Without a doubt, I would say "Acceleration": acceleration of the post-Covid recovery, acceleration of the roll-out of high-quality, increasingly personalized offers designed, among other things, to help attract the teams back to the office... Acceleration, too, of the demand for our Benefits & Rewards Services, which are a powerful tool in helping to retain and engage employees. And of course, acceleration of the transformation of our models, which underpins all of these changes.
In October 2021, I set out four priorities following the shock of the pandemic. We accelerated Sodexo's transformation and made progress towards sustainable and profitable growth.
We have boosted our growth in the United States. In North America, our client retention rate reached more than 96% and our development rate increased by 400 bps.
We have continued to accelerate the transformation of our food model, in a context where hybrid working has now become a well-established habit for many employees and where expectations are changing rapidly. Our service offering is evolving at every level: on the plate, we are offering more and more organic, local, plant-based foods. Upstream, we are continuing to optimize our production methods. And we are offering ever greater flexibility to consumers, with home delivery, click and collect, or via our partnerships with platforms. We are taking advantage of our recent acquisitions, such as The Good Eating Company, Fooditude and Nourish, to introduce highly innovative and attractive offers.
We have also been more active in managing our portfolio: we are continuing to improve our multichannel food service offering, for example by further investing in digital group catering company Meican in China. And we continue to focus on high-value markets.
We have also accelerated the changes to our organizational structure to improve its efficiency.
We evolved our governance this year: I was appointed as Sodexo’s Chief Executive Officer in addition to my responsibilities as Chairwoman. Given my new role, Luc Messier was appointed independent Lead Director. His main mission is to ensure the proper functioning of the company’s governance bodies.
As soon as I took over as CEO of the Group, I transferred the management of our Schools and Government & Agencies segments to the local level to increase efficiency. In line with that decision, in July we announced a project to evolve our organization to support our strategy and help us serve our clients even better. In On-site Services, we transferred end-to-end P&L management to the regions and the countries regrouped into three geographic zones: North America, Europe and the Rest of the World. Simplifying things in this way will enable us to take decisions at the most local level, making our implementation quicker and more agile.
At the same time, we are keen to retain the best aspects of our segmented organizational structure, coupled with the advantages of local P&L management. The establishment of a Growth and Commercial function will allow us to continue to mobilize and strengthen the expertise we have developed, in go-to-market strategy and business development for example.
We have also brought together IS&T, Data, Digital and Innovation, as well as our expertise in food and facilities management, within a Tech & Services function. This will allow us to accelerate very rapidly in these areas.
And our Chief Impact Officer’s remit is to ensure that our purpose, our values and what we stand for are constantly reflected in the way that we operate, and that they give us a competitive advantage.
Finally, to speed up decision-making, I have reduced the leadership team to eleven people.
Our strategy of refocus and acceleration is based on three pillars: first, refocusing on food services and being more selective in Facilities Management.
The second pillar is to accelerate the profitable growth of our Benefits & Rewards Services business, which is Sodexo’s highest contributor in terms of Underlying operating profit margin. We have reinforced its governance to support the acceleration of its development while addressing the specific challenges associated with its competitive environment.
Our third strategic pillar is about strengthening our impact as market maker in sustainability. Among other things, we embarked on the process of formalizing our commitment to reach Net Zero emissions by 2040. This commitment, which we are the first in our sector to make, is about perpetuating Sodexo’s mission and taking our purpose one step further. It is fully in line with the spirit of progress, one of our founding values.
Our goal is to achieve an organic revenue growth between +8% and +10% for Fiscal 2023, and an Underlying operating profit margin close to 5.5% at constant rates. For Fiscal 2024 and 2025, we aim for an organic revenue growth between +6% and +8% and an Underlying operating profit margin above 6% in Fiscal 2025. This is both ambitious and exciting!
