APC 2012 Annual Report Download - page 4

2012 REGISTRATION DOCUMENT SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC2
MESSAGE FROM JEAN-PASCAL TRICOIRE
CHAIRMAN OF THE MANAGEMENT BOARD
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Message from
Jean-Pascal Tricoire
CHAIRMAN OF THE MANAGEMENT BOARD
In a complicated international environment, 2012 has been a year of
consolidation for Schneider Electric. A year dedicated to unlock the
effi ciency and the potential of being one Schneider.
First of all, 2012 has been a record year of earnings and cash
generation. We grew 7% in sales reaching €24 billion, we increased
our earnings per share by 11%. For the fi rst time, our adjusted EBITA
reached €3.5 billion, our adjusted net profi t exceeded €2 billion, and
our free cash fl ow was above €2 billion. This strong performance
allows us to propose a 10% increase in the dividend to €1.87 per
share this year.
These fi gures refl ect the strength of our business model, the solid
execution of the Connect company program and the disciplined
integration of our acquisitions.
We have positioned Schneider Electric on a solid and growing
business: our technologies make industry, IT, energy and cities
more effi cient. We have diversifi ed and balanced our exposure to
geographies and end markets, while remaining totally focused on
our mission to help our customers make the most of their energy.
We continue to grow our business in new economies, which now
make up 41% of our sales, expanding our presence in these
geographies with a huge potential and developing catalogues and
solutions specifi cally adapted to those countries.
Our business with partners has been strengthened by a growing
relationship with large end users, especially to optimize their critical
applications. By growing our service business and our software
solutions, we have considerably improved in 2012 in delivering new
added values to our customers, wherever they operate in the world.
We have increased our investment in innovation with more than
€1billion invested in R&D, to reinforce our leadership in functionality,
quality, connectivity, integration and usability.
Our work was intense on making sure our customers can benefi t
from the effi ciency of one Schneider. We continued streamlining
our costs and delivered signifi cant cost productivity from our
new size. We progressed towards a more customer-centric and
effi cient supply chain, and by doing so improved our deliveries and
optimized inventory. We globalized and simplifi ed our organization.
We created two business groups: Partner , dedicated to the service
and the growth of our partners, integrators and distributors, and the
End User , focused on end to end solutions for our end users. We
organized our geographical presence by integrating our operations
into three hubs, by main geographies. We also globalized our supply
chain in order to strengthen partnerships with our suppliers, and
drive effi ciency of the supply chain on a whole different scale.