Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the presentation of the DSV Interim Financial Report First Quarter 2022. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press 5 star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded. Today, I am pleased to present Group CEO Jens Bjørn Andersen, Group COO Jens Lund, and Group CFO Michael Ebbe. Speakers, please begin.
Thank you very much. It's Jens Bjørn Andersen here. Welcome to the Q1 2022 conference call here from Hedehusene. A super good day for us and for our company, and we look forward to sharing the performance of the last three months with you this morning. After you've taken a look on our new, brand new facility on the front page in Dallas in the US, would kindly advise you to read the forward-looking statements on page 2. After you have done that, you will see on page 3 the agenda for this morning. I think it is pretty similar to what we have been going through in the past.
With no further ado, I'll skip to the highlights of the quarter on page 4. We have seen a performance of DSV in Q1 2022 like we have never seen before. We've seen a performance that we had not even dreamed about seeing only a few months ago, and also much better performance than what we expected when the year started. We have seen a very, very strong, very good momentum from Q4 carrying on into 2022, even accelerating across all of the three divisions.
Of course, now when we have achieved an EBIT result in the quarter, which is pretty much equivalent to the annual result of DSV in 2019 of DKK 6.5 billion, we feel obliged also to address the guidance for the full year, and we have increased that this morning to now saying that we will aim for EBIT result of between DKK 21 billion and DKK 23 billion . As always, it goes without saying that we would rather end in the upper range rather than in the lower part of that range.
Michael will come back to it later, but it's really a privilege to be able to see also that the cash flow has continued to be very strong in the quarter, which has given room for a new buyback, very, very consistent like you normally would see, but a buyback in the coming period of DKK 6 billion, which we have also announced this morning. On a less positive note, we are of course like all of you following the Ukraine-Russia crisis very, very closely, and that has generated even further disruption in global supply chains.
We are actually in the process of terminating all business in Russia, seeing if we can find a solution with our local management so we can exit the Russia operations once and for all. It is not easy to do. It's on a very sad background, but we feel that is the right thing. In a not too distant future, we will probably be without Russia in the DSV network. The exit from Russia has no material direct financial impact on our earnings.
It's still less than 1% of turnover and earnings, and what needs to be provided for in terms of closing down the activities have already been taken care of, so to say, in Q1, in the numbers that we have reported this morning. Yes, let's jump to page 5. Just might be the last update you get on the Agility GIL integration. It's one of the best acquisitions we have ever done, a very positive impact on our earnings. You might see on bullet point number 1 that we have put in a new kind of wording where we say that the financial contribution will now be what we say, at least DKK 3 billion to the total profits of DSV. Integration is going well.
The company and the countries have done a fantastic job once again, unbelievable, to integrate such a large company with thousands and thousands of people across the organization and the network. That's why it's a true pleasure now, so early into the integration to be able to say that all major countries have been onboarded to our DSV platform. I think this is even faster than we have anticipated and faster than what we have seen in the past. With a few minor exceptions, we do expect that the total integration with the program will have been finalized during Q3 this year. A few headline numbers.
As you've probably seen, the transaction and integration cost was about DKK 400 million in Q1, meaning that we still have about DKK 600 million to book for the rest of the year. Once again, we are super pleased with all the new colleagues, all the new capabilities and the skills that we have now from the acquisition of GIL. Let's move to page number 6, and let's just observe the numbers for a few seconds. They basically speak for themselves. Absolutely superstar stellar performance from the division. I can only repeat what we've said before.
An extraordinarily strong performance and everybody working in Air & Sea and DSV can be really truly proud of the performance that you guys and girls have put in the recent period. Of course, we see a big tick up in the revenue driven by, of course, the addition of GIL, but of course also driven by a continuation of the increase in the rate levels.
What is maybe more important is that we also see tremendous growth in the GP both for Air & Sea and we have still continued, which will never go out of fashion in DSV, worked on the productivity of the division, meaning that we have achieved a growth in EBIT surpassing 100%. That is absolutely fantastic. Taking us now to a new record in terms of the conversion ratio of 60%. We are very proud of that. We're very happy about that. It's a fantastic performance. The markets are still characterized by disruptions in the supply chains, and most recently by the lockdown we have seen in Shanghai.
We do not believe that we will see a very big change in the disruption even if we get to the later part of this year. It's not unlikely that the whole of 2022 will be characterized by these challenges that we have been facing at the beginning of the year. Page 7, air freight. We've taken market share. We've grown faster than the market, not a lot, but we have grown 2% organically in the quarter. We do estimate that the market is flat including GIL. We've seen growth of 22%.
You can see, of course, the yield, the GP per unit has grown from DKK 9,200 to DKK 11,400, which is, it was unexpected that we saw this big increase in yields. We are of course pleased to see that. We've seen some negative impacts due to the closure of the airspace over Russia. We've also seen that certain proportion of the capacity has been taken out, as we cannot use Russian-owned aircraft at this moment in time. Very strong performance. We're very happy. It seems like it's a kind of a stable situation right now.
We see great benefits of our own enhanced capabilities in terms of the charter network. We expect that the performance will continue to be very strong. Sea freight, let's also here start with the market and volumes. We see that a relatively weak market in Q1 in terms of volume. Market is down in terms of TU somewhere between 5% and 10%. We are down volume-wise 7%. I guess we can say that we are having a development in line with the market. We are not growing faster, but we are not losing market share either. Remember, we are still in the middle of the integration phase.
Normally, we would actually expect us to have a somewhat weaker development than what we are seeing on the market. It's not likely that this weak development will change right now as we are still seeing negative impacts from the lockdown in China. Of course, there will be a lot of build-up demand once we will see reopening in the Shanghai area. Also here, a very good development going from, in round numbers, DKK 5,000 per TU to DKK 6,000, or from DKK 4,900 to DKK 5,900 to be accurate. This is somewhat also higher than what we had both expected ourselves and also indicated to the market.
When I can, I might as well just talk a little bit about it right now. For Air & Sea, I'm sure that a lot of you will ask us about the yields, what are they gonna be this month? What are they gonna be for this quarter, and for this year, and for the next coming years? I hope you will appreciate that it is associated with a great deal of uncertainty for us to guide you in respect of a single number that you have to put into your spreadsheets.
It's not unlikely that we have probably come to the conclusion that we probably have been slightly too conservative in the guidance we gave you in terms of trying to direct you in terms of an absolute yield number. If it's gonna be X, Y, or Z going forward, it's just very difficult for us to say. It's not unlikely that we can capture and retain a little bit more of the new and higher yields, even as the markets normalize going forward. We can probably come back to that. Road Freight, very nice. I met a lot of the country heads of the Road division here in the building today.
Fantastic to see them back after COVID lockdowns, celebrating also a fantastic result. They can stand the challenge also to anybody in the market or competitors. Rock solid, very fantastic, very good result. Growing earnings by 23%. Very, very good. Also stemming from a nice development in the gross profit. Some of you have asked about the margin, the gross margin. It is inflated by the high revenue, costs are going up for road haulage. Don't be too concerned that the gross margin is down as long as the gross profit in absolute terms, and also consequently, the EBIT is up, nothing to be concerned about.
We, as you know, have very few KPIs to measure the market, and our developments up against the market. It is our very, very firm, very clear ambition that we have taken market share. We are gaining a lot of new customers, and we have taken market share in the Road division. This is also what is driving the good development, it seems like. The capabilities we have, or the fine-tuning and the professionalism that we have now in terms of the product that we're offering, also as a part of the Road Way Forward project, is something which are also attracting customers. We have access to capacity right now, which is good to be able to establish.
We do hear certain anecdotes that that is not always the case in the market. The fact that we can actually supply shippers with capacity, it goes actually also for Air & Sea, but also here for Road, is something which will probably be beneficial for us also going forward. The last slide before I hand over to Michael is page 10. Here, just take a moment to observe the earnings growth. I think this breaks most of what we have seen in the past. Earnings growth of close to 200%. Maybe Q1 was not the best quarter a year ago, but nevertheless, a very strong performance in the quarter.
The whole consolidation of our infrastructure, the building of the logistics campuses that we are doing around the world, is now also being reflected in the numbers. We have also here, you can say, access to capacity. We have our own facilities. This is the result of a very long-term strategy that we have had in the company. It's a true privilege to be able to see the very strong development of the division. Here we've tried to illustrate that in the conversion ratio and EBIT margin graphs, also the addition of Agility. It's very clear that you can see that also reflected in the overall numbers of the company.
It has been an extraordinarily strong quarter, so just a word of advice, be careful not to kind of multiply this EBIT result by four. We cannot promise that will be the result going forward for the division. We are adamant that we will continue to see a satisfactory and a good development also in the coming quarters. We just have to get a couple of more quarters under our belt. Very good performance. Also, a lot of people also during COVID lockdowns have performed fantastic operations coming to our warehouses around the world, and performing a high service to the clients that we have in the division.
Well done also to everybody in the Solutions division. You can read all the bullet points. I'm not gonna go through them each and every one of them, but you can read them yourself to the right-hand side of the slide. With a little over 15 minutes already passed of the presentation, I will pass on the word to you, Michael. Please take it away.
Thank you very much. I will go through slide 11 with the P&L for Q1 2022. One thing, of course, is that you need to be aware of is that GIL is not included in the comparative figures, so that's an impact. Also the matters that Jens Bjørn elaborated on the previous pages is the impact here in the P&L. The revenue growth almost 78% compared to last year's quarter, it's due to the GIL, obviously, and then also to the freight rates. We see a strong performance for our gross profit in absolute terms and numbers, so that is very satisfying for us to see that.
We are also able with the productivity, I think Jens Bjørn also mentioned, to convert that into EBIT, giving us an EBIT result of more than doubling what it was compared to same period last year. The conversion ratio then sits at a record-breaking number here, 50% for the group as a whole. Also a nice increase in there. If I look at the number of employees, it has also increased. When we acquired the GIL, there were 17,000 employees, so you can see that has been included, and then we have also added some growth. So that's the number of employees.
All in all, if you then add it all together and convert that into our earnings per share, at 12 months diluted, we have seen also here a significant increase in nearly 80%, giving an earnings per share of DKK 60.5 per share. That's a nice number for us, and as you are aware, we track that very thoroughly. If I skip to the next page, that is the cash flow. We have also seen a significant increase here in the cash flow. It's always nice to see that we are able to convert our P&L into some cash. That's also what it's all about. I know I also said this before, that the net working capital is increasing.
It is due to the fact with the high freight rate and also the growth obviously. I've said it before as well, that we do not see any signs on overdue in our receivables. We track that also very narrowly to make sure that we get the cash collected so we can continue the strong cash conversion that we see. We have our cash flow from investing activities has been impacted a little bit by the property disposals. I think in the last couple of quarters, we mentioned that we are tied up a little bit in our net working capital, and that should be done now, and that's impact is not a significant number, but it's obviously impacting the number.
Our gearing ratio now sits at 1.2. That's also, I can say, a little bit below what we had expected maybe. Also giving us the opportunities to increase the share buyback that I will come back to in a minute. We have this quarter issued a new DKK 600 million corporate bond of the duration of eight years. That also adds nicely to our portfolio of bonds and our debt maturity table. It looks fine. We have given our GIL acquisition, we have, of course, had more EBITDA, and then hence also more debt. We are close to DKK 30 billion in net interest-bearing debt.
Again, it's clearly within our range for that. If I skip to the next page, as mentioned, we have seen nice results for Q1 and also converted into cash, giving us the opportunity to start a new share buyback program today with the amount of DKK 6 billion running into close to when we announce Q2 in the 25th of July 2022. We have in Q1 had a share buyback program, which was concluded three weeks ago. You can see that here in the table as well. I think one thing that you should bear in mind here that we have decreased or reduced our share capital.
We did that in connection with the AGM, and now it's also registered in the Danish Business Authority. Now our new share capital is DKK 234 million. When we calculate the earnings per shares, we have, of course, included this as well. The share buyback now, it's if you look at Q1 2022 for the three-month period there, it's roughly DKK 1.6 billion that we have acquired per month. If you look at the numbers now for the next quarter, it will be close to DKK 2 billion on a monthly basis that we buy back shares. It's a significant portion that we buy back. The next slide is a little bit about our outlook.
I think Jens Bjørn has also mentioned some of it based on the performance that we have seen and the expectations for the remainder of the year. We have increased the guidance now to in the range of DKK 21 billion-DKK 23 billion. It's based on the strong Q1, and we have also the expectations for the last couple of quarters. We expect some normalization in the second half of the year, and that is factored into this updated outlook. I think you can also see here that I think a lot of others expect that the global economic growth will be a little bit less than what we had anticipated early on due to the things that Jesper mentioned with the current crisis that we see.
It's also clear that the uncertainty or the visibility for the remaining part of the year is, the uncertainty is increased, and the visibility has decreased. I think that's, and we expect the tax rate to be in the range of 23%. This year, it's obviously impacted by the integration, like always, but we expect that we'll come back to around 23%. For the special items, integration cost, I think Jens also mentioned that we still have to expense DKK 600 million. Obviously, we'll not expense them if we do not use them, but that's what we expect as right now. I think that's it from my side. We go to the Q&A session now.
Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press 5 star again. We will have a brief pause while questions are being registered. The first question is from the line of Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes. Thank you very much. Three questions from my side. First of all, guys, could you make some comments in terms of how the relationship with the carriers is at the current market state? You see them out there on some of the tenders, the ones that also focus on logistics, and you find the negotiations in general are more challenging with the carriers. My second question is on the ocean side also. You mentioned lower demand. Can you be a little bit more particular exactly what you see in terms of the lower demand? Is it within some specific areas? I know that Kuehne+Nagel yesterday said that service-related goods were actually doing quite well. My final question is on the conversion rate.
Well done on getting that above the 50%, and obviously you are well-placed for the long-term targets. Can you just explain to me, are there any dynamics here assuming that a rate starts to go down, that will put your conversion rate on the price after? Thank you very much.
I'll start on some of these, and before Flemming here in the room gets too sad, please also have a look at page 15 in our presentation, talking about it's not every day it happens, so that's the reason we wanted to focus on it. A Capital Markets Day at DSV on the thirty-first of May. You are more than welcome to participate if you wish to. In terms of the carriers, we have a good relationship with most carriers. We are finding solutions. We are growing with them. We get space allocation. We find deals when we need to find it. We show flexibility. They show flexibility. It's business as usual.
We use most carriers in the world still in our program. Then there are some, of course, that are more vocal about kind of going into our area. It's, I think, it sometimes gets blown a little bit out of proportion. It's not like we are in fierce competition with anybody with any of the carriers. There have always been kind of certain areas. There's always, as we know, 50% of all volumes have always been carried by the ocean carriers. We have taken market share. Maybe they've taken a little bit of share recently.
As it looks right now, we actually feel that it's not changing the dynamics for freight forwarders like DSV. It's a little bit about the ocean markets. It's difficult to say that of course we all know that estimates for global GDP growth have been reduced a little bit. Still believing that we will see maybe in the region of 3% growth this year, which is not necessarily bad. You know, the market we said was down 6% to 8% in the quarter. Most significantly, it was the Transpacific, which was also very strong a year ago.
We have to be very careful when we measure month by month and quarter by quarter now, comparing or remembering all the time what happened a year ago. Some quarters and months were very strong last year and also the opposite. Kuehne+Nagel is a company we respect. So we can concur with what they said yesterday also. It is a mixed picture. Some industries suffer from a lack of microchips, from lack of components, and others are maybe also suffering a little bit from a lack of demand. For instance, maybe some retail and fashion customers.
On the conversion side, it would be so nice to go out and say that this level will not change even if the rates go down. We will try to offset some of the pain if we see a slower growth by continuing to work on our productivity in the company. That can offset some of it, but I guess it is likely that if rates and yields go down, consequently, also conversion ratio, the conversion ratio will go down. For the time being, we stick with the long-term financial targets that we have. It's of course also fair to say that should things change, we would of course also yeah feel the need to readdress the targets.
At this moment in time, they are what they are.
Great. Thank you very much for taking that question. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Lars Heindorff from Nordea. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted. The next question will be from Samuel Bland from JP Morgan. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Yeah, thanks for taking the question. I have two, please. The first one is on the air unit margins. Just want to understand, you know, the strength we've seen in Q1. Was that quite specifically driven by the Russia-Ukraine situation and on the major Europe lane? Or was the strength more broad and through the quarter? And the second question is, you know, where there's been mix changes in your volume, towards higher margin areas. You know, you mentioned LCL, for example. Do those mix changes have to necessarily reverse as freight rates eventually come back down? Or can some of those mix improvements be more permanent? Thank you.
Last question first. This is more prominent. You might have a point, but not necessarily on air freight. I don't know if that question also related to air freight. On ocean, it's actually a relevant point that you raise, the LCL product is doing really well. We have seen some mix change, which could have a permanent positive impact on the yields. We cannot quantify exactly what that would be. That could help us retain some of the high yields that we are having right now. It's not what is happening on air freight. On air freight, it's more a matter of us, what you say.
It's not really related to the Russia-Ukraine situation, what we have seen on air freight. I think it's a continuation. It's the product of the continuation of the development of the air charter network, for instance, where we are still fine-tuning that system that we were so pleased to inherit from Panalpina, those capabilities. We have expanded our service offerings through our own network with fixed departures, own capacity. We have got more and more used to also maneuvering in this environment. We have been able to strike some good deals where we offer a strong service product to customers. It's more that has driven the yields in the air freight, and not so much the Ukrainian-Russian situation.
Yeah. Understood. Thank you very much.
The next question will be from the line of B. Martin Fenouill from Bernstein. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Hi, good morning. Just to touch base on Ukraine in supply chains lockdown cadence, please. Well, what's your assessment on the loss of capacity, and how is it different for trade lane? Second question, on M&A, if you were to acquire another company the size of Agility, let's say same forwarder, RFC, before Agility is completely integrated, would it threaten the GIL integration? Even in general, what's the risk that you see integrating two mid-sized forwarders at the same time? I think I have to stick with two questions. Thank you.
It's all about the M&A part, maybe the first more than one can see.
Yeah. If we take the loss on capacity, I think that we see that there are different areas where we've lost capacity. It's in the air freight market. Obviously, it takes longer time to fly from China to Europe, and here there's been rumors in the market that it's up to 15% that has been taken out. That's predominantly in the freighter market, because many of the passenger carriers would go through the Middle East, so they would have the same routing. If we take on road, I think it's something that is also a little bit underestimated. They actually furnished a lot of drivers to the haulage capacity. Here, there's been speculation that it could be 5%, some even say a little bit higher than 5% of the capacity that has come out.
There's certainly some impact on the situation in Ukraine that is much larger than the impact of, what can I say, the lack of volume in the country itself. It has a spillover effect on other markets as well. I think that's a little bit on the capacity side. If we take the M&A side, I think it's clear that, you know, we have to complete the GIL integration. We are almost there. Jens Bjørn already touched upon it in his introduction. I think that we are doing fairly well. If we were to look at a similar size of transaction, I think there would be nothing that would prevent us from having a look at that.
It does take some time from, you know, the initial discussions would start anyway until we'll be able to close the transaction and start an integration. The organization might sometimes need a little breather. The GIL integration will be done faster than anything we've ever seen before, and we're very happy about that. We also know that it puts the organization under pressure, so we'll have to strike a balance on that. You can rest assured that if something moves in the market, we will be part of it. I think that's the feedback on the second question.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Dan Togo Jensen from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes, thank you, and congratulations on the results here. I have a couple of questions. We'll take them one at a time. I'm still trying to get my head around the solutions part and the very strong development we see here. Jens Bjørn, you said we cannot multiply Q1 by 4. Why not? I mean, Q1 is typically, as I see it, the seasonal weak quarter. Has something changed fundamentally here? That's one part of it. The other part is, can you give some wording on why this higher level? Is it a few contracts that, you know, that you've gotten rid of or you have improved, that's interesting? More to get a feeling of how we should see coming quarters. That is question number one.
You take great care about, yeah, many things in the company, but a particular solution, so maybe you can answer that question.
I'll try to give it a shot. I think, Dan, if you look at Solutions in general, we probably run at a capacity utilization just shy of 95%. Typically, we've been running at 87% to 88%. That of course means that we get, what can I say, more rental income, and we would have the same cost base. When we then have the warehouses full, but they're not, what can I say, flooded. If you get that balance right, then the productivity, it also comes up. We will have a little bit higher productivity. We have a little bit of situation like we are a semi-carrier on this because we have some lease agreements on these premises, and the market rates have gone up. That probably also has an impact on the volumes.
I would say the seasonality might change a little bit with the additional GIL as well. We've seen that. That means, you know, we don't know the business that well yet because we haven't run this for a whole year. But we see that it's been quite busy, despite it being what we would call a cold period in that part of the world. We would probably consider it summer, but, you know, that's sort of been doing really well and impacting on that. That's also what we would highlight. I think the whole campus situations that we have been working on, it really pays off as we consolidate the volumes, and we can do the resource planning in a good way.
Then the last thing that sort of we've really also done is we've added a lot of automations into our warehouses so that we get a higher productivity. If you add all these things up and, you know, I would actually mention one thing more. I don't know if you can recall it, but years back, we talked about a bleeder list where we implement new customers and, you know, have some, what can I say, financial negative impact of that in the beginning. That's been reduced dramatically. If you have an engine and it's firing on all cylinders, I think that's what we can say that Solutions are doing right now. Of course, we would do our best to try to keep it at that level.
It could also be that it plateau a little bit lower than that. Having said all this, I think that at a certain point in time, given the results that we produce in the Solutions division, we will have to have a discussion about the targets for that division as well. I think right now we will just focus on the operation and then a little bit later, once this has stabilized, we will figure out what we should think about it in the longer run.
Okay. Sounds good. Thanks a lot. Back to NC. It's easy to see, to be bullish here and to see the progression. If you should turn this around, where do you see, so to say, the challenges and what would take this down? Is it just a matter of, you know, we are entering some sort of recession, volume starts to decline? Or is it, you know, freeing up capacity coming back into the market and reduced rates? How should we think of the timing of this? That's number two. Thanks.
Some negative scenarios about this, that, and the other happening, and as I said, we have been too conservative in the past. It's good that we have been conservative and not the other way around, having to come out and explain a weaker performance, but more positive performance. Of course, we do rely on growth in volumes. Volumes traditionally, you know this as good as me or even better, have grown traditionally in line with world GDP. It seems like world GDP will grow faster now this year than what it did in 2019. It's not like it's going in reverse or anything. We don't know what will happen next year, of course. There are different speculations among macro specialists about that.
Of course, if volumes were to deteriorate, there's a lot of overcapacity coming in, that would not be very beneficial for the sea freight market. The big question is, yields, where will they go? As I said, they will. We are not estimating that yields will go back to anywhere near where they were before. They will find a place between where they are now and what they used to be. Where that exactly is, it's just impossible to say. Actually, I do believe that air freight yields will be not sustainable on current levels, but that they will be, because more structural things in our company has happened on air freight maybe than sea freight.
We could probably see a more positive development going forward in terms of yields not dropping as much on air maybe than what they do on sea.
Just finally, you touched upon it here, Jens, a bit, because I was always curious about, everybody knows and reckons that the GDP will still grow, but maybe at a lower pace. How is that linked to global trade? How will forwarders grow? You know, you usually say the containers model at least, and probably also air model, can grow with a premium to GDP. In that market, how will forwarders grow? Will you continue to be able to take share so we can, you know, add one, two percentage points to your growth with a GDP growth of 2% to 3%? Is that realistic?
We've always said that you should expect us. We know we lay it out when we say this. It's a fragmented industry. We know that we have strong competitors, some of them we respect, others not so much. Nevertheless, we feel that as one of the largest in the world, we should outgrow the market. Outside of M&A and integration periods, if we cannot take market share, I mean, it's a little bit of a problem.
No.
You will know this by analyzing the development of GP over the last many years. We have never been the company who have outgrown in terms of volume the market the most. Where we have outgrown is on the TP, absolute TP growth. We are committed to continue to do that. We should have this most effect in the peak growth of the world also. We will continue to work on the conversion also. We have so many plans that can improve the productivity of our company through investing in IT and process optimization and digitalization. There are a lot of room for us to be able to grow our earnings, everything else.
Looking forward to see that. Thanks a lot. That's it for me.
The next question is from the line of Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yep. Yes, loud and clear.
Okay, perfect. My first question is around the current situation in China and what you're seeing there in terms of trucking goods to the ports both on air and ocean. Have you seen any improvement in trucking, given the government was talking about easing some of the restrictions? How do you see kind of volumes from China, as the restrictions are eased? Do you expect a surge in volumes? Could that be further disruptive to the market and tighten the market or a gradual improvement? That's the first question. Secondly, we've seen trucking rates in the US have declined, and capacity availability has increased.
Just wanted to know how you're seeing that market, and if you have seen any indication of a slowing demand in the US. Thirdly, on Agility GIL contribution now expected to be at least DKK 3 billion. Kind of what's driving this? Is it the market conditions or the fact that the GIL operations have turned out to be better than you expected? Thank you.
The GIL, and explain a little bit why we have changed the wording to at least DKK 3 billion, and then I'll try to come back on some of the other questions.
Yes. Thank you. It's obviously we have been clever along the way with implementing the GIL activity, and it looks really good for us. We have added significant volume on our Solutions business in the Middle East section, and that has turned out to be a little bit more profitable from what we anticipated. That's one of both the areas. Then there is the normal growth in the acquired business as well. That's why we say at least DKK 3 billion in long-term impact from the GIL acquisition.
When you look at the trucking market in China, it's been deeply negatively affected by the lockdown. We have seen certain, I guess, the most important production areas are on a test, so to say, being reopened recently. We are slowly seeing an improvement in the situation, but it's still far too early to say exactly what will happen. I've spoken to our people in the region, and they are actually expecting, as you mentioned, to put it, a surge in volumes. There will be a lot of built-up demand, which will come.
This is also what we've seen in previous lockdowns in China, and we can take some lessons from previous experiences. There was even somebody who raised the point that warehousing capacity would come under pressure in the destination areas once all this volume came back into the system. I don't share that concern as such. I think the flow will be constant to the warehouses and to end consumers also. In the US, I don't have information about any particular slowing of the activities that we are seeing.
It's correct that we are not in this kind of the same situation maybe as we were a year ago, where it was really difficult. Sometimes, you know, something without us knowing it, things are actually improving. We are not noticing it because it's happening very gradually. If you were to compare now with maybe nine or 12 months ago, you're probably right in saying that there's been a little slowdown, but nothing material for us. I mean, the fact of the matter is that the EBIT contribution of DSV Road US is significantly above what it was a year ago, in Q1 2022.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Sathish Sivakumar from Citigroup. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yeah. Thank you. I got actually three questions here. Firstly, on the Road Way Forward, 'cause you mentioned that it's progressing as per the timeline, as per the plan. Can you give any color on how much of the volumes are actually onboarded onto this platform within the road network, and how much of the countries are also being onboarded? That's one. Second one, on the charter network, can you give any color on the load factor within your own charter capacity, i.e. 12% of the capacity on the East Coast trade lane? Just trying to get a sense, like how much room is left there in terms of further optimization of charter network.
The third one is around the yield impact, because you did flag that the unwind of low-margin volumes also contributed to the yield performance. What is actually the exposure of those volumes in your mix, and what will be the impact as you go into the, say, Q2? Thank you.
If we take the Road Way Forward, I think there's a couple of things in relation to that, when we look at it. If you look at it from an operational point of view, we actually have, what can I say? We defined our groupage product, which is the cornerstone or the LCL product in Road, and we've sort of reinforced the way we produce it. We can do this on our existing production platform and then govern it based on that. It's a little bit harder to govern if the system doesn't help you as much. The Road Way Forward is actually a system that will coexist with this groupage network, and also produce it in a more efficient way, where you need much less human interaction to do it.
Here we run our POC set up, and I think we also said that on the last call, that the next country coming up this summer is Poland. Then we will have the last country in the POC is Germany. Once these countries they are on the platform. It will be, what can I say, a completion of the POC, and then we will basically go into a full-blown rollout. It's still early days on the digital part of flow. Right now we are making good progress in relation to to sort of completing the POCs with success. I think the charter network and capacity, given the lack of capacity you see in the market, we actually run the charter network with you know, basically full capacity utilization.
That means that, you know, on all the major lanes where there are volumes, we would fly more or less with index 100. Sometimes if there's not, let's say China is an export area and you go to Europe, you have planned in the schedule that you don't have full utilization in the other direction. If that makes sense to you, it's a little bit counterintuitive, that means that if we do certain number of round trips per week, the business case is based on that we are full in one direction all week, and then it might be that we only fill it up 50%, 60%, 70% in the other direction.
It's very important that we get back to the origin where you pay, what can I say, for the predominant part of the journey on that plane. I would say that we cannot really produce more unless we get more capacity in at this moment in time. You also talked a little bit about the yield impact and low margin business. I think if we should say something about it's very hard, you know, to come up with something specific because it's dynamic. It happens all over. You have a contract, it's priced perhaps a little bit below market.
You contact the customer, you know, would like to seek another solution, and it's probably impacted us with 2% to 3% or something like this of our volumes, where this volume has then gone elsewhere. I think that's what I can say to that.
Thank you. Can I actually ask a quick follow-up on the Road Way Forward? How critical is this platform to go live if you had to acquire an asset which has a significant exposure to overland?
You can say, in order to be able to do what you've been doing on A&S and really get, you know, the marginal conversion ratio up. Getting it higher than it is now, then it's crucial. If it's to combine two operations, you can also do this. We have, solutions in our stack that allows us to integrate with multiple platforms. It is possible, but you will have a lower productivity and more human interaction. It doesn't prevent us, from growing, but, the value you can get out of it is lower than if you have the real platform. As I've said before, there's no enterprise solution, at least to my knowledge, on a European road, business today. Nobody has a platform.
The first one that will get it, obviously will have a very unique situation with higher productivity than most peers, and also with, what can I say, the capability to do roll-ups on the M&A side and basically take advantage of the scalability. That card we are trying to get, and as it looks right now, we will get it, and then we will be able to develop Road quite nicely.
Got it. Yeah. Thank you very much.
The next question is from the line of Parash Jain from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Thank you, hello from Hong Kong. I'm new looking at this company, but familiar with the sector. If I may have three questions. Just a bit of clarification on your target with respect to Agility of DKK 3 billion going into 2023. It seems like 15% to 20% higher than 2022. Is it on a pro forma basis or does this DKK 3 billion number take into consideration some rollover of freight rate going into 2023? That's number one. Secondly, to the question that has also been asked in different form with respect to expectation of pent-up demand this summer because of the volume loss out of China in probably April and to an extent in May. Can you share some color on the inventory level at the retailers and particularly in Europe?
Following Russia-Ukraine conflict, are you seeing cautiousness among the retailers leading up to the summer? They would rather prefer to draw down inventory, which I would imagine not already been probably pretty lean? Finally, in terms of acquisitions and what drives in terms of your air and sea, are you comfortable with the scale? At what point you would think that incrementally synergies would diminish? In terms of own cycle, shall we expect the intensity will slow down at the peak of the cycle because the valuation multiple probably would have gone at a level where your implied IRR would be difficult to achieve? Thank you.
For the deal impact, you have to bear in mind that this is a full year 2023 estimate at least DKK 3 billion in impact. I think I touched upon it before, why we say at least so. I think that hopefully should answer the question.
Yes.
You've not had the full year impact in 2022. We will complete it in 2022, and then you will get the full year impact in 2023. I think that's sort of. We don't get more synergies in 2023. Just what we say is that we've got DKK 3 billion probably, and a little bit more. We can't sit and quantify it, so we would like to close off, what can I say, this communication now. If you look at the inventory level in EU with the retailers, I think the situation is that many of the retailers, they still need to stock up. They're running on very low inventory levels. It's a little bit here that the inventory levels are a little bit higher in the US, so it's a little bit different.
Right now there's a backlog of what needs to be shipped. Of course, we expect to produce that at a certain point in time. You're right about the consumer confidence given the war in Ukraine. It's probably declined a little bit, so we will see what the consumer will do. It's not only the war in Ukraine, it's actually also the energy prices, stuff like that drives some different behavior. Right now, we haven't seen our volumes decline because of that. You never know what happens. We also see at least certain governments pumping out money to make sure that they get re-elected. I think they're gonna try to look after the people that really need us when it comes to that.
You asked about A&S scale and you know when have we gotten too big you know to get an advantage out of doing M&A. If we look at it, the market is highly fragmented, and I think you know we sit in with a situation you know where we probably have 3%, 4%, 5%, depending on which area we're talking about and how you measure it. I think that's quite unusual that you're in a mature industry, in a certain way, have such a what can I say a low market share of the big players. There's nothing that tells us on our infrastructure that as long as we can scale, that there's no economies of scale. If we continue to scale, we're gonna get benefits out of it.
I think, you know, that's at least gonna continue as long as I'm in the company. I don't know, you know, how long that will be. That's. It might even be a decade. I can only remember one thing that somebody that's not in the room said, the old CEO, Kurt K. Larsen said way back, "It's always been consolidating in this industry, and it will continue consolidating as long as I live." That's the only thing I sort of can say to that, and I think we will be a part of it as we've been, you know, for many years. Hopefully that answers your question.
Sure. Just in terms of timing, is it the down cycle offers you a better return on the acquisition versus now?
In this case. Let's assume that there is value for 100. If the seller wants all 100, he will keep the company. We will get some value to our shareholders if we have to buy it. You can have all kinds of argument. Is it better in this part of the cycle or the other? We will make a business case and have an individual opinion about the, what can I say, value of the asset that we are talking about. If we can't meet, there will not be a transaction with us. If you buy too expensive, you don't get the return. For us, capital allocation, Michael has just talked about share buybacks also with We just buy our own shares, then that's a better return.
Lovely. Thank you so much, and have a lovely day.
As there are no more questions, I will now hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.
Thank you. Thanks for listening in. Thanks for all your questions. Very insightful questions also. We hope we have answered all of them. If not, please feel free to reach out. We look forward to seeing a lot of you on the 31st of May at the Capital Markets Day here in Copenhagen. We look very forward to that. I know the investor relations team are in the process of putting a very special and very interesting program together that you can all look forward to. It will not only be the three of us that you have heard speaking here today, which will represent.
I also have to once again extend a big thank you to all the brilliant, hardworking employees of DSV who has actually produced the numbers that you see. We talk a lot about IT and processes and digitalization, but we are still a people's business. It's the people of DSV who's made this result happen. Thank you very, very much for that. We could not have done it without you. With that said, we will conclude and we will say goodbye and have a good day here from Hedehusene, Denmark.