Thank you very much, Rebecca. Good afternoon to everyone. I am Marco Parisi, Head of IR. With me today, Massimo Mauri, the CEO, and Lorenzo Mazzini, the CFO. We will have a first part in which we will illustrate the results of the first nine months of this year, and then a second part with a business update. I will leave immediately the floor to Massimo for the presentation. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Marco. We posted the third quarter results that give us the opportunity to look at nine months of the business. We posted EUR 144 million in revenue, growing more than 116% versus the previous year. Over 50% of the growth is organic, while 43% if considering the performance of all the acquisitions we did in 2021 from the beginning in a like for like basis. Moreover, we posted over EUR 32 million of EBITDA with 22% incidence on sales.
Observing more in detail the Q3, we can find a strong acceleration of the revenue versus the previous year, but also versus the beginning of the year. Which is very important, a more than proportional growth of the EBITDA. EBITDA was equal to 23.6% of the sales in the third quarter, thanks to the operating leverage. We was able to generate EUR 4.2 million in cash, improving our net financial position despite the shortage in the critical components and increasing in inventories will still have so high also to support the future growth that we need to face in the near future. The gross profit margin was stable, even if we started to note improvement.
I would expect them to continue later in this year and more important with a good improvement next year. Also we was able to post around EUR 50 million on our Clea business, proving that the strategy to continue to scaling up the value chain into other software platform, AI, IoT platform to our hardware is working, and is working extremely well. Of which EUR 5 million was related to the Q3. Our order backlog continue to be very strong with a good level of order intake observed in the last few month. It is now around EUR 167 million, over 48% on a like-for-like basis. Therefore, the guidance we provided in the very beginning of the year still confirmed.
I want also to say that all the guidance is already in our order backlog, so we are very focused in delivering and we are expecting to be better than the guidance in the end of the year. Focusing on the Q3, we can observe two very important indicator in my mind. One is related to the gross profit margin, where despite the extra cost and the shortage and the increasing of the cost of material, we was able to increase our gross profit margin by couple of points in terms of incidence comparing with Q3 of 2021. Also very important, the EBITDA jumped at 23.6% already.
This is a very good sign looking at the super strong fourth quarter that we are now building, where we expected to see a further increase in the EBITDA driven by operating leverage. Also the growth that we are performing is really solid and is giving us a lot of visibility also on 2023 and beyond. Because, basically, this is something that you can see by observing the quarter-by-quarter trend. We are passing through around EUR 30 million in 2020, EUR 36 million in 2021, and close to EUR 50 million. I would expect it to be around EUR 50 million at the end of 2022.
This is driven by a mix of existing customers and new customers that progressively are starting working with us. Our business model that see a long life of the hardware product around five years.
Permitted to us to be extremely precise also on the future growth, but strong. Well, I think Lorenzo can provide full details of the 2022 Q3 results. Please, Lorenzo, go ahead.
Yes, thank you, Mass, and good afternoon to everybody. Well, in this slide we summarize all our financial highlights that Mass has already mentioned. Again, our net sales performance in 2022 Q3 2022 versus Q1, we recorded a really important growth. What I would like to stress here is that the pace of the organic growth rate at 53%, and as Mass already said, is really important also our like for like growth, demonstrating that also SECO in Europe is growing at a really important speed and at a really important pace.
For what concerns net sales, another aspect that I would like to point out is the fact that our growth, as you can see from the next slide, is really well balanced across our geography and across our end markets. In all areas, end markets, we are performing and growing really well. For what concerns gross margin, as you can see here in the left of the slide, we recorded a really important growth in absolute terms, obviously driven by sales. Really important for us is the fact that we have been able to keep stable our gross margin in percentage of sales respect to the same period of 2021.
More important for us is the fact that in just the Q3, we recorded a 47.5% gross margin increase with respect to the level we recorded in the first half of 2022. This despite the fact that the shortage condition on components is continuing. What are the key drivers of this important growth of gross margin in a difficult environment? Firstly, for sure is all the action that we put in place regarding the pricing of our products that are little by little revealing their full effect. More than this is the fact that we are seeing the first little signs of reducing the price of some selected components, even if the shortage situation is continuing.
More than this, the most important factor is the fact that our software revenues are increasing and the percentage of our software revenues with respect to total revenues is increasing. As you know, the profitability of the software is higher with respect to the one of the hardware. For what concerns EBITDA, we recorded a really important growth, one percentage point of EBITDA margin. The main reason of this growth is for sure the exploitation of our operating leverage, thanks to the fact that we are able to deliver additional sales with a less than proportional growth of our OpEx. I would say really good performance also in terms of net income.
Net income more than doubled from EUR 7 million to EUR 15 million on the Q2- Q3 2022 respective to Q1. Really important is the net income margin. That, as you can see, the net income margin has been stable comparing the two periods. This despite the fact that we have higher depreciation and amortization of EUR 5.4 million. The main reason is the fact that obviously the consolidation perimeter is included here. This year, SECO Northern Europe, on which have more or less EUR 2.5 million of D&A relating to SECO Northern Europe.
Moreover, due to the fact that, considering the fact that our financial expenses increased by EUR 2.7 million in 2Q3 2022 compared to 2021, this is due to the fact that our figures obviously include the interest relating to Garz & Fricke, today SECO Northern Europe, acquisition financing. Really important results in keeping stable our net income margin despite this new item. Thank you, Mass, for moving to the next slide. Well, here we can see a really important fact for us, that is our breakdown of sales by geography and by end market.
The fact that we are growing in all geographical areas and in all end markets at a really good pace, a really good speed, demonstrating our stronger diversification across geographies and across end markets. We have no dependency by a single geographic area or by a single end markets. A thing that I would like to point out relating to these slides, and in particular relating to the end market, is the really important performance of growth of some end markets. You can see that we are growing at a triple-digit, in particular in vending and distribution end market and in the industrial end market. For what concerns vending and distribution, we are growing a lot, both for what concerns SECO customer and for what concerns SECO Northern Europe customer.
SECO Northern Europe as a niche in which it is really strong for what concerns vending and distribution. For what concerns instead the industrial end market, we are taking a lot of new customer, and we have been able also to penetrate most of our existing customer base. Well, let's have a view in more detail to our EBITDA performance comparing the two periods under analysis. Year-to-date Q3 2022 compared to Q1. EBITDA more than doubled from EUR 14 million- EUR 32.1 million. Again, we improved the EBITDA margin by 1 percentage point, and consider that this is a really important result due to the fact that we are comparing two periods that one is affected by shortage while the Q3 of 2021 was not yet affected by shortage.
Maybe we saw just the initial signs about the shortage that was initiated in Q4 2021. Just comments regarding the adjustment that we reported on our EBITDA. We adjusted the EBITDA by EUR 1.7 million relating to the three-year stock option plan actuarial value, that this stock option plan is for the managers of the company. I would like to stress that this is a non-cash and non-monetary item. By EUR 0.9 million, this is due to extraordinary transaction costs relating a little part to the acquisition of Garz & Fricke in the beginning, a cost that was incurred at the beginning of the year. The other part was relating to the deal that we performed in July on Camozzi Digital business acquisition.
Well, our performance in terms of net financial position, this is, on my point of view, a really strong results that we did also in Q3 other than in the first half of the year, because here we are comparing the net financial position for Q1 2022 with respect to H1 and Q3. You can see that the net financial position has a decreasing trend. We producing in total EUR 4.2 million of cash, 3.2 in the second quarter and EUR 1 million in the third quarter. What is really important is in which context, in which scenario we have been able to reduce our net financial position.
That is the shortage situation and the fact that we have been obliged to continue to invest in our working capital, and we have to do this even for at least the shortage is continuing. This cash generation derived just from our EBITDA conversion, but not from a better management of working capital that for sure can bring additional cash generation once the shortage continuing condition will improve. Thank you, Mass. I give the speech to you again.
No, thank you to you, Lorenzo. Let's focus now on the business. I think let me recap which is our strategy, where we are, where we are going. I think we already completed the shift from modules to systems, and we are adding now to our system our IoT AI data analytics platform. Well, we are in the very beginning of the execution of this strategy and all the data and all the pipeline, the customer feedback, all the things that we are observing are providing us a lot of good feedback into the fact that the strategy is working extremely well.
It's producing and increasing on our key performance indicator, but it's in a very beginning, meaning there is a lot of to be done and a lot of benefits that will be taken in the next future. We will launch also the Clea Store at the end of March 2023. This is a further evolution of our software strategy. Thanks to our strategy, we can really provide a lot of value-added services to our customers, enabling them to basically offer this kind of value-added service to their end customers. This is important because it's a win-win-win business model. It's a business model that is something that can work long-term speaking.
We are really transforming what we was, a hardware company, into, a long-term speaking, a service company that will provide solution to customers as a service. That's where we are going. This is the key of our strategy, providing a lot of benefits to our customer because our offering is an end-to-end offerings. It's so important in a B2B business space because we can provide and assure customers to really be able to offer them a complete solution, quality, time to market, price, a lot of advantage in making it with SECO. Observing the KPI that we have on our table nowadays, we continue to improve our backlog. Backlog is growing and in all the region, as Lorenzo said.
That's important because we are getting traction in all the world. An important data on it is a good portion around in between 25% and 30% of the total backlog is coming from new customers that we are getting every quarter and who will provide future growth in our growth path. Observing the level of the design win, which is in the range of EUR 85 million now, very well spread across many different kind of vertical markets. Observing the total pipeline of our business, which is now in the range of already weighted EUR 420 million for the next two years. Again, around 30% of it is coming from new customers.
Well, I can say that despite the scenario, the global scenario of economy slowdown, we still expect and still see a strong growth as for organic growth also in 2023 and going forward. We have different kind of design win in different geographical area and in different verticals. I would like to underline the most important one, which is EUR 10 million per year for the next 10 years, which is related to a new concept of voting machine in the South America area. These customers will use starting from second half of 2023, a complete system of a solution for voting machine, electronic voting machine. We are, of course, offering to these customers also to connect this solution to Clea.
Well, this is a good example for me of the fact that the strategy is working extremely well because these customers was a model customers five years ago, and now is keeping the entire system from SECO. Look in the future, there are, of course, new verticals, a new kind of product that are coming. I would like to show to you which are the most hot verticals that we are and product that we are observing. Basically, I think sensor, AI accelerator, cybersecurity, these three will be for sure our future because many customers are now asking to add an AI accelerator to their hardware solution to maximize AI algorithm on the machine that can really improve the performance and provide a better and a less expensive maintenance of the assets on the field.
When you connect a lot of devices on the field, you of course need to have a super secure infrastructure. This is important because you need to have a cybersecurity tool inside to secure your data, to secure your infrastructure. Having a lot of sensors spread around the field can really provide a quantity of data that you will elaborate, you as a customer, of course, will elaborate on your machine, having a lot of benefits in analyzing your business. Well, if I look to the future, I see two verticals that will become very important in 2023, but will literally booming in 2024. That are the functional safety. This kind of sector will become bigger and bigger because any customers in the industrial field is going into automation and robotization their facility.
I think smart factory will be the reality in a couple of years. In the EV charger, as you can see, all over the world, there are a lot of electric vehicles that are coming, and to maintain them working, of course, you need to provide a real capillary EV charger infrastructure. We are very well focused and very well-positioned to be a leader in these two new domains that are basically starting now and will provide a lot of boost to our future growth. Well, here you can see Clea. Clea is working, is growing a lot. We are expecting to see many customers that are now finishing the modeling part of the algorithm coming into mass production, starting from Q1 of 2023 and going forward.
It will provide a lot of increasing into recurring revenue and into not only recovered but incremental revenue year by year that will come from our solution. Moreover, it's very important to underline that a lot of customers, new customers are testing Clea, and month by month, we are starting converting them into mass production, into the NRE phase, which is the most important phase in the very beginning because it's the phase where we customize the AI model for customers. Again, this is a business that is win, win, so it's a long-term business that is working for SECO, is working for the SECO customers, and is working also for the customers of the SECO customer, which is definitely good. Well, here you can see some examples of end markets where we are delivering our solutions on Clea.
There are many of them, really, because we are enlarging a lot the sectors where we are present with the platform. Just to summarize some new sector, we are doing a new algorithm for vending, for boilers, for electric motors, motion tracking in the fitness area, CNC machine, smart infrastructure. On the smart infrastructure, let me say that we are finally observing a lot of business, potential business that is coming from the PNRR, which is the Italian part of the European recovery funds, which is dedicated to the digitalization. We are starting to see good prospect for the next three, four years coming from this plan. Well, just to complete the picture, as I said before, we will launch the Clea app store at the end of March 2023.
It will be important because we'll create a sort of ecosystem also enlarging the opportunity for our customer to find startups that will work into Clea to produce AI apps and to publish them into the store. More important, we will provide an end-to-end solution also considering the app store technology to enable our customers to sell the apps by themselves to their end customers, leveraging on the app store technology that we are providing, creating private app stores for our customers. Last but not least, of course, we already develop around 200 apps in many different kind of verticals. Thanks to the app stores, we aim to reduce the time to market of the new customers that can get already done and finalized app for their solution into Clea.
That's, I think, together with new product, we already launched over 40 hardware product in the beginning, from the beginning of 2022 up to now, and a lot of vertical apps on Clea. The sum of these two positioning our company at the forefront of the innovation and is very well positioned to capture the future growth and the secular trend of the digitalization. I think that's all from my side. Just let me conclude this my speech with a very important point. Regarding the shortage, you all know that the shortage was something that affect negatively our results in the last at least one year. Well, we are observing now clear sign that the shortage is the situation of the market is improving.
We are expecting for 2023, and we are already observing decreasing into the lead time and slightly decreasing on the price of the material. We are expecting to continue to see it in 2023. As a consequence, a clear reduction of the working capital, with a huge benefit in terms of cash generation and an improving of our margin in terms of gross profit margin as a consequence, an improving of our EBITDA margin. That's the future that is really near to us. I will expect to see a big impact on this kind of dynamics already starting from the first and the second quarter of 2023. I think that's all from my side. We can now start with Q&A section.
Thank you. Thank you to the speakers today. We now have an opportunity for questions. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand function on your screen, or for those dialing in, it's star nine on your keypad. Once the name is announced, please unmute your line, state your company name before asking your question. Thank you. Our first question today comes from Miss Arianna. Please, the floor to you.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. So, Mass, I have two questions for you. The first one it's quite quick, actually. If you can please quantify the impact of the shortage on Q3. So what's the value of orders that you have to postpone due to the shortage impact? And second question is maybe if we can talk a little bit about how do you see SECO in the context of a recession. Have you maybe seen any signs of, you know, customers being a little bit more cautious and maybe delaying or postponing some investments? And also, which, again, in a context of recession, what do you think are the most resilient, and markets and where maybe you would expect a little bit of softness?
Thank you, Anna, for your question. Let's start from the shortage. The shortage was in the level of EUR 6.5 million end of Q3, meaning, besides the strong growth that we posted, we had around EUR 6.5 million of overdue backlog. Backlog that we wasn't able to ship in the time over the quarter. We are seeing an improvement in it, meaning that maybe we were starting to reduce the overdue backlog already in Q4. Definitely the key acceleration factor, we are expecting it for the first quarter of 2023.
Regarding the potential slowdown of the economy, actually looking at all the KPIs that we are observing every day inside the company, we do not see sign of decreasing in our business. Beside it, we are now in the phase to build up a bottom line analysis for the 2023 business plan. I will be for sure more specific in a dedicated session where we will present the 2023 guidance to the market.
Just to give you a flavor, I think nowadays what we are observing in the market, in our vertical, fitness still growing and will continue to grow also because our important customers is growing extremely well and is projecting to grow extremely well also next year. In the industrial market, we are getting a lot of traction thanks to the fact that we are getting new customers, a lot of new customers in this domain. Beside the fact that maybe some of our existing customers will slow down a bit, we have a lot of new customers that will ramp up during 2023. On the vending machine space, the market is stable and will remain stable.
This year we got the benefits of recovery in the after-COVID situation in the vending, and we are expected to see vending continue to grow, not at the same speed that we observed in this year. Keep in mind that we are still not at the level of the pre-COVID situation. These guys have enough space to continue. Medical is growing. It's growing because we are getting new program, new customers, and new program inside the customers that we already have. Well, this market, I do not expect to see any impact. Actually, the defense market is more or less the same. These are the key verticals for SECO.
Moreover, I think that, as a paradox, there is an acceleration on the evaluation of the platform, Clea, because companies are looking at Clea to reduce cost and to cut people and to basically maximize their return of the assets. As a paradox, we are looking at many, many verticals of further acceleration in curiosity around Clea, in new customers that are approaching us to look inside Clea and to understand if Clea could be a good solution for them looking forward.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question today comes from Mr. Marco Vitale. Please, the floor to you.
Yes, thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. It's Marco Vitale from Mediobanca I have a couple of questions this afternoon. The first one is on margins. We have noted an improvement in gross profit trend, and this translating to a very strong trend, remarkable improvement of EBITDA margin. If I got it correctly, do you expect this improvement to continue over the rest of the year, specifically Q4? I was wondering if you're still confident to deliver a further margin expansion compared to last year, on top of a margin expansion on a quarter-over-quarter basis for the next quarter. The second is on cash generation.
I got the messages that you don't expect any significant improvement in working capital as long as the shortages is continuing. I was wondering when do you expect to normalize this next year? If you have already in mind what could be a target in terms of working capital on sales each semester? Thank you.
Okay. Let's start from the end of your question. We are expecting to see progressive normalization of the situation during 2023. As a consequence, we will see a decrease in the inventories on sales, which is now so high. In a normal situation, after one year, I think in the end of 2023 or somewhere in 2024, I would expect to see this KPI back to the normality, which is in the range of 28-25 on sales as an incidence inventories on sales. We will be there progressively.
On the question, which was the first question related to the margin, yes, as you said, I'm expecting to continue to see an improvement on the gross profit margin, which will be maybe not so big in the last quarter, but very progressive. It will become more bigger in the Q1, Q2 of 2023, providing of course a further expansion of the EBITDA. I would expect to see also an expansion in EBITDA level in Q4. This is due to the fact that we will post the all-time record in revenue for sure on Q4. Thanks to our operating leverage, we are expecting to see the EBITDA growing in a very considerable way.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Vitale, for your question. Currently, we do not have any questions queued, so we will wait just a few moments to give everyone the opportunity. Okay, our next question comes from Mr. Bonizzoni. Please, the floor to you.
Thank you. Thank you, Massimo. I was just asking you, I was looking at consensus estimates for 2023 currently on several data providers, Bloomberg, FactSet and so on. My understanding is that for the next year, the revenues, the average of the estimates is in the range of EUR 250 million with an EBITDA range between EUR 55 million and EUR 60 million. Do you have any expectation or comment, let's say, about this range of expectation?
I think it's too early. As I said before, we will provide a guidance at least on the revenue, later in the beginning of 2023. It's too early to make a comments from me. My only comments is, our growth path now is stronger than this data. Let's see how it will come at the end of the business review that we are performing now, and let's discuss it at the right time.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Mr. Żurowski. Please proceed.
Hi, Mass. Congratulations on a good set of results. I just wanted to ask two questions. First one, I wanted to clarify on adjusted EBITDA margin for 3Q 2022. It was much higher than in previous two quarters and was at around 23.5%. Do you think it's sustainable for the fourth quarter? Is it a good starting point, or should we expect some extra costs to kick back in? My second question is on Clea. You posted revenue of around EUR 5.4 million in the third quarter. How much of that is non-recurring project revenue, and how much is it a recurring piece? Thanks.
No, thank you to you for your question. I think, EBITDA margin at 23.6% is a level where you can think to see at least the Q4. Actually, I would expect to see something slightly better. Because, of course, of the operating leverage that we can have in the last quarter, where we are expecting revenue above EUR 55 million, for sure. And, in terms of, 85% of the total still NRE project, which is very important in my mind that because it show how big is the potential of this business going forward. Because all the customers that now are in the non-recurring engineering phase will be in a mass production phase in two, three quarters.
It will provide a further increase, of course, of the revenue coming from Clea, but the starting of the delivery of the recurring revenue part, that is, as you know, not only recurring but also incremental. It's a piece by piece that we will add over every year. That's very important because customers are paying on average in between, let me say, half million and 1 million per project, investing a considerable amount of money on the platform to develop together with our team AI models to maximize the return of the use of the platform. As soon as they finish this job, they're entering into the rollout phase of the platform on the machine month by month.
This is a clear progression that we will start to see from the first quarter of 2023 and going forward, and providing us a lot of visibility, not only on the hardware, but also on the software side of the business, which is very important in my mind.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Zurawski, for your question. Currently, we don't have any questions queued. We will just wait a moment to give everyone the opportunity to raise their hands.
Good afternoon. Paolo Cipriani. I have a question regarding the backlog. Can you just maybe help me to understand, you mentioned about decreasing lead times, but if I see the backlog, although it's quite strong, I mean, it's also quite stable. Now it's EUR 170 million since April 2022. What give you the confidence that SECO will be able to grow like a strong double digit in 2023, even being the backlog quite keep stable at this level, EUR 170 million?
The backlog is stable, yes. We are posting and so shifting and delivering and consuming, of course, a portion of the backlog month by month to make the revenue. Meaning revenue are growing at 43% like for like and 54% organically. We are, of course, consuming a portion of the backlog, which is recovering by the order intake. For me, the fact that the level of the backlog is stable is very important because it show the fact that we are assuring our growth path also for the next year. More important, year-on-year, same parameter, you have a backlog up nowadays for 48% versus the previous year same period. Meaning it is showing us the opportunity to have a super strong growth also next year.
Let's see how the business analysis that we are performing will come out. I think this year, despite the shortage, despite the integration of Garz & Fricke into the SECO group, which is now completed, despite the launch of Clea, we was able to perform a good integration, to successfully launch Clea and to maintain what we said at the very beginning of the year, provided a guidance that we are now in a position to be, of course, close to the guidance, beating it for sure. In providing a year-over-year growth path that is super solid also for the future, because it's coming for a good portion from a new business, which is Clea, and from a good portion from new customers that are starting right now, right now.
We would expect it to continue the growth path trend also in 2023. Of course, I will be more specific at the right time. Looking all the KPI, design win backlog and pipeline, weighted pipeline, I'm very happy.
Okay. The lead times, can you just give a more level of detail around where they are moving to?
Yeah. Yes. Lead times of the components was in the range of 50 weeks. Yes, you understood correctly, 50 weeks in the last three, four quarters. We are now down. The normality is 12 weeks, so there is a lot of space, and the gap is so huge. There are a lot of improvements that will come month by month. But it's a strong sign that something on the materials supply chain is changing. I would expect to see a slowdown, yes, in electronic components demand coming from B2C market, computers, smartphone, automotive. It will provide a lot of benefits to business-to-business market like SECO that need the components like air.
Really can improve our not only our margin, but more important, our cash generation, reducing in a very important way the level of inventory that now are too high and are not normal, driven by this shortage problem.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Currently, we do not have any questions queued, but we will wait a moment just to give everyone the opportunity to raise their hands. Thank you. All right. As there are no further questions, I will now hand back to the speakers for any final comments before bringing this presentation to a close. Please go ahead.
No, just as a final comment, I think we are really providing to our investors and to the market solid results. Actually better than the expectation and also my personal expectation. Definitely we will be in line/beat the estimation by the end of the year. Thank you to everyone to be part of this call. See you next time. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much. This presentation will now come to close. Thank you.