Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Prosegur Cash full- year 2022 results presentation conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Miguel Bandrés, Head of IR. Please go ahead, Miguel.
Good morning to everyone. Thank you indeed for connecting to today's call. I'd like to welcome you to our 2022 Q4 results review that will be led by our CEO, José Antonio Lasanta, Javier Hergueta, our CFO, and myself. The presentation will last around 30 minutes, in which we'll review the main events that have taken place in the quarter and in the year, as well as the actions that are behind our performance. We will as well revisit our performance by region, our main financials, and we'll update on our ESG strategy. After the presentation, we'll hold a Q&A session to address all the questions you might have. Should we not get to respond all points today, we'll be pleased to answer those remaining on an individual basis.
I again wish to thank you all for your attendance and remind you that this presentation has been pre-recorded and is available via webcast on our corporate webpage that you can find at www.prosegurcash.com. Before letting the floor to José Antonio, let me highlight some news regarding cash that have lately appeared in the media. They range from the problems generated in Colombia by a collapse in key banking platforms to the rise of cash spending in the U.K., the decline of bank card payments in the U.S., or the rise of the preference for cash in Spain. In the first news, which you can read on the upper left-hand part of the page, we refer to the collapse of banking platforms in Colombia on December first. That happens to be payday in the country.
On that day, several banking platforms broke and stopped working, provoking hundreds of thousands of Colombians to be unable to withdraw money from their ATMs, use their cards for their daily expenses in supermarkets, restaurants or gas stations, or preventing them from performing operations in the bank branches or through their banking applications. This event once again highlights how important it is not to rely on electronic methods that can hamper economic activity due to technical reasons, as well as the relevance of having an alternative and reliable method always available, as is the case of cash. In the second piece of news, we move to the U.S., where Payments Dive highlights the effect that economic headwinds are having on consumers. That is reflected in the deceleration of bank card volumes by around 4%, showing how, under adverse economic conditions, consumers leave electronic payments on the side.
This links to some news we've shared in prior quarter result reviews, where we highlighted how consumers shift towards cash to better manage their domestic budgets. The third news taking from Onda Cero, a major Spanish radio broadcaster, cites a survey led by social research consultancy GAD3, where it highlights that cash has gained preference amongst the population. In fact, 46% of Spaniards prefer cash over any other method of payment, implying a very significant 5% increase over the ones seen one year ago. It's interesting to see that despite living in a digital era, global shocks such as pandemics or high inflationary environments drive an increase in people's preference for cash. Lastly, we can read on The Daily Telegraph that cash spending has risen in the U.K. for the first time in more than a decade.
As we have seen as well in the above U.S. related news, U.K. households are avoiding bank cards and turning to physical cash to better manage their finances. This again highlights the importance of cash to best handle domestic budgets, especially in the wake of economic turmoil. After this brief news update, I will share today's agenda. First, José Antonio will review the highlights for the period. I'll then reflect on the key aspects of our performance by region. Javier will review the main financials for the year. Lastly, José Antonio will first do an update on our ESG strategy, and to finalize, he will review the key takeaways before opening the Q&A session. This being said, José Antonio, please share with us your view on this period's key highlights.
Thank you, Miguel. Good morning to everyone. It is a pleasure for me to share with everyone the final result of a phenomenal year in which we've been able to clearly show how capable we are of delivering upon our strategy. Delivery, I would say, is the cornerstone of 2022. In a nutshell, I would summarize that this year has been a year in which, loyal to our strategy, we have both performed in terms of growth, profitability, and cash flow generation while we have transformed in terms of new sales penetration, as our plan stated. If we first turn to the top line, we'll see that our sales have grown on a full- year basis by 23.3%, reaching EUR 1,872 million.
Especially remarkable is the fact that our organic growth raised by 28.4%, giving an idea of how solid the fundamentals of our business are. On a standalone basis, I want to remark the performance of the fourth quarter, which has grown by a very healthy 32.4% in organic terms, despite being affected by foreign exchange that drives overall growth to 4.2%. Dimension quarterly organic growth results in the highest ever and record growth for a last quarter, and as well closes a remarkable set of seven periods growing quarter after quarter, both in organic and local terms. Next, if we look at the growth of new products in 2022, they have climbed by an outstanding 47.5% in the year, reaching 25.6% of total sales.
This implies an increased penetration of 420 basis points. This is particularly important for us if we take into account that only five years ago, this product family was virtually non-existent. Now it accounts for one out of every four EUR we sell. This reflects a very transformed and poised for growth company. I would like to highlight here the welcoming of the foreign exchange business into our product offering. Next, very important to the perform portion of our study, I want to highlight the results of our continuous strive to improve the profitability of our platform. It has enabled us to increase our EBITDA margin by 26.8% in the year, reaching 13.9% of total sales. If we look at the quarter standalone, this improvement is even more remarkable, having reached 14.3% of sales.
That is within the target we set ourselves for 2023 in our 2021 Capital Markets Day. It is as well noteworthy that we have improved our relative profitability quarter after quarter in this year, 2022. As well, when compared to last year on a like for like basis, the improvement of relative profitability reaches 170 basis points. Continuing with the delivery of our performance strategy, cash flow continued to be an absolute priority for our management. Despite financing the substantial 28.4% organic growth of our business, as we highlighted earlier, our constant discipline and focus on cash has enabled us to generate EUR 148 million of Free Cash Flow in the year, EUR 40 million of those in the last quarter.
This strict approach to cash flow generation has allow us to further lower our leverage to 2x EBITDA, well below the 2.2x we reported one year ago, after having continued to invest in our company to best prepare it for the future. Very important for us, with regards to our continuous commitment to ESG, and besides other initiatives we will later review on this front, we have been able to offset 38,000 tons of CO2 equivalent, making our environment a better one to live in. In page 5, we can see the development of sales in terms of local growth and margins that have anticipated by one year our Capital Markets Day target set for 2023. We can see that local growth has reached an impressive 33.6% versus the prior year.
This growth has been the result of a combination of both a favorable environment for our business, with generally increased inflations in all geographies, together with a targeted and sharp commercial strategy. We foresee that the environment in which we conduct business will continue to be positive for us in coming quarters, since inflation, we believe, will remain at considerable levels. When we look at local growth by region, the health of this growth is present across all regions, with both Europe and Asia-Pacific growing well above 20%, and LATAM almost reaching twice that growth. This shows that everyone is contributing strongly to the growth of our underlying business. It is as well worth noting that the comeback of cash has continued quarter after quarter, showing the resilience it has as a mean of payment trusted by consumers across the world.
Turning now to profitability margins, we can see that underlying EBITDA has climbed year-on-year by 40.7%, showing how effectively we've been able to absorb the increase in volumes, improve margins by 170 basis points. The efforts made company-wide on the efficiency side have enabled reaching such a result. It is as well important to underline that despite costs having increased in an inflationary environment, we have not only worked on efficiency in operating terms, but as well, we have been able to effectively pass on cost increases to our customer base.
As well, as I stated earlier, I want to underline the consistency of our profitability improvement on relative terms quarter after quarter throughout 2022. Going now to page 6, I'm very proud to share with you the continuous acceleration of our transformation strategy that has as well reached our Capital Markets Day target one year in advance. The growth of new products reached 47.5% in the year. If we now exclude the divestments materialized in early 2021, that growth reaches 55%. Such a growth takes the overall revenue for this category to EUR 480 million, the highest ever, accounting for 25.6% of total sales. If we look at the quarter on a standalone basis, we have reached EUR 130 million sales of new products in the period, a figure that we are particularly fond of.
Not to say that in relative terms, our quarterly transformation ratio reached 28.7% of total sales. As I said earlier, the goal we set ourselves in the 2021 Capital Markets Day was reaching 25% of growth initiatives over total sales for 2023, we so anticipated to 2022. Overall, in the year, new product penetration has improved by 420 basis points, by 500 basis points should we exclude the investments. Our best improvement ever. I would like as well to highlight that all regions, as we will see later on individually, have contributed very positively to the increase of new product penetration. A special mention is to be made to the particularly good performance of our solution Cash Today, CORBAN or Forex, showing all of them that our customers are receiving them in a very warm manner.
In this front, I'm going to highlight the extraordinary performance of foreign exchange, the latest solution that has joined our new product portfolio made in Europe. This is a solution we have been pursuing for quite some time that we finally were able to incorporate to our family, as you know earlier in Q3. As well, I would like to remember the acquisition of Facilito this year, which significantly strengthens our CORBAN offering in Latam. We are confident the best in the transformation front is still to come, and all of the solutions have still a lot to say. With this review, I hand it over to Miguel so he can share our development on a regional basis.
Thank you very much, José Antonio. I would like to start with our main region, Latin America, which accounts for 66% of the company's total revenue. It's important to underline that in 2022, organic growth here reached 35%, showing how important cash is for this country's economies. Total sales climbed up to EUR 1,236 million for the full- year, implying a 22% overall growth versus 2021. It is well important to underline that we have suffered an unfavorable exchange impact that has increased towards the end of the year. We're confident that the inflationary environment in which we have developed our activity this year will catch up with the devaluation in coming quarters.
The acquisition front added 3.5% to total sales and as well helped improve the transformation of the region, where new product sales increased by 44% and reached EUR 344 million in the year, increasing its penetration by 420 basis points to 27.8% of total sales. In terms of profitability, we reached an EBITDA of EUR 252 million, implying profitability in relative terms of 20.4% of sales, this being the best one in the last three years. If we now look at Europe, sales in the region have grown by 25%, accounting organic growth for 13.8%. This clearly shows the cash has continued to come back at a very healthy rate in the region where inflationary trends clearly favor our business.
Inorganic growth accounts for an additional 10.9% growth and combines a good mix of both strategic acquisitions in Eastern Germany to strengthen our footprint, together with the transformational incorporation of The Change Group to the Prosegur Cash family. Total sales in the full- year reached EUR 499 million, almost half a billion and close to 219 levels. When looking at the quarter, revenue reached EUR 139 million, the second highest ever. If we look at the second graph in the page, we can see how transformation has phenomenally advanced with sales of new products climbing by 57% to reach EUR 106 million in the closing 12 months. The penetration of new products over total sales has increased like for like by an astounding 780 basis points.
In terms of profitability, we can see as well a very favorable evolution of the underlying EBITDA that has improved by EUR 13 million, reaching EUR 15 million in the year and representing 3% of sales. Turning lastly to the Asia-Pacific region, that represents 7% of total sales, we've seen a very positive organic growth of 20.8% year-on-year. This growth consolidates a consistent trend of quarter-on-quarter improvements. Total sales have improved by 25%, reaching EUR 137 million, with foreign exchange having a positive impact in the region of 4% for the total year.
It is very important to underline the fantastic improvement that new products have experienced in the region, have increased by 54% and reaching an absolute figure of EUR 30 million and a penetration over total sales of 21.9%. A very significant jump of 400 basis points when compared to one year ago. Another aspect to highlight when looking at the last graph regards to profitability. In this front, we've achieved a very significant loss reduction of 49.8%, with losses for the entire year totaling EUR 7 million. That compare very positively to 2021's EUR 15 million loss. This implies a very relevant improvement in margin over total sales of 800 basis points in the closing year, and a good proof of the progress experienced in the activity levels and the major efficiency measures taken when managing the region.
With this, I conclude a review of our regional performance, and I hand it over to Javier so he can share our key financials with you.
Thank you, Miguel. I would like to start with our profit and loss statement. Looking at the revenue line, we can see that we've reached sales of EUR 1,872 million for the full- year 2022, which means a 23.3% improvement over that line one year ago. I would like to draw your attention to the graph on the top right, where we can see the breakdown of that growth. It is particularly important to underline the performance of our organic growth that accounted for 28.4% of sales versus 2021. This means the highest organic growth in yearly terms of all our history. It reflects how solid our business is and how our customers are demanding our services.
To that, we add a 5.2% increase on inorganic, fundamentally invested in transforming our business and getting it more ready than ever for the future. We have to account for a negative impact of currencies totaling 10.3% of total sales. We now look at profitability, we see that we have reached EBITDA of EUR 260 million in 2022, which implies a growth of 26.8% versus the same period in 2021. Looking at the graph on the lower right-hand side of the page, we can see that in terms of underlying profitability evolution, this has risen by 41% if we exclude the divestments made early in 2021.
What is even more relevant, it shows a substantial improvement of relative profitability by 170 basis points, reaching a total percentage over sales of 13.9%. In terms both of sales and relative margin contribution, we can proudly share, as José Antonio did earlier, that we have anticipated by one year our goals announced in the 2021 Capital Markets Day. Another consecutive quarter, this improvement in relative profitability shows that our continued efforts on efficiency have paid back when absorbing growing volumes. I will now move below EBITDA, where we can see how amortization of intangibles have reached EUR 24 million in the year, which is a substantial reduction versus EUR 39 million one year ago, when we had some special impairment adjustments.
These results on our EBIT improving by 42.3% to EUR 236 million, which is at 12.6% of sales, representing a 170 basis points improvement over one year ago. In the financial results line, we observe that the total amount reaches EUR 51 million, which is EUR 8 million lower than the figure shown one year ago, with lower Forex impact, and all this in a context of higher interest rates. This results in an earning before taxes of EUR 185 million, a very relevant 72% improvement over the same figure in 2021, and a margin over sales of 9.9%, which is a 280 basis points improvement over last year.
On the tax line, we can see an expense of EUR 90 million, representing an effective tax rate of 49% over sales, which results in a substantial improvement over last year's tax rate of 69.2%. We're confident that this tax rate will continue to reduce in coming quarters as we stabilize all operations. With this, we reach a net profit of EUR 94 million, 5% over sales, an improvement of 280 basis points, and almost 3 x higher in absolute terms than last year's EUR 33 million. In the following page, we can see the evolution of our cash flow statement, which, as you all know, is particularly important to us.
Departing from an EBITDA for the period of EUR 363 million, we reached a Free Cash Flow for the full- year 2022 of EUR 148 million. A significant figure, especially taking into account that it includes the impact of financing the strong 28.4% organic growth we've seen earlier in our presentation. Free Cash Flow for the last quarter of the year totaled EUR 40 million, with a remarkable positive impact of EUR 24 million in terms of working capital variation.
Provisions and other items total minus EUR 13 million, which is a reduction of over EUR 9 million versus one year ago, while income tax accounted for EUR 91 million, basically due to the fact that we had no advanced recoveries like had been the case one year ago. CAPEX reached EUR 77 million, EUR 10 million more than one year ago, but reduced as a proportion of total sales. In terms of working capital, the investment reached EUR 33 million, as said, to finance the close to 30% organic growth. Our free cash flow reflects a conversion over EBITDA of 79%, which is an improvement of 1 percentile point versus last year's figure.
Interest payments for the full- year totaled EUR 2 million, a very relevant improvement of EUR 11 million versus the same figure back in 2021, benefiting from higher returns on our cash positions, while M&A payments increased from EUR 33 million to EUR 44 million, driven by the continued acquisitive initiatives. Dividends and treasury stock in this year accounted for an outflow of EUR 43 million, down from EUR 71 million in the same period last year, whilst others totaled EUR 9 million, which means EUR 3 million more than one year ago. Bottom line results in a total net cash flow of EUR 51 million, 38% better than last year after having invested in growing the company, in transforming it, and in recognizing our shareholders' support.
If we now look at the chart on the right-hand side of the page, we can see that our Free Cash Flow Yield was standing at 10% for another year, which makes our stock a very attractive and solid investment option with a very positive upward potential. Turning now to page 14, I will review the evolution of our total net debt, made up fundamentally of our net financial position, deferred payments, IFRS 16 debt, and treasury stock. Our total net debt at year close reached EUR 729 million, which reflects a reduction of EUR 27 million from that shown three months ago.
If we compare this figure to that of one year ago, we can see a net variance of EUR 57 million being the result of a reduction in the net financial position of EUR 14 million and an increase in deferred payments and IFRS 16 debt, both due to our acquisitive activity. In any case, when we look at our total net debt to EBITDA ratio, we can see that this has reduced from 2.2 x one year ago to 2 x now, well below our internal set threshold of 2.5 x, giving a clear sign of our prudent leverage management as well as the soundness of our balance sheet that assures us we are best prepared for the future. In terms of our main debt maturities, there are no significant changes. We expect no relevant maturities until 2026.
Along these lines, I want to remind that most of our debt portfolio is mainly at fixed rates. With this, I finish our financial review, I hand over to José Antonio to conclude with our ESG update and final remarks.
Thank you, Javier. I would like to now share with you our ESG efforts that are particularly important to us. There are many initiatives we have worked on in 2022, but if I were to choose, I would underline several. The first, and for me, most important, is the fact that ESG is firmly ingrained in our corporate culture, in our way of doing business. This is not only our intention and our view, but that of expert external parties. S&P has recognized us with its global ratings ESG grade, and as well, our commitment to the highest level of governance has been recognized by AENOR G++ rating. On the environment side, we have continued with multiple initiatives to reduce the impact on our environment, making our fleet more efficient, investing in recycling plastics, or strengthening energy efficiency projects in Spain, Portugal, Brazil.
All in all, we managed to offset 38,000 tons of CO2 in 2022. With regards to social, we as well invested heavily in training, with a number of hours dedicated to that matter increasing by 26%. Especially relevant with regards to safety is the fact that the number of hours dedicated to health and safety training climbed by 40%. On the governance front, multiple initiatives were taken. Regarding party, we adopt the Women's Empowerment Principles established by the UN Women and UN Global Compact. On policy, we review and implemented a new code of ethics that increases our focus on sustainability, transparency, and innovation. We adopted a new anti-corruption policy to assure no gray areas are left behind.
To complement the above, we made training on compliance matters compulsory for new hirings, and over 4,000 people in the company received training in compliance matters. Being aware of the importance of dealing with all ESG related stakeholders to properly share our initiatives and advancements, we have maintained active and bidirectional communication with an increasing number of leading players, as you can review on the right-hand side of the page, and we have also taken part in several alliances with global institutions. To conclude, I would like to share with you my key takeaways for 2022. This has been the year of delivery. It has been a year where we have proved our commitment to our strategy, which has clearly paid off.
On the back of a strong business growth, we've been able to confirm the transformation of our business model while never losing sight of profitability and cash flow generation. Looking at the top-line growth, we reached almost EUR 1.9 billion at a 3.3% improvement over last year, benefiting from the trust of our customers on our service and inflationary environment which plays in our favor and that will likely remain for coming years. When we look at our new product performance, we see that we continue to transform at an outstanding pace. Our relentless commitment to having a better positioned company for the future has made us reach EUR 480 million sales in new products, which implies a 55% improvement over 2021 on a like-for-like basis.
These two elements, as we have stated earlier, anticipate by one year achieving our 2021 Capital Markets Day targets. Not only we have rapidly growing and more transformed company, but loyal to our performance strategy, we have a more profitable venture. All the efforts we made in improving the efficiency of our platform result in an EBITDA margin of 13.9%, which is, as said, a very significant improvement of 170 basis points versus only one year ago. Critical to performing is generating cash. On this front, our Free Cash Flow for 2022 reached EUR 148 million, 40 of them alone in the last quarter of the year. Our devoted management of cash flow and our financial discipline result in a total net debt to EBITDA ratio of 2x .
Always well below our internal thresholds and in the lowest level of the last years. Lastly, we have already remarked, ESG is always present in our strategy, our policy and our management priorities. In that line, we have worked on the three sides of it, health and safety, governance and environment. Training hours have increased substantially by 26%. We have reviewed and relaunched several policies such as a new code of ethics, anti-corruption guidelines, and we have improved our environment by among others, offsetting 38,000 pounds of CO2 in the year. As the figures show, we are committed to delivering today while at the same time assuring the proper transformation to the best prepare in the future. Thank you all for your attention, we can now open the Q&A session.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile a Q&A roster. We will now take the first question. It comes from the line of Miguel González Toquero from JB Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Hi, good morning, thank you for taking my question. I got three, if I may. First on Argentina. I guess most of the effects you can release to Argentina. I wonder if you could share maybe the top line evolution in Argentina this quarter, just to see if volumes fully offset the effects or you registered a negative top line growth in this region. Also related to this, maybe you could share your view on how you think election this year might affect operating activity in this country. Secondly, on tax rate, you registered a high effective rate recently. Maybe you could provide some indication on the tax rate we soon expect for the next year.
Finally, on The Change Group, I believe you registered about EUR 25 million contribution this year. I wonder if we can assume already like EUR 100 million run rate sales for them for the next year.
Thank you, Miguel. For the first question on Argentina, we don't provide sales per country. As you mentioned, we've been hit by Forex in the last quarter, and it's been, I think it's been mainly in all main, yeah, in all countries in Latin America or most countries in Latin America. Argentina, for us, is a strong country, so it's been also hit, but I think it's been across the board, no. I think if we look at the Brazilian real, I think when the dollar, US dollar, appreciates against the euro, there is one movement and when it devaluates, it's more or less it hit us the same, you know. At the end of the day, it's a matter of the whole region.
Argentina, especially as we have seen in the last few weeks. What is our perspective on Argentina? I think Argentina, elections are gonna be at the end of this year. We have the PASO elections in August, which are a good proxy of what is gonna happen at the end of the year. We'll have a new president next year. Normally, election year are good for us. It should be a good year for us in 2023. Second question was about the tax rate. Tax rate has been this year 49%. As you know, we are very conservative in terms of tax rate because we don't capitalize any losses that we have in any given country.
Our, It has been an improvement compared to last year. Our next target should be approaching to 40% as soon as possible. I don't know if it's gonna be next year, but we are aiming to get closer to 40%. It's gonna depend pretty much on two or three things that could happen this year. The last one is about Change Group. We are very happy of incorporating this new business for us. It's been a good year, first year. I think it all depends on the team, and the team has been fantastic. Integration has been quite good, and we really are maintaining what we said during the acquisition call. We believe it's gonna be above EUR 100 million in sales next year.
All right. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take the next question. It comes from the line of Francisco Ruiz Martin from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello. Good morning. I have three questions. The first one is on the margin in Europe with particularly record sales with a strong organic growth. The margin is still at very low levels of 3%. It's true that it has improved quite substantially from last year, but at 3% it looks quite low. What are your expectations for the coming quarters, years on this margin, and what is the level that you think you could achieve? The second one is again on taxes. Traditionally you will have a different impact between the taxes and the P&L and the cash tax, but this year the difference is quite small.
I mean, could we see that this, P&L, sorry, P&L taxes could be the cash tax as well in the coming years? Last question is on Australia deal. Could you give us an update on this? I think that you have already deconsolidated or.
Thank you, Francisco. Coming to Europe, this quarter has been hit by the Change integration mainly, also we had a strike in Germany. I think our aim is to improve it, and we foresee that the coming quarters are gonna be higher. We are aiming to more healthy margins. We are seeing that in 2023 they are much, much healthier. On that front, I think we are gonna deliver. On taxes, I think you are right. In the past few years, we had some cash returns from advance payments we make to government. This year, the profit was pretty much in line or almost better than what was advanced to government. At the end of the day, we have the same outflow as what is in the P&L.
We foresee that in the coming years, it's gonna be more or less the same because we believe we are gonna improve our margin. If we keep improving our margins, our cash flow, outflow and our P&L impact will be quite similar. In Australia, is still consolidating in the P&L. I think we are improving our numbers or our operation in Australia. For us, our main plan is to go for this merger with our competitor. We are in the process, but we cannot comment much on it. We foresee that it's gonna be, we are gonna have a final resolution before first half of this year. Hopefully will be at the beginning of second quarter.
Yes, the business in Australia, I think is improving because of volumes and because of all the actions we have taken. We keep to our strategy of the merger because we believe this is the best outcome for the future.
José Antonio, one follow-up. I mean, if I saw your balance sheet in the, in the annual accounts, there is EUR 120 million asset for sale. This is Australia?
Yes. Javier is gonna come in to.
Hi, Paco. Let me take this one. Yeah. This is more of a technical thing. I mean, it's Australia. It's just accounted for available for sale, technically we need to put that aside in the balance sheet in a separated caption. That's why you see assets and liabilities, available for sale. It refers exactly to Australia, but that's just on a balance sheet issue. When you look at the P&L, you have 100% of the results-
Yeah.
from Australia being consolidated.
What's the impact on your net debt of this accounting issue?
as of today, I mean, it's not really affecting us because it's part of the balance sheet still there. I mean, so it's just that it's under a different caption. as of today, you should see no impact coming from that.
Okay.
Thank you. We will now take the next question. It comes from the line of Enrique Yágüez from Bestinver Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, everybody. I have three questions. First of all, as you said in the presentation, you have already fulfilled in 2022 the strategic targets provided in your Capital Markets Day. Could you provide an update about what will be these targets this year, or at least, do you plan to provide an update throughout the year? Secondly, the parent company, Prosegur, said that one of its targets for this year is to review financial leverage. To which extent this aim could affect your M&A optionality or your, yeah, your appetite for further M&A. Finally, a follow-up question regarding the Australia. If I'm not wrong, Australia has a syndicated loan of roughly AUD 70 million in the country.
Is it still on your book? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Enrique. Yes, you are right. We have achieved what the Capital Markets Day targets had for 2023 one year in advance. We believe our current environment is very favorable to us. We are aiming to beat current consensus with sales above EUR 2 billion and the margin within the Capital Markets Day guidance. Debt. Yes. I think in the current environment, we are very conscious of financial discipline, and we are gonna be, I think we are gonna be very careful about it. At the same time, we believe that very good opportunities in terms of M&A may come. I think we are gonna be very conscious to what could be acquisitions at, we could say at average multiples.
We are gonna be very agile if there is an opportunity that comes around. I would say in a normalized world, we would be very financially disciplined, and we are gonna be very financially disciplined in terms of CapEx and in terms of our outflows. If we find any opportunity which we believe is a good opportunity that is not gonna be around for some time, we'll jump at it. The third one on the Australian debt is still in our balance sheet, and it's in Australia. It's in Australia offices, and if we make the transaction, we'll have to refinance it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take the next question. It comes from the line of Manuel Lorente from Mirabaud. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hola, buenos dias. My first question is on the FX headwinds in this last part of the year. Seeing the underlying evolution of the business, sorry, and with the FX headwinds on Q4, shall we expect a significant bounce back in revenues throughout, the next quarters in order to adjust prices to the FX environment?
Thank you, Manuel. I believe that in 2023, what we are forecasting is inflation more or less similar to the valuation. This is what we are expecting, and this is what we have been talking to some of our experts. I mean, the Forex plays an important role on our operations, so it could go either way. What we are forecasting and what we have been talking to many experts that our best estimate could be inflation similar to the valuation for 2023.
Inflation similar to the valuation, assuming the delta of the new devaluation or the one that you have already consolidated in your 22 numbers?
The one that is consolidated.
Okay. My second question is on the impact of the new products. Whether you can give us an indication of the margin impact, because looks like they are growing 2 x above underlying revenues. However, we have not seen that significant impact on profitability. Either they are not meaningfully scaled yet, or they are not significantly accretive margin-wise. That's the correct way of seeing these new products or am I missing something?
Coming to the new products, I think as we said, on a general basis, they have more or less the same profitability as the core business, and this is what we are seeing. What is doing is maintaining current profitability in relative terms. It is true that they are very different in nature. There are some products which are more profitable and products which are less profitable. If we look at the profitability of the whole P&L of all the new products, it's very similar to current profitability. It's improving. It's improving, yes. It's improving. It has some leverage, operating leverage. We should be extracting it in the coming years.
I see. Then my final question is on the provision and others line of your Free Cash Flow statement, in the sense that line was EUR 10 million positive at the end of nine months, and now is EUR 13 million negative, at the end of the year, which implies some EUR 23 million consumption of provision or. My point is there any extraordinary issue to mention regarding the profitability of the full quarters standalone because of these EUR 23 million consumption of provisions or other issues that are included in this line?
No, I think it's the normal seasonality that we have in our P&L. That's why sometimes it's quite seasonal, and it's very similar to what happened last year. I don't know, Javi, you know that, something on this one.
I think it is exactly as José Antonio is saying. It's seasonal in nature. If you look at last year, we had a consumption of EUR 70 million in Q4, and we are having a consumption of EUR 24 million in Q4 this year. The only difference to highlight maybe is just that we are under a more normalized tax payments right now than we had one year ago. That makes a bit of a difference and can explain the variance between the EUR 17 and EUR 24. It's essentially seasonal in nature. That's basically, t hat's what José Antonio explained.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question. It comes from the line of Álvaro Lenze from Alantra Equities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one would be if you could provide some update on how the trends in the different, or at the group level are going in the first few months of 2023. Last year, you started on very strong footing, but this was partly due to a very easy comparison base. Now the comparison base is a little bit more challenging. Just wanted to get a sense of whether you're continuing to maintain the strong organic growth and whether you are outgrowing currency depreciation, unlike what we have seen in Q4. My second question would be regarding capital allocation. And whether you could consider maybe slowing down a little bit on M&A and making higher dividend payments or further share buybacks.
The last question is with the current treasury stock that you have, whether you are going to cancel it, and if you are canceling it, when should we expect this to happen? Thanks.
Thank you, Álvaro. The first one, on the update of 2023, we have not closed February yet, January has been quite strong. In all, by all means. I think the business is performing very well because of the current environment in terms of inflation, interest rate, which makes our service more important. Capital allocation, we have announced, we have our AGM has approved a 33% increase in dividend payments, and we also go to some share buyback. Our current program ends up in December of 2023. We have almost a year to know if we are gonna lengthen our program or what do we do.
Our current initiative or our current way of thinking is if we don't find any opportunistic M&A, as we said, normally M&A is an M&A that we believe we can do next year, we'll postpone it. If it's not something that we find opportunistic or a very good multiples, no? Our current thinking is that if we don't do any M&A, we'll increase our share buyback program. That's what we would like to propose to our board.
Thanks. Regarding the cancellation of shares?
Yes. That's it. It can only be done after the program is finished, and the program is finished in December.
Oh, okay.
We'll see what we're gonna do after.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand back over to the speakers for final remarks.
Thank you very much to all of you for your attention. I would like to conclude by thanking everyone's attendance and by putting the accent on the continuous positive evolution and resilience of our business model in what is a favorable environment, while we continue to transform to best position the company for the future, really. Thank you again. As always, our IR team is available for any queries you might have. Thank you very much.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.