Good afternoon, everybody. I am pleased to share my screen and start the presentation of today's results that we published. As I was saying, I was going through the highlights. Q4 divisional sales, we had the heating +3.6%. Metering as a whole was -17.5%, also including the water metering business. We will go into details later in a specific slide on these numbers. Full year consolidated revenues were disclosed already some time ago, but we closed at EUR 380.5. That's 18.6% versus 2020, pretty much in line with our forecast. As far as the heating business, all geographies have performed well.
We have the Americas up 24.3% or nearly 28% at the same Forex rates. We have direct heating performing very well and stable storage water heating and very important growth of China, 32%, particularly because it was the retail market that is picking up very well. Italy and the rest of Europe are up 26.7% and 16.5% respectively. In terms of EBITDA margin of 13.5%. That means EUR 51.2 million versus EUR 43.6 million of last year. That's a 17.4% increase. Net debt at EUR 106.7 million. It was EUR 116 million at the end of last year, of 2020, while cash flow from operations was EUR 27.2 million after CapEx of EUR 26.1 million.
All in all, very much in line with our expectations. Going into detail, in this table, we disclose the margins that were not discussed before. We have EBITDA adjusted at EUR 51.2 against EUR 44.6. Last year, we had some exceptional items that this year were not accounted. We have EBIT of EUR 24.3, meaning 6.4% against 19.6 of last year. It's a 24% increase. Reported net income of EUR 8.2, but we do have some accounting items that are not recurring. They are related to the fair value accounting of warrants and mark to market of certain items in the financial transaction. That means that the net income adjusted of these is EUR 16.3 million.
That's 4.3%, better than the 4.2% of last year, meaning an increase of EUR 21.6 million. I already commented the cash flow and the debt. Looking at trade working capital, it's EUR 45.4 million. That means just under 12% on revenues. We have a detailed slide on this because we want to make a few comments on it. Looking at the quarter, let me say, that at 9.8% of revenues, it was slightly under our expectations. We had logistics costs, transport costs, that were higher than expected, in the range of over EUR 1 million, more or less, and that is certainly one of the reasons. We also have the
In comparison with the fourth quarter of 2020, we will see it in the volumes in the walk through of sales, the very much this decrease of the smart gas metering. We also have some volume effect. The quarter was slightly under expectations, but at 9.8% of EBITDA of revenues. Anyway, we all know as a historical trend that the fourth quarter is slightly one of the lesser performing quarters of the year. Also because December is a year when the heating business has less working days, and then there are some accounting policies that are applied at the end of the year. Anyway, let's go to the revenue bridge. As I said, very much in line.
We already closed the business sales at EUR 375.2 million some weeks ago. EUR 380 million is the total revenues. Here we have the bridge. I think it's important. We represented during the 2021 financial year the water metering business as an add-on. Starting from 2021. We have a price effect of EUR 9.9 million, and Forex was slightly EUR 1.1 million. I would go on. This is the fourth quarter. As I commented before, it was EUR 94.3 million total against EUR 93.8 million. As I said, basically in line.
We have the add-on of water metering sales, and the heating and gas metering were - 8.8 overall, made up by EUR 7.5 million of gas metering in terms of volumes. We have the EUR 3.4 million of prices and a positive Forex effect in the quarter. Heating, I think that the trends that we already discussed are confirmed. We close at 298 against EUR 249 million. It's a 19.8% increase. It's 20.8% at the same Forex. We have Italy +26.7%. Main product families were Controls, Fans, and Flues. I think overall, all families performed very well.
I would add, Europe, Q4 was particularly flat because we had some issues in the U.K., missing components, not from our production, but from other suppliers slowed down the local sales, so we had an impact on that. The overall full year growth of the market was 6.2%. Central Europe, very important KPI. It's growing at 30%. You might recall that we have introduced a new product family in a key customer, and the performance is going very well. This is a trend that we have been seeing all the year during 2021.
America, the Q4 was up EUR 2.7 million, 14.6%, with Fireplaces growing very well at a full year at +48% at same Forex. Of course, there was some impact in the 2020 year, in this market, but the performance was very important. While the Storage Water Heaters was down EUR 1.4 million, at 4% at the same Forex. That was slightly in line with, slightly underperforming versus the last year. In Asia Pacific, I already mentioned China. It's very important because it's the retail market is not boosted by incentives, by the coal to gas policy that in the past created some issues in the whole industry.
This is a market where we have a premium price and premium position in the market, and we are very satisfied to see this growth, and are also expecting a good performance during 2022. The metering business, we have four tables. On the left side, we are representing gas metering, smart gas metering. I promised to report the foreign sales this year. I was hoping to have 10%, but we are at 7%, mostly Greece and Croatia. That means that the U.K. is still a bit behind our plans in 2021, but we are looking forward to have some significant sales in 2022, so to add on to that foreign part of the market.
As I said, the EUR 10.4 million in the quarter is 42% less than the Q4 of 2020. We have to recall that in the Italian market in 2020, there was a very strong rebound after the COVID lockdown. You know, the comparison here is quite challenging. Anyway, this is the numbers. It's 42.3% down in 2021. Looking at the water metering, you know, we acquired the company at the end of 2020. We report the 2020 data just to comparison and so to see that the growth is very good, 24% at a full year basis. The acquisition is going well, and we are very happy with the first year of consolidation that we are presenting here today.
This is the Q4 data. Again, also here, the growth rate is lower than the full year data. Speaking of Adjusted EBITDA bridge. We want to represent the bridge going from EUR 44.6 million, meaning 13.9%, to the 51.2, meaning 13.5% of 2021. The 17.7 is volumes. This includes the contribution of the water metering business. We do not disclose this data, but the year was sustained by strong growth and volumes, and the contribution is here represented in 17.7 at 2020 conditions. Prices. The overall effect of sales price increase and the cost inflation on procurement at the end of the year is basically equal. We have a.
We were able to offset with our pricing policy the increase in the cost of materials and purchasing. That is a policy that, as we already stated in previous calls, we want to apply also in the future. We will speak about that in the later on. Looking at operations, here we represent in this graph the increase in cost that were compared to 2020. Again, the trend is the same in the previous, let me say, reporting sessions that we had in the previous quarters. We are aware that there is about 30% of that number is the increase in transport costs, in freights, and so it is. About half of that is due to price increase.
The other is more of a volume effect. The other 30% of this increase is due to the manufacturing overhead that we are building. We know that we are building, ramping up the location, the plant in Tunisia. The volumes that we are able to shift to Tunisia are not complete. We have some underutilization of capacity, and we still have some fixed costs in some other plants. We are in a transitional phase of this footprint, and that means about 30% of that cost is related to this transition, so we are speaking of manufacturing overheads. The other 30% is, I would say, SG&A in general terms. We are investing in future developments of products, meaning marketing, R&D.
We are very much committed to new product development. We in energy transition, development of products, and also you know adapting our product offering to the markets that we want to serve with the smart gas metering. That is the other 30% of that increase of SG&A cost. Forex is basically zero, and other materials are basically some risk provision release. That is our walkthrough between 2020 EBITDA adjusted and 2021 EBITDA adjusted. Under the operating margins, we let's go from EBITDA to net income. D&A, we have an increase not only for the CapEx plan, but also for the PPA of the Janz acquisition, which is worth EUR 1.5 million. That's an additional cost in D&A.
The EBIT, as I said before, was EUR 24.3 million, 6.4%. Net financial charges of... We include here the EUR 9 million for the increase of the cost of the warrants and the unwinding for EUR 1 million, some financial items, because we refinanced our loans, our debt, and we unwound the IRS, the interest rate swap we had in place, and there was a write-off, the amortized cost. Non-cash items that, let's say, were due to the refinancing that took place between Q2 and Q3 of 2021. I also recall that in taxes, we have a one-off revenue for the patent box ruling of EUR 1.8 million. It took place in January 2021, so we've been reporting it each quarter.
If we take away these, exceptional or, let's say, fair value accounting items, we have the net financial charges and the income adjusted at 1% of revenue, and the net income adjusted at EUR 16.3 million, meaning nearly a 22% increase versus the previous year. Here we have a representation of cash items. On the left, we have the cash flow, the change in net debt. We start at EUR 52.2 current cash flow. The working capital generates 4.8. CapEx at 26.2. Very much in line with our expectations. We did, you recall, we bought the asset deal that we made in the new valve, in the new electronic control in Mexico. We build up the Tunisian plant.
We started the building of the R&D labs here in our headquarters. I mean, we are able to put on track the main projects and initiatives that, you know, in 2020 were slowed down a bit, as you see, if you compare the two numbers. This means that cash flow from operations is EUR 27.2. It was EUR 14.6 in 2020. Under the line, there are other items, but at the end, the change in net debt is EUR 9.3, going from EUR 116- EUR 107. The detail of that EUR 107 is in the table on the right, where we have the new portfolio of debt that we issued a 10-year bond and a five-year ESG-linked bank loan.
Actually, we made a press release a couple of weeks ago, last week. We also had another debt loan of EUR 15 million, five-year, to finance the building of the new labs as well. We did some activities in these years, in this year, on the finance, on the. Let's say debt side.
Under funding.
Yeah, under funding. Thank you. Looking at trade working capital, if we look at it in net trade, it's, I would say, well performing at 12% of revenues with an improvement. I want to highlight that we have an increase in inventory, which is not in line with our historical trend. This is due basically to two reasons. We have a procurement strategy that is aiming to have you know opportunistic procurement of components and to manage the shortage issues and risk. We are actually buying components whenever available and trying to build a stock to serve production and customers.
We actually have an inventory that is growing a bit and in line with our decisions, and that is a key part of this strategy to support our customer service.
We give Federico next.
So.
Yes.
Next, I leave the floor to Federico, who can continue. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, everybody. A brief update from our side on the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. As you can imagine, the situation is carefully monitored. Our accounted sales last year in the two countries were less than 5%. All refer to the Heating Division. We do not hold direct assets in any of those two countries. We serve those countries through local distributors that are being managed by our people located in the Czech Republic. That's what we have always been doing historically. On the supply chain side, we have a supplier who is part of a multinational company, which is based 3 km from the Czech-Slovakian border, so in a relatively safe area.
We do not consider this safe enough, so we have started a process to accelerate the relocation of this electronics production, which will be partially in our own plants, both in Tunisia and in the Netherlands and also at other locations of the current supplier and of other suppliers. We have started this process to safeguard our supply chain. We believe, as Paul said, that this year in particular, 2022, even more than in 2021, being able to supply the market to guarantee continuity of supplies, always bear in mind, and always having our customers at the center of our strategies is and will be more and more essential.
There are issues, as you know, with the electronic components, and now also with the Ukrainian and Russian war, but let's say the situation is under control. As I just said, we have started activities to de-risk the supply chain. In view of the current situation, we do not consider, let's say, appropriate to provide precise forecasts for the current year, but we remain absolutely confident on the positive trends that underlie our business and our targets of business growth. We know that we are market leader and technological leaders, and this allows us strategies that other competitors cannot enforce. One of those being the possibility of pass-through of increased costs, raw material costs.
You have seen that we have invested in the warehouse, in the stock, and we are financially stronger to be able to do that. We don't want to, of course, to exaggerate, but as I said, it will be crucial in our industry, but also, I'm sure, in other industries, to guarantee the supply of our products. We have also that strength compared to some of our competitors, for example. The underlying trend of energy transition to lower-emission and hydrogen-ready applications, we continue our research and development efforts from that point of view.
There are some products in the metering division, for example, that are already ready to be sold into the market. We see a continuous trend towards higher efficiency applications, also supported throughout 2022 by incentives. We also see a growing trend in water consumption management, and we will continue to invest in that area. Let's say we see that domestic market gas metering replacement rollout as another important trend. We think we believe we're very well-positioned for another good year also in 2022, despite the general conditions that are challenging, I would say for most of the companies.
As a final point, as you probably have seen from the press release, the board this morning proposed a dividend of EUR 0.30 per share to be approved by the general assembly on the 29th of April. I think we're perfectly in time with the presentation, and I would like now to answer to your questions. I leave the management of the Q&A session to Mara, please.
Thank you very much indeed, Mr. De Stefani. Thank you, Paul. Now I open the floor to the Q&A section. Please raise your hand for really asking for having Adam for having the possibility to make the calls. Adam, it's your time.
Hello. Hi there, and hi, everybody. Several questions from me. Firstly, you talked about utilization at the Tunisian plant not being potentially 100%. I wonder if you could put a rough percentage number on where utilization is at the moment and where you might expect it to be in 2022 as it kind of ramps up? Also just looking in terms of your ability to keep passing on price increases, can you give us a feel for the percentage of value in your customers' final product? I'm trying to think here, you know, what's the price elasticity of demand? Do you have any impact on that, or is it really only a small part of the total product?
My feeling is it is quite small, but if you have a figure, it would be quite helpful. Just finally, you know, I think recently you announced that you've got now certification for both your hydrogen meter products. What's your marketing plans going forward? How are you looking to take those to market? And what sort of impact might we see? Is that likely to be meaningful at all in the current year? Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, Adam. Tunisian plant utilization as we speak is below 30%. We expect this utilization to achieve, let's say 60%, more or less 60%, by the end of the year. Obviously, as I mentioned before, the Russian crisis has forced us to, on one side, accelerate transferring the production. Bear in mind that there is also the shortage of components, which is limiting us in this transition. We have to be very close to our customers. We agreed with our customers a move, so we made it very clear with our customers what we want to do.
Our plan for derisking the supply, Ukrainian supplier, and also to possibly take advantage of the situation by accelerating, and you know, being closer to our customers and being more transparent and taking decision with our customers together, you know, which risk we want to take to accelerate the move to Tunisia. We are more and more transparent with our customers in terms of plans for relocating to the Tunisian plant. The second question, the percentage of our offer compared to the bill of material of our customers is, in let's say on average. Obviously, as you know, we move from single components to integrated systems which can be also three or 4x more than the value of the single component.
The average, to answer your question, is between 10%-15% of the bill of material of our customer. I'm talking about obviously the heating side. Hydrogen metering plans, we are seeing more and more requests from not only the U.K. We know the U.K. is well advanced in terms of requests for hydrogen solutions.
We're also trying to open other doors, because we believe that from this point of view, also the recent Russian-Ukrainian crisis will accelerate certain trends, and we believe that the future will be composed, as I always say, and I always express my view, the future will be no longer only one solution, natural gas, you know, 35-kW boiler for every requirement. For sure, in the future, there will be natural gas. For sure, there will be hydrogen. For sure, there will be biomethane, and we all know that all our products are already fully compliant with biomethane. And for sure, there will be electric. And we will have.
We're working very hard to have a complete range of products on all these technologies: natural gas, hydrogen, biomethane, and also electric.
That's really helpful. Thanks.
Other questions? Emanuele.
Yes. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my questions. Just a few information about the gas metering. As first, I want to know if it is correct to affirm that you have some problems in margins, mainly in the gas metering, because the passthrough results to be more challenging in the last quarter, as I read in some of your interviews in the last month. About the gas metering, can you provide us some more details regarding your abroad strategic points, meaning, what do you expect from U.K. and India for the next year particularly? To conclude, if you can provide us with some more details regarding the last comment you did about Ukraine, about that 55.
25% you have from that provider and just to understand how does this account in your product range, your complete product range? How many of your product does include this specific you may have problem to achieve?
Okay. The first question is correct in the sense that your interpretation is right. Let's say generally speaking, all over 2021, the gas metering business, compared to the heating and also to the water metering business, had more difficulties in passing through cost increases. This is going to be less valid in 2022, where we expect to, once we start winning and approaching and winning new tenders, we will be able to win these tenders with more realistic prices.
With the second point about the U.K. and India, we continue to be positive on starting sales in the U.K. in particular and India this year. We mentioned hydrogen being one of the keys to winning business and tenders in the U.K. We're now working also through our U.K. subsidiary with potential new customers. I continue to be positive on starting sales in both countries this year. With regard to the third question, our supplier based in Ukraine is supplying products only in the heating division and in particular to one product range which represents the majority of those supplies.
Also, other Electronic boards, all of these are used in boilers. Some components are used on certain components for like fans, for example, and for boilers and other are used still in boilers but to perform a different function of the boiler. Heating Division and boilers and part of those boilers. As we said, we are managing the situation. Some of the customers of that supplier have also decided to remain and to continue to buy from this supplier, given the fact that it is really, as I said, 2 km or 3 km away from the border.
We consider the situation to be too risky, so we decided to move production. As I said, I see it also an opportunity to accelerate transfer of these boards from the supplier to our Tunisian plant. This has to go through a common agreement with our customers who need to be aware. Let's say, if before the crisis, they had longer times in terms of approving our products. Now they know that they need to be faster in approving and reapproving the new boards. Working with the customers, I think we can turn this risk also in a potential opportunity.
Thank you.
Giulio Antonello.
I hope you can hear. Just quickly, you mentioned Tunisia. I was just wondering at what... So we spoke a lot about your Tunisian investment. At what capacity are you now in Tunisia? You mean, how much? And what is this... Everybody's focusing on Ukraine, but the situation there, like nine months ago, got a little tense, I remember. If you can just update us then on the capacity operation of the plant now and the general environment there.
Yeah. As I said, the Tunisian utilization is in the 30% area, with a target of achieving 60% by the end of the year. We all know that the decision we have taken when we started the Tunisian plant is to limit and to manage geopolitical risk in Tunisia by having double sourcing. Everything that is produced in Tunisia can also be produced by either our different plants from the group or other suppliers. Situation in Tunisia is, let's say, stable. No problem in terms of availability of skilled people.
The government has put, as we know or as we have read, let's say more stability to the country, the new government, so we're quite confident about the stability in that area. As I said, despite that, we don't want to take any of that risk, so we have dual source strategy. Sometimes you will have to pay for this because obviously the cost advantages in Tunisia are significant compared to other plants of the group. Our strategy is to have, let's say possibly the ideal target is 80% in Tunisia, 20% from other plants of the group or different supplier.
Thank you.
Marco Cristofori.
Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on the result. A couple of questions, if I may. First of all, do you have an estimate, more or less, of the cost of transferring the production or to find new supplier from Ukraine to other country? Secondly, I saw that you were able to reduce strongly your working capital at the end of the year. Do you have any expectation if this level can be maintained also in 2022, or will increase slightly? The last thing, if I may, you reported, let's say, higher than average tax rate this year. What do you expect for 2022? Thank you.
I will take the first question, and I will leave to Paul the second and the third. Cost of transferring. There are some minor investments, which means to duplicate investments for testing agreements, which would have been required anyway. It just will happen faster than expected. If there are some additional costs in terms of relocating production to a higher cost country compared to Ukraine, it will be temporary. We're not planning to move on a stable basis any production to any higher cost country than Ukraine. If there will be cost reduction moving to Tunisia.
There will be some cost increases, moving to other plants, at a higher cost than Ukraine, but this will be temporary, a few months only, and this is being managed, and discussed and negotiated with the supplier. Paul, I leave you the second and third.
Yes. Thank you. Speaking of working capital, as I introduced my presentation, we are actually aiming to serve customers first thing. Our inventory might have an increase. We are seeing an increase in current trading. It is a procurement strategy to build the availability to serve the market. If you want to answer directly your question, I think it will increase. It will be more in line with that 15% that it was in net terms of net trade working capital that you saw at the end of 2020. The other question, tax rate, when you have the equity instruments that we have issued, the warrants, is always tricky to calculate. We have a big swing in numbers.
You know that the change in fair value of the warrant is not a tax-deductible item, and it is not a tax revenue. It gives a change to effective tax rate. If you adjust it, if we adjust our tax rate to the fair value accounting, it is in the line of 24%. As you know, the warrants will go in exercise, or they will end. The warrants will end in this year. I think we can target a 24% tax rate as a normalized and baseline for the future.
Thank you.
Any additional question? Emanuele.
Yeah, sorry, just a quick follow-up about what you told a bit before. About your CapEx plan, we are talking about some more investments to solve the Ukraine problem. What can we expect in terms of CapEx for the next two years, about what you can say, obviously?
You mentioned the Ukraine?
No, just in total, meaning, I mean, there may be some more investment from this problem and what you expect, overall.
Okay. We don't foresee at the moment, you know, additional CapEx related to the change in footprint. I mean, we want to build on our current underutilized capacity, as Federico highlighted. So, I would not say that I have additional CapEx at the moment, for that reason. In 2022, you know, we are in the middle of our new headquarters, so that is going steady. It's on time. We don't foresee any changes. So, I would say EUR 25 million for 2022. We still target that number. For 2023, there will be a carry forward of some numbers of the building, but we will go back to a normal level, I would say, in the EUR 18 million-EUR 20 million range.
Because at that stage, you know, with what we foresee now, that is our plan in the midterm.
Thanks.
Do you have additional questions? Okay. No. Thank you very much indeed for participating to this call. We are always available, of course, for any additional clarification or whatever, let's say, doubt you may have, either Paul or myself. Please call us or write to us. Thank you very much indeed for participating to this call. Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much. Thank you all.
Bye-bye. Thank you, everybody.
Bye for now.