Very welcome. Good afternoon to everyone, to the full-year result presentation of 2022. Very welcome to everyone here in the room, but also obviously on the webcast. I would like to go to the first slide, which presents the key messages, and that's actually well represented by the headers in the slide. We saw strong revenue growth in 2022 of 14.8% with margin expansion, whilst we also see the need for further investments to cater for the growth in the future. If we look at the details of the finances, Barbara Geelen, our Chief Financial Officer, will do that a little bit later. The highlights are obviously the margin improvement, coming up to 6.1%. Let me be clear.
That's not where we want to end up. We have targets for the mid-term that are higher, between 8% and 12%, we feel that we're well on track to meet those targets. What is good to see there is that it's actually supported by all regions and all business lines, which is, I think, very powerful to see because we have seen other years where this was not the case. It's also driven by solid improvement in the land business, which is also something Barbara Geelen will elaborate a little bit more on, which is also good after all the restructuring and work that we have done over the past few years.
I think we should also recognize that it was a special year with the war in Ukraine and the result of that, with very high inflation across the world. A lot of companies obviously been affected also in the whole supply chain, it's good to see that we have been able to mitigate the higher cost in that whole supply chain, inflation cost, in, yeah, everything we had to deal with. Operating cash flow significantly higher, however, offset by also a higher CapEx and working capital, obviously due to the higher growth, in the market and in our revenues.
I think what is very positive to see is the order book, the 12-month backlog, going up close to 38%, which obviously a combination of volume and price, which is also quite important to understand because, yeah, to handle a volume of 38% would be very steep. So it's good to know that this is a combination of the two. In general, we can also say that we have a high demand for our services moving forward. We'll elaborate on that a little bit later. We also feel that we're on track to meet our targets in the mid-term, which is 2023, 2024.
As I said before, we'll come back on that, we have made a separate announcement of the acquisition of two vessels that will be transformed into, repurposed into geotechnical platforms, which we feel was a great opportunity that we really require to meet our requirements for the business needs in the future. We'll come back on that as well. Last but not least, also very good to emphasize is that in the second half of the year, we'll come back on, yeah, the next phase of our Path to Profitable Growth strategy, which is, I think, important. Obviously, people will have questions with the market dynamics we currently see in the market. If we move to the next slide, we see that we feel that we're on track for the financial and non-financial targets.
You see them here on the board, related to people, planet, and profit. We'll elaborate obviously on the financial targets a little bit later. If you look at, for instance, the objectives that we have for the planet, so to say, the sustainability, the environmental sustainability targets that we have, we feel that we're doing quite well there as well. First target was related to the amount of work that we do in the infrastructure, water, and renewable energy market. We have a target there for the mid-term to go above 65%. We've made another good step towards that. We're now at 63%, coming from the 61% last year.
We then look at the very important target, the reduction of CO2 emissions, then, we have there a target in 25 of 20% reduction of CO2 emission. We have now reached already 13% with an achievement of last year reduction of 7%, which I think is quite good. There's another target there, CDP rating, which is the Carbon Disclosure Project rating. That's already met the target that we have. It's important that we keep it also on the B level or even improve further up. We have the intention to go to Science Based Targets, SBTi targets. That's a whole process that normally takes two years.
We're now one year underway, and we basically going to submit those targets, and then they need to be approved by SBTi, and then they will be, yeah, accredited, so to say, and then we can move forward to start delivering on that. If we move forward, this is a favorite slide of me because I'm actually quite proud of what we have achieved here over the years. We now see a nice spread, mixed diversification of diversified portfolio of markets that we serve. 37% oil and gas, which obviously came down from 80% probably seven, eight years ago. It's not visible here anymore. From 2015, we show on the page, 74%, which is a steep reduction.
This was by design because I clearly recall that we sat down six years ago with the team to actually say we want to further diversify and also serve other markets with the expertise, the core expertise that Fugro has. This worked out quite well. As I just said, we want to aim for a minimum of 65% of, yeah, water, infra, and renewable energy market. We're well on track with the 63% that we have met till now. Something to be proud of, and I think this is a slide that we'll obviously keep on the board. It's also good to see what have we done growth-wise in the markets over the last year. 42% growth in offshore wind, which is obviously very steep. Again, a combination of volume and price.
If you look at the other markets, oil and gas, 9% growth, which is probably largely driven by price increases. Probably volume-wise, there is a minimal growth on the oil and gas in 2022 yet. Probably more to come in the future. If we move forward and look at the markets in general, we could say the following. I think it's important to start noting that obviously this world is becoming more crowded. In 2050, 10 billion people on this planet that obviously all need food, water, energy, and infrastructure.
That all happening in an environment where the world is changing faster than ever before with climate change coming in and things that we have to do to actually build that safe and livable environment for everybody that lives on this planet, that uses this planet as our home. A lot of things to do there, and that's also what you see in these markets moving forward. All the markets that we serve, the energy markets split in the renewables, which is largely offshore wind and oil and gas, very much energy going up. Oil and gas market here is shown with a minimal growth of 4% per year, a CAGR of 4% per year.
That is changing each time that we actually ask the experts, the market experts for new reports, then there is fluctuation in that. It's obviously going up and down a little bit. Over time, we expect, and you see that in the news as well, that energy companies are also investing in the traditional energy sources because simply the world needs these energy sources. Specifically, we see the need for gas, and that is also quite visible already in our revenues. We can say a few more words about that a little bit later. If you look at all these markets and these developments and what is happening in the world, there's only one thing that is very clear, and that is more need for geodata.
The expertise that Fugro has, because we want to build more in this world, and if you want to build, you want to fix something to the subsurface, the planet, and the planet is dynamic, it's moving all the time, and then you need the Fugro expertise. What is also changing there is that probably people are now looking at building something responsibly. I call that nature inclusive. Very interesting if we look at our markets for Fugro moving forward. Another thing to add, last but not least, that's something we'll take on board also if we look forward in the second half of the year when we come out with an update on our strategic direction, or more to say, the strategic agenda that we already have.
Things like hydrogen, but also CCUS, carbon capture and usage and storage, are things that will come on the board, and Fugro is already getting involved in these markets as well. We all know that end of last year, I move forward to this picture. End of last year, we did a deep dive in two things, which was related to our land business, but also to the offshore wind business. I want to repeat some of the slides that we used in this deep dive. It was available to everyone, and the slides are still on our website. If you haven't seen it, you can always find them there.
What is important if we focus on the land business, but it is also extending into the marine business, then this picture says a lot because this is what Fugro does in their core activities, and that is reducing risk related to the ground. We call it the Geo-Risk Management Framework. When you develop an asset in the world, the whole life cycle, you can actually bring the risk down. You can actually increase the schedule of building and also maintaining these assets over time by bringing in more geodata, by thinking well ahead and well in advance what you need. There are multiple services that Fugro, throughout this whole lifetime cycle of these assets, is bringing in. Some technologies we have already present also in this deep dive.
I won't go into this today, but one of them is, for instance, SWANS, where we use geophysics to actually characterize the subsurface of particular sites that are being developed and where assets are being built. It is technology, but also the data portals that really helps our customers to answer their questions, to further reduce the risk, and also to speed up their building process. This is core expertise of Fugro, and we can use that throughout every asset on every place on the planet, land and marine, to help our customers. Many opportunities there moving forward.
One of the things that is a really good example there. I wanted to bring that in. This is not in the slide deck that is already shared this morning with you. Two slides on Turkey, which I think is a great example where Fugro gets involved with their core expertise in something that is, yeah, visible to everyone in this world. We have a problem because there's simply a movement of tectonic plates.
Basically, the country is ripped in two, basically moving apart, and that has an enormous consequence for the people that live there, which is extremely painful and many casualties, obviously, which is the problem that we all have to deal with now and then because the planet is so dynamic and will continue to move and change. What is important to see there, and that is, I think, interesting to note, Fugro has an office in Turkey, two offices in Turkey, with the core expertise on earthquakes. We have been actually involved over the last decade or even longer, to look at these specific faults in the tectonic plates and what it does to planet Earth and the environment.
Even today, we're advising the government with our experts on the ground to really help them to think about, how do you actually in the future rebuild Turkey in a responsible manner, also to keep it safe there for the people that live there. What we have done, moving forward here, you see some pictures on the board where you see the dramatic shift on the Earth, so to say, major shifts. Basically the country ripped apart over the fault that you see there in the subsurface.
Fugro is offering to the government to map actually this area of 300 kilometers and bring this data to the government to really help understanding what the damage has been and what we can do to help the lives of the people there moving forward. Great example to the point where the expertise of Fugro can help, especially now in this dramatic, quite disastrous event. Another example is the coastal resilience work, which comes to the board more and more. That has all to do with the climate change work or the climate change adaptation work that is now required related to the changes on our planet.
That has to do with sea level rise, flood control, but also the risk of water and severe weather patterns that we have seen already over the last couple of years. We have seen projects now over the last few years build up and also request for our services in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, India, Ireland, Romania, Australia, and various other islands, what they call actually the big ocean, small islands that really need to be helped because they have actually the risk to completely disappear in the next 100 years. There's a responsibility there for the rich countries to, yeah, deploy their expertise to help the world. Coastal resilience, urban resilience are the themes of the future, unfortunately, due to climate change.
If we look at the deep dive on offshore wind, we also presented these slides before end of last year. If you look specifically at the growth in the market there, you see steep growth of 25% CAGR year on year for the investments that actually move into this business. Fugro actually outgrew this growth of 42% last year.
Something that is really needed, and that is the reason is that we are very much in the forefront in the early stage to help these clients to understand the total environment, the subsurface, the service, but also everything around the environment around it, how to build in a responsible manner, but also how to design their field and make sure that they mitigate all the risks involved related to the ground and the conditions around it. Quite steep growth. If you look on the right side there, you see how much is installed today, gigawatts installed on the wind, offshore wind site, 42 in 2022. That needs to move in the next eight years to 210 gigawatts being installed.
I think that is sometimes for people very difficult to understand what it actually means and how much is required. Therefore, maybe one example, if you look at the country very close by, the Netherlands here, we have 3 gigawatts- 4 gigawatts installed today, offshore wind. We're working now with Fugro, providing, collecting all the information for the next 4 gigawatts, so 2x 2 gigawatts. That project will be sent out at the end of this year in September. The government will launch these license rounds. Fugro is collecting all the information before that so that everybody has the same data pack and then can bid on these licenses. That is another 4 gigawatts. Together, let's say 8 gigawatts in the Netherlands. They have an ambition in 2030 to have 20 gigawatts on the board.
That is another, more than double, 2.5x What we're working on today or what is already installed. 10 years later, in 2040, they want 50 gigawatts. That is a magnitude of 10 compared to what is installed today. In 2050, they want 70 gigawatts, only in the Netherlands. Germany is moving as fast. Denmark is moving very fast. The U.K., Italy, many other countries. That's only Europe. The magnitude of this market is enormous and the growth will continue for many years to come. The governments are good to give insight in what is coming up for the next 10 years or even 20 years, and they do that so that companies can also think about the investments that are required.
I believe there will be definitely a capacity constraint in how fast we can build all these high demands and wishes that we have. What is Fugro all doing in this environment, there are key questions that we need to answer for our clients. I will put them all on the board one by one. See that I don't skip the slide by doing it. These are common questions that clients have. Very simple. How do I install my pile straight at location? Before you can actually install, you need to understand the subsurface. Is it sand? Is it clay? Are there any rocks? If you want to put your monopile in the sea floor and you hit a big boulder, you can start redesigning your pile again because it will be damaged.
You need to know all these things in advance. Think about the bombs of World War II that are still on the sea floor, buried under the ground. You don't wanna put your pile on one of these old bombs. I think people can imagine what is required throughout the whole life cycle of that building process, but also thereafter, what is required for the inspection and maintenance of these assets. Fugro provides a very nice mix of services that is very applicable in the whole development of these fields. Just a small comparison with the traditional energy environment, where maybe some of our clients would do maybe geotechnical boreholes every year. 10 boreholes, they set, for instance, for the traditional energy. Now they build offshore wind farm, and they need 200 windmills, and that is suddenly 200 boreholes.
You compare the 10 maybe with 200, and there's only one wind farm. You can see the magnitude of the problem that we have here and what is required. Then I have not spoken about the biodiversity requests that are popping in, into Fugro supplying environmental baseline studies, looking at what kind of organisms are living there on the sea floor, how can we build responsibly moving forward. It's all about the data, and I have a great picture if it works. Yeah. Fugro created a platform to present this data real-time or semi-real-time to the customers, cloud-based, where they see actually what data is collected, and they want to, during the design, enter this data multiple times. They have different departments that need this information.
Some need the water depth, others need the subsurface conditions for further developing these wind farms. This is very interesting. This is exactly what we do, creating the insights on the geo-data that we collect and analyze, and this is where we can really help our customers. That could be with design, that could be with route planning, so we also have modules that they can work on in this software delivery. If we look at the services that Fugro provides, and that's, I think, the beauty of this, the clients have a wide variety of services that they require, and Fugro has the beauty that we have that all in-house. We can combine these services, and the contracts become larger and larger and ask for these integrated packages.
A wide spread of services where we move from initially, maybe only determining what kind of wind there is in one area to actually determine, do we want to build a wind farm in this particular location, towards doing the site investigation, the marine site characterization, the bomb detection, the UXO surveys. The installation supporting that, Fugro is not installing anything. Later on, the inspection, making sure that the assets are also safe and in a good and right condition. On the right side, you see, well, an external party has looked at what is the market all about in the geophysics and geotechnics, because that's where the majority of the work right now for Fugro is in the marine site characterization area. You see that we have a market-leading position. You can obviously argue if these percentages are all correct.
That's an external report from Rystad, but it gives you good indication that we're well-positioned to also maintain that position if we take the right steps. That brings me to the next slide, which is a message that we also brought out this morning in the news next to our annual results. The acquisition of two vessels, platform supply vessels, that will be repurposed into geotechnical platforms. Really very good platforms for us. We have investigated that. This was something that came to our board last minute, and we see it as a great opportunity to dive into this and that's why we pushed through with, yeah, a high intensity investigation that had to be done if this is the right solution for us. Why are we doing this? We're doing this because we want to keep our market-leading position.
The market is growing. You have seen it. You see it in our backlog. We need to have these core strategic assets to be able to deliver on this high expertise that Fugro has on the geotechnical side. Unfortunately, these things cannot be done with an uncrewed platform. As you can potentially remember or that you can see yourself, because we need to do drilling in the sea floor, you need the drill tower for that. We only go 100 m deep, it's always for, yeah, geotechnical purposes, the drilling that we do. It's also important to emphasize that. We're not deep drillers or so. That is to determine the characteristics of the subsurface. Very important, as I explained, if you want to design your windmill and your windmill location.
That cannot be done in the next probably 10 years-15 years from a remote uncrewed platform. That's simply too complex. There is too much required there, so we need to also have these stable platforms where we can actually do the geotechnical work for. There will be attempts, obviously, to do the lighter geotech also from smaller platforms and also from remote platforms. Our roadmap that we have for our USVs and developing USVs for the geophysical fleet, that is still in place. We have still the same ambition there to actually move towards asset lighter in that front, with smaller assets, with reducing the CO2 footprint, the net zero emission roadmap that we have, very important, and we'll continue to move on with that.
To be honest, these platforms are actually very good fitting into our net zero roadmap, and the reason for that is that they are very fuel efficient. They actually burn a lot less fuel when we actually use them on DP. It's significantly less than many other vessels that we use. I think it's important to also understand that these are exactly fitting into our net zero roadmap, not only because they use less fuel, but also because they are prepared with the engines that they have. That those are the first Caterpillar engines that will be transformed into methanol usage. I think we are well prepared to also use different fuels in the future, specifically methanol, that fits these size of vessels and our operations quite well.
Let alone that some of these vessels, or these two vessels, have also tanks for methanol, which is also a benefit that many other vessels do not have. It also allows for hybrid solution in the upcoming years if we want to include that. That's something we're currently investigating. For our current backlog, that's maybe also good to realize, we already have increased our fleet. These things do not come in for this year, so to say, to actually deliver on the high backlog that we currently have, because we were already ramping up in 2022 with the addition of the Fugro Quest, but also an additional lease vessel, but also the lease vessel that we have committed to for the upcoming period.
We are doing two, another two lease vessels for the upcoming period to cater for the high growth in the other region, or in all the regions. I think it's important to say, why not moving on with leasing more assets? Well, the dynamics in this vessel market has also changed. Prices really climb up, and then you get into the situation where you say, "Okay, leasing is becoming very expensive," and then owning is also important. We have leased more over the last couple of years because it was very attractive, the lease market. That has changed now. We're back into a situation where vessels are becoming more expensive, and that means that you need to find that right balance between owned and chartered vessels. That's very important, and specifically for the geotech vessels, that means...
For the geotech solution, that means that we need these larger platforms to cater for our growth. Last but not least, and also to emphasize once again our focus on USVs, just earlier this week, we just got the approval from the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the MCA, to be able to work completely remotely in UK waters. This is quite remarkable because we're the first party that received accreditation or approval to actually work 60 nautical miles away from the shoreline from a fixed platform, category two. That means, that is the same problems that 20 years ago we had with drones in the air, that there was no regulation, and actually at sea, the same problem applies there. We have worked on this for many, many months, and we have now received this approval.
I think good steps moving forward to that, in that roadmap that we have on the USVs. With that, I come to the end of my part, and I hand over to Barbara.
Thanks, Mark. Good. Welcome, everyone. Mark has already spoken about the significant growth in our revenue last year and the backlog as well, 37.5%. Just to summarize also, the revenue was up by 14.8%, double digit. I will get back on the details of the financials when presenting the next couple of slides, but for now, I just wanna highlight a number of things. The growth in our revenue translated into an improvement in our margins. EBITDA margin improved by 1%, from 12%- 13%. However, in absolute terms, that was an increase of EUR 54 million, which is quite substantial. The EBIT margin also improved in line with the midterm targets that we set ourselves upon as 2022 being a step-up year, increased from 4.3%- 6.1%, that is an increase absolute of EUR 45 million.
Clearly, good progress was made, and we can be satisfied by that. We're clearly not there, because the targets are 8%-12%, but this was an important year, and it was not an easy year, with the war in the Ukraine, the inflationary pressures, the supply chain pressures, and lots of moving parts to move the shift to the energy transition, as already highlighted by Mark. Our net result is EUR 74 million. If we look at the leverage, we deleveraged from 1.7x- 0.9 x, and this was a combination of higher EBITDA, as just mentioned, and the equity raise, which we did as refinance, part of a refinancing in last summer. Let me then go to the next slide. Let's look at Q4 of last year.
Q4, if you look at the revenue, it increased by 8.5%. This was compared to a particularly strong growth in the comparable same period of 2021. If we remember and look back, we actually that was the first fourth quarter that was very strong vis-a-vis earlier years before. This was supported by high client demand in the renewable markets, especially in Q4. If we look at the right-hand side of the chart, the EBIT and the EBIT margin was impacted by disappointing operational performance, mainly in marine site characterization in the Americas. This was driven by the first half year incident, supply chain difficulties, which resulted in a delayed start-up of a large geotechnical survey in the U.S. East Coast.
This unfortunately had a related knock-on effect on several other projects, which were pushed into the poor weather season in the fourth quarter. The underlying EBIT margin performance in Q4, adjusting for this event or this sequence of events, as I should say, is sound. This is what I wanna reiterate. We are still traveling towards the midterm targets from an EBIT margin perspective. After Q4, let's focus on the full-year and look at some comparisons. As Mark already showed, the revenue growth was strongest in the renewables, 42% revenue growth. This benefited actually both marine and land business. Marine revenue increased by 12.9%.
This was mostly driven by marine site characterization and the utilization of our vessel fleet, which relates both to owned and long-term chartered vessels, and this was 72% throughout the year on average. Because clearly, we have low and high season, and this is the average that we achieved on owned and long-term chartered vessels. Also in land, the site characterization business showed the strongest increase. This was particularly, as I mentioned, in the renewable site on the nearshore activities for offshore wind, but also we saw strong activity on LNG developments. This was mainly in the U.S., where land showed a remarkable improvement, and I'll get back to that later. The positive exchange rate was mostly related to the dollar, the US dollar. The bottom graph shows that, and particularly land contributed to the margin improvement.
Our EBIT margin improved to 6.1%, as I just mentioned. Overall, all regions contributed, and this is what I've said before. For Fugro to achieve the midterm targets from an EBIT margin perspective is very much that all regions contribute to the EBIT margin. This is what we see happening actually already last year. Apart from Europe, Africa, which is already performing in the midterm target range, APAC is closing in on the midterm target range as well. As you can see on this slide, the biggest driver was the solid improvement in the land business, and I will get back to that later. Now let's look at marine. First marine, and then we'll focus on land. To summarize, we reported the largest revenue increase in Europe, Africa, as you can see in the slide.
Also Middle East and India showed the strongest growth. If you look at the right-hand side of the slide, you see the EBIT, and there you see that actually Europe, Africa, and APAC have been able to translate into EBIT. Overall, as already Mark said, we have been successful in passing on higher costs for fuel, charters, and third-party personnel. This was quite a juggle as we saw high top-line growth last year coming from not so high top-line growth, so the company really had to shift gears in what was global turmoil. We are happy with the results that we delivered on because this was not easy. At the same time, the strong growth in the site characterization required the additional mobilization of vessels.
That is the gear change I was just talking about, which has resulted in delays, unfortunately, in Middle East and India and the Americas, and we could not translate the increase in revenue to the EBIT. Only in APAC, we saw a decrease in revenue as a result of an unexpected change in permitting for geotechnical site investigations in South Korea. We talked about that in the press release on the certain immaturity levels of offshore wind markets. The outlook and the underlying plans of the governments in Asia give us a lot of comfort that in the longer term, you know, those projects will be there, but it will not happen in a straight line. Marine APAC starts to contribute better. This is also what was happening from 2021- 2022.
We're shifting there from volume to value, increasing the margins as the market activity picks up. In marine, in the pie chart, the right-hand corner, I would like to highlight that 37% was offshore wind in 2022, and in 2021, that was 27%. That's an increase of 10%. Let's look at land. Land reported a marked improvement in its results. EBIT margin improvement of 2.5%- 7.2%. A year-on-year EBIT growth of 250%. In absolute terms, maybe not so big, but for land, this was really a remarkable result. Definitely after a couple of challenging years. During the past years, we have been implemented, and we have been talking about it, several changes in the land organization in various regions.
It's more a local business. We have now turned a corner in the various regions where we're active in land. All regions contributed to the overall margin improvement. In particular, the Americas region, we benefited from nearshore projects in LNG. There in land, there's also offshore wind activity, renewable activity. It was 13% last year, and the year before in 2021, it was only 4%. Also there we see a shift. Look, let's look at the increased operating cash flow. I'm pleased to show you, to be able to show you that we increased the operating cash flow by 50%. In absolute numbers, EUR 60 million, before changes in working capital. I've said before, I'm focused on that. I find this is an important indicator, now let's look at what then happened after.
We had working capital. Working capital took some effect away from that, some positive effect, let me put it like that. Also CapEx. That resulted in the end in a free cash flow of EUR 24 million. As a percentage, let's quickly look at working capital. As a percentage of revenue, this increased. It was 12.9%, up from 10.9% a year ago, consuming EUR 69 million more. The DRO was 85 compared to 82 the year before. Of course, we're growing our top line, and this is actually one of the reasons why the working capital is higher. It doesn't mean that we're pleased with the working capital result. This needs our focus, even additional focus, because we were already focused on it in an upgoing market.
The contracts are getting larger, we're doing a lot of work for government, especially you see the working capital consumption going up in Europe, Africa. This is something that has our attention. If contracts get bigger, you know, and milestones need to be hit before you can get paid, this consumes more capital. This has Mark and my attention. On the CapEx, what happened on the CapEx? As Mark already said, we're adjusting the asset base for future growth. It's driven by a strong top line growth, the backlog development of further opportunities that we wanna grasp. Therefore, we're stepping up our investment levels.
Also in light of the uncrewed surface vessels strategy and the net zero roadmap, I do want to reiterate that we're not deviating from that with the purchase of two geotech vessels, we simply cannot execute the backlog in geotech, in the offshore wind, in an uncrewed manner. In 2022, as we guided in Q3 trading update, we upped the CapEx to EUR 125 million, we realized EUR 123 million of CapEx spent. This was a combination as each year of maintenance and transformation and expansion CapEx. The maintenance CapEx was much more driven by a high number of scheduled drydock and special service, which we need to do to maintain the integrity of our fleet and to ensure we have reliable vessels to execute the work.
Also we had the conversion of the Fugro Quest, which came on stream later than we had planned for, but we have added it. It has been working, and it's working successfully. Going forward, as Mark already presented, we're stepping up our investment levels with a guidance of EUR 200 million-EUR 225 million of CapEx in 2023, and that includes the two new vessels. Let's look at the bottom part of the P&L, and let's just briefly highlight the biggest swing factors.
We had specific items more than the year before, they were mainly composed of EUR 5.7 million onerous contract charges, EUR 2.8 million restructuring costs, EUR 2.6 million net asset impairments, and EUR 2.1 million refinancing costs. We look at the net foreign exchange gain in 2022, this was primarily the result of the appreciation of the dollar, just like what happened in 2021, where that was already the case, and the dollar development continued in 2022. The net reduction of the interest expense follows from the full repayment of the remaining outstanding balance of EUR 190 million convertible bond in October 2021, and the partial repayment of the EUR 100 million convertible bond in 2022. The refinancing in July 2022, we did at improved terms and conditions, reducing the cost of debt.
These effects were largely offset because the difference is not that big, if you see going down from 38.1 to 35.3. The effects were largely offset by expensing the remained unamortized direct cost upon the settlement of the previous facilities, as well as the higher interest expense on leases due to higher lease liabilities. Now let's look at the leverage, at the balance sheet and the capital structure. Net debt declined to EUR 207 million from EUR 293 million at year-end in 2021, as a result of the equity raise that we did in July of EUR 150 million, and where we, at the same time, put a comprehensive sustainability-linked refinancing package in place. As I mentioned before, this combined with the increase in EBITDA, the net leverage improved from 1.7- 0.9 at year-end.
In light of the growth in Fugro's markets, the company will not propose a dividend over 2022, and we will reinvest the generated cash flow in the business. Now back to Mark for the outlook.
Yeah, just one more slide, holding us from the questions, so we'll go over to questions very soon. That's the outlook for 2023, which you probably all have read already. We expect growth in all our core markets, resulting in, yeah, continued revenue growth, steep revenue growth, as a strong revenue growth, so to say, as we have seen also in 2022. Further margin expansion towards, yeah, getting closer to those midterms, margins.
As we also spoke about, the CapEx, the additional investment, EUR 200-EUR 225, is the guidance now, which includes indeed the investments in the two vessels, also additional geotechnical equipment, additional USVs, as I just mentioned before, but also the net zero roadmap asked for particular investments that we continue to do. That's quite important to take note of that. You obviously have questions around the years thereafter, which I fully understand. Therefore, we also have been clear that in the second half of the year, we will come up with a update on our strategic direction.
More so, the strategy is quite to the point, but we want to see with the dynamics in the markets, if we actually cater for all the opportunities that are out there. That also means that probably we need to make some choices here and there, and we will do so in the upcoming period and present that to you in the second half of the year in a capital markets day. That will be coming up in the second half. With that, I would like to move over to questions. I'll close this presentation. Obviously afterwards, there can always be questions towards our investor relations, Catrine Buitenga. For now, over to questions.
Hi, yes. Luuk van Beek, Degroof Petercam. A couple of questions. First, on your backlog, can you give a rough indication about the split between volume and price? And also, to what extent the the share of oil and gas is increasing? Because you noticed that could increase going forward the volume, at least from that business. Second question is on your dividend versus your CapEx. You did some additional CapEx, as you described, you want to increase your fleet in view of the lease rates. Maybe there are further opportunities later this year. Can you describe how you will make that balance going forward, between future dividends and expansion CapEx?
A question on the vulnerability for delays in both vessel availability and permits. That depressed to some extent your result last year. The market is becoming more supportive, so you probably are in a better position to exclude that risk. Can you comment on the outlook there?
Absolutely. Thank you, thank you, Luuk. First and foremost, to talk about the backlog, the, yeah, the 38% growth in backlog. Or maybe, it's also good to mention that we announced another large contract in the Americas, which was not part of the backlog presented before. So, quite good development, specifically focused on oil and gas, no, on renewables, offshore wind, sorry. And if you look at oil and gas, we see a similar split as what we have seen before in our revenue split, also translating again, the same trends translating into our backlog moving forward. That means that still, offshore wind will play a large element moving forward. Oil and gas is definitely growing again as well.
You have seen it in our previous year results, which basically meant that we grew 9%. As I said before, there will be a large part of that which is price related and not volume related. Moving forward, I expect also more volume to come in, specifically on the gas side. Barbara already mentioned a few things there. We have seen specifically in the Americas quite a few projects around LNG developments, nearshore LNG developments, Fast LNG developments which was quite visible in the U.S. Gulf, the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, but also in Mexico itself. We have also seen some other gas projects, for instance, the Indonesia project, as well as a project in Brunei coming back on the board again. Multiple gas projects moving forward.
There's big differences between the regions, and I think I give you one more number. If you look at Europe, MSC, more than 90% is offshore wind. Also Americas is following this trend. It's moving very rapidly into the wind environment. We obviously look at the total of Fugro. There's also the Middle East and India in there, which will be more related to oil and gas, which is always good to realize if you look at the total of Fugro. We see now Asia Pacific also coming in more steeply with movements in the offshore wind, potentially being the area which will grow fastest.
I always talk about this area without China, because if I include China, it will blow everything from the table, because they develop as much as the rest of the world develops. That we never consider because we will not operate in that market. Maybe I will answer first the vessel availability and the risks that we see there, and then maybe Barbara can jump in also for dividend. What we see right now is a change in the charter market. That's one thing. There's higher costs in charters and chartering, which means that it becomes also attractive to own vessels and to have the right mix there.
That tilted towards more chartering over the last couple of years when this vessel market was very attractive. What we have seen in our results end of last year is twofold, two different reasons what happened in Q4. We're not satisfied with that. Let's be clear on that. That is first and foremost, what happened in Asia Pacific, a sudden change in regulation in South Korea, which meant that our clients did not have the permits to continue with the work. That actually had the result that we were on standby. We were paid for standby, but standby had different returns than being operational, and that was actually happening for quite a long time.
The projects or not all the projects have started even now, therefore we had to reposition our vessels elsewhere. That is now happening. That means that there might still be some impact also at the beginning of this year, but much smaller than what we saw before. Then the big ticket item and the big shift we saw in Q4 was the Americas, specifically on the geotechnical side, where we were hindered by actually an effect that was created by ramping up our capacity in Q3, which did not go according to plan, which had a knock-on effect for multiple projects, which meant that eventually we had projects that need to be executed in a very difficult environment at the end of the year, actually off-season periods, and weather was even worse than actually normal.
We always see that in, in the Americas, that this can be very much fluctuating year-by-year. That was causing big problems, and we couldn't generate any operational days or very minimal operational days there, which had an enormous impact on the result there in Q4. That will have some impact at the beginning of this year, but again, also there much smaller. The problem has been tackled. We know what we have been doing. The vessel is operating well, but this was the cause of it, and it had primarily an effect on the fourth quarter and less so on the third quarter. That is those two things. If I look forward, because that's the next question, what can happen then again? You're absolutely right that we can actually, yeah, reduce the risk moving forward.
Also standby fees are different now, nowadays moving forward. We also have different contract conditions because, yeah, if clients want to work with us, then we also need to have the decent terms and conditions in the contracts to be able to deliver our services. That means that we cannot have a vessel very long on standby in a particular period or in a particular area because there are projects to be executed. We need to be able to move our vessels around accordingly. We take that on board. We reduce the risk for Fugro on that side as well. That helps. We are going to, as you know, now also, yeah, repurpose new vessels and these assets that we have secured already.
That means that, you also have the risk that some things go wrong there. Having said that, we are obviously learning also from the past. We're on top of that. We have good people on it. We have to realize when you move assets, when you make changes, there will be things that never go in a straight line, as Barbara said before. It will have some hurdles now and then. In general, we're very positive around the trends that we're moving in the right direction and also how we organize ourselves for these repurposing and, or transforming these assets. I think that answers those two questions. I look at Barbara, you want to answer the one on dividend? Happy to do as well. And CapEx, but go ahead.
Thanks, Mark. Yeah, on dividend, last year, for the first time in seven years, over 2021, Fugro made a profit again of EUR 71 million. This year, that is EUR 74 million. We do want to return to the dividends paying stock. Timing thereof has been impacted in the sense of, as I mentioned, operating cash flow is important. What are you, how are you gonna repurpose or use the cash that you generate? We have the very strong end markets. We know that the asset capacity in our markets is actually smaller than what the market requires. You've seen the build out slide from Mark. That means there are opportunities.
The companies of the view, we are of the view that those opportunities also represent a lot of value for the shareholders, future value for the shareholders. Therefore we want to take those opportunities also to maintain the leadership of the company in the businesses to continue to invest. The net zero roadmap costs money. The uncrewed vessel strategy costs money. For now, we have decided to divert that cash into good opportunities where the company's convinced that this provides value also for the shareholders.
Having said that, we've also said that going forward, we will come back in the second half of this year to present the next phase of the Path to Profitable Growth, because we are on that path, as I just mentioned, from a free cash flow perspective and the CapEx component in that. That has changed a little bit. We're looking at the midterm targets, and we'll get back on that. In terms of going forward, ROCE, and we haven't discussed ROCE yet. ROCE needs to go up as well at the end of the day. In the midterm targets, we can reconfirm that we're working very hard on that, and that is what the investments should also demonstrate that we're doing now.
That is how we make the trade-off between dividend and return of capital employed. Having said that, we're very well aware that shareholders also expecting a dividend at some point. We're not proposing a dividend for 2022.
Thank you. Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO -ODDO BHF. First question on cost. Can you maybe give a feel for the impact of fuel costs in 2022? And what you expect there in terms maybe of release in 2023? Second cost question is on what kind of average cost rise should we expect in staff expenses? Third question is on the backlog. Backlog up 38%. The backlog, I would say, is primarily booked in the past 12 months, so I presume that in principle, the budgeted backlog margins are already in line with the midterm targets. Is that right or not? A CapEx question, a question I got from many clients. What kind of return can we expect on the investments in the new geotechnical vessels?
Related to that, I would say in your official reporting, you're still reporting a ROCE of 8%-9% or so on EUR 1.1 billion capital employed. I think this still includes EUR 270 million of goodwill, which is not really an asset you're investing in. Excluding goodwill, I would say ROCE is already well above 10%. The required ROCE is probably more like 15%-20%. Is that correct?
Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Thijs, for the questions. Let me first talk about a few. I do not have a very exact number on the few. I don't know if you have one, but what I can say about that is that we saw the impact primarily in the second quarter of this year. There was some effect also in the second half of the year. The second quarter, obviously, when the Ukraine war started, obviously that had a very rapid effect on cost increases. There we had to deal with existing prices, so to say, that were climbing up very rapidly. That was a problem end of this first quarter and the second quarter.
In the latter part of the year, we were more pricing this in and also pushing the risk towards the customer. We now feel that we're in a very good position where we have either the right prices in or we have, let's say, caps when it goes above a certain threshold, we can actually have a new discussion with the customer to say, "Okay, how are we going to deal with the differences there?" That is well covered. How much it exactly is, I had a number in mind for the second quarter, but I need to first verify that. We'll come back on that.
You could easily see that for the largest region that goes above EUR 10 million where the impact lies around fuel. Staff expenses, I will leave for Barbara to answer what we have, how we look at that and how we do that for the total of Fugro. Maybe the backlog, because your question was, okay, the backlog is pretty new, so to say, so you can expect that they are a bit in line with the midterm markets or mid-midterm targets. The only answer I can give you, of course, that is the case, because it would be strange in this environment not to bid in this line with mid-midterm targets there.
The backlog is more healthy pricing-wise, so prices have moved up and that is also communicated in the press release. On that side, I can be clear. We have the staff expenses. Barbara, maybe you can answer that, and then the ROCE one.
Yeah, sure. Average cost rise in staff expenses. We have, we have done, as every company has been battling with won the war on talent, and to the inflationary pressures, we've decided at the end of last year to give, to do a company-wide increase of 4%. We felt that was the right thing to do. Also, to make sure that, you know, we keep our employees motivated and happy and compensate also for the higher cost of living. That is what we've done. For this year, what can you expect? We have annual rounds of increase, as is normal for any company.
This is what is included in the budget for this year. That may vary a little bit more per region, and that is what we're not disclosing. There will be, as any company would be doing, an annual increase that will be applied. On your CapEx, on your return, what can we expect? Well, you can expect a return above the WACC at least. On the CapEx, geotechnical vessels are not the cheapest, so therefore, we apply a higher rate of return than perhaps for the land business that we would expect.
So that is definitely something that we're working towards, and that means that the compensation also needs to be in line with, as Mark says, if we have, for example, special service costs money, potential breakdowns or inefficiencies cost money, so that should be included in there and still get us to the return that we are having set ourselves upon. Therefore, I also reconfirm the ROCE midterm target. That is a nice segue into your ROCE question. Yes, there is goodwill in there. This is a definition that we've applied, so that's the measure that we use. So if you want to subtract goodwill, that is fine. Now we're already there.
I wouldn't say we're there because, you know, we need to be better at the ROCE midterm targets, which we set ourselves upon. That's what we're focused on.
I think maybe good to also on that side, that we always set more than 10% in all the businesses. That's a starting point, because traditionally Fugro was higher on the ROCE side. That's also our ambition.
Andre Kloppers. I think in the past, you were contemplating about reporting backlog in a different manner, so reporting the full size of the backlog. Can you give any indication what is beyond 12 months included in the backlog? Again, pointing at the longer projects in offshore wind.
Barbara?
Yeah, sure. I'm happy to take that question. Yeah, we have set that, but it also needs to be meaningful if we do so. We do see indeed the request from our customers, being it governments or private companies, for commitment because everyone, as I mentioned, It's well known in the market that there's a shortage of assets and people to execute the work. We are considering that. If it's meaningful, we're not committing to it, and nor are we committing to a timeline when we will do so.
What we can say is that we do indeed see that trend of larger contracts on the wind, as explained by Mark, the 200 boreholes, and equally the desire of the customers to ensure that they have assets also for beyond the 12-month, as we communicated.
You've already had capacity reservations for, let's say, 2024, 2025?
Yes, we have.
I think, Andre, maybe what we can add is, being in the business and you following Fugro for a long time, contracts are larger and longer, so and that's very clear. More of them. That's really the trend of the wind environment, that it's more complex because it's more data that is required. It's more higher intensity of the data, the geo data that's required, more laboratory work because it's only one pile sticking out of the seabed quite high, so, a lot of force on the foundation as well. In that sense, the characteristics of these complex projects are in principle meaning more work, longer, for Fugro in that, in, yeah, foundation area, so to say.
That is what we can say. Obviously, you always lose something if you go only to the full extent of the projects in the long term. You will also lose the history that you have and the comparison there. That's the balance that we also need to find.
A small question on land, or should I say marine? Was it surprising that you are reporting nearshore activities and offshore wind on the land? What's the reason for that?
That can be answered fairly quickly. If I talk about nearshore, I really talk about along the coastline, so very close to the shoreline. The activities are done with the expertise and the equipment of the land business. It's very closely related that and logical that these teams get involved in executing this work. There's a gray area where it overlaps, and you go into the marine side, and that's also what is happening because you have people that are trained for land cannot go offshore because they have no certification to actually do the work in marine environments. It is only the actually along the coastline work. It's the cables that are the cable landings.
It is the surf zone, that needs to be mapped maybe, and it's close by to, the shoreline. That is basically what we decided is, okay, the very near shore and near shore is really along the coastline.
Mm.
done with land, equipment and expertise that is reported on the land side.
Any signal how large that is?
What we see now in the U.S., for instance, there, quite a significant part of their revenues in the U.S. suddenly changed in 2022 towards Fast LNG. They have actually, yeah, a large chunk of their work, I won't call exact number or percentage, but it's getting more closer to, let's say 40%, 50% type of size that is now related to FLNG, Fast LNG work that suddenly really came up very rapidly.
Good afternoon, everyone. Quirijn Mulder from ING. Couple of question. My first question about about the CapEx, maybe a couple of sub-questions on that. first of all, if you are raising your CapEx by almost EUR 100 million compared to 2022, you are looking at saying, "Okay, we're not paying dividend because we are reinvesting that in the company," what does it include for 2023? Are you still then also not paying any dividend also given the cash flow developments? That's my first question. On the CapEx further, there is in the plans you have released, you don't give any indication about dry docking. Is dry docking the upside of the CapEx as well given, let me say, last year what you did in dry docking?
In additional, there was cost overruns with regard to Fugro Quest. How is the CFO preventing that it's happening again? Are there people with nice ideas which cost tens of millions, and they are putting that on the vessels? That's my question on the CapEx. Finally, if I'm calling you tomorrow and I'm asking you, "Do you have a geotechnical vessel available for the month of October?" Do you have that at all, and especially in the U.S.? Because in my view, it looks like that last quarter you didn't do the work you were planning, it's moving on to 2023. You have just announced a large project of geotechnical work in the U.S. as well.
Is there any capacity left in geotechnical in general, and especially in the US? That were my questions for this moment, only about capacity.
Very good. I will start with that, Quirijn, because it's high on your agenda. If we look at the U.S., we have seen in the ramp-up of the charter vessel in 2022 that started midyear that we had delays in getting this dry dock done and the installation done there. That was also caused by supply chain issues, and that had a knock-on effect on projects later on, especially in Q4. As I just said, we will also have some effect at the beginning of this year, significantly smaller. We have already committed to an additional lease for the Americas. In that sense, we are ramping up that capacity again. That is in progress already.
That is obviously what you have to realize with this additional vessel in the U.S., but we also have the Quest that obviously came only in December. You asked a few questions on the Quest as well. The Quest was, and I think we have communicated, and I will also hand over to Barbara on that, we have actually done a more extensive overhaul than we were initially planning. It is also that we have along the way decided to do more fundamental work to that vessel. That is not all lost. That is not all leakage. I want to be not so negative about that.
We have decided, actually to take on, for instance, the whole drill tower and do a complete overhaul of the drill tower and the setup there specifically for the laboratory on board, as well as the drill tower and the technical side of the vessel. Initially that dry dock started maybe as a dry dock meant for the vessel itself. Later on, we decided that it was the right thing to do while it was in dry dock to pick up additional work to that vessel. That was the reason why it took longer to get that vessel into the market. That happened in December, and as Barbara said, it's working well at the moment. We're very pleased with the setup there. That's also additional capacity that we didn't have in 2022.
An additional vessel in the U.S. started mid-last year. We have committed to another one, the Fugro Quest came up with it on it, and we are also committing to an additional hire in the Asia Pacific. That's also ongoing as we speak, already being, yeah, repurposed or transformed into a geotech platform. Last thing before I hand over to Barbara. On the dry docking, there is less dry docking this year than last year. Last year we had, and we communicated around that, a significant number of vessels that had to go through special surveys and intermediate surveys. That is not something that we can plan because that's just date.
After three years, you have to go into intermediate period survey, and after five years, you have to do a special survey. You can map them out, and in one year you have maybe five or seven . Next year you might have three or four . That's just something that we can map out. We're not going to be very specific about these things in the future, but we will obviously give you some guidance there where required. It's not the reason why CapEx is higher in the upcoming year, and you even asked for the years thereafter. I hand over to Barbara.
Yeah. On the Fugro Quest, what we've done, and Mark has already explained that, the scope what we have increased along the way, that's also to delays. What we have action in 22 is the we've intensified the CapEx guidelines, i.e., the process of managing the time, scope, and budget of any CapEx. We have included that also more explicit in the authorization matrix. We're more focused on it, not only from a business case perspective, which we clearly were already doing, but also from a progress reporting perspective and more indeed assuring that we don't get scope creep throughout big projects.
Therefore, we have, we're in the process of making more clearer divisions of people who are executing the CapExes versus who are gonna use the equipment or vessels that what will be used in the business. That is, that is teamwork, but with a clearer division of responsibilities to exactly tackle, Koen, the point you made that along the way, the, the goalposts are changed. I'm pretty confident that that is working, that tightened process. Can it be avoided then? No, because what we do see is that supply chain issues, delivery of, for example, electricity on board a vessel or items that come up that were not that were not foreseen, you will always have that.
We have contingencies in place, and we're managing those contingencies actively. I am more comfortable in that perspective that, yes, we had lessons learned from the Quest in that regard, and we're improving on that. On the dividend, as I mentioned for this year, we will not propose a dividend. Going forward, I would like to restate again that we are looking at the balance of indeed paying dividend and reinvesting in the business. We have said that we will consider paying dividend if the leverage is around 1.5 and, or and we can do it in a structural manner.
That is something that for this year, with the investments that we need to do in the business, as I said, we believe that is the right way decision to make sure that Fugro is well positioned to maintain its leadership position for the future, has made us decide that for this year, dividend will not be proposed. Having said that, I'm not gonna give any guidance on what we're gonna do next year. I think it's too early for that. We're reviewing the steep growth that we've seen in the market and how we can best benefit from that and how, what that means. As I mentioned before, we are very aware of expectations also of shareholders on the dividend, and that is what I want to say about that for now.
I've written down EUR 100 million. That was more. That was the increase.
That was related to the dividend.
No, the EUR 100 million is the increase of your profit.
Yes.
That is for the vessels and for the refurbishment of the vessels acquired. We need to put a drilling tower on it, et cetera, I think.
Yes. Well, yeah, we're not specifying that EUR 100 million. What I would like to say is that we said, in Q3 results, we said we expect to spend EUR 125 for year-end. We spent EUR 123. The question on, that was then asked, what do you foresee for CapEx going forward? I said, "That would be on the higher end on the outside of EUR 125." I wouldn't draw the conclusion that the vessels are then EUR 100. We have gone through a very thorough budget process, and there is a mix of maintenance CapEx, of net zero roadmap, and we need to keep going on the net zero roadmap, and that costs money. There is conversion CapEx in there. We do need to continue on the asset-lighter strategy that we have. There is also CapEx in that.
we need to maintain and adjust our asset base in terms of reliability, which I also said, reliability of vessels because we're getting busier. it's really a combination, equally the opportunities in land and the nearshore, all of these components require CapEx. that is, some of it is in the maintenance area, some of it is in the transformation, and some of it is in the expansion.
Maybe to add one thing there, Quirijn, and then we go off to the next question. I think we have and written down that also in the press release of very strong focus on operational excellence. One of the things that we're doing in the organization is really strengthening the operational lag of Fugro. Also because you have seen changes in the staff involved. Very good people joined Fugro. We have had more than 2,000 people joining Fugro last year. We're training them up. We're bringing them to the right level of expertise. We also felt that we need to actually do more and actually ensure that the execution also goes another notch up in execution there. I want to emphasize that. That applies throughout everything.
That's dry docks, operation, but also we're preparing for the next job or even rounding off a job.
Thijs Berkelder again, ABN AMRO- ODDO BHF. Question on how busy you are and a definition question. Your vessel occupancy is still 72%. Is that including dry dockings or so? Why is it not higher than a year earlier? What kind of vessels are then still idle? Second question is on backlog again. Backlog in marine, I think, is up 52% even, so I would assume offshore wind even more, up 60% or so. At the same time, order backlog in land is not so much up year-over-year. Can you explain why that's the case, especially in light of Biden's infrastructure plans? Final question maybe on water. Water was down last year. What can we expect from water in 2023?
Thank you. Thank you, Thijs. 72% also includes the dry dock. It's the total fleet is what you have certain, the fleet available and then, how much do you use of the year in the fleet. It was the same, 72% last year, 72% this year. However, there's a big difference between the first half of the year and second half of the year. Second half of the year, we talk about 77%. Fourth quarter was also a decent utilization in that, in that side. What we see is that obviously, if you have a vessel in a particular area and it cannot work for whatever reason, it's not so easy.
It's not like you put it in an Antonov plane, and then you move it to the other side of the world. It is very costly to move vessels around in the world, so you need to plan and be well in advance. We moved one vessel from Asia Pacific last year to Europe, one of the bigger geo tech assets, and that was really important to do because they saw a delay in certain projects in Asia Pacific and therefore we brought the vessel over transit to Europe, which also is included in the 72% for the total year. You see those things also having an effect on the total vessel utilization.
In principle, we spoke about that, before, many times, we always, I always said, "Yeah, we want to drive that vessel utilization towards the 80%." I think a global vessel utilization of 78% would be probably the max. If you can reach it, I don't know. Depends a lot on the mix. Where's the work? Where do you need it? You need to be also then maybe a little bit lucky in what project pops up with the vessel on the right side of the world. If you have one idle, it has quite a bit of effect. That's what I can say there.
On the backlog for marine, yes, you have read well, that's significantly further up than on the land side because land side is modest. In that sense, we can definitely expect marine to grow faster than land, which is also logical because we spoke about wind, offshore wind being the big player there. We have seen 42% growth, which is largely driven by marine last year and also next year it will be largely driven by marine because it's the offshore fields that actually drive the activities there. Also the land business, as we said, the nearshore activity is also related to renewables in land, and that is, yeah, the cable landings, those kind of things.
It's also related to the offshore wind and not necessarily to land wind. Land wind, we hardly do any work there. You can expect also the growth to be larger on the marine side moving forward. I think what we have said before, two years ago, there was only one region performing, you know that. Europe, Africa, was the only one putting good numbers on the board. Next year, or last year, we saw all the regions contributing. We saw quite a few problems in the marine site characterization with big swings and a market that was under huge development, where the second half of the year became more busy, so to say, which is also lead into this year, where we can expect, I think all the regions to contribute and also all the business lines to contribute.
That's what I can say there. Your question on land. Water market, sorry. The water market that is shrinking somewhat. Indeed, you saw that, correct. It is a very small market. We see enormous opportunities there with, for instance, the coastal resilience I spoke about. Because it's so small, yeah, you see some swings. When it becomes larger, it becomes also more reliable to see growth in these things. We see additional projects on the horizon for specifically coastal resilience and coastal mapping. We do see in the long run this market also to further increase and grow. You had one question around land, why is the backlog not growing so much?
That has to do with the fact that land has different dynamics, less large projects. It's more short-term, so that can change quickly. As I said, we'll probably see land growing less fast than on the marine side. There is indeed a big project or big ambition in the world to actually do more for aging infrastructure, and the U.S. is one of them, but it takes a long time before these projects actually come to the market and are materializing. Any other questions?
I think we're, we get a signal that we're running out of time. We have room for one last question then I think. Quirijn, you had a list?
No, maybe. Oh, okay, sorry. Now maybe final question then about the Middle East.
Yeah.
We see a couple of FIDs. We see, let me say, Saudi Aramco, ADNOC, and all the players in that region, proposing a lot of projects, et cetera. We don't see it in your revenues or in your backlog yet. Maybe you can give some elaboration on that developments there in the Middle East.
Yeah, I can say definitely a few things. We saw last year indeed, also, the Middle East, the large energy players, and you mentioned them, Saudi Aramco, ADNOC and others, announcing big investments again. That is always great if they do that, but it takes a lot of time before things actually move thereafter, and that they come to the market for us to be able to bid on it. The bid will also take some time before it materializes. I would say, just follow the news and wait and see what comes out, Quirijn. If you can be patient.
Yes.
Thank you. That brings us to the end of the presentation for the annual results of 2022 for Fugro. Thank you very much for attending, people here in the room, but also on the webcast. Thanks a lot. Till next time. Thank you.
Thank you.