highly respected company, a leader whom I respect, but I was given the general management in 2003 by Henri Lachmann. Now we're in 2022, time has flown. But I do believe that market cap was multiplied by 8 to 10, but that isn't what matters most. What matters most is something else because market cap is the result of repositioning the company, the commitment of our people all over the world, the global deployment that accelerated. We multiplied the size of Schneider by a factor of 3, but it was multiplied by 10 in Asia. Why? Well, because we already had operations there, and we were ambitious, and that was the front that we had to operate on. So market cap is just 1 indicator. But what matters most and what I talk about every year at the AGM with you are the seeds we sow for the future. I'm more interested in the future because that sort of lies ahead. I'm not really interested in the past, I'm more interested in what lies ahead. So anyway, yes, in the past 18 years, Schneider has indeed grown and expanded. Thank you. Okay. I think we had some questions over on this side. No? Over here.

I have a very quick question. I would like to know more about the impact of the dollar on the euro. What is the percentage of your sales number in dollars? How much does it represent compared to euros? And what's the impact of this dollar on your net earnings?

So the impact of parity is reported on a quarterly and half year basis whenever we operate on our statement of income, and it's a pretty complex impact because it both impacts our costs and revenue alike. And in a global company such as ours, where certain parities are pegged to one another, it's difficult to draw any general conclusions. So our quarterly and half year reports give you all the parity-related impacts, whether it be on revenue or on costs. But an actual fact -- well, you're familiar with Schneider, and earlier, I showed you our structure and you saw that the breakdown -- which is rare, the breakdown of our employees mirrors sales because it is our will to be strong locally for the sake of speed, efficiency, understanding what's going on. I think decentralization is critical. And I'm not from Paris, which is probably why. But anyway, beyond speed and efficiency, you have to balance revenue and costs and for structural protection to parity swings. We have another question in the back. I see a hand that's raised back there. Okay. Please wait for the microphone. It's teamwork, isn't it? Mic is almost there. Please speak a little bit louder into the mic.

A question to the Chief Financial Officer, you pointed out that your profit had increased 50%, but EPS grew a mere 30%, if I may say so. Why hasn't EPS also grown 50%? And I have an observation. You said that you were happy with the makeup of the Board. It's international. People from different backgrounds. Companies like L'Oreal and Air Liquide, who recently held their AGMs made the same observation. They are also very proud of the diversity and professional nature of their Boards.

Well, that's good news. Great. Fine. Okay. Let's come back to the first question.

Yes, I mentioned that the net result for us was up 51%. I then shifted to talking about the adjusted net results and the adjusted earnings per share that are something more like 30%. So we look at the net income in 2 ways: one, including a number of below-the-line items for us, like basically other gains and losses and restructuring and one without. So if we were to translate the 50% net income into the nonadjusted earnings per share, they'll be around the same in the adjusted earnings per share because I talked a few times about the fact that we're also controlling our below the EBITDA line costs and quite paying attention to that. Without those cost controls that we're also focusing on, it's -- on the adjusted side, we're only up plus 30%. So they should be commensurate. I just shifted from -- and sorry for that, I shifted from one line, which was not adjusted to another line that was adjusted, and I only gave the EPS growth on the adjusted, which takes out some of those gains we have on the below-the-line items.

All the details can be found in the universal registration document anyway. Any other questions? Yes. Number 3.

I'm an individual shareholder. I have a technical question to the CFO regarding performance shares and free shares, how are they accounted for? I'm raising this question because in the U.S., to the best of my knowledge, when stock options are given, there's a U.S. GAAP restatement. It's like a salary. So it does have an impact on margin and net profit. How are things stated with regard to free shares and performance shares? Are things accounted for in the books? Or are they accounted for separately? Is it IFRS governed or not?

So indeed, directly governed by IFRS, and there's 2 programs that we have that will impact shares. We don't have auctions at Schneider, but we do give under our long-term incentive plan shares. And we do, do the share ownership program that we talked about as well, which gives our employees an opportunity to also participate in the shareholding of Schneider at a slight discount to the current price so that we can have the maximum of our employees participating and having the same excitement and incentive that you do as shareholders. Both of those under IFRS are charged on an annual basis based on some formula that we have over the vesting timeframe of those. So it is part -- directly part of our results, the long-term incentive plan as well as the accounting for the share ownership plan. So it's not the same under U.S. GAAP and under IFRS, but in both cases, it's part of the result, it's not something off to the side.

Over here. Number 2.

I have a question on the monetization of data and because you spoke about digitalization...

What is your question?

How do you monetize data? What is your vision about data monetization?

Well, most of the data monetization is done using algorithms. Well, and our artificial intelligence and our customers pay for that on a subscription basis. In other words, in the data processing, I'd say there's 60% of the mix of the algorithms that are charged through subscription and the other portion is paid with lump sums. That's the vision you see. Data is more and more important, and that is why 2 years ago, OSISoft was acquired, and in the industrial field, it is the leader of structured data, which makes it possible to have artificial intelligence modules and algorithms that can provide value to our clients. To try to keep it simple, what we do is, we connect our customers' facilities. And since they are connected, they supply data that we structure in our databases, and therefore, we provide our clients with a more substantial data portfolio and that helps them improve their operations. There's a model consumption called Flex in which you buy consumption unit to apply this to various parts of the menu that you have on the catalog. That's how it works. The number of connected assets is increasing when we started reporting these assets, we had 1 million. Now we have over 6 million connected assets. Human beings produce a lot of data, but machines produce more because they are so talkative. They keep on exchanging and our algorithms run on the cloud more and more, and we provide more and more value to our clients in so doing. Number 3 now.

I have a question on tax. No, excuse me, on supply. Do you have a supply strategy, relocating plants and so on? Or do you have a strategy based on partnerships to try to solve the supply and shortage quagmire?

Well, this has always been at the heart of our concerns. What you call supply is what we call our suppliers, our strategic partners in other words. And I spoke about this in my presentation, one of our approach is consistent in using specialized companies to build products and systems. In other words, the relations we entertain with our suppliers are symbiotic. And I think that we're the only ones in our industry to do this because for 10 years or so now, we have brought together our supply chain -- well, supplier relations chain with -- under a single umbrella, a single responsibility so we can provide a holistic vision of what is going on at Schneider. That's what we provide our partners with and that's how we can have in-depth discussions. And this, let me tell you, was very, very valuable because during the COVID crisis, there was a collapse of the supply chains that have picked up real fast and then there were recurring shortages in more areas than one. So we do have the broad thought out strategy, and it's multifaceted. So we work with our partners in innovation. Our suppliers' innovation efforts are integrated within our systems. Also, we work with them on the future of our industry. We ensure that their innovation plans match ours and that their capacity projects match ours as well. And we try to do this regionally because we look at short circuits and local understanding, but it has to do with location. So Schneider is decentralized and the shortages that affect us the most are global in nature, notably in electronics. So all that is quite complex indeed and it's time consuming. In the past 2 years, I must have spent just as much time with our strategic partners and with our clients because we do work hand in hand, and we are on the same boat following the huge disruption generated by COVID and the shortages that have ensued. Okay. Do we have any other questions? Apparently not. So -- no, we have one last question over here. Madam?

When you are dealing with individual shareholders, well, there is a phone number, and you answer the phone on Tuesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon. But you only get an answering machine that says, "Give us your message, we'll call you back. For 3 weeks, I did it twice a week, and I -- nobody answered. Nobody called me. So I sent a mail, I got an answer to the mail. I was asked whether I wanted to vote by correspondence or not. And then I call, saying it's not -- there is no name. So I think you should be -- I mean you should be nicer with your shareholders because when you say you have a phone line and nobody ever, ever answers this phone line, it's annoying.

Okay. We're going to do our best to try to solve that problem. That is not right. There are problems like that, but it shouldn't happen. So we are going to take that remark in our stride and try to fix it quickly and get back to you. Do we have any other questions? No? This time, there are no more questions. So that closes the Q&A session. Okay. We are now going to vote on the resolution submitted to the shareholders at the AGM. So we're going to move on to the voting session. This is an important moment for the AGM. Please remain until the very end of the process. At the -- we're going to give you a bottle with Schneider logo. When you hand in your voting device, you will be given that gift, and Ségolène will explain the process to you.

So before proceeding with the vote, we know the status of definitive quorum. The shareholders present here 364 million something, 67.07% of the capital. Before voting, we invite you to watch and listen, it's a very short film that will tell you how to use the box in your hands. [Presentation]

All shareholders have been able to read the various resolutions, and I'm not going to read the whole text of each resolution. First resolution, approval of statutory financial statements for the last fiscal year. You can now vote. [Voting]

Vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Second resolution. Approval of consolidated financial statements for 2021. [Voting]

The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Third resolution. Appropriation of profit for the fiscal year and setting the dividend. [Voting]

The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Fifth resolution. Reappointment of Mazars as statutory auditor -- sorry, approval of regulated agreements governed by Article L225-38 of the French Commercial Code. [Voting]

The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. Fifth resolution, reappointment of Mazars as statutory auditor. No reappointment and no replacement of Mr. Thierry Blanchetier as substitute statutory auditor. [Voting]

The resolution is adopted. Seventh resolution, approval of the information on the directors and the corporate officers' compensation paid or granted for the fiscal year -- sorry, sorry, sixth resolution. I skipped one. The appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit as statutory auditor; no reappointments and no replacement of Auditex as substitute statutory auditor. [Voting]

This resolution is adopted. Seventh resolution, approval of the information on the Directors and corporate offices compensation paid or granted for the fiscal year ending at the end of December 2021, mentioned in Article L. 22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code. [Voting]

The resolution is adopted. Eighth resolution, approval of the components of the total compensation and benefits of all types paid during the 2021 fiscal year or awarded in respect to the said fiscal year to Mr. Jean-Pascal Tricoire. [Voting]

This resolution is adopted. Ninth resolution, approval of the Corporate Officer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer's compensation policy. [Voting]

This resolution is adopted. 10th resolution, approval of the Directors' compensation policy. [Voting]

The resolution is adopted. 11th resolution, renewal of the term of office of Mrs. Linda Knoll. [Voting]

The vote is closed. This resolution is adopted. 12th resolution, renewal of the term of office of Mr. Anders Runevad. [Voting]

The resolution is adopted. 13th resolution, appointment of Mrs. Nive Bhagat as a Director. [Voting]

The resolution is adopted. 14th resolution, authorization granted to the Board of Directors to buy back company shares. [Voting]

This resolution is adopted. 15th resolution, authorization granted to the Board of Directors to freely allocate shares to the employees or to a category of employees and/or the corporate officers of the company and of companies affiliated there with as part of the long-term incentive plan up to a limit of 2% of the share capital. [Voting]

This resolution is adopted. 16th resolution, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to undertake capital increases reserved for participants in a company savings plan without shareholders' preferential subscription right. [Voting]

The resolution is adopted. 17th resolution, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to undertake capital increases reserved for employees of certain non-French subsidiaries of the Group, directly or via entities acting to offer those employees benefits comparable to those offered to participants in a company savings plan without shareholders' preferential subscription right. [Voting]

This resolution is adopted. 18th resolution, review and approval of the plan to merge IGE+XAO into Schneider Electric. [Voting]

The resolution is adopted. 19th resolution, powers for formalities. [Voting]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thank you for your presence.

Thank you for your support. I Hope to see you next year for our shareholders' meeting on May 4, 2023. We hope that you will attend in large numbers. And now I would like to invite you to a cocktail in the next room. Thank you. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]