AkzoNobel announced at the company’s Capital Markets Day that it is entering a new era of accelerated and sustainable growth.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands - AkzoNobel announced at the company’s Capital Markets Day that it is entering a new era of accelerated and sustainable growth. Outlining the company's new medium-term strategy to financial markets, CEO Hans Wijers explained that AkzoNobel will leverage global mega-trends, geographical spread and leading market positions to realize its new ambitions.

"Having successfully transformed our portfolio and completed the phase of integration and restructuring, we are now entering a new chapter of accelerated and sustainable growth," Wijers said.

The new ambitions for accelerated growth include: increasing revenue to EUR 20 billion, growing EBITDA each year while maintaining a 13 to 15 percent margin level, reducing OWC percent of revenue year-on-year by 0.5 percent towards a 12 percent level, and paying a stable-to-rising dividend.

The sustainability ambitions are: remaining in the top three on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and being in the top quartile of its peer group in terms of safety levels, diversity, employee engagement and talent development, and eco-efficiency improvement rates.

With high-growth markets currently representing close to 40 percent of revenue, AkzoNobel believes that these markets will become significantly more important and intends to grow revenue to 50 percent during the course of the decade. The company will focus most of its resources to also gain market share in the mid-segments of these markets. Specific country targets include doubling revenue in China from $1.5 billion to $3 billion, creating a significant footprint in India by growing revenue from EUR 0.25 billion to EUR 1 billion, and outgrowing the competition in Brazil by increasing revenue from EUR 0.75 billion to EUR 1.5 billion.

AkzoNobel's innovation strategy currently delivers 9 percent of revenue from breakthrough innovations and 22 percent of revenue from eco-premium solutions. The company intends to increase big R&D spend to more than 60 percent of total R&D spend and focus on functional solutions. As a result, AkzoNobel's medium-term ambition is to achieve more than 15 percent of revenue from breakthrough innovations and more than 30 percent of revenue from eco-premium solutions. AkzoNobel's innovation strategy will be underpinned by a clear sustainability focus.

AkzoNobel is broadening its operational leadership team with the establishment of a new executive committee. Joining the five Board members on the executive committee will be Marjan Oudeman (Human Resources and Organizational Development), Graeme Armstrong (Research, Development & Innovation), Sven Dumoulin General Counsel) and Werner Fuhrmann (Supply Chain/Sourcing).