Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to conference call concerning the results of H1 2022. H1 2022 has been the best ever period for our group. I think you've seen the results in the presentation, and it was an increase of almost 40% in revenues compared to H1 2021 with a significant increase also on the EBITDA value from EUR 26.5 million to EUR 42.8 million, which means 61% increase compared to previous year. Even better on the net income, thanks also to the sale of the control company Tecnair brought EUR 9.3 million of net result for this extraordinary operation. H1 was a very positive period for the whole group.
In each and every market segment, we had a very interesting growth in refrigeration. If you go to page five of our presentation, as a reference, you can see that refrigeration, our traditional most important market, grow about 20%. Within this 20% growth, the biggest part is related to the HoReCa application segment, so hotel, restaurant, and catering, which was the one who suffered the most during the pandemic and had a very strong restart after the situation was normalized. In the air conditioning segment, the growth is up to EUR 67.1 million, is 73% increase, which is related in mostly to data center. But the biggest part is the heat pump application.
Heat pump related to the electrification process, replacement of old gas system for hot water is for sure the, as we already said in previous calls and meetings, is for sure the most important and most interesting application segment also for the next coming years because of this acceleration to the process of replacement of gas devices. Within special application with a growth of 40%, I recall once more that special application includes mostly three segments.
One, the most important one is home appliance, so the heat exchanger for the dryers, high energy efficiency dryers with a growth of more than 30% and mobile application, specifically refrigerated trucks, which is thanks to the new project we acquired in the last few months, showed a very interesting growth of more than 50%. More and more projects are coming and very promising for the next month to come. The remaining part is other application from compressed air, cooling of electrical cabinets and so on, and even this segment is growing 40%.
The last segment, industrial cooling, for those who are familiar with the LU-VE Group, we said last year that the last part of the year, after week 21, there was a very good order intake. This is proved by the results of the H1 with an increase more than double the turnover in this application. This is a very positive results which will not be confirmed the second part of the year because the projects, as you know, are long-term projects. Some of them that are shifting relating to different reasons.
All in all, as I said, 39.9% growth in revenues, and part of this is related to pricing and part is volume. The pricing part is roughly 25%, and this shows once more, as also the EBITDA chart will show, the resilience and the way our system of automatic price adjustment and revision of selling prices for our cool products has proved to work. In facing an important increase in all costs of raw material, logistics, energy, and so on, the group has been able to transfer this cost increase to the selling price and to recover marginality, or at least to protect marginality, even in this troubled period.
Having said that, I would move rapidly to the EBITDA chart on page 8. There is the traditional bridge analysis starting from last year, and this proves exactly what I was just saying. We have an increasing volume, about EUR 10.2 million. Selling price has an effect of EUR 66.9 million offsetting slightly less than EUR 51 million cost increase related to raw materials and purchasing. This brought to an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 42.8 million, then there are EUR 0.7 million non-recurring item related to the M&A process of acquisition of Refrion and ACC.
Just to spend a couple more words on these two operations, as you may recall, Refr ion is a company we acquired at the end of March last year, and the integration process is starting well. We are already on some parts of working to get synergies in purchasing, in the redefining the manufacturing platform and standardization of some components. Even on the administrative point of view, the project is launched and is working very well. While ACC is an asset purchase agreement finalized at the end of July, beginning of August. Finally, it took a bit more to get the official contract signed as the public authority was involved.
It was a very complicated process, but through this project we got the main point, that we got 40,000 sq m additional surface for our expansion and to improve logistics and to allow that space available for further growth in the next coming years. We secured also 150 workers in hiring in the next 24 months, coming from the previous company. It's a win-win, a classical win-win operation because it was a social issue in that area for the unemployment rate, which was going to grow. We were looking for skilled workers available. Already 40 of them are already working with us since March in training period.
Now they are officially being transferred to the group. According to the contract signed, we will then buy officially the plant. The closing is foreseen at the end of the year or beginning of January next year. Having said that, I think I will leave the space to Q&A just to give you some indication concerning the future. After such a brilliant H1, we expect an H2 where we expect to confirm both in sales and EBITDA, the results of H2 last year, which was, as you may recall, a very positive one. Of course, there are some. The order backlog remains very high. We've seen the order backlog at the end of June was EUR 200 million.
At the end of August, it's practically the same. There are some projects in this order backlog related to 2023. In some market applications, we see the signs of some slowing down, specifically supermarket business. We see also, as I said before, the heat pump application is foreseen as a booming market in the coming years. We think that it will compensate partially or more than partially the slowdown in other applications because as you may recall, part of our strategy has always been to extend the number of applications served in different markets, in different countries. This proved to be a good strategy protecting our revenues and also our margins. Having said that, I think it's.
I don't want to be too long and too boring. I leave the space to your question.
This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Andrea Randone of Intermonte. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon and congratulations for the results. I have three questions. The first one is about raw materials. You mentioned in the press release some key raw materials are witnessing price retracements. I wonder if you can comment on that and also if you can explain if you are assuming also your prices will follow this pattern. Second question is about heating pumps. I know that you are organizing an Investor Day, so we will probably be better informed during this Investor Day. This heating pump business is becoming relevant.
I wonder if you can comment what is the incidence on revenues in the H1 and what are your expectations? The third question is about more generally your business. Again, it's just a clarification what you already said. There are some parts of your business that are more economically sensitive. So if you can elaborate on this and comment on what are the main areas you think might suffer some pressure? On the other hand, what are the areas that you are enjoying better visibility? Thank you.
You're welcome. Coming to your first question concerning raw materials, as you know, a great buyer of copper, aluminum mainly, and both these materials showed a downturn starting from August in the LME values, even then with, you know, a bit of an increase back a little bit. Of course, your question concerning the pricing effect is the fact that, for Q3, the prices are based on the average of previous months. We expect that if the situation remains like this, which is unpredictable in reality as usual with the raw materials, we will have a pricing effect, a negative pricing effect starting from Q4 for those with an automatic price adjustment mechanism.
Concerning the raw material, a point I would like to underline is the fact that we differentiated very much our sourcing during the last few years, and especially in the last couple of years, we've obliged to increase our safety stock. This energy issue on aluminum pricing, on transformation cost of aluminum pricing is also included in this adjusting price mechanism. There is the part that the raw material pricing is going down slightly, but the transformation cost is remaining high. In general, the value will remain higher compared to the past, considering the average pricing.
There is the bad news that European Union decided to introduce a special import duties of 27.5% on some specific coated aluminum, special aluminum that we were sourcing from China. We are now once more redefining our sourcing policy to cope with the situation. Concerning heat pumps, as I said before in several meetings in the last few months, heat pumps is for sure was already before the war expected to be the fastest-growing market segment in Europe. After the crisis, this process of acceleration has been further accelerated. All the forecast we receive from our customers are more and more ambitious. Now, the issue for them is to grant the supply of heat exchangers and other components.
In the first six months, our sales in this market segment, as I said before, they increased dramatically from less than EUR 6 million to almost EUR 16 million. Considering that there are some projects started just in April, May, so we expect this value to be above EUR 30 million at the end of the year. We are already discussing some new projects and some ambitious projects where we are discussing with big accounts how to split the capacity between our plants. We already launched some additional investment that were forecasted just in 2023.
We had to anticipate them already to launch the order in order to get the machinery on time, because the delivery terms of the machinery involved now are very long, eight to 12 months. We had to anticipate our CapEx forecast dedicated to heat pump applications. Last question, the segment more sensitive to this slowdown up to now, as I said, the supermarket business, specifically the display cabinets, showed some sign of slowing down since May. This in this moment is the one who is suffering a bit more than the other one. We received recently some updated forecast in the domestic appliance business, which was very brilliant in H1. The forecast for H2 are lower than that.
This is very much related, especially for the German market, to the fact that usually Germans are very scared about inflation rate. The explanation that our customer gave to us is the fact that they expect the German customer to be less willing to buy domestic appliance in a period with higher inflation rate. This is, I don't know if it's an excuse or an explanation, but this for sure is what we expect, and we already see the forecast declining. On the other hand, as I said also, the industrial cooling by being related to big projects, the order intake is still good, but the new orders are more related to Q1, Q3 next year, which is good in terms of production forecast.
We expect, as I said, a slower H2 compared to H1. On the other hand, we apart from the heat pump, there are the big project concerning logistics center and also data center. We had a very good order intake in the last couple of months for data centers, specifically for the biggest customer we're dealing with. In general, there are for sure some sign of slowdown and in different application, but there are also some project that are coming out or flourishing in the last few weeks that we've been working on for maybe months. As usual, it's a combination of different application, different market, different trends.
Thank you very much, Mr. Liberali.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Marco Vitale of Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for taking my question. The first one is about your cash generation profile and specifically on the inventories built up. Could we assume that you have reached in the H1 the peak in terms of the cash absorption? Should we assume only improvement going forward on this side? The second question is about the timing for the STAR. I saw that the two major shareholders have waived the loyalty share schemes to reduce the free float. Was wondering, what could be the expected timing for the transition to the STAR segment? The last question is a follow-up on the pricing. Could we assume a negative pricing on average for the whole 2023? Thank you.
Sorry, can you repeat the third one? I didn't hear you.
The last one is about the pricing. Could we assume a negative pricing effect for the whole 2023? Thank you.
Okay. Starting from the effect of the increase of safety stock, as you said, it was something that's already started last year due to the logistics issues. Today, we have this increase in inventory. Of course, we are working to reduce, and we already started the process to go back to a more normalized situation, even if we expect not to be able to reach the excellent values we had in the past, because the situation, the logistics is still very critical. Also the forecast for the next coming months has to be adjusted according to the market situation.
As I said before, one part of this increase for the first time is related also to the finished product stock, which increased a little bit because of the phenomenon of continuous at the end of the month. There was postponement of our products ready to be shipped that had due to delays in the installation, due to the difficulty in finding the trucks, and if not properly planned in advance. This is a rolling issue that we have from month to month, so it affected the performance. Normally at the same level each month. Compared to the past, we have more stock in finished products. Of course, the biggest part of the increase is coming from the raw material.
This is due to a double effect because we have a pricing effect. If we only talk about copper, we have 15% higher value per ton in our stock compared to year end, and 21% to 29% is for aluminum, the pricing effect on aluminum. Then we have also a volume effect and specifically related to aluminum. One of the reason is one I mentioned before, we were expecting this import duty to be reintroduced. It was suspended for a few years, so we ordered more than necessary for two reasons, in order to protect against this risk and also because, as I said before, it's coming from China, so in order to be on the safe side on the continuity of supply, we pushed a little bit more than necessary.
We expect, as I said before, by year end to reduce. We touched the peak, as you mentioned. We expect to reduce, but for sure we do not expect to go back to the value we had in the past. Concerning the STAR segment, as you said, yeah, the preliminary activity in order to allow the company to move to the STAR segment has been done. It has been scheduled a board next Monday to take the final decision to submit the request. It will be submitted, I think on the 13th of September. Then there are some technical time. The process is started online.
As you recall, we had to postpone in spring. We decided to postpone it to September. Now we decided that it's time to do so. We expect by the end of September at the latest to move to the STAR segment. Concerning the pricing effect, it's for sure Q4, if situation remains like this on copper, aluminum, we expect to have a pricing effect only on the component parts, not really on the cooling system because it's the pricing list is not going to be reduced. It never happened. It's excluded as a policy. For sure on some specific projects now there are, due to the order backup which is still very high, we are talking now already about projects for 2023.
For the time being, the instruction we give to our sales guys is to keep the pricing and to add some safety factor on the pricing for the future. It's difficult to predict. Of course, if the situation will slow down further, we can expect the raw material to further reduce the value. Of course there will be, we will have to pass on additional discount instead of reducing the price. Automatic price adjustment mechanism will work, but that is too soon to forecast what will happen in 2023, I would say.
Okay. Thank you. Very clear.
You're welcome.
The next question is from David Coppini of First Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Congratulations for the results, and thank you so much for answering my questions. The first one is on the different countries. If you see some countries that going onwards are stronger than the other ones. My second question is from your income statement, we see that the purchases of materials have a higher weight on your income statement, so from 62.2% to 65%. You were better on your labor costs. That decreased from 23% to 20%. If you can elaborate a little bit more on this efficiency on your labor costs. The third one is on the electricity, energy prices on your income statement. How is the weight of the energy on your income statement? Thank you.
You're welcome. Considering the countries, this year in H1, all the countries were doing extremely well, especially, of course, Italy and Germany, Finland, because of the industrial cooling projects related market, and also Czech, Poland, and France, as usual, was not growing as fast as in the past, but with a very good ordering take. It's just a matter of timing. We expect also the German market and the Polish and Czech market to continue to increase in the next coming months, on one hand because of the heat pumps, heat pump market, because most of the plants and the customer base in these countries, it's Germany or the plants in Eastern Europe or even in France in one case.
On the other hand, the domestic appliance plants of Bosch and Miele, one in Czech, one in Poland, and Electrolux as well is in Poland, so they will compensate. In principle, in the long term, we see that these markets remain very positive. Considering the incidence of raw material and labor costs, of course, we saw that the fact that the raw material increased quite a lot. The pricing effort on our revenues was 25%. There is of course a higher absolute value of raw material that we bought at the same volume, then we increased also the volume.
The incidence of labor costs, on the other hand, is related to the fact that there is a pricing effect and also the fact that we work very much to increase our efficiency in direct labor. We didn't have to increase the indirect workers that much, so the volume growth was covered with just an increase of direct workers in each and every plant, mostly. This is basically the reason why we normally in our budget we tend also to be on the safe side while estimating the labor cost trends, but in this case, we are talking about actual figures. This is the result of increasing volume, requiring less scale economy, let's say it is, requiring less indirect workers.
On the energy part, in the first six months, the effect of this increasing cost of energy and gas is slightly above EUR 2 million. We are, as a process, as a manufacturing process, not the kind of process who is using that much energy. We have also some renewable energy plant in some of our plants, and we are adding some more. The last one was in India that we just opened in the month of May or June, if I recall exactly. We expect this value to be higher in the H2, slightly higher on H2, because in H1, we took advantage of some contracts, long-term contract signed during 2021.
The incidence in total is 1.4% on revenue, so it's not, as I said before, our industry is not energy so energy requiring so much energy consumption. For sure it's something we are monitoring very carefully, and we are trying to be on the safe side on this one.
Okay. Many thanks.
The next question.
Welcome.
The next question is from Giuseppe Grimaldi of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for taking my question. I have just one on volumes. Based on what you have seen in your order backlog, is it still reasonable to assume volume growth in the second part of this year? To which extent, basically something like in the low single digit area or more in the mid to high single digits? Just to have a rough idea.
If you talk about volumes in exchange, I would say it's really difficult to have volume in the second part of the year because the increase in heat pumps in volumes will compensate the decrease in supermarket application. Before in the HoReCa segment, we would like to have additional capacity available because we already now have delivery terms in January. In general, I would not expect an increase in volume in H2 compared to H1. I think it will be roughly more or less the same.
Okay. Thanks. Thanks again for the clarification and congratulations again for the good set of numbers.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is a follow-up from Andrea Randone of Intermonte. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on Russia. You mentioned you are still doing business in the region. If you can comment on that. Also, if you can, you know, explain what you think will be the continuation of the business in the coming months in this area. Thank you.
In this area, in the first six months, we had a decrease of EUR 3.5 million revenues, roughly. The situation is, I would say, differentiated by what we are manufacturing locally and what we sell from Western Europe. The local manufacturing plant is still up and running, of course, with lower volume than last year, but just serving local markets and the fact that we had higher stock than normal helped us to have continuity even there. We see a local demand, which is not brilliant, but the situation is not bad. It's compared to the scenario we made internally, the situation is better than compared with what we were expecting.
On the other hand, what we are selling from western plants, of course, as we expected, is practically gone to zero. The order backlog is very much reduced. We approved internally a procedure in order to be compliant to all the rules and regulation and limitation concerning projects in Russia and so on. We are still quoting some projects in the long term for some specific application. Yesterday we got, for example, an order for a big logistics center which partially will be manufactured. The indoor unit will be manufactured in Russia and the outdoor unit for CO2 that we cannot manufacture in Russia will be produced here. It has been approved and from all the authorities and all the checks have been done.
In general, we expect the situation to remain more or less like it is now concerning the local plants, but we keep our sales office in Moscow still up and running. We transferred one guy from this office to Finland in order to keep him busy, and this is the situation. I don't think there's much more to say on this part. On the total revenues, you see that the increment is between 3% and 4%. Of course the order backlog compared to last year is less than half.
Thank you again.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Paolo Cipriani of CP Capital. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. A couple of questions from my side. One is regarding the EBITDA margin. If I understood well during the conference call you mentioned the H2 2022 will be like in line with the H2 2021. Just was wondering since the H1 2022 is 13.8%, there should be like sort of a slowdown in margin in the H2 . If you could help me to understand which are the puts and takes, what drives this margin. The second question is regarding Russia. I mean, considering the geopolitical situation of the sanctions that are ongoing, do you also consider to like to sell the business unit to the, maybe to Russia or Chinese player? Thank you.
I'll start from the second one. We made a lot of thinking about the Russian operation, but the decision we made up to now is that we have to protect our people, and we will resist until we can, and we are not taking into consideration any idea of selling the business unit in the short term. In the midterm, we'll see if situation will remain like that, we will have to make other decision. Up to now and for the next coming months, we do not see the need, and we don't want to sell this business because of our people and because we think that it remains an interesting market even in the next year to come.
Concerning your question on H2, if I got it correctly because the H1 was not that good. Your question is raising the fact that I mentioned that we expect an H2 result in line with last year. Is that so?
Yeah. In terms of EBITDA margin in line with the H2 last year, if I understood well.
Yes.
That's what I got from the confirm. Yeah, and why, I mean, shall be like that? Because in the H1 is 13.8% EBITDA margin. In the H2 , 2021 was 13% EBITDA margin. It's a bit lower, I mean, compared to the H1 2022.
Yeah. There are two points. The H2 includes August and December, where in August, we have some additional closing compared to the past year because of some extraordinary maintenance and some lack of component in one plant. In reality, I think the 13% margin of last year is reasonable. To be on the safe side, It's as I said before, Q3, we are reasonably sure what we are going to get. Q4, there could be some shifting of orders and some combined with the slowing down.
To be on the safe side, we think that this is a reasonable figure because in this moment, there is a bit of uncertainty on Q4, not on the order backlog, but on how much is order backlog and the new project we're working on will be transforming orders and will be invoiced in this period. This is the reason why. Of course, there is also a small pricing aspect expected if the raw materials continue to go down. Of course, the pricing adjustment mechanism will be working on that and considering the average purchasing price and the fact that we are not going to buy in the next coming months. In order to reduce the stock, we will have to buy material. We will have to.
We are not taking the full advantage of purchasing material at a lower price in the short term because we have a higher stock to be consumed.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Mr. Liberali, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay, good. If there are no further questions, I would like to take the chance to thank you for participating to this call and summarize the fact that it was a very good H1. We expect a reasonably good H2 as well with some good news and some small uncertainties on some parts. But we remain confident that the strategy and the long-term strategy and the policy and all the action put in place by the group are going in the right direction. Thank you again for joining us, and have a nice evening.