Good afternoon, and welcome to the Investment Analysts Conference Call for the results of the first half of this year for the Teraplast Group. First of all, welcome, all of you. I think you have seen already the results. We published them yesterday morning.
This presentation that I'm going to go through today is on our website in the investor section. I will start also with a short presentation of the group because some of you are new or newer to the group, Teraplast Group, so you're not as familiar.
The Teraplast Group consists of the mother company, Teraplast, which is a leader for systems for interior sewage, exterior sewage, transportation and distribution of water and natural gas, rainwater management, cable protection, including fiber optic cables, underfloor heating. Also, we produce compounds both in PVC and halogen-free flame retardant compounds.
We also have one of the leading rigid PVC recycling businesses in Europe, which produces micronized recycled PVC and regranulated recycled PVC. The micronized recycled PVC is part of our raw material, but we sell to third parties also, while the regranulated material we sell all to third parties. We have fairly new business in the flexible packaging.
It was started up at the beginning of last year, where we produce biodegradable and compostable packaging, as well as classic, let's say, packaging made out of polyethylene, either low density or high density. We have a third company that produces PVC windows and doors.
This company is, let's say, the main exporter of the group in terms of percentage of the turnover, although its impact in the group is fairly small. All these businesses have had, let's say, been impacted by a slow demand in the first half of this year. This slow demand was in line with our expectations, because we had a complex external climate.
Although the engineering works, as for the National Institute of Statistics, have grown pretty sharply by 30%. Mostly, most of this growth comes from road infrastructure, especially motorways that are being built at an accelerated pace.
These type of works do not use up much of our materials. On the other hand, works in water and sewage infrastructure have been fairly slow ever since, let's say, the end of last year or the second half of last year, and have continued to go like this for the first two quarters of this year. Again, this was in line with our expectations. We see the fact that the large infrastructure operational program of the EU will reach its end at the end of this year.
ration in the auctions that are taking place to attribute the work to the construction companies for these type of works. What we can see is that if in the first half of last year, the number of contracts that have been allocated a building company that was designated to execute those contracts was 219, with an overall value of RON 2.7 billion .
This year, the number has increased to 339 contracts that have been allocated a building company, and the value, which is more important, is RON 6.2 billion . We also see some movement on the infrastructure program, financed by the government money, not European money, namely the Anghel Saligny program
Out of RON 21 billion, which is the total value for water and sewage network that is being allocated in this program, already RON 5 billion have been approved for the various city halls to spend. Unfortunately, out of this RON 5 billion, up to the end of June, only RON 280 million have been already spent.
This means that there is a lot of work and for the RON 5 billion, most of the, let's say, bureaucratic passage of these works has been completed. Therefore, in line with our expectation, we expect to have a highly dynamic second half of this year.
However, despite the fact that infrastructure works seem to have a very good perspective for the second half of this year, we see a decrease in residential works, as well as a contraction in the markets for compounds, both PVC and HFFR, as well as recycled compounds, as our customers complain about a decrease in demand, both on the Romanian market as well as in foreign markets. As we said, for the first half of this year, we did not expect too much.
Unfortunately, we were not proven wrong, so it was a fairly slow start of the year. However, we see that there is an acceleration in the second quarter versus the first quarter, an acceleration that is much higher than it was in the same period of last year.
Which means that our EBITDA has increased by 58% quarter-on-quarter, much higher increase versus the increase of last year. We saw a similar increase in the quantity sold, namely, the quantity in tons has increased by 21% in the second quarter versus the first quarter, as opposed to only 5% last year in the same period.
We see this acceleration as more and more infrastructure projects go from, let's say, the local authorities to the construction companies and work starts on them. Therefore, this favorable trend makes us reasonably confident that reaching the budgeted targets is within our reach.
Another thing I'd like to point out is that we are working on the stretch film factory, which is going to complement our flexible packaging portfolio, and production tests will begin towards the end of this year. All in all, for the first half of this year, we had a turnover of RON 320 million, a 14% decrease, which is, let's say, generated by a 14% decrease in overall volumes of products delivered to the market. This has translated in an EBITDA of RON 23.3 million, with an EBITDA margin of 7.3%.
As stated, we see on one hand an acceleration in growth from the first to second quarter, based on the publicly available data, we expect this trend to accelerate further towards the half of the year. We are going to get rid of the base effect, because last year was completely, let's say, upside down.
We had an extremely good start of the year and then a very slow second half. This year we are going to go into a normal seasonality of the business. Therefore, we expect this to also contribute to the growth for the last two quarters of this year.
In order to preserve decent profitability margins, we were forced to take several decisions regarding cost cutting that are also reflected in the fact that we managed to achieve for some business line EBITDA margins of double digits, like in installation and compounds.
If we go down to business line, to business segment level, the largest of our businesses are the installation business and the compounding business. Installation gives us 70% of the turnover and has the highest EBITDA margin of the group. Compounds, although hit significantly by the slow demand, still managed to have an EBITDA margin of above 9.5%, which shows how lean this business is.
On the other hand, windows and doors has underperformed. We have a turnover decrease of 12%, especially due to the decrease from external demand. Although this has been partially compensated by increase in domestic sales, we still see a degradation of the profitability.
This is offsetted partially by measures to have a sharper control of the costs. Last but not least, the flexible packaging business, a business that we are extremely confident about this business evolution in the long run, has managed to achieve break-even in terms of EBITDA in the month of June, which is a first for this business since it was inaugurated. We expect this positive trend to continue.
Because, considering the complex market context, we decided not to hedge our bets on the increase of volumes, which we feel is very difficult to do in this time, but on reducing the fixed cost base. We managed to achieve that.
As I said, in June, we had the first month with a break-even result. As you can see, the reduction in turnover was influenced by both price and volumes playing a bigger part. In our market, we see a deflation that is caused by a decrease in raw material prices, which has several causes, sharp decrease in demand, as well as decrease in the cost basis of our raw material suppliers, like energy or precursors.
Which meant that the share of raw material in the turnover decreased to 63%, as opposed to 68% last year. We increased our gross margin and this allowed us to, let's say, have more room to manoeuvre with our fixed costs at group level. I will let our CFO give you more details regarding the numbers of the business, and I'll get back for the Q&A.
Looking at what we've done for the first six months compared to the budget, we have this decrease in turnover because we did not expect such a sharp decrease in the prices of raw materials, which triggered a decrease in our selling prices. Still, it's important to note here that the decrease in our selling prices was not in line with the decrease in the raw material costs. We have a saving here at the gross margin level, saving which went to compensate for the increase in the salaries and in the other operating costs.
Still, the increase in these operating costs was not at the level that we budgeted because we've implemented some cost-cutting initiatives, the effect of which are going to be more visible in the second half of the year. We do have reduction in the employees numbers. We are about 900 people working in the Group now, which is 10% less than last year. These decreases in the number of employees were employed together with the production efficiency initiatives. Were targeted to the businesses that struggle. That is the packaging business and the windows and door businesses mostly.
Also in recycling, we had this cost-cutting initiatives that had the objective of reducing the level of our cost base to the level of sales. In the other operating expenses area, the highest increase was with utilities. We're going to have a saving here in the second half of the year, because we have renegotiated the contracts with the utilities, with the electricity suppliers. Therefore, the saving at gross margin level did not fully compensate for all the increase in the operating costs, given this level of sales. Yes, the interest cost was double compared to last year. We did budget this increase in interest costs.
We also budgeted the evolution of the context, in the market context in which we operate, because we did not expect a significant demand in the first half of the year. That is why you are seeing this reflected in the progress bars compared to the budget and compared to last year. We do have good prospects of achieving the budget because the context is more favorable in the second half of the year for all the businesses in the group. Because for the installations and recycling, things are moving better due to the number of infrastructure contracts that are active. T he recycling business is also picking up.
For the windows and doors, we do expect that the profitability will improve in the second half of the year, reflecting our focus on higher value products, which are sold for thermal insulation of buildings and new buildings. The breakeven at the flexible packaging business that we've obtained in June, is going to further improve. Therefore, we expect a profit in the second half of the year, at least an operating profit for this business. Given the weaker year ended June, because in 2022, the second half of the year was weaker.
We do have a leverage that is more than we usually target. This is temporary because together with the decrease in working capital, is gonna follow a decrease in net debt in the second part of the year. A decrease in working capital is gonna be natural as a result of the overall decrease in prices in the market. As the raw material prices are decreasing, sales value is decreasing, and therefore, inventory and receivable are also decreasing. That is gonna be reflected also in the decrease in net debt at least for the part needed to finance the working capital.
We are going to receive in the following months, another RON 12 million state aid for the investments that we have finished and implemented and paid last year. We've generated net operating cash from the EBITDA that we had and the optimization of the working capital. We've made investments in fixed assets, so the RON 20 million day refers mostly to investments made in the stretch film factory. Therefore, to conclude, our results are not at the level that our investor expect.
We are aware of the expectation to deliver two digits EBITDA level. It's an acceptable result given the context in which we operate. The market situation in with the challenges that we have on all segments, the lack of infrastructure works for the installation segment and the reduced demand for the other segments. We do have operational efficiency and cost-cutting measures that are going to rebuild our profit to the expected level. These measures, coupled with the expected increase in demand in the second half of the year, should improve our results and should enable us to deliver the budgeted profitability. Okay. If you want to add something to conclusion?
No. For the Q&A, if you have any questions, please. If there are no questions, I would like to point out a couple of things. We are, let's say, going through a complex market context that has been somehow underwhelming compared to what we were used to in the past couple of years.
It's a continuation of what has been going on ever since the second half of last year. We have indicators that things are starting to look up, especially for the installation business that we are having, which is again, the core business for us. We see some positive developments in the packaging, in the flexible packaging business as it, let's say, slowly getting out of the red and into some profitability. Once the market is starting to grow again, we expect to have a high level of profitability for this business.
As well as the fact that the current flexible packaging business is going to be complemented by the stretch film business. It's also going to create more critical mass and will allow us to be a market leader in this segment, as well. There are, of course, challenges, especially in the TeraGlass business, but we hope to overcome them by continuing to reduce costs in order to achieve profitability at the group level, in line with our expectations.
We need also to keep into mind the fact that we have an increased cost base because of the developments that we are deploying in this period, which doesn't have any revenue associated with them, but they are necessary in order to have a swift deployment of the new investments. Therefore, that also impacts the bottom line. Although it has been, let's say, underwhelming start of the year, it was in line with our expectations.
We did not expect more from the start of the year, considering how last year ended. We see, let's say, positive signs for the second half of the year, both in terms of volumes as well as in terms of value for profitability, especially. We are confident that in, let's say, three months' time, when we will meet again in this format, the financial results will be fundamentally different from the ones that we have just presented. Thank you very much. If there are still no more questions, see you in about three months. Thank you.