Welcome to the 2023 full year preliminary results for Ferretti Group. Present today, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Alberto Galassi, and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Marco Zammarchi. The Q&A process will be explained once we reach that portion of the presentation. Mr. Galassi, the floor is yours.
Hi, everybody. Good morning, good afternoon. We are here in the new shipyard of Ancona, the just renewed, and I'm very pleased to give you what I consider were the best results in Ferretti Group history so far, because the best is still to come. So let's start from, giving you some highlights on the double-digit growth of the main KPIs of the company. So, on track, definitely on track to meet, the midterm targets that we gave, to the investors. The revenues of the group reached EUR 1.111 billion in 2023 versus EUR 996 million of 2022, with a growth of 11.5%. The, adjusted EBITDA grew of 20.9% to reach EUR 169 million from the previous year of EUR 140 million.
It's interesting to see that the guidance that we gave of growing in four years around 400 basis point is being not only met but beaten in 2023. So we grew from 14.1% to 15.2%, so 110 basis point. And the important numbers, because we want to have visibility and clarity from the future of the order backlog that reached nearly EUR 1.5 billion, so EUR 1.491 billion, with a growth of 15.1% versus 2022. Now, we ask external sources to give us a positioning of Ferretti Group, and where do we stand, where do our position versus the competitors. And the Global Order Book is one of the most reliable sources.
In the latest release, with a focus on high composite, so above 34 and the made-to-measure yachts, we still have a leading position with 15.8% of the market, 4.3% up versus 2019, 0.9% up versus 2022. This is not including superyachts. But if you go to the following page, we've been showing this since the Capital Market Day of 2023. We give you an update on the latest one, and it's confirmed that Ferretti Group is still positioned in number one place between 80-99 ft. So this is what we call the high end of composite yacht and on the made to measure. So, again, tracking not including the superyachts, we're still tracking number one.
But the good news is that we just received, and I would say a few days ago in the following slide, an interesting external source, which is the Superyacht Times research. It was released in February 2024, and it's... First of all, I like the use of word delivered. So the top five superyacht builders ranked by number of yachts, 30 m plus, delivered 2022, 2023, sees Ferretti Group leading globally with 36 yachts above 30 m delivered to the market versus 26 of 2022. And let me jump on this, saying that this is driven also by the manufacturing capacity.
I mean, the investments that some of you that are present with me today in Ancona, and I hope to invite and have one day a Capital Market Day in this shipyard, physically, you can touch that size in our industry matters. You need to have the space and industrial capacity in order to grow with the most profitable segment, which is the made-to-measure, the super yacht and the high composite. So this is the, we're compared with the other competitors, but it's interesting because it's the same source, Superyacht Times, splits the 36 deliveries in the brands.
So when we say, and we took the quote, the quote of them, of the, of the research says that within Ferretti Group, Custom Line delivered 14 yachts, closely followed by Riva with 11, Ferretti Yachts contributed with seven, Pershing with three, and Wally, the newcomer in the family, with one. When we say that one of the strength of Ferretti Group is to have seven brands, the seven notes on the pentagram, it's confirmed by the data and the, and, and the sales. Because the client that picked the Wally, bigger than 30 m, and was, by the way, a sailboat, if I'm not mistaken, and the Pershing, it's not the same client that buys a Ferretti Yacht or a Custom Line or a Riva.
So we are actually addressing an incredibly different customer base in terms of age, in terms of geography, in terms of taste, in terms of new passion or old passion for yachting. This, don't underestimate the importance of giving any kind of customer, the newcomers, especially in the new areas of the world, which are approaching us, and you will see by geography, some areas had an incredible growth in our customer base. They've been approached, and they liked the differences between the styles, the design, and the performances of our brands. So ordering intake of 2023 is a very healthy ordering intake. Why I use the word healthy? Because first of all, as you can see, we don't have seasonality.
Every quarter, as we kept saying, once you sell in 71 countries, at the end of the day, seasonality is shrinked and limited to the minimum because you don't have to wait for the summer in some areas, and you don't have to wait for the winter in some others. But the interesting point is the huge jump of the Q4 2022. 2022 last quarter gave us 106% growth in collection of orders. We collected EUR 245 million of new orders, versus the EUR 119 million of the previous year. This is driven by the fantastic season of the shows that we had in September and in October. This is driven by the fact that the new models, they were being well and extremely well received by the market.
Order intake by segment, we'd like to give you this as well. As you can see, usually, more or less, we are in line with the previous year. As you can see, the biggest chunk is driven by the composite yacht, the EUR 527 million, representing 47% of the order intake by segment. Of 50% of this number is given by the high end, above 80 ft yachts. Basically, I keep highlighting and saying, this is where the high marginality and the high profitability lays. So made to measure yachts and superyachts, they declined, but this is driven by obvious consideration. One, overperformance of the previous year. Secondly, time for the deliveries. The some of you that have been today in the shipyard of Ancona, you've seen the ships, all of them are sold.
And, once you have on superyacht, to make an example, the first available delivery in 2027, well, I can tell you that the decision to postpone the order, because three years from now is a long time frame, is a decision which should not surprise any of us. This is one of the reasons why in the shipyard of Ancona and in the shipyard of La Spezia, where we do the made-to-measure and superyachts, we will continue making investments. Order intake by geography. This is very interesting because we've been, we are seeing a surprise. We've seen that an area, is not surprising at all. The Americas, you've seen also our competitor, is not performing as the previous year, -25%, but then we have to give a highlight on the Americas.
But what is very interesting is that the Middle East, Africa region increased in an important number dramatically from 242 to 274 in the made-to-measure, and it's driven the 13.2% by the performances of the GCC countries, namely the Arabian Gulf, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, Saudi, which is not in the Gulf, but we consider in the same area, and Qatar, and important presence of Turkey. To give you a reference of United States, the reason why Stefano de Vivo is not with us today is because Stefano is coming back from Miami Boat Show that finished and completed—I think it ended yesterday.
He's stuck somewhere in the airports because, of course, connecting flights are not the best what we're famous for, at least not in this country. I can tell you that Stefano is bringing three sales coming from the boat show. So it's we are not worried at all about the U.S., but we'll deep dive in that. Order backlog and net backlog. Following slide says that the order backlog is breaking the sound barrier of nearly EUR 1.5 billion, so +15.1%, which gives us a clarity and a clear visibility on the future revenues. In 2023, we collected more or less EUR 1.12 billion of orders, and corresponding into units, interesting, 244 units.
In the same period, this company delivered 212 units. Don't underestimate the delivery of the ships. Please, have a focus on this in this industry. 2023, as you can see, versus 2022, there's been a growth of 14.3% in the net backlog, so we continue to grow healthy, healthily. I will give you an example. Marco will deep dive into that. We have to deliver for the season in Europe and Middle East, in our two regions, 150 boats, yachts, within this now and the end of the season. With the end of the season is going to be in the summer. So just imagine the kind of industrial effort, the kind of effort, the working capital this company is doing in order to meet expectation and to meet the order intake that we have.
Excuse me.
Sorry, Marco.
Go back, please. If I may, the coverage offered by our net backlog for 2024 result is 69%, so... It is the best result ever for our company. We have a very significant visibility on our revenue generation for the current year. Please.
The order backlog by segment, as you can see, we had the growth, we had the growth of 13.9% in composite yacht. And again, let me highlight it, that in this composite yacht segment, that the high-end composite exceeding 80 ft is the one that is booming the most. Made-to-measure yachts, plus 7.3%. superyachts, 0.8%. And the other businesses of the company are growing as well at 5.3%. So again, large composite and made-to-measure segment, they can be -- they continue to be the core of our-
Actually, I'm disconnected. I realize it just now. I hope somebody listened anyways. are the core of our industry and our business.
Revenues, Marco?
Yes. So moving to the revenues, as Mr. Galassi said, we increased by 11.5%. And what we want to highlight is that our company has now reached a very low seasonality level. In fact, you can appreciate in this slide how stable is the revenues generated by this company among every quarter. And if we go to the next slide, instead, we can analyze by segment, and we can appreciate three major point. First of all, the composite that is in line with our expectation and with order intake that we present before. Because, you know, according to the production cycle of this kind of boat, the relation between order and revenues is quite immediate.
Instead, for made-to-measure, we experience a slow growth, but in consideration of what we said before, that is the consequence of the waiting list, and the waiting list is derived by the lack of capacity that now, with investment that we'll talk later on about Ravenna, we suppose to have solved at least for the next three or four years. And then the two other comments about the superyacht, that is increasing by 23%, thanks to the contribution made by the flagship semi-serial models. So we practically, as we already shared with the markets, we are taking the advantages of the know-how generated by CRN applied to the brand, so to Pershing, to Custom Line, and to Riva, and this is contributing a lot, and this is just the start. The last point, instead, the 10.2% for the others. Among this figure is that Wally sailing is starting to contribute in a significant way to our revenue generation. This is just the beginning.
Just a question. I've been told by somebody on the line that, that sometimes the slide, and the, and the mics, and the sound is not perfect. So if-
Okay, we'll share it. Okay.
This microphone is not working?
Okay. Okay.
Just one. Apologies, this is, okay, good.
So if we move the analysis by geography instead. Okay, first of all, Europe is just a confirmation of the prior year result with an increase of 2.5%, but the big jump, but the big jump, as Mr. Galassi mentioned before, is represented by Middle East and Africa, and especially, is coming from GCC countries and Turkey, with an increase of 143%. And the same trend, significant better, is 37.2% from APAC, Asia-Pacific. Instead, AMAS decreased by 13.1%.
Before going to the following slide, we want also to highlight that, in this year, and, because the backlog goes in 2024, AMAS will benefit of the contribution of superyacht, because is, in the last two years, we have sold a significant number of units of superyacht in this area, and so it was able to compensate the slowdown in this market. So offering—we want also to offer the view of the AMAS market in the following slide, that, as we said, we had a decrease in 2023, representing 29% of our total sales. But again, if we compare with the prior year result of this company, is the second year ever of this company, because we were better of 2021.
In terms of percentage, we are significantly better off than the 2019 and 2020. So we are quite confident that this market, yes, on one hand has lowered down, but on the other hand, continues to generate a lot of revenues and a lot of profitability, because this market, we have to say, is quite profitable for us, being some sales that we operate in a direct way without any dealer. So, if we can move to profitability. In terms of profitability, as we said, we increased 110 basis points, reaching 15.2%, that represents a growth of nearly 21%.
And the same path, we appreciate in term of net profit, where this company reached EUR 84 million with an increase of 140 basis points, an increase of 38%. The rationale behind this increase is again provided by the brand power, the product mix, so the strategic position that see our company more and more focused on the most profitable segment, that it is high composite, high composite made to measure, and the semi-serial of superyacht, and also industrial scalability, so the very efficient fixed cost absorption continue to generate a lot of profitability, but not only on 2023, but we expect it continue to contribute in the following year.
CapEx. In terms of CapEx, this company has invested EUR 147 million in 2023. It's definitely a big jump versus prior year, but we want also to offer a breakdown of this figure, because 62% of this amount is represented by Ravenna. We have a specific slide on Ravenna later on, but we want just to tell you that this is representing an additional capacity of 30% of our company, that at the end of 2023 is has 96% full utilization of this place. On the other end, we want also to highlight that the maintenance CapEx is just EUR 23 million, in consideration that, because, our fleet now is younger and younger, and also the new shipyard that we completed in prior year, at the state of the art, we can also think that maintenance CapEx can be lower in this step. But as we said, we wanted to offer a good sight, a good a deep dive on Ravenna Shipyard, because they're representing a very important milestone in our growth plan.
Okay, thank you. The Ravenna Shipyard is the shipyard San Vitale we acquired in March, 70,000 sq m in the area. And in January 2024, fully paid in 2023, we acquired an additional area of 30,000. So total is 100,000 sq m . We will, as Marco said, increase the production capacity of 30%. And by the way, the shipyard, you can see the rendering of the how it will look like at the end, but it's already operational, because we are building actually, under construction, we have the Ferretti Infynito 90 , and also the new model. And the total investment in 2023 was EUR 77 million. So made-to-measure, composite, and sail segments of the Ferretti Group and Wally will be built there. It's an incredible site close to the headquarters of Forlì.
We can have the same manpower that we use in the other areas. It will help us to optimize some decisions that we have to take. Namely, we will today, we had the board, we are considering also what to do with Taranto, because the delays on the process are getting very, very long. It gives us flexibility in case we take a decision of a no-go. Important, for you to have a short video that will give you a status of where do we stand, what it was looking like, and you can see the boats inside. Thank you, Marco.
Yes. If we move to the following slide, we can talk about the net financial position, net working capital. The net financial position at the year-end, it was EUR 281 million. In, this, net financial position, that is decrease, represented a decrease of nearly EUR 80 million versus prior year. We have to include that this company has distributed dividend for EUR 20 million, paid taxes for EUR 12 million, and you have seen the EUR 147 million of CapEx, of which 77 related to Ravenna.
Another point, another comment about the net working capital that we consider quite healthy, being still negative, is that we temporarily decrease it to -2.7 in order to be ready in a satisfactory way for the next season deliveries in Europe and EMEA, that we foreseen more than 150 units. So we wanted to be ready for this season, so we take the benefit later on. So if we can move to the business highlights?
Yes. Business highlights. What have we done in the market with the products? So we splashed 11 new products this year, not 11 boats, 11 new models. Seven of them was range expansion, so models that we never had with the brand before. We did the 82 Riva, the Infynito 90, I'm just mentioning the range expansion, the Pershing Sport Utility Yacht, the GTX116, and then the wallywhy150 . Interesting also, the full custom. We splashed and delivered the 72-m motor yacht with the call sign 139 CRN, as you can see, and also the Wally 101, full custom sailboat. The others were range update. Well, what's going to happen in 2024 is as challenging as 2023.
Because in 2024, we have splashed already two, but this is what's gonna happen. You can see new models, the El-Iseo, the first model of the range, E-Luxury of Riva, has been presented in Düsseldorf Boat Show. We will have in the water the 67 m, the CRN 143, wallypower50, wallyrocket51 for competition like the Ferrari Competizione or Corse Clienti equivalent for the Wally owners. The wallywind110 sailboat, the GTX, which is the entry level of the sport utility yacht, Pershing GTX. Brand-new Navetta 38, some of you maybe saw it when she was docking today, the prototype. She will be presented very soon, and the very important Custom Line 50, hull number one has been sold to South America.
Now, what we've done in Venice in December, we presented the wally 100. The wally 100 is, the entry-level model of the why series. We presented in an incredible event that we had, with the charity with Sir Elton John at Teatro La Fenice, and it was incredible to see docked in front of Punta della Dogana in Venezia, in the beautiful sunny day of December, the wally 100, that, by the way, has been sold immediately. And, very important, Venice will be also the, the location for the launch of the Custom Line Navetta 38, hull number 1. This is the prototype, which is currently under testing. And, she will start, and she will be the leading edge and the cutting edge of the new Navetta range for the future.
Incredibly well received by the market, with so many technical solutions and features that I can't show you now, but you'll be very surprised when you'll see it in two months from now. Very important step, because people talk, and there are doers and people that talk. We did the El-Iseo. We used the best brands we have in the world, which is Riva. There's no comparison in terms of history and heritage and fame and allure, and we decided to go electric with the El-Iseo. The prototype has been tested for more than one year. Some of you may have seen it. Now, the final version is being presented in Düsseldorf, in the month of January. Very well received by the market, especially Swiss market, Austrian market, and believe it or not, Saudi market.
Next to me on the left, finally, back from an interesting from being a mother, we have Margherita Sacerdoti. She's not only our Investor Relations, but she's also in charge of sustainability, and she will talk a bit about what we are doing. Thank you, Margherita. Welcome back.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Just a quick overview of our sustainable solutions on our yachts. So you can see here a list. Four out of five solutions described here are being already installed on our products. The first one is in the Infynito line, the first of the Infynito line. It's a mix of solar panels, sustainable materials, and this is already a product that anyone can buy. We have the hyper propulsion system that is already being sold on one of our CRN yachts that is able to optimize the extra load from the main engines, the heat recovery system that is able to capture extra energy and transform it into thermal energy, heat waters, pool, and main cleaning system.
And finally, we have an offer of solvent-free resins that can be used on our ships. We also have the architecture ready for fuel cell system whenever someone will ask for and when the market will be ready to offer green methanol in harbor to be loaded on the yacht. So this has not been sold yet, but it's ready for whenever the right time comes, and it's been certified by RINA already. I'll give the word back to Mr. Galassi for our social responsibility part.
I would love to share the microphone. Companies, the best secret of this company... Actually, we have five secrets: people, people, people, people, and people. The best secret of Ferretti Group is people, and we do believe that it's mandatory to invest in people. The Scuola dei Mestieri is an Italian way of describing, it comes from, well, sounds a bit like renaissance. We wish to be like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci. We're not definitely that good as the maestri, but the Scuola dei Mestieri is a project for, from 18 years old to 29 years old, students, or anyone that wants to start to have a career in high-end of Italian luxury. We believe that our artisans are unbeatable, our workers are excellent, and so you basically train them and teach them on the Saper fare Italiano.
It's very hard to translate Saper fare Italiano, the well doing, Italian well, well doing, between on-job training and classrooms. The first edition, we've done it in Forlì, and we launched it in the Mondolfo, the Pershing site and Sarnico site, where we do the Riva, up to the size of 18 m. We kicked off the second edition in Forlì. Why I want to spend some time in this? Because we are preparing the people that will actually work in Ravenna shipyard. And believe it or not, of all the students and kids that compared to me, I am a dinosaur compared to them that are joining, that are willing to learn driven by something that you cannot live without in this industry, which is passion. You can't do my job if you don't have a passion for this.
Well, if you see the way they learn, how quick they implement the technical solutions that the, the expert and artisans or engineers or tech are telling them to do, and the, the fallout in the manufacturing line, it's the best investment that the group could have done. By the way, because that's investment for the future. It's something that you will actually harvest in few years, but you have your own people, trained by you, working on very expensive, very delicate, very sophisticated machines. It's not only style, there's a lot of technology.
And, again, I hate to say that was a maestro of the maestro was Enzo Ferrari, but the first one who did the school for Dino Ferrari, school in Maranello, to train young mechanics to join the factory, it's been him. He was absolutely right, because you actually train your own people with the same passion and the same blood for the products that we do. Sorry if it took longer than expected, but I thought it was very important.
About the final remarks, we wanted to share with the community our annual guidance. It's the first time for us, and we also take the occasion to confirm the mid-term guidance. In terms of annual guidance, we believe that our company, also thanks to our product portfolio, order backlog, the net backlog is covering 69% of our revenues. We foresee revenues between EUR 1.22 billion and EUR 1.24 billion, representative of growth between 10% and 11.6%. And in terms of EBITDA, the result should be between EUR 95 million and EUR 105 million, with a growth of between 15.2% and 18.2%.
And as a consequence, the EBITDA margin will be increased slightly below 100 basis points. So we will foresee something between 16% and 16.1%. As I said, the mid-term guidance at the moment is confirmed, but we don't exclude reviewing this guidance with half year result. So Mr. Galassi, I think-
There is one important decision that the board of directors took today. The board of directors declared and resolved, actually, on the implementation of a buyback plan, with, of course, the normal purposes of a buyback program. And I received mandate to prepare the buyback plan to be submitted to the next board of directors in its executional form by March 14th, and it will go to the shareholders' meeting approval by April 22nd, 2022. Now, the elements of the buyback plan are driven by everything which is written there, plus something that I will say on top of it. Number one is the rules are maximum amount of shares, 10% of the company ordinary shares.
The financial commitment to repurchase the shares will be equal to market price, not exceeding 105% of the average closing market price of the 5 days preceding the relevant purchase. The purchase of the shares, as you know, we are listed both markets, Hong Kong and Milan, will take place on both markets. The maximum duration of the buyback program will be of 12 months from the shareholders' meeting approval. Now, what I want to add on top of this bullet points is that we will start immediately, and we made some calculations today. If you see the average volume of Ferretti Group, the shares trading recently is around 1 million. Today, I think it's 1.5 million now, lost somewhere.
It's very easy to calculate that by the end of the year, we will be able to buy up to EUR 50 million. So technically, the driver of this is that we have an excess of liquidity, and we don't see any better investment than buying our shares. I think we are one of the best-kept secrets in the stock market today. I think that the numbers that we are, in terms of execution, constantly providing to the market, are not only real, but are actually... The delivery has been there since 2014, and we don't understand, it goes beyond my comprehension, I'm not probably very smart, but we believe that buying our own shares today is the best investment that the company can do, better than using shares to buy somebody else at different valuations.
We are at a very reasonably low valuation compared to the performances, the backlog, the fact that we do not sell to the dealers. Something that I would like to highlight, our backlog is healthy. We don't sell, we don't stock. We sell to the end user, to the end customer. So we don't see, and the board, and the shareholders, they don't understand that they don't see a better investment to buy our own shares, given the current market valuation. So we will try to buy as quick as possible and buy as much as possible. Volumes is going to be most likely the only limitation that we have in order to make it quick and to make it now. Sorry for the beginning of the presentation with the mic that was off. If we've got lost in, you missed something, I'm here to repeat with Marco, or now is ready, we are ready for Q&A.
Thank you, Mr. Galassi. We've reached the Q&A portion of this presentation. We will commence with questions from the audience in the room, followed with written questions from the web stream, and lastly, questions from the audio conference. For the audience in the room, kindly wait for the microphone to be handed to you before asking a question... The attendees joining the audio conference are reminded to press star five on the telephone keypad to ask questions, and questions will be allowed in the order in which they are received. We'll now commence with the room. Thank you.
Hey, good afternoon. Adrien de Saint Hilaire from Bank of America Securities. Thank you very much for hosting today. So I have three questions for you, if that's okay. The first one, I was wondering if you could please comment a bit more on what you see in terms of consumer outlook in the different regions, particularly in Americas and in Asia-Pacific, following the numbers you released today. The second question would be in terms of the share of new versus returning customers. You gave those numbers when you did your Capital Market Day this year, and was wondering if you could update us on them, if it had changed or if it was still the same trend. And my last question will be on the EBITDA margin.
So of course, we still have the same midterm guidance of 18.5% adjusted EBITDA margin. This year it was plus 110 basis points to 15.2%, and next year you have guided to 80-90 basis points of improvement of the margin. Could you please walk us through a different kind of stepping stones to get to these 80-90 basis points? And in the coming years, do you still see the same level of improvement of margins? Thank you very much.
Okay, let me start. I think we if you can display, there's an annex, I think page 39. If you can display this page, it gives you an idea of the customer base that continues to grow globally. Okay, let's go. First of all, let's go generally. There's a very limited penetration of our industry into the wealthy community. This one tells you basically that, the Americas will always play the leading role. Europe and Middle East, very important, and Asia-Pacific as well. Very interesting point in the following slide in the annexes, before getting into the detail of the Americas, this is interesting. There's enormous growth potential. There's a market that is still totally under-penetrated.
Even if there's been an expansion in supply in recent years, because all the shipyards that are, went well, there's still a huge room to align with the growth rate of the addressable customer base. If you see the number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals and the penetration rate, it is basically nothing. We're talking about 1.5%. So, the potential is still there for many, many, many years to come. On the United States, interesting, if you make a combination of interest rate going up, even if we don't have a lot of financing, actually, Ferretti Group, the clients, they don't go with financing. But if you go with the election date, if you go on what's ever been going on in America, and generally speaking, you've seen that the last quarter has been a little bit of a slowdown.
But Stefano de Vivo, which maybe could be also on the line, is back from Miami Boat Show. And we've seen in Miami, inquiries, customers, and contracts. Three boats has been sold in the Miami Boat Show, Pershing 6X, Pershing 7X, not by chance, Pershing is number one brand in the United States, and Ferretti 720. So if you consider that in four, five days of a boat show, we had three contracts signed, it tells you that we have no expectation not to meet the budget numbers of the United States and Americas in general. To make another example, I showed you the Navetta 50 m, the ship that we deliver, that will be delivered in this year. That boat goes to Mexico.
So Americas inclines and includes the super huge potential of South America. Interesting question on how is the revolving, the repeating, non-repeating. Repeating clients are always our, in my opinion, is the backbone of our company. And repeating clients switching from one brand to the other is the, the secret of our success. You have many clients that keep one boat and switch from A to B, or they decide, and I can make an example of one of the most important shareholders that we have in the company, if not the second largest shareholder of this company, which is actually switching from a Riva to a, a, a, a, a Wally compete, a bigger sailboat, and keeping a Wally as a tender. So this is absolutely the strength of this company.
The percentage-wise, whether it's higher or lower on the Capital Market Day, I think in the quarter we'll be able to provide you the latest number. But at the end of the day, the body language of the CEO and the smile on the face of CEO tells you also some more thing, one more thing. When we highlighted 143% more sales in the area of the Gulf and Turkey, namely Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, this young generation of owners is going to be, in my opinion, one of the best assets of this company. So what is changing in this industry are two key elements: Duration of the stay on board. They spend more and more and more time on board, everywhere, because of the connectivity.
You can actually work from abroad too, the fact that the young comers are entering into this business with a huge financial potential for growing, changing, upgrading, or having even more than one model. This is a strong signal that you have to read from there. This is not third time, third generation of people owning a yacht. They just came to this market, and for us, it's a very strategic market. The Gulf is very important. Sorry, Marco, on the EBITDA. Yeah, now we have your own mic.
Yeah, CapEx.
CapEx.
Question on CapEx on the microphone. In terms of, in terms of EBITDA, as we said, this year will increase by 110 basis points, in line with our mid-term guidance. The rationale is again the pricing power, product mix, and economy of scale, or better, fixed cost absorption. And in the guidance that we provide for 2024, we believe that these are the three elements that will continue to play the important role. But if I had to choose, the best one is the fixed cost absorption, because we are continuing to grow without increasing in a significant way, or better, increasing it in a very light way, the fixed cost. So that's the reason behind it, this margin increase.
And we believe also in the mid-term that now is one year shorter, the 18.5 is still in our target. And, as we said in our mid-term target, we are not taking into consideration in this result some M&A upside, especially from side businesses or ancillary business that we are looking forward to announce, most likely this year.
Niccolò Storer, Kepler Cheuvreux. Two questions. The first one on cash flow. What should we expect in 2024 as a cash flow guidance, considering that probably in 2023, you had greater absorption from both CapEx and working capital? Clearly excluding any buyback and possible M&A. And the second one is on Taranto. You deliver some bitter remarks on Taranto, while over the past weeks we have read in the press that maybe the contamination works could start soon. So what's the state of the art on Taranto? Thank you.
Okay, first, about the cash flow, for 2024, we don't provide a guidance at the moment, but we don't exclude to do it in occasion of the next quarterly result. We could say that, in terms of CapEx, we believe that 2024 will be slightly less than 2023, in consideration that, we'll have to close, I mean, the deal, the investment in Ravenna, and then we have some other expansion of two shipyards, one Ancona and La Spezia.
But I wanted to take the occasion to tell you even more, because, having finished this CapEx cycle, we don't see in our business plan from 2025 onwards, a total CapEx exceeding EUR 50 million per year. Because, at this point, after this 2024, we don't believe to have a significant part of CapEx. So in other words, maintenance will be in the range of 2% and expansion less than 3%-4% for 2025 onward. And, in terms of cash flow, 2024, from this year, unfortunately, we have to, unfortunately, I mean, we should start to pay more taxes versus prior year, because we start consuming our deferred tax asset. We do confirm, most likely in the occasion of our next board meeting, that we'll distribute 40% of the 2023 dividends, so that will have a significant effect in our cash.
On Taranto, I was not bitter. It's just facts. We started the process in 2020, and we are in 2024. And, despite, to be honest with you, Regione Puglia did an incredible job, despite the Port Authority of Taranto did an incredible job, l'Autorità portuale, we still are waiting for the, I would say, come avete chiamata, bonifica? The contamination of the areas, starting with a bid, in order to see who's the winner that will start doing the first step of the process. The better usage of money is the driver. To be honest with you, Ravenna 100,000 sq m is an opportunity that gave us, frees us some space elsewhere.
Other opportunities are coming up in the market, and an industry like Ferretti Group, with the speed of growth that we have, cannot be in a limbo forever. So the board today, this morning, asked for an update, and we will see in the next resolution that will take place in mid-February. But, to be honest, I have some concerns, and and maybe we have, given by this potential growth, that we acquired some other opportunities, we can't wait additional two years before starting the production there. Two, maybe two and a half.
Emanuele Gallazzi from Equita. Just two quick question. The first one is still, let's say, a follow-up on the net financial position for 2024. Just would like to understand if you expect, the net working capital on sales to stay between 0% and -5%. And the second one is, on the capital allocation, given this buyback plan, should we have to exclude any short-term M&A, or it's still something that you are, looking at?
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for the question. The effect on the working capital, we do confirm to stay in the range and 0%-5%. Honestly, we expect it to be closer to -5% once we close the delivery season of this year, but also in consideration of some trend that we see in the supply chain. Because up to 2023, we were forced to secure a lot of deliveries from the supply chain when talking about engine and generator with some deposit, because the supply chain was really under stress. Now, we don't see any more distress, so that's the reason why we don't have to pay some deposit. And so that's the rationale behind our expectation to be closer to minus five than closer to zero. But for sure, we are negative. In terms of capital allocation, on top of the buyback program that we mentioned before, we don't exclude M&A.
On the contrary.
On the contrary. Recently, we finalized last week the short list, and we sent last week some offer to potential target. And, hopefully we'd like to announce something to the market in the next month.
This company has too much gunpowder not to use it, and the opportunities are coming up quicker than we expected.
Do we have any further questions from the floor? Nope. We'll now commence questions from the audio conference. Our first question is from Giuseppe Grimaldi from BNP Paribas. Giuseppe, the floor is yours.
Good afternoon, everybody, and congratulations for the results you announced today. My first question relates to the order entry, if you can give us an update of what is happening right now on the market. And on top of that, it will be very helpful if you can share with us what you have assumes, assumed in term of order entry in your sales guidance. I mean, if we should look at 2024, you sit on a very solid backlog, you have lots of visibility. How we should read this year in terms of order entry, what we're—what I'm basically asking is, do you see any sort of decline in order backlog, in a sense that you have lower order entry compared to last year, because you have capacity constraint at the moment? So it will be very helpful if you can share your thoughts around that.
I think also-
Good afternoon.
We have Stefano de Vivo on the line, right?
I don't know.
Yes. Can you hear me?
If you speak loud. Sì, Stefano, Chief Commercial Officer.
Yes. So good afternoon to everybody. Sorry, I can't be here in person. I'm just sitting outside Bologna Airport, thanks to Swiss Airlines. But, to answer your question, our backlog for this year, the order intake that we are expecting, is to be slightly less than 2023, simply because of capacity constraints. From what Mr. Galassi already told you earlier, we're seeing still a very strong Middle East and Africa market, and also European market. America, that was the market that had slowed down considerably at the end of 2023, in the last quarter. Coming back from Miami right now, I can tell you that the wind is changing again, and that sales are going up again. We are also talking to our competitors. We've seen good traffic as well during the show.
And when I talk about sales during the show, for us, it's contract signed and deposit received. So we have many more things out there, and we think that they will start becoming good fruits. As far as the Asia-Pacific, Asia-Pacific slowed down at the end of 2023. Really, it's a smaller market, smaller percentage, but we are seeing again a pickup. We have Thai Phuket Boat Show at the beginning of January. We had some sales. We had sales also in New Zealand. The strategy of really pushing all of the countries and expanding to all of the countries in Asia-Pacific is paying off, because if one country goes down slightly, the others are picking up. So our outlook is to collect more or less the same orders as we did in 2023 due to capacity.
Thanks. Very, very, very clear. A quick follow-up if I may, in terms of growth speed, what we shall expect from a product perspective, I mean, by segment. If you look at 2024, what do you expect in terms of growth by composite yacht and made-to-measure? So should we expect composite to keep growing in terms of share based on the capacity constraint that you're having at the moment in the made-to-measure and superyacht?
If I may take this part of the question, we are gonna see made-to-measure growing a little bit more because this year we have, Mr. Galassi already showed you Navetta 38, and we have another couple of projects that we are announcing later in the year that you still don't know about, which are in the made-to-measure segment. Therefore, as order backlog will probably increase slightly compared to this year in made-to-measure. Composites will stay strong simply because we are launching yachts between 80 ft and 100 ft, which for us are as profitable as the ones made-to-measure. Therefore, they will stay strong. Also, I think here you'll see the superyacht division that right now is capped with deliveries, for summer 2027.
I think you will see that, by the end of the year, we'll start getting an increase in sales also on that due to the fact that, summer 2027 is gonna be closer when you're talking at the end of 2024 for summer 2027. And we have the Riva 54. That is a great success, already two units sold, and we have many clients who are discussing unit number three and four. They're only slowed down by the long wait.
Thanks a lot for the clarification. Very helpful.
Thank you very much. Would be from Wendy Gao from CICC. Wendy, the floor is yours.
Thanks for taking my questions and on your robust earnings. I just had one question about the competitive landscape. It's not been asked. As we are the market leader and gaining market share year by year, how should we think of the concentration of industry, and what is ideal market share you'd like to achieve in the mid or long term? Thank you.
As I replied before to one of your colleagues, which is sitting here, there is the penetration of our industry. If you have a look at page 40, this is 40. Next one. There is a huge potential for, there's a huge potential for growth. I mean, how do you see the landscape? The landscape is definitely a landscape which is gonna be filled with people selling discounts instead of selling boats.
Because if you don't have the brand, if you don't have the positioning, if you don't have the style, if you don't have an industry back and you have some people, small shipyards, all the newcomers, all the zombie companies that came back to the market driven by the booming of yachting in the past 5, 6, 7 years, they will face the reality, and the reality is not easy. But if you have brands and a company and your sales network, and you don't sell to the dealers that will make a lot of stock, which actually is not considered even a sale in our industry, in our company, well, the potential is huge.
If you see that the potential of growth, if you're just penetrating the ultra high net worth individuals at 1.5%, I mean, what is the limit? The limit is gonna be driven by capacity. The limit is gonna be driven by the fact that you cannot feel, you cannot grow without a stop. Actually, we gave the guidance. Without M&A, this company, if we go back to the guidance slide, Marco, in the next two, three years, is definitely gonna go very, very, very well and very, very high. But again, don't underestimate the M&A potential, because as I said before, zombie companies, people that thought that this life was easy, and I love Coldplay because a friend of is playing in the band.
He always reminds me, "Alberto, nobody said it was easy." As taken by the lyrics of the song The Scientist. It's not easy. You have to compete, you have to invest, you have to be there, you have to have the best designers, best engineers, and the best sales network. So I'm very optimistic, to be honest with you, because we've been facing one pandemic and two wars in Europe. I mean, what else? And these are the numbers.
If I may add, Mr. Galassi, when we—if we're talking also about the market, we are seeing a very healthy trend. If we look at our market share, but also the market share of the top five players, from 80 ft to 165 ft in fiberglass or carbon fiber, you can see that the percentage of market share of the top five players have been solidly increasing every year, which means that the barriers to entry to this market have been raised, as we have always said, that we really need to raise these barriers to entry so that we can all profit more and not have small players that are selling products with our brand and with a low level. So, this is a very important data. If you check actually above 30 m, so above 100 ft, you can see that the top four players, because one of the players has divested, we actually have nearly 70% of the market with four players. So it's, we're gonna gain and take advantage of the whole growth of the market directly just for top four players.
Thank you.
Mr. Galassi, we seem to have no further questions from the audio conference, and we've reached the end of the hour. So if you agree, we might end the presentation.
Thank you very much, and we'll see you shortly. Stay tuned, and we think, we invest here, you should as well. Buona giornata.