It is a good time to reflect on the milestones that occurred throughout 2024, and that not only explain the current positioning, but also project their effects towards the coming years.
This balance, broadly speaking, shows that 2024 has been a very positive year for the Prosegur Group, which is very favorable in terms of formulating forecasts.
From a strictly financial point of view, solid growth in sales has been achieved, which is evidenced by a ratio that sufficiently enters the double digits and that spills over as we go down the income statement, suggesting a clear improvement in efficiencies. Now, it is not only the growth rate itself that must be highlighted, but also the growing diversification, both geographically and in products, which contributes to the sustainability of growth. What has been said is confirmed by the continuous investment in alarms, exceeding the total gross registrations by more than 20% compared to 2023; the expansion in the Forex business and the sustained increase of Cash Todays (over 30,000 machines). All this growth was carried out without neglecting our net debt position, which relative to EBITDA, will remain at 2023 levels.
By 2025 we hope to continue the growth trend, without prejudice to the fact that in certain businesses the time comes to begin the consolidation phase, such as the Forex business. Thus, sales are expected to exceed historical records for Prosegur.
In the business of Securitythe focus will be on increasing productivity and accentuating differentiation with respect to our competitors, in order to increase the generation of value per client. As is already known by the market, year after year for the last five, the business has been experiencing very high growth rates. The strategy was explicitly to increase sales in order to gain scale, improve operational efficiency and more efficiently manage the business. Today, we have reached a volume that allows us to focus on being able to extract the greatest possible value. Of course, this does not mean stopping growth, especially in geographies where there are good opportunities, such as the United States, where the market is very large and there is still a long way to go.
In the case of Cashapplies the need to differentiate geographies. There are some more consolidated ones, where they are committed to improving through efficiencies, being disciplined with the price review policy and diversifying into new products such as Cash Today, Corban and Forex; while in others, such as Asia, which is expanding, they are read as opportunities on which to continue working on its growth.
In Alarmsit is expected to continue with the policy of pronounced growth thanks to investment in marketing and product innovation, with a focus on improving service margin, reducing deposit margin and containing churn so that the value of the portfolio continues to increase as He has been doing it until now.
From the point of view of cash generation, the good results estimated for 2025 will cause the net debt EBITDA ratio to decrease significantly.
This brief review of the businesses and the results achieved places us in a very competitive position for the materialization of the business objectives set for 2025, which are based on the consolidation and expansion of the businesses, without neglecting the leadership position that characterizes the Prosegur Group.