Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Intercos Group full year 2023 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Renato Semerari, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Good evening, everybody, and thanks for joining our call today. In a year of continued geopolitical and macroeconomic complexity, plus a very clear destocking from a number of clients, and in the second part of the year, a slowdown of the growth pace of our market, Intercos has demonstrated the strength of its business model built around innovation and diversification. And I must say that diversification has been the key word this year. This allowed us to reach new records in top line, absolute EBITDA, and net debt. Moving to the numerical results, for the second year in a row, we are registering a top line growth, a constant rate of +20%, more than twice the market rate. We grew at current rate of +18%.
Adjusted EBITDA was just shy of EUR 138 million, growing a double-digit rate of +13% despite a margin dilution due to the change of mix that we discussed about in the previous calls. Adjusted net income was at EUR 56 million, also growing double-digit. Net debt is staying at a leverage below one despite CapEx increases and IFRS 16 impacts due to contracts renewals. We've done also, and I'm very proud of that, a further step ahead in our ESG roadmap with the assessment of our Scope Three Emissions and the opening of a diversity and inclusion roadmap and committee. In consideration of the above results, we will propose a dividend distribution of EUR 18 million or approximately EUR 0.19 a share, consistently with the announced dividend policy of in between 30% and 40% of the consolidated net profit.
Now, going a bit deeper into our results, these results are the consequence of a Q4 performance where we registered sales growing by +8% at constant rates, about twice the market pace we've seen in the market despite the severe clients destocking phase that took place starting summer 2023. EBITDA conversely suffered from the broadly communicated temporary change of mix, which overweighted less profitable business units, clients, and products, especially in our makeup business unit. Let's now go deeper into our sales results. Let's start looking at the sales by business unit. The first point I would like to register is that all our business units grew double-digit, if you allow me to round up the makeup growth of +9.5%. Hair & Body has clearly been the key driver of 2023 growth, registering an exceptional +47% with fourth quarter at +25%.
This fantastic performance was largely but not exclusively dependent on our fragrance segment performance. Skincare was the second contributor to the company growth, achieving a +20% in the year thanks to an exceptional Q4 at +40%. Makeup was the business unit most affected by clients destocking and the extremely high base of 2022. As a reminder, in the fourth quarter last year, we grew 30% in makeup. So it ended the year at +9.5%, also in this case, close to twice the market trend despite a difficult fourth quarter at -7% that, as I said, was facing a very challenging base. In any case, makeup remained the backbone of our business, owning a 61% share of our revenues, followed by Hair & Body and skincare. Moving now to the results by region, all our regions reported higher-than-market growth rates.
EMEA was the fastest-growing region in the year, at +26%. All business units, especially Hair & Body, contributed to the growth we had in Europe. Growth pace moderated in Q4, +6% due to the very high comps and makeup clients destocking. The second-best region was Asia, +19% despite the challenging China market and the RMB devaluation. Notably, both China and Korea reported double-digit growth, while India's contribution was still marginal in 2023. These results presage a progressive growth acceleration in the year, with Q4 recording an outstanding +28% and China confirming its double-digit growth pace. Americas reported the more moderate growth, +7%, still above market pace. The yearly growth was impacted by Q4, which recorded a -4% decline attributable to the extremely high comps and the clients destocking. In terms of comps, I remind you that in Americas, we grew last year in Q4 by 29%.
At the end of the year, EMEA still represents over 50% of Intercos revenues, with Americas at over 30% and Asia just below 20%. Moving to our sales by customer type, all clients' clusters reported growth in the year, although the pace rates were quite different from one cluster to another. Emerging Brands confirmed once more their role of growth engine, reporting a +46% growth in the year and +33% in Q4. These results stemmed from high growth rates in all BUs and regions. Retailers continued in their mid-single-digit trajectory, recording a +6% in the year and a +2% in Q4 when they also went through a destocking phase. Multinationals were the lowest-growing clients, recording a +4% in the year. This was mostly due to Q4 decline, -11%, driven by the severe destocking trend, especially performed by makeup Prestige Brands.
These were the brands deploying the most deliberate destocking action plan. In terms of sales repartition by client cluster, emerging brands continued to gain share of wallets, passing the 40% threshold in the year and 45% in Q4, while multinationals remained at about 50% in the year. I now move to Pietro, who will give you more details on the financials.
Thank you, Renato. Now, let's give a look to our major KPIs. I would like to look at the revenue. In fiscal year 2023, we have reached the record level of EUR 988 million, which is a growth of 18% versus prior year or 20% at constant exchange rate. I would like to remind that at constant rate, our revenues have surpassed the EUR 1 billion bar. This new record was achieved despite a particularly challenging baseline from the previous year. In 2022, our sales already increased by 19% compared to 2021. So it's two years in a row which we are growing 20%. And also despite the fact that some prestige brands began reducing their inventories starting from the first part of the fiscal year. Worth noting that China, thanks to the development of the local brands, substantially contributed to this really good result.
Our Adjusted EBITDA stood at EUR 137.5 million, showing a 13% growth over prior year. And despite the impact caused by the temporary reduction in inventories of prestige brands, which put pressure on margins, excellent sales performance and cost control that we have put in place allowed us to close the year with another double-digit growth. EBITDA margin was at 13.9%, and value-added sales margin was at 17.4%, slightly down compared to prior year by 46 basis points. And this was due to the announced mix change that characterized the second half of our fiscal year. Adjusted net income was at EUR 56.5 million, growing EUR 5 million compared to the previous years. And the increase is entirely attributed to EBITDA growth and also a decrease that we have been able to achieve in tax rate.
These were offset by higher financial charges that we had caused by exchange rate fluctuations, while the cost of debt basically remained unchanged due to the fact that already starting from 2020, we have protected our interest rate. Our net debt, we closed the net debt at EUR 102 million, increasing by EUR 9.6 million compared to the previous fiscal year. And the leverage ratio remained essentially unchanged at well below one times, at 0.73 times, despite the fact that we have in the fiscal year paid EUR 16 million of dividends, and we had an impact of roughly EUR 20 million caused by the renewal of certain lease contracts applying the accounting principle IFRS 16. Our net debt, excluding and neutralizing the effect of the IFRS 16, was at EUR 54 million, decreasing EUR 10 million compared to what we have achieved the last fiscal year. So a nice development also in this case.
If we then look at the Adjusted EBITDA by business unit, we have already seen that we have reached EUR 137 million of EBITDA in the year, growing 13%. It's very important to highlight that although in the second half of the year was influenced by an expected realignment of the inventories of the prestige brands, the diversification of Intercos came. Once again, we have been able to expand our EBITDA in absolute terms. On the other side, with a decrease in margins, that basically was due to the change that we had in the mix. Makeup EBITDA was at EUR 85.7 million, same level as we have achieved in 2022. Despite a substantial mix change affecting the profitability, the 9% sales growth has enabled us to reach the same result of 2022 in absolute terms.
Reasonable to expect that once the destocking phase of the prestige brands will be over, the profitability of the business units will return to historical level. Skincare, we had a really good year. We had an EBITDA of EUR 24 million, plus 20% compared to prior year, with a significant acceleration that we have been able to achieve in the second half of the fiscal year. Very important to highlight that we have been able to maintain the same profitability versus sales, and we had a substantial improvement in profitability on value-added sales, which is also a sign of the significant mix change that we have experienced in the second half of the fiscal year. We can now move to look at the development of our cash flow. Our operating cash flow was at EUR 58.2 million, improving by EUR 9.8 million compared to 2022.
This despite a significant increase in CapEx, partly due to the accounting impact of the IFRS 16 that on the CapEx side accounted for EUR 28 million. This was caused by the renewal of certain lease contracts of our plants around the world. This significant achievement was made possible by the increase of EBITDA, of course, and the excellent performance that we have been able to achieve in working capital absorption, which was contained at just EUR 3 million despite the strong revenue growth. Looking at the components of the working capital, the overall containment was achieved through a decrease in inventories by EUR 25 million. We have been able to maintain a stable turnover index on receivables that increased only by EUR 26 million, basically in line with the growth of the sales. Our payables were basically stable compared to last year.
We have been able to go back to the historical ratio of working capital on sales, and even better, our working capital on sales is below 16%. Net cash flow and consequently, our net debt was negative by EUR 9.6 million, primarily due to the fact that we have paid EUR 16 million in dividend and also the impact of the higher financial charges caused by the adverse impact of the exchange rates, currency exchange rates. Neutralizing the accounting effect of IFRS 16, the pre-dividend cash flow is positive by EUR 26 million with a cash conversion rate of close to 20%. Our net debt is at EUR 100.2 million with a slight decrease in leverage ratio, which is now at 0.73 times. Net debt, excluding the IFRS 16, amounts to EUR 54 million.
Thank you, Pietro. Let's now move to the future. So the status of the business you've heard about, I'm very happy to underline once more that our mix of innovation and diversification is proving to work. And even in an environment of clients destocking, allowed us to grow significantly in 2023. For 2024, we expect the market to be growing in a rate in between +4% and +5%. We think that the second half of the year will be better, also thanks to the progressive comeback of China, which we believe will stay focused on Chinese brands first and foremost. So considering that starting December 2023, we have started seeing a comeback of makeup prestige reorders, we believe that the stocking phase is close to its end. We also and we will see it in a second.
We had a record order entry in November, December with makeup at an all-time high in terms of order entry, followed by also a very strong January order entry. So we are very confident that we are getting out of that phase. Unfortunately, the cyberattack we've been victim of will create difficulties in Q1, which we think we will recover in the first half. At least the vast majority of it will be recovered in the first half. So all in all, considering the positive signs we're getting and the difficulties of the first half, especially of Q1, we believe that we will reach a growth rate in terms of top line for the fiscal in between the range of +6% to +8%. Moving to the order entry, as I just mentioned, November, December was the best-ever by month order entry result.
Makeup to a record, plus 10% versus the past 12 months' average of order entry in makeup. The order book is very healthy. It is indeed below a year ago. But when you consider that last year, at the end of December 2022, we had a heavy backlog, which we don't have anymore, indeed, the going business, the portfolio of orders is very, very healthy. So we are quite confident on this front as well. That's all on our side. We are now ready to take on your questions.
Thank you. This is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone wishing to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Kate Rusanova with UBS.
Good evening, Renato, Pietro, and Andrea. I have three questions. So firstly, can you elaborate on what drove such strong Q4 performance in skincare? Did you recruit new customers? Were there any one-offs? Or we can basically extrapolate the Q4 sales of nearly EUR 48 million into 2024 quarters. And last question on skincare, your H2 margin stood at 17.2%. Basically, is this a new sustainable level for the division? Secondly, can you talk about your outlook for Adjusted EBITDA margin progression for the group? You mentioned that the stock realignment is coming to an end and that you also have a number of cost efficiencies coming through. So in theory, that should be a material benefit in the second half of the year. So why did you decide not to provide the guidance? What are the uncertainties you see? And my last question is on the Hair and Body Division.
Can you provide some color on the development of your franchise excluding Dolce & Gabbana and what drove that development? Thank you.
Hello, Kate. Thank you for your questions. So skincare performance was indeed very strong in Q4. We need to admit as well that the base for skincare was less challenging than for makeup, for sure, because we didn't have a very strong fourth quarter last year. Now, this was driven by a number of clients. There is an important client that was active not only in Q4 but also in previous quarters but was quite marginal in the base, to be honest. So that is incremental business that came through and that we believe is going to continue to come through. Obviously, you also need to factor in and not forget that Asia is by far the biggest market in skincare on a global basis. And therefore, the more the Asian market and China in particular will recover, it should benefit our skincare business as well.
So I don't think that we can make simple math and project that easily multiply by 4 that specific result. But I must say that I'm pretty confident on our skincare developments in the coming year as well. The margin of skincare has been good. It is very positive, as you said. We think it is sustainable. I wouldn't take the fourth quarter necessarily as the EBITDA margin that, again, you should multiply on every single quarter. Typically, you've seen that even in the past years, we tend to have better margins at the end of the year than at the beginning of the year. But if the question is, is the yearly EBITDA margin of skincare sustainable, I would certainly answer yes. Now, if it is 17% in the year, I'm even up here, but I cannot put my hand on fire on that by all means.
As you know, we don't give and you said it, we don't give Adjusted EBITDA guidance for the year. I think it is certainly our expectation that we will see an improvement in terms of EBITDA margin in the course of the year. I think it will depend on a number of factors. It is true that for two months in a row, we have seen a comeback of prestige brands, and this is a very positive sign. It is a bit early to extrapolate and say that the war is over. So I would be a bit more cautious in that respect. We expect to improve EBITDA margin this year compared to 2023. I don't expect a revolution, to be honest. The last question was whether hair and body was all driven by Dolce & Gabbana, if I understood your question correctly. The answer is no.
Dolce & Gabbana was an important contributor, but you may recall that we already had Dolce & Gabbana in the base in the fourth quarter of 2022. And as a matter of fact, we grew last year, I'm telling you exactly, by 47% in fourth quarter. That was mostly driven by Dolce & Gabbana at the time. And despite this, we've done a +25% in Q4 this year, which proves it is not only one client but is in general, there is a number of clients in fragrance that have helped us. But it's, again, not only fragrance, although most of the growth came from that segment. So Dolce & Gabbana, certainly a very important contributor. It's not a one-off. It's not the only one. I hope I've answered all your questions, Kate.
Indeed. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Anna Frontani of Berenberg.
Hi. Good evening, team, and thanks for the presentation. Three questions. The first one on the cyberattack, if you can please provide more color on what happened and if you have any expected quantitative impact for Q1. And then the second one on the 2024 guidance. The 6% to 8% growth is something which seems slightly below your historical growth rate. So my question is, what could represent an upside risk? What should happen that could make you raise your outlook for revenue? And then the last question is, if we can have a sneak peek of the Cosmoprof, what are the main innovations that you are planning to bring, if you can tell us, and what do you expect would be the main trends?
Okay. Ciao, Anna. Thanks for your question. Cyberattack, we noticed strange behavior of some systems in Poland in the night of the 18th of February, which led us, and thank God we did it right away, to shut down all our systems to check what was going on. So we saw there was an attack. We found a message saying that we were hacked and that our systems were encrypted and obviously asking for a ransom, which we always and immediately said we had no intention to pay. So we've been working very hard to restore systems. To date, we have seen that about 30% of our servers around the globe had been infected. About 5% of our PCs have been infected. So we have progressively and under a very controlled way reopened applications and programs not to create further spreading of the virus.
I must say that I feel a lot better now than I was feeling a week ago. Many systems are back in place, although all the users are not yet connected because we are still checking and cleaning and monitoring and restoring. All the servers that have been infected needed to be restored. Thank God we were able to protect the backups we had so we can restore the systems that were impacted by the virus. So we are now coming back to, let's say, full functionality, I think, in a matter of days by now. I mean, unless there are news because it's not a linear you always can discover bugs and glitches here and there. And so we need to be very prudent in the way we come back to normal.
We will have an impact because we had some few days of shutdown, and then we restored functionality and operations, but in a controlled way. As I said, there were a few users at the beginning that could, for instance, operate on SAP. So we've been a couple of days, we were shut down. Then we have restarted about 30% to 40% of our normal operation run rate. So there will be an impact in Q1, for sure, which, as I said, we think we're going to recover or the vast majority of it in Q2. So on the semester, we do not expect material impacts.
In Q1, in consideration of the fact that, as you know, Q1 was already challenging on its own because we had a base of +34% in 2023, we think right now that we're going to see a mid-single-digit decline in Q1 that we should, again, recover in Q2. About the guidance of +6% to +8% being below what we usually do, I know, but it's not that linear, I would say. We are coming out of two years where, cumulatively, we've grown 40%, so 20% a year. So personally, I do not find shocking that if we have a growth pace on that kind of range, especially because the forecasts for the market are not that bullish, certainly a lot more conservative than what we had seen, especially in the first half of 2023. So what should happen to have better numbers than that?
First of all, the teams will, as usual, do their very best to beat any possible target. But we should be seeing a reverse behavior, not only going back to normal buying behaviors from the big guys but even an accelerated pace on that front. Then you may have 2, 3 launches of the year which go viral on TikTok and may explode. But personally, I don't tend to bet on those and make assumptions based on that. I personally think that if we realize that growth rate that I've just mentioned, we will be closing a 3-year, let's say, period, which is way better than what we had forecasted when we listed the company. So I would be personally pretty happy to achieve those results. Innovation for 2024 Cosmoprof, there are numbers.
I honestly wouldn't like to unveil it now because we owe our clients to see that first. The thing that I would like to underline is that the number of innovation coming from our Asian labs is growing. It's growing at a very nice pace. So if we, for many, many years, were relying on one center of excellence with some help from other labs around the world, we're now sitting on, let's say, on two very, very solid pillars that are Europe and Asia in a very, very strong way, especially for all what is emulsion technologies, so foundations and so on. We're proving that our innovation coming from Korea, especially, is having fantastic results in markets like U.S. and especially in California. So I'm very, very happy to see how our capacity, our know-how is progressing in terms of innovation from our Asian labs.
We will be presenting innovations across the board, across all the technologies with very interesting products, both on face and lips, especially. I'm sorry I cannot give you more details, but I promise that in the next round, I will be more precise.
Thank you very much, Renato. Very clear.
Thank you, Anna.
The next question is from Tilly Ennion of Morgan Stanley.
Hi. Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions on your Asia business. The first is your expectations for China in 2024. You've clearly been able to deliver extremely strong growth, double digits in recent quarters thanks to your local brands. But just wondering if you could talk a bit about the expected growth rate you should see in 2024. And then the second is on Korea, where you'll be expanding your plant in 2024. Could you talk a bit about the potential uplift to production and sales that could come from that plant expansion? Thanks very much.
Thank you, Tilly. So, China, honestly, we were not betting on given the trend of the market in China in 2023. I was not expecting such a strong performance. We believe that we will still get double-digit growth in 2024 in China. I personally believe it's going to be a good year again for our subsidiary in China also in 2024. Then, however, as well as they do, that the Chinese market is very volatile. You see incredible successes of some brands in a short period of time, and then they evaporate very quickly. So it's a bit difficult to speculate on that. The thing that I'm more happy about is the fact that year after year, we are increasing the number of clients that we have. So we are raising our profile.
Before, for instance, if I look back three years ago in 2021, I would have told you that we were very reliant on the success of, for instance, Perfect Diary, just not to name anybody. Today, we are in a position where we have a lot more clients of size that we can bet on. We have launched some powder technologies in China with a prominent brand recently that is proving to work extremely well. So I'm pretty confident on that. But again, it will depend on who will be the winners and losers of 2024 among the Chinese brands to be able to predict what is going to happen to us in the market. Again, my guess is that we're going to keep the current pace also for 2024 in China.
Korea, the expansion of the plant, well, you need to read it on a, I would say, almost 10-year basis. We're not expanding a plant with the expectation to have it full-blast working as of day one, first of all, because we will be completing the construction and the equipment at the end of this year, beginning of next year. So it will not have really an impact in terms of production capacity in the course of 2024. We are doubling the surface. This is what I can tell you. It will allow us to bring in-house, for instance, in warehouses a lot of pallets that we have stored outside. It will bring us the possibility to potentially double our production capacity.
But this will materialize later because construction takes time, and that's the reason why we're moving ahead of time, not to have capacity constraints in the course of the year. For Korea, again, I would reiterate that I think that we will see once more double-digit growth coming from the country as well, although it's not going to be connected to the plant expansion yet. I hope I've answered your question.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Francesco Brilli of Intermonte.
Good evening. Thanks for taking my question, and thanks for the presentation, and congratulations for all the results. A couple of quick questions from my side. A few questions already been answered. But if you can provide some additional color on the component of the growth for the next year that you guided on 6% to 8% in terms of business unit, what we should expect, if you can be a little bit more ground around that, we should expect similar trends. And on hair and body, the basis is still very, very big for this year. And if you are seeing continuing growth and additional clients to feed that growth for next year. And also on the hair and body, if you can provide some additional color on the new clients, then indeed, Dolce & Gabbana is driving other big names to you, to contact you.
The third question is on CapEx for 2024. Is it fair to assume, I mean, similar amount as for 2023 for 2024? Thank you.
Thank you, Francesco. Thanks very much for the congratulations as well. It always helps our soul. Growth by business unit for 2024. Now, I expect a more, let's say, homogeneous growth by business unit. I think that the growth basis of the three business units will be more similar. Obviously, we're getting out of a year and actually, I would say, 18 months of exponential growth of hair and body. I don't think that that kind of rate can be sustainable and maintained over time. So we believe hair and body will continue to grow and will continue to grow at a very healthy pace. It's not going to be the 40% kind of growth year-on-year every single year. I wish it was the case, but I think it's rather unlikely to happen.
So we believe that we're going to be growing more than the respective markets in the three views for 2024. I do not expect to see massive jumps for any of those. I think that we've gone through a phase where the base were a bit blurred by the many specific issues that happened with COVID and after COVID and all that. So I think that we need to take the market in general and also Intercos with the market will take a more regular pace going forward. Now, for the hair and body, Dolce & Gabbana, it has been quite an unusual case. Now, you may speculate that something similar could happen with Kering that has announced a similar move to what Dolce & Gabbana is doing.
But we know they have contracts with Coty too, not to name anybody, till 2028 on their big franchises of Kering, Gucci being the biggest, obviously. So aside from that, you know that the main players of the fragrance market tend to produce in-house their fragrances. Obviously, there are other clients that are important. We've named a few in the past. I don't know whether I should go back to that. They are launching new products. Some of them are launching new brands or taking licenses from other players. And this is the opportunity we are running against behind, and we will try to do the best we can. Dolce & Gabbana also has other lines that are not produced by us. So that is another opportunity that we work day in, day out to gain a bigger share of wallet.
I do not expect to gain new big clients for hair and body. There is an opportunity to gain share of wallet among these clients. Then there are some new clients, but smaller than the sizes of these big players. CapEx for 2024 will be in the 7% range, more or less. This is consistent with what we announced in previous calls when we announced the fact that we had a manufacturing sites expansion plan that was starting in 2023 and would have lasted 3 to 4 years. 2024 is another year where we're going to be spending more CapEx than usual. It will be in that range, 7%. I think it's a good guess.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Francesco.
The next question is from Misha Omanadze with BNP Paribas.
Good evening all. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two housekeeping ones, if I may. Can you please comment on the nature of financial costs which are related to exchange rates? And the second question is on the tax rate. What tax rate should we factor in for 2024, and has your medium-term guidance changed? Thank you.
Thank you, Misha. I leave here from.
Ciao, Misha.
For the tax rate, basically, you should expect what we always had, basically, something in the range of 28% to 29% in tax rate. For the exchange rate, what we had this year, contrary to what we had in 2022, where we were having gains in terms of exchange rates, in 2023, we had a reverse of that, basically all losses, basically coming from intercompany variation on the loans that we have intercompany. And half of it is realized losses, while the other half of it is unrealized losses. So it's just valuation of the balance sheet.
Very clear. Thank you.