Good afternoon or good morning, and welcome to El.En.'s first half-year 2022 financial results conference call. Today's call will be recorded, and there will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the conference call. With me on the call, Andrea Cangioli, El.En.'s Managing Director, and Enrico Romagnoli, El.En.'s Chief Financial Officer and Investor Relations. Before we begin, please note that management makes remarks on this conference call about the future expectations, plans and prospects and forward-looking statements. Certain statements in this call, including those addressing the company's beliefs, plans, objectives, estimates or expectations of possible future results or events, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known or unknown risks, including general economic and business conditions and the conditions in the industry we operate and may be affected should our assumptions turn out to be inaccurate.
Consequently, no forward-looking statements can be guaranteed, and actual future results, performance or achievements may vary materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation about the content, nor to update the forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date hereof. At this time, I want to turn the call to Mr. Andrea Cangioli. Please go on, Andrea.
Thanks, Bianca. Good morning. Thank you for joining us in this call, held after the release of our financial report for the first six months of 2022. On this call, myself, Andrea Cangioli, Managing Director of El.En., and Enrico Romagnoli, CFO and Investor Relations Manager for El.En. The financial results for the first six months were once again outstanding, and we are of course very pleased with them. Revenues were up 19.4%, well above the 10% minimum growth that we had forecast for the full year. Profits are also increasing nicely, not only in absolute value as a natural effect of volume growth, but also as margin on revenue as well.
With EBIT margin at 12.7% in the sixth month, we are touching profitability levels that the group had not seen in a very long time, and that go beyond our initial expectation as well. To provide you with a comprehensive view of our current situation, I'd like to focus at first to the specific market environment in which we are active and the positioning of our operational structure in such environment. We are talking of a very healthy and promising environment in most of the market segments and sectors where we compete with our high-tech system solutions that are able both to fulfill and to stimulate the needs and desires of our customers and potential customers. A comment on our three most significant application markets, medical aesthetics, medical surgery, and manufacturing.
The two medical segments are in general enjoying a long term favorable cycle driven by social and demographic trends. People desire to look and feel better and are ready to spend for that. The population that is on an average aging, has yet a desire to retain a more youthful look. When age calls for specific surgeries, patients would like such surgeries to be non-invasive with no downtime and pain-free. Our technological offer is aiming at first place to fulfill this need. But also our innovation aims to make new and alluring, effective and affordable procedures available in order to expand the desires of the potential customers and at the same time to expand the market for our devices. The manufacturing world does not have an expected growth trend as strong as expected for our medical segments.
It has indeed the general need to improve the cost and quality effectiveness of its processes, and is eager to invest in solutions that enable such improvements. Our technologies for the manufacturing world enable production processes to be materially improved under several points of view, cost effectiveness, productivity, quality standards, and last but not least, environmental impact. Bottom line, our main markets are currently showing a positive general trend, which is also sustained by the proactive innovative action of our offer that stimulates demand by continuously improving the system performance and jointly our customers ROI. If we zoom out from our specific market level to the general economic trend, the situation changes quite materially since we are facing one of the most turbulent and uncertain times of the past years.
In May 2020 and 2021, the post-pandemic rebound was strong and allowed the world's economies to pull out of the pandemic downturn. It did it with so much strength that it generated an inflationary wave. The war outbreak in Ukraine has added for the European countries, the uncertainty and sadness of a very close war with the undesired byproducts of losing access to very promising markets, and most important, importing a very tough energy cost escalation, which is driving further inflation and threatening to change trade terms for several energy-intensive businesses and the financial balance of households. We are not an energy-intensive business. We do not have a very high energy bill impacting our cost of goods sold, but we do have an increase in expenses due to the energy bill.
At the same time, the U.S. economy is also facing recently unseen levels of inflation and a recession. The Chinese economy is not yet out of the pandemic restriction phase, and the frequent lockdowns are further slowing down an economic environment that was instead needing a booster to improve its performance. The macroeconomic trends are not favorable, but they played no negative role on our business, with the exception of the Chinese uncertainty which limited our sales expansion in these months. However, these overall uncertainties loom over us. In order to describe the most relevant difficulties that we faced in these six months, we have in fact to zoom down again for business and to specific activities within the normal business conduct. I mean, the purchasing of material and components that we need for our production purposes.
Apart from price inflation, which is a matter of cost and can be somehow managed, and of course, the real issue is still the unavailability of certain components. Lead times are often extended well over 50 weeks, and the delivery terms became unreliable as never before for several components. I could spend an hour with anecdotes about delayed deliveries of fake components, so-called allocation of deliveries by suppliers, delivery interruptions, and of course, material cost increases. Since we could not assure a stable inflow of materials following our standard purchasing procedures and maintain the same terms with our vendors, we decided to accelerate purchasing volumes, anticipating deliveries to us, and increasing the amount of material we are holding in-house. The physical production cycle of the group is now materially longer than it was before because we try to anticipate delays and cancellations.
Excuse me, to prevent delays and cancellations that, if surfacing at the last minute, could completely block certain production lines. Moreover, by paying advances to vendors for gaining priority in the supply and by paying suppliers earlier than in the past, we further stretch the financial cycle of working capital as well. This is quite evident in the use of cash that we made in the six months, and with the change of our net financial position registered in the period. We invest some of the cash we have on hand, and we succeeded in most of the cases in stabilizing our production volumes as our overall profit and loss performance is showing.
Only in few circumstances, the organizational and financial effort we made had to succumb to material shortages and slow down production rate, mainly during the late spring and the summer in our production line, in our factory in Calenzano . We have been extremely determined in pursuing this path, which proved to be essential for allowing us to maintain and increase our production volumes. The financial interest has to be considered in part temporary, due to the supply chain emergency, and in part due to the continuous expansion and expected expansion of production volume. Moreover, there are reasons for which the financial cycle is seasonally more positive towards the end of the year, and as in the other years, we expect part of the working capital expansion to be absorbed.
We thought we should provide you with the details of the various components of our six-month cash absorption. At first, the sensitive point of the use of cash in the period, I would like to switch back to the topic on how we made money in this 2020 to today, and how we were able to increase EBIT and EBIT margin to the record level we are showing. The first driver was the sales volume. 19.4% average growth was an exceptional achievement, and there was close to 25% increase in medical sales in medical sector sales, which allowed a good leverage of operational expense. Sales growth was softer in the industrial sector, 13.2% only, and I quote, "only".
Anyway, an outstanding performance considering that we had a slow performance caused mainly by the Chinese lockdowns which slowed down our manufacturing and our sales activity in China. Gross margin on sales improved by 0.8% in the period, and I would like to mention three drivers for that. First of all, the faster growth of the medical sector, which provides on average higher margins on sales, around 45% in the six months, allow a mixed advantage. Second, a more favorable sales mix within the industrial sector also contributed to margin improvement. Marginality improvements in China outweighed the margin reduction in the European sales that were driven by a strategy of rapid market share expansion on the European territory.
Margins in the medical sector were more or less stable, benefiting from the increase of sales towards the U.S. and of the stronger U.S. dollar. An advantage that helped offset the slight margin decrease due to cost inflation and the increase of sales to large volume customers bearing also volume prices. The ability to increase margin on sales with such strong sales increase was the main driver for EBIT margin expansion, combined with a good control of expense on operations. Research and development activities have been fruitful in the period together with our regulatory activities that, as you know, in the medical field, allow sales in specific countries, sometimes years or months after the first release of the product. For instance, we obtained today the clearance for the sales of RedTouch, our innovative collagen stimulator based on laser emissions in Taiwan and Korea.
Among our new products, I'd like to mention the increasing clinical evidence and market acceptance due to the increasing clinical evidence of the efficacy of MonaLisa Touch and DuoGlide. Our latest CO2 devices, which integrate a second 1540 nanometer wavelength laser source, allowing thermal effects to flank the traditional ablative CO2 effect in vaginal health treatment. Our new dual wavelength CO2 device designed for the U.S. market is due to release to sales in early 2023. Among others, we are further enhancing our wide product range of laser hair removal systems by improving the performances and the usability of our DEKA Motus range, while Quanta System is expected to release a new powerful system for sale in early 2023. The body shaping product range is being enhanced with improvements to our flagship Onda Coolwaves system.
Sheet metal laser cutting systems are being equipped with laser sources of increasing power, but most important, on the application side, the effectiveness of laser cut with 20 kW and 30 kW laser sources is continually improved by our application specialists, allowing unprecedented cutting achievements. Some of you could appreciate live during the recent open day here in Florence and in Prato at Cutlite Penta . Before Enrico dives into the details of our financial results, I'd like to mention the celebration we held a few days ago, a party in the fantastic venue of Calenzano in Florence, where El.En. and the City of Florence acknowledged a tribute to the scientists that set up the technological foundation of our business, among which the 2018 Physics Nobelist, Professor Gérard Mourou.
The meeting between science, business and art, there are very few promoted that night, is one of the key success factors in EL.En.'s history, with science and R&D playing a crucial role in the product innovation process that is central for business development. Enrico, please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, Andrea. As already said by Andrea, in the first six months of the year, El.En. registered further record results with our consolidated revenues of EUR 327 million, up 19% compared to the last year. With another time, another double-digit growth in both our sectors, the medical one and the industrial one.
Together with the increase in sales, there's also an increase in profitability, with an EBIT at EUR 41 million, with an increase of 34%, comparing the data with the first half of last year. Thanks to the high volume of sales, we have a sharp increase in EBIT and EBIT margin, with an impact on sales of 12.7% higher than last year, 11.3%, and higher than last quarter, and higher than the first quarter, 11.8%. In the Q2, the EBIT margin of El.En. Group was at 13.3%. The increase in sales is also accompanied with an improvement on gross margin, and the drivers of this improvement are already explained by Andrea.
Thanks to the improvement of the gross margin and the stability of the impact on sales of fixed costs, as operating expenses and staff costs, EBITDA was positive for EUR 47.2 million, an increase of 20.7% compared to the EUR 39.1 million of last year. The incidence on turnover remains substantially unchanged, 14.4% in this year compared to the 14.3% on the last year. EBIT marked a positive balance of EUR 41.4 million, up 34.1% compared to the EUR 30.9 million as of last year, with 12.7% margin of sales marking a record level significantly higher than the result of the last year.
A positive contribution was done by the reduction on accruals for risk and charges compared to last year, when the increase was mainly due to the warranty to take into consideration the increase in sales volume and some extension of warranty period. Pre-tax income showed a positive balance of EUR 41.6 million with a 30.0% increase, and net income of the group amounted to EUR 28.4 million, up 26.6% after a tax rate of 26%. For what concerns the balance sheet, we can see that the net capital employed increase of 50% due to the reduction of net financial position.
The net financial position of the group remained positive for EUR 43.9 million, and we recorded a decrease of EUR 72 million in the period compared to the EUR 115.8 million at the beginning of the year and compared to the EUR 85.8 million at the end of Q1 2022. In the cash flow chart, we can see that the main reduction of cash was due to the increase of net working capital with an absorption of EUR 46 million to support the rapid growth and to face the impact on the business of the supply chain crisis.
The change in other current payables and receivables was mainly due to EUR 14 million to the decrease in advance received from customers, especially in China, where acquisitions as well as sales volume were weaker in the semester. For EUR 7 million an increase in advance paid to suppliers necessary to ensure timely supplies, and for an additional EUR 7 million as a temporary negative trend in tax payable and receivable for income taxes and VAT. In the reported period, dividends for EUR 17.2 million were also paid, of which EUR 16 million by EL.En., equal to EUR 0.20 per share. Investment in new buildings, plants and other fixed assets reduced cash for EUR 9.6 million, when EUR 3 million of liquidity were invested in an insurance policy and recorded in financial fixed assets to reflect its multi-year nature.
This kind of investment already booked in previous financials of the group by their nature of mid, long-term investments, are included among non-current financial assets and so not included in net financial position. The total value of this kind of instrument, as June 30, was EUR 21 million. For laser business, the medical sector recorded a growth of 25% compared to the same period of last year, and the growth was strong in all application segments. Aesthetics, which represent the most important sector with a 60.7% share of total medical turnover, showed a revenue of EUR 111 million compared to the EUR 94.1 million in the same period of last year.
The share of aesthetics decreased slightly in the six months due to the very rapid growth in the other segment, mainly Surgery, +43% and Physiotherapy +25%, that overcome the results achieved before the COVID pandemic. Sales and after sales service were close to 20% of the sector's turnover, with sales of EUR 33.3 million. A strong increase of 35%, thanks above all to the sale of optical fibers for surgical application in urology. Whose production had suffered a sharp slowdown at the beginning of 2021, due to the technical production problems overcome in the following months.
In the medical sector, there are brilliant trends, both from the point of view of turnover and profitability in DEKA and Quanta and other, and the insufficient availability of components lowered the production and growth of Asclepion and consequently of El.En. The negative phase of Japanese branches remains, especially due to the weakening of sales cycle of small home use devices that had characterized the last few years. The industrial sector recorded a 13% turnover increase compared to the same period of last year. The growth in revenue confirming the positive trend of the last few years.
The growth is driven by sheet metal cutting, increasing by 15% with a turnover of EUR 122 million, and the sales performance recorded in Italy was brilliant, with capital expense achieving an excellent +52% growth over the six months. The half year results of our Chinese business were deeply affected by COVID-19 issue, and consequently lockdown, and recorded a decline of 16% in turnover in local currency and 25% in net income. In euro currency, the sales amount reduced by 3% and net income of 16%. Thanks to the reinforcement of renminbi against euro currency. The marking segment remained essentially stable with a turnover of EUR 10.8 million and presents further good development prospects. While the sources sector showed growth of 8% with EUR 2 million in revenue.
Same thing after sales service increased of 9%. Finally, on a geographical point of view, the first six months of 2022, revenue growth was rather significant in various areas of the world. In Italy, we have the main overall increase in sales that up 31% as an average of an increase of 7% in medical sector and 43% in industrial. Close to Italian growth rate, there was Europe up 28%, with similar growth rates in medical 29% and industrial 25%. In the rest of the world, the first half of 2022 shows an increase of 13% as average of a strong growth in medical, with a very good performance in the U.S. market, while in the industrial there was a reduction of 1% due to China. Andrea, please go ahead with the guidance.
Thank you, Enrico. As I mentioned before, we feel very strong and optimistic when looking at our capabilities and at our overall market potential, long term but also short term. Only negative external disturbance can in this moment have us diverge from the excellent growth path that we are facing. The strongest disturbance has been and still is for us, the persisting tendency of COVID-19 limitations on the Chinese territories and economy. Finally, concerning the guidance, the starting point here was the previous hint of more than 10% revenue growth on 2021 and EBIT growth on 2021 that we released in March and then subsequently in May. It was more than 10% in terms of revenue, we specified, while no indication was given about EBIT margin.
The six-month financial results instead are widely compliant with the released guidance by marking a 90.4% revenue increase and a an EBIT increase, moreover bearing 12.7% record EBIT margin level. In the second half, we plan to continue to grow five times, exceeding the EUR 660 million revenue threshold, which would mean 30% revenue growth in H2 against against H2 2021, and 16% overall yearly revenue growth. We expect EBIT, and this will be the minimum level. We expect EBIT to nicely grow with revenue. We are so improving on EBIT margin for more than one reason. Inflation could impact our costs more than we are able to recoup from the price increases that we are pushing into place. Energy costs and operation expense are going to materially increase, especially from the Italian companies.
There's a third reason which also ties to the revenue growth guidance. It's the extent to our ability to sell to expand the sales volume in China and subsequently to take advantage of the leverage effects that are material in determining EBIT margin results. What I was meaning is that, we don't have in this moment a very high visibility on the revenue development in China, due to the unstable situation in China. Could we expand our volumes in China more than we factored in the revenue projection that we just shared, we will be able to have also better leverage effect on our P&L. H1 did not factor in a good performance on the Chinese market.
We are counting on improvements in the second half, but we need to be able to operate in more normal overall conditions, i.e., without the continuous interruptions due to lockdown. We are over with our presentation at this point, and I believe we are ready to handle your questions.
Okay. We can open the session of question answer. Please attach for your question, please book into, and you will be given the floor by order and by your arrival. Andrea, we have just two questions. The first one comes from François Robillard of Intermonte. Go ahead, Francois.
Hi, everyone. Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes, please.
Okay. Thank you for taking my question. I've got three. The first one is on working capital. You made quite a strong investment over the second quarter and the first half. Just to know how much of the factors you mentioned are going to remain structural in your view? We've mentioned so higher inventories and also the trend in advanced payments, both to suppliers and received from clients, especially in China. I guess so my question is about how structural are those changes in trends and can we expect a reversal in the second half of the year? Or is a reversal more likely in 2003? That was my first question. I have a couple afterwards.
There are various components in the working capital trend. We expect the main elements of the working capital, i.e., inventory, accounts receivable and accounts payable to decrease their balance and their impact on sales at the end of the year. Concerning the dynamic of the advances received and advances paid, advances received from customers and advances paid to vendors, this dynamic is strictly dependent on the order bookings and on the nature of the order bookings. Should we be able to start an important order booking, especially in China, as we had at the end of 2021, this amount would further increase.
In order for this amount to increase positively, we need to have an order booking which is larger than the order booking we have had today. Anyway, also in the contract situation, we don't expect the balance of the advances to worsen. I mean, to be cash decreative towards the end of the year. Generally speaking, we expect the impact of total net working capital on sales to be reduced by a few percentage points from here to the end of the year.
Thank you. Thank you very much. My second question was on the extent at which you have visibility on the current demand strength across your two categories of product. Can you come back on your expectations for demand in the medical and the industrial segment for the second half? Give us a quick comment on your current order backlog as well.
Demand, notwithstanding the quite turbulent economic general condition, has been strong in all our segments. The only and real problem we have is to deliver timely and to increase production volume. For this reason, we continue to have very strong backlogs, even though the backlogs are just a little bit smaller in most of our companies than they were at the beginning of year 2022. There's only one case where our backlog is materially higher than at the beginning of the year, and this is the case of a company Asclepion, which, as I mentioned in my presentation, has suffered more than all the other companies in the group, the component shortage, and could not improve its volume and this means couldn't match its demand that is still sitting in a very high amount in its order backlog.
We are very confident on the near future due to the consistency of our order backlog. The same applies for the order backlog in manufacturing, both in laser marking and in laser cutting for what concerns our European and Brazilian facilities. The only area where our order backlog is not as full as we could hope is the Chinese area, where, as I mentioned before, the demand is threatened by the continuing pandemic looming on the day-to-day life and on the business activity on the Chinese territory.
Thank you very much. Just a last one, if I may, about your EBIT guidance. You added more precision on the second half trend. Technically speaking, looking at what is implied by your guidance, it is quite a wide range for the second half, between EUR 25 million and EUR 42 million for the EBIT in absolute value, or 7%-12.7% in terms of margins. Where, or what part, of this guided range do you see yourself achieving? Do you expect more to arrive at the higher range or the lower range? Thank you very much.
Of course, the guidance is what it is. It cannot be too precise, because otherwise we would have given a different guidance. When we set a minimum expected sales volume at EUR 660 million, we also say jointly that if the situation remains as it is for the medical segment and improves just a little bit in China, we would be able to beat that amount. The same applies for EBIT margin. If we are able to increase the volumes in the Chinese market as well as we are expecting to do it in all the other markets, the leverage effect could offset a slight correction in margins that we expect in the second half as the effect of the wave of inflation.
We are not talking of large swings, but we are talking, we are expecting an EBIT margin just below the EBIT margin, the record EBIT margin of the first half, unless unexpected wave. This is why we don't factor them into the guidance. Sales growth would allow leverage on the operating expense.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Andrea, we give the floor to Andrea Bonfà, Banca Akros. Go on, Andrea.
Hello, good afternoon to everybody. Part of my questions have been answered. Andrea, if you can elaborate on the comment that you mentioned during your presentation that paradoxically, China's profitability has helped or offset, let's say, some aggressive pricing on the Italian laser cutting business, metal laser cutting business. In particular, the performance anyway, volume-wise, of the Italian market in metal laser cutting was impressive. Is that set to continue? What is your potential market size in that segment? Could you replicate that into Europe? If you can elaborate a little bit on that.
If you can, recap again, maybe a little bit, more slowly the new products that you were mentioning before, which are set to be launched in 2023. Thanks.
Thanks. Thanks, Andrea. Yeah, I was mentioning the following. We had an extremely brilliant six months for sales. The opposite happened in China, where there was a decrease in sales comparing 2022 first half sales to 2021 first half sales. Decrease in sales in the local currency then. That of course, when translating to euro for our consolidated reporting. Factor being the strengthening of the renminbi and reduces the sales reduction. Since in this period, the sales that we performed were more heavily weighted on the high power systems that we are selling in higher marginality market segments, like the market segment in which we are replacing the plasma systems, marginality on sales in China improved.
As a total balance of the margin of sales of the industrial sector, we therefore have a small improvement which impacted positively on the consolidated balance of the growth margin. In terms of the potential of our markets, we continue to be extremely optimistic due to what you can actually perform with this increasing power laser cutting system, and how we have been able to manage those systems, and how we became recognizable as real leaders in this segment. The gap between us and the most significant players is still very important. For instance, the market leader, Bystronic, reporting six months sales, I believe it is reporting a small sales increase.
I believe they are below EUR 500 million of six months revenue. Our sheet metal cutting division, I don't remember. Maybe, Enrico, you could tell me how much was the sales revenue of the division and not just the cutting system, of the division. Yeah. The second the division. I can find it maybe too. If you give me one second, I have the number. I don't remember by heart now because I wasn't. Anyway, we will have the numbers soon, Andrea. Third question. I mentioned a few products that are gonna be delivered, new products. One is a new dual wavelength CO2 laser system, which will be delivered for the U.S. market starting 2023.
We have new versions of products. We, as you know, hair removal is largest segment, and we cover hair removal with several families of products. DEKA is present with the Motus family, the AGAIN family. Quanta System has the Thunder system and the Discovery Pico system. Asclepion has the MeDioStar system. I was talking of improvements in the Motus family, with the new system, Motus AZ platform, which also provides new hand pieces which broadens the capabilities of the Motus platform, not only limiting them to the hair removal abilities, but also with new special hand pieces enabling the Motus laser system to perform as a platform, also for vascular treatment and skin hardening treatment.
I believe then I also mentioned the clearance that we have obtained for the RedTouch, which is a dermatologic system used for the stimulation of collagen. Basically an anti-aging system, especially effective for the chest area. We obtained the clearance for sale in Korea and Taiwan, which are two very significant markets for this product. They are not the only market, but I was just exemplifying how the R&D activity is fundamental in delivering new products, technically speaking, while the R&D regulatory activity, sometimes years or months after the technical release of the product, allows the sale of the product in selected countries, and this is the case of Korea and Taiwan for the RedTouch.
Now, Andrea-
Thank you very much.
Oh, sorry.
Enrico?
Sì?
You know, no, not too also tomorrow.
You will provide that later on, don't worry.
Okay. Okay.
Now we have a question from Luis Casal, Good Value for Money. Go on, Luis. Thanks.
Yes, thank you. Just a little question on the income taxes. I don't know if I'm wrong, but it looks like the taxes were much higher compared to the EBIT. Is there any special reason, or? I saw the slide pretty quickly, but I think you were from EUR 7 million to EUR 11 million instead, which was EUR 4 million increase.
Maybe I'm wrong. Yes, here.
We have an increase of tax rate compared to last year. Last year we are around 22%, now we are around 26%. The main reason is that the pre-tax income of Chinese company reduced compared to the other pre-tax income, and the tax rate in China is lower than the European tax rate. Tax rate in Europe is around 35%, 30%. In China is around 15%. More or less, this is the main explanation of the increase in tax rate.
Okay.
I am ready with the answer to Andrea with the numbers. The revenue for the Quanta division in the first half of 2022 was EUR 100.6 million.
Which compared to Bystronic is about 1/3 at this point, just below 1/3. Between 1/3 and 1/4. I mean, three years ago, we were 1/10 of Bystronic or maybe not even. Therefore, we are gaining market share. We believe there is a potential in continuing to expand our activity in Europe. We have a very intense exhibition schedule for the second half of 2022, including our physical presence in the EuroBLECH fair of Hanover, which is the most important sheet metal cutting fair.
We will also present at the FABTECH in Chicago, where we hope to start planting a seed for the expansion in the U.S. market, which is a very significant market, in which we could have a good potential of expansion with our sheet metal cutting system. Thank you.
Now we have a free question from Giovanni Selvetti from Berenberg. Go on, Giovanni, please.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes. Hi.
Hi, Enrico. Hi, Andrea.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my question. I have a few. The first one is, can you please quantify how much of increase in the profitability at the gross margin level was due to the effect of the exchange rate, in particular of the U.S. dollar, and how much was coming from the different mix between medical and industrial? The second question is about Quanta. If you look at the single company, Quanta is increasing at an amazing pace, more than 60%, much more than the other companies in the group in the medical segment. What is driving this amazing performance? Is this due to the rebound of the surgical business or what it is?
The third one is like to really quickly on aesthetics. I mean, during the call of the results, InMode had stated that they opened a new subsidiary in Italy, which is already positive and contributing to the positive results of the European group. Do you see an increase in the competition in the domestic market? If yes, how is the company planning to tackle it? The last one, again on aesthetics. Listening to the American piece, there seems to be a demand which is stronger than ever and seeing the client also accepting higher cost of the leasing. Is it something you're witnessing yourself? Thanks.
Excuse me. Could you please repeat the first question? I didn't get it. What the clients accepting higher cost of the leasing and
The leasing cost to buy the laser system are higher now, but according to your peers, the trend is so strong that the client is willing to accept a higher cost of buying the machine because the demand is still strong. Is it something you foresee yourself?
I understand. Four questions. Exchange rate impact was significant, but we didn't disclose the amount, but we are talking of a small percentage of impact. I don't believe that the exchange rate P&L impact on gross margin would exceed half a percentage point in the six months 2022 financial. This is why I mentioned that the increase is mainly due to mix. The mix is that the medical is heavier, and so this is worth more or less half of the change in the margin. The other half is due to the improvement in the margin in the industrial sector.
The foreign exchange effect is not an active effect. It neutralizes an effect of margin reduction more or less of the same amount. Why did Quanta System grow so fast compared to all the other
No, no. Quanta.
Quanta System. Excuse me. Why did Quanta System? Yes, there is a technical reason here. Quanta System did very well, and they had very good progress sales in the surgical segment, and also they were comparing to a first half 2021, in which they had two structural problems. One, we discussed it and closed it. There was a production stop on the optical fiber supply. We had to stop delivering optical fibers, which are a significant part of revenues, due to a problem which occurred to one of our suppliers. It was a very invasive product problem. Basically the supplier was not being CE compliant, and he had to shut down the factory.
Due to very strict regulations, we could not switch manufacturer, and bottom line, we have to wait. We have to re-qualify under medical quality standard another supplier and this caused a delay in revenue in optical fiber in the first month of 2021. The other event which caused some problems, not large, but some problems which were not present in 2022, was the change of the ERP system in Quanta System with SAP knocking in on January first, 2021. As you know, in companies like Quanta System, the change of the ERP system could somehow, even though we spent a lot of money in consultancies and in, let's say in training of people, actually had an effect on the first month of production back in 2021.
For this reason, the comparison is particularly favorable. We don't expect Quanta to be able to maintain this kind of growth rate in the second half of the year. InMode is our most brilliant competitor, even though they are often competing with weapons which are completely different from ours. They sell a low technology product with an excellent marketing package and support. They get exceptionally high margins with exceptionally high average prices. We know that they are present in Italy, and we know that they could become a threat to our market position in Italy, yet we need to be told for sales sold through InMode because not necessarily a customer buying from InMode would be a customer that we lose.
There is a high possibility that a customer buying from InMode is not a customer that would buy from us. It's early for me in giving to you a comprehensive answer on this specific topic on the Italian territory. Looking worldwide, it is evident that InMode is doing very well. It is evident that we are doing very well at the same time, and since I believe that we are not looking for the same kind of customer, I believe that also in Italy with their presence, not necessarily it's gonna be harming our dominant position. Finally, your last question was on the cost of leasing. Of course, with increasing interest rates, end users have to bear a higher cost.
Also, when we apply price increases, because we are applying price increases, to our customers, they will also bear a higher cost of the purchase, not extending the financial expense. Today, in the middle of September of 2022, we do not see a material effect in demand as a consequence of this higher cost of the purchase on medical doctors. I don't know, maybe in two months from now, the situation could be different, but for the moment, the trend continues to be strong.
Thank you very much for your answer.
Andrea, we have no more question on our list. Some other question from the floor? No. If there are no further question, let us conclude this conference call. Thank you for attending this conference, and we hope to have all of you in the next occasion. Good afternoon to everybody.
Bye. Bye.
Bye.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye bye.
Bye.