France's Capgemini raises medium-term targets on global tech expansion

(Reuters) -French business IT services provider Capgemini raised its medium-term margin targets on Wednesday, and said it would focus on artificial intelligence and customer experience as the pandemic has made more companies turn their operations digital.

"The group is ideally positioned to take advantage of the fast expanding use of technology across industries," Chief Executive Aiman Ezzat said in a statement released ahead of Capgemini's capital markets day.

"We aim to become the strategic partner of chief experience officers in our chosen industries," Ezzat said.

The Paris-based group said it expects an operating margin of 14% by 2025, compared to the forecast range of 12.5%-13.0% first announced in 2015 and reiterated over the years.

Revenue of the company, which operates in nearly 50 countries, should increase by an average of 7%-9% each year until 2025, it said.

Shares in the company, offering IT services to industries including telecommunications and aerospace, with clients ranging from the German drugmaker Bayer, Daimler's Mercedes-Benz to the Swedish army, tumbled almost 30% during the first two months of the global coronavirus outbreak last year.

But the stock has been on a steep rising curve ever since, picking up 150% since the slump and 15% so far in 2021.

(Reporting by Kate Entringer and Zuzanna Szymanska in Gdansk; Editing by Kim Coghill and Rashmi Aich)