Well, we have moved with real speed over the last few months to get to this point. And this sense of urgency and momentum will continue. I can assure you of that. There’s real hunger among the senior leaders in Unilever, who have all contributed to this — but just to give you a flavor on how we see different elements being adopted over the next 12 to 18 months. The new leadership team will be in place by the first of January, but will start to transition from today. Our new unmissable brand superiority framework will be in place and fully operational across all the business groups by the middle of next year. A similar timetable will apply to the way we embed our new approach to innovation. The changes to the new organizational structure will be complete by the end of this year.
The new standard of leadership that will underpin the changes we want to make to performance culture will be rolled out by the end of the year. The radical focus we are bringing to our work on sustainability will be reflected as part of the climate transition action plan, we will be presenting to you at the next AGM, time-bound actions for each of our business group to help reduce our footprint on our journey to net zero. Next year’s AGM will also be the occasion to get agreement on our new remuneration policy, another important bank in driving enhanced performance. This is all illustrative, but will I hope will give you a sense of the urgency with which we will intend to introduce these changes. Let me try to bring this all together and first, by reconfirming what this plan means in relation to capital allocation.
As I have said, we are prioritizing organic growth, and this is reflected in how we deploy our capital. Our first priority is what I call organic investment to grow what we own. Hence, we will always invest in our business first as this creates the platforms for value creation in the future. We will further increase brand and marketing support focused on our 30 power brands to ensure strong execution. R&D investment will grow consistently in order to support bigger innovations. Capital expenditure will increase from around 2.4% to above 3% of turnover to create leading-edge manufacturing, distribution and technology assets. We will fund this organic investment by building back our gross margin. Second, we have significantly reshaped our portfolio since 2015.
Looking ahead, we will continue to prune the portfolio in areas that are less strategically attractive. This will be accompanied by selective bolt-on acquisitions, focused in specific high-growth areas provided they meet the higher bar for M&A criteria and parameters for value creation. This is particularly relevant in a world where financing costs have sharply moved up. And third, we will continue to return capital to shareholders. This will be done primarily through an attractive and sustainable dividend. We expect our dividend payout ratio to remain above 60% of our underlying earnings. Surplus capital will be returned via share buybacks as we have done through the recently completed 2022, 2023 share buyback program. Summing up. The fundamentals of the business are strong.
These strong fundamentals are now coupled with a focused 10-point action plan to step up performance and deliver fully on Unilever’s potential. To repeat, we will do that by, first, aiming for faster, high-quality growth. This will be through bigger — priority and increased support with a focus on the top 30 power brands. Second, by driving greater simplicity and productivity, funding investments by building back the gross margin bank and creating impact through a focus on the most impactful sustainability commitments and by driving the benefits from the new organization. And third, we will sharpen our approach to performance through a renewed team that drives and rewards outperformance. This combination of strong fundamentals and accelerated action plan will enable us to solidify our ambitions and deliver consistent value creation through underlying sales growth of 3% to 5% modest margin expansion, 100% cash conversion, mid-teens ROIC, EPS growth and attractive dividend and top third TSR.
Hence, this is not about communicating a new ambition or setting out a new strategy. This is an action plan for delivering performance in line with our ambition. If we do it well and consistently, then the business will be better positioned for the future and shareholder returns will improve. Thank you for listening, and I look forward now to taking your questions.
A – Jemma Spalton: Good morning. Many thanks for joining the call. My name is Jemma Spalton, and I recently joined Unilever as the new Head of Investor Relations. [Operator Instructions] So I see our first question is from Rashad at Morgan Stanley. Rashad, please go ahead.
