Welcome to the presentation of the DSV annual report for 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 star star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded. Today, I'm pleased to present Group CEO, Jens Bjørn Andersen, Group COO, Jens Lund, and Group CFO, Michael Ebbe. Speakers, please begin.
Thank you very much, Jens Bjørn Andersen here. Thanks for joining us for the full year 2022 results from Hedehusene, Denmark. You've probably seen the presentation. It's online. After having clearly looked at the beautiful photo on the front page of a bridge in Tokyo, you can go to page number 2 and read the forward-looking statements. Then, further on, go to page number 3 with the agenda for this morning. Those of you who have listened in before will probably recognize the agenda, and you can read it yourself.
With that said, I just wanted to remind you that when we get to the Q&A, we would kindly ask you to refrain from asking more than two questions each to respect the time. We would like to get this done in about 1 hour. I am sure you also have a very busy day. Page number 4 talks about the highlights of what we do deem as an exceptional and very, very strong year for DSV. By far the highest and the best EBIT result this company has ever seen, and far above the initial guidance we gave of between DKK 18 billion-DKK 20 billion of 2022 when the year started.
Overall, on a day like today, we can be happy, we can be proud. We are still humble, but all the staff members of our company have done an absolutely fantastic and a remarkable job, and we are both proud and very pleased about the performance. It's not often that we can show to an EPS growth of 60%. Please be reminded, I'm sure you're aware that looking at the EPS for a longer period of time, we still have a very, very strong development. Also been a more eventful year than probably ever before. Amongst others, we have integrated GIL in a record-breaking, at a record-breaking pace in less than 12 months. It was not an insignificant chunk of business.
On top of that, we have seen extreme market volatility, the year was also characterized by a great degree of supply chain disruption. We always say that cash is king in DSV, so the fact that we had a very strong performance of the cash flow. I'm sure Michael Ebbe will spend some time because that's a really highlight of the year also. The fact that we've been able to distribute or allocate over DKK 21 billion to shareholders is really a great feeling, and Michael Ebbe will elaborate on that. This morning, we have also released the earnings guidance or the EBIT guidance for this year, for 2023.
We estimate that the result will come in between DKK 16 billion and DKK 18 billion, and that reflects that the market is normalizing and that we will get, at least at the beginning of the year, some macroeconomic headwind. As such, it's a little bit against the law of nature in DSV, where we normally always have a higher result than the previous year. As such, we are actually pleased about the fact that we will see some sort of normalization in 2023 and that we will get back to levels that we can recognize will be somewhat similar to what we saw in various degrees, I have to say, before COVID. Nothing wrong with this. The result, if we can achieve this between DKK 16 billion and DKK 18 billion, is still internally considered as ambitious and very strong.
Not to forget, we also announced this morning our new sustainability ambitions to. We have committed with the Science-Based Target to a net zero target by 2050. We're very happy and also proud to take part in this journey of decarbonizing our industry. With that, we'll go to the divisions, Air & Sea. Again, very strong results. We have seen a certain decline as we would have expected in Q4, driven both by a soft market where volumes declined, but also of course, yields going down. More or less as we had expected, nothing dramatic in the development in Q4.
We had basically been aware that this was going to happen, and the fact that it happened was actually good because it sets the base for, as I said before, a more normal situation going into to 2023. A lot of you, and we will not elaborate too much of this, but a lot of you have asked if we will sit on our hands and do nothing with the cost base. We get a little bit disappointed when you ask this question, because if you know us well, you should know that this will not be the case.
We will do what we can to adjust the cost base. We have already in Air & Sea and also for the two other divisions taken steps to align the cost base with the lower volume. We need to ensure that the productivity of our divisions do not decline. We feel that the Air & Sea division is very, very strong. The network is, it will never be complete, but it is strong. We have great competencies from a digital point of view, high service levels, great employees, good leaders in the operation. We feel that the division is stronger than ever before. We have now to go out and grow our volume and take market share in the coming months.
Very, very strong performance and the fact that the division surpassed DKK 20 billion is of course absolutely remarkable compared to the EBIT result the year before. Flipping to the next page, just quickly on the products. First, air freight. Maybe we should start by looking at the markets for Q4. Of course, not an environment you want to be in for many, many quarters in a row. We have seen a decline in volumes of between 15 and 17%. Our own market development is approximately minus 16%, so we are in line with the market. We have still moved 368,000 tons of air freight, so we have still been busy.
We have managed to have a fairly reasonable yield also of above DKK 11,000 per ton. There's no really peak season and we have to see how the development will develop. How the development will be for 2023. Inventory, high inventories by our customers is of course one reason for the low decline or for the low development in volume. Of course, also the fact that air freight is the most expensive mode of transport has meant that it has had this weak development. Sea freight on page 7, more or less the same story as air freight.
I did forget to say we also have to remember that air freight is in nature more volatile than sea freight, so we will expect less volatility here on sea freight than what we have seen on air freight. Markets down approximately between 9% and 11%, and we have the same development also. We have volume development more or less in line with the market. Still a higher yield than we had a year ago of a little over DKK 5,000. We have to see now, we're very eager to see how the development will be when we get into so February here after the reopening of China after the Chinese New Year.
We do expect that volumes will develop in a better way than what they have at the beginning of the year. Overall, we are happy and content with the situation. We go to Road freight. A couple of things have happened. First, we would like to point your attention to the gross profit. It's more or less in line with what it was last year. Of course, you can allude from that we have had a higher cost base. A couple of things have happened. We have tried to highlight that. We have to remember we have exited Russia and Belarus and Kaliningrad. Some profit was in the numbers for 2021, which we missed this year.
We have been hit a little bit in one region, which is South Africa, where we've had certain issues that we've been dealing with, which has had a negative EBIT effect. Also at the very end of the quarter, a little bit later than what we did see on Air & Sea, but also at the very end of the quarter, we did see a little deterioration in volume, and we were impacted by that. Also here, it was no surprise. Also congratulations to the Road division of surpassing not 20 but DKK 2 billion in EBIT for the full year.
This is also a great achievement and the growth year-on-year of 9.2%, something that everybody in the division can also be very proud about. Last slide before I hand over to Michael is solutions. Some of you have asked about the development this morning. This was also expected. We are also here pretty happy with the gross profit where we have had an increase. We are very aware of the fact that we need to get the reporting right all the time. Even though it annoys investors and ourselves for that matter, we have done a little reclassification of some of the cost base, which makes a difference between GP and EBIT.
Also at the end of the year, we did do a few accruals also on the cost base to make sure that we don't carry any risks, so to say, from 2022 into 2023. As such, that has happened throughout the company. The last thing I wanted to say is that when we look at the Q4 numbers for 2021, it was the first full quarter of GIL. It was probably a little bit too good. There were also other allocation mechanisms in GIL than what we have in DSV, so that has also been one of the reasons. You shouldn't be too concerned.
We are full of optimism, and we still believe that solutions will continue to produce good and strong results. Also here, growing earnings from DKK 1.7 billion-DKK 2.7 billion for the full year is absolutely fantastic and also job really well done for everybody working in the Solutions division. With that said, I'll hand over to you, Michael, so please take it from page number 10.
Thank you very much, Jens Bjørn. Yes, I will go to page number 10 with the some KPIs from our profit and loss, 2022. I think Jens Bjørn has already explained the development in EBIT, so I'll just touch upon some few other KPIs here. Clearly the revenue is in especially in the fourth quarter is impacted by the lower freight rates and also the declining volume as Jens Bjørn already mentioned. So clearly the gross profit has been less volatile than the revenue also as expected. Another thing that we have seen, especially here in the second half of 2022, is obviously the currency impact, and that has also had an impact of our cost base.
Most likely some of you will say, "How will that develop in the guidance?" What we can say here is that as always we're an asset-light, so we are investigating different opportunities to protect the conversion ratio. I would though say that we aim to have the same cost base in 2023 as we had in 2022. That's about it for the cost base. I would say like always, we do have some foreign exchange adjustments. It's still related to our intergroup loans, so no cash impact there. Our tax rate is 24% for the full year, a little bit as expected.
When we come to the guidance, we also expect that that will be this tax rate going forward as well. Last KPI on this page, Jens Bjørn has already touched upon that. This, the earnings per share with a growth of 60%, clearly driven by strong earnings growth, and we expect that it will normalize in 2023. We skip to the next page 11 with the cash flow. We believe ourself it's a strong cash flow that you can see here. All earnings reported are converted into cash, and the adjusted free cash flow are then allocated back to the shareholders that you will see in the next page.
The growth in the cash flow is obviously driven by the earnings, but also our net working capital that we have worked with throughout the year, so it's good to see that has been reduced. Clearly, there's also an impact on the lower rates and the lower activity level, but we have also done a lot of initiatives in order to work with that after we have implemented the GIL. The development of the net working capital in the same line is offset by higher tax payments due to the higher results, obviously. Our gearing ratio is exactly 1.0.
That will also, if you look at 2023, when our guidance taken into consideration, the EBITDA will obviously decline, meaning that will have an impact on the gearing ratio as well. We do obviously still have a target of staying below two times EBITDA, so that is of course what we want to work with. Our capital structure and balance sheet are in a good shape. I think we have nearly DKK 10 billion in cash, and the average duration of our corporate bonds is 8.3 years. The first corporate bond that we have to repay or refinance is in 2024. We have a good balance sheet here. Our return on invested capital are also satisfactory at 25%.
Also impacted by the growth in earnings. The next page, number 12. As mentioned, we have allocated all the cash, all the earnings that we have converted into cash, we have allocated back to the shareholder. We have nearly 19 million shares we have bought back in 2022, giving an allocation to the shareholders of DKK 21.6 billion in this table that Fleming has provided you with. I think for the dividend part, we have suggested to increase the dividend from DKK 5.5 per share last year to DKK 6.5 for this year. We have also, like we normally do at every quarter, assessed our cash flow for the current period assessment.
We have initiated a new share buyback of DKK 2.5 billion starting today and run until we publish the first quarter results in April. That's the allocation part. I go to the next page number 13, the outlook for 2023. I think you already read that this outlook is significantly lower than our results this year. It's clear, when we talk about outlook, it's a more uncertain market and macroeconomic outlook that what we have been used to. That's obviously reflected in our guidance here, which is between DKK 16 billion-DKK 18 billion. That is how we see it currently.
We do expect the first half of 2023 to be negatively impacted, and then we assume a normalization or improvement in the second half of 2023. It's clear the Road division is the one that has gained the most with the market conditions. They will most likely also be the one with the highest decline. Our tax rate, it's expected to be 24%. It's a little bit higher than what we have seen, but that's due to the nature of our earnings and the way that they're structured these days. It's still our target, obviously, to take market shares in all areas. That is also what we will work with. I think that's about it for the outlook.
We've also the last slide from my side, slide 14. It's just to remind you that we adjusted our long-term financial targets last year, exactly a year ago. We maintain the current long-term targets. It has been an unusual year this year, and now we look into a normalization, but that doesn't change our ambitions for the more long-term, 2020 takes. I think that's it from my side. We can go to the Q&A. I will assume there are lots of questions.
Thank you. To ask a question, please press 5 star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press 5 star again. As stated, please restrict only 2 questions per participant. We'll have a brief pause for questions being registered. Alex
Two questions from me, please. First, on volume, medium-term, do you think in 2023 that we're undershooting what would be a normal level of volumes, and therefore, there's some subsequent catch-up to come? Does six years probably look like pretty normal growth rates of a 2023 baseline? If there is no catch-up to come after the destocking that we're seeing now, why might that be? Second question is on GP yields. Your outlook for the year suggests your GP yields down between 20% and 25%, which would be about 15% higher than the targets at the Capital Markets Day from last year. Should we be thinking about more medium-term upside to the DKK 8,000, DKK 4,000 level that we talked about at the CMD, please? Thanks.
I can talk a little bit about this. Good questions. When you talk about that reduction of between 20% and 25%, as we have guided, you have to take into account that this is the average for the full year. You can make your own calculations as when you expect this to kick in. We still believe that what we have indicated before is correct, and I think with this number, you can also make calculations getting to that point. We've also said that we are slowly moving a little bit away from giving the hard kind of numbers on the yields, because we've also come to realize that it is very difficult for us to anticipate exactly how the yields will develop going forward.
We have said on the volume side that it's the biggest misalignment we have ever seen from growth in the GDP of the world, which is estimated to be 2, maybe 3% this year. We guide that volumes will drop 2% to 5%. Of course, driven by high inventories. Let's see how it goes. Of course, we prefer 2 rather than 5, but this is the best estimate we have right now. We think also we've seen that already with the continuation of the weak markets from December going into January. We do expect that it's not gonna be super strong in the first quarter, but then we hope to see an improvement subsequently in the quarters to come.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Alex. The next question will be from the line of Stig Frederiksen from ABG. Please go ahead. You will now be unmuted.
Thank you very much for taking my question. A question back to the capital structure, because calculating backwards on what you've announced of share buyback at DKK 2.5 billion that would go into April, and then comparing back to that you were guiding DKK 16 billion-DKK 18 billion on EBIT and DKK 5 billion on depreciations, but an EBITA of DKK 21 billion-DKK 22 billion. What should we think about returning cash? Do we want to deleverage? I am aware that your multiples or ratio would go up to 1.3, 1.4 based on the guidance you're giving today. Are you seeking to keep it around 1 time, or should we expect maybe more cash returns relatively in the second half? That's my question. Thank you.
It's Michael speaking. Stig, we have not changed in our ambitions or our guidance for the ratios. What you need to take in mind here is that when we look at the first quarter, we always have a little bit lower cash flow for the first quarter. That's reflected in this one. When you talk about our earnings, we also have to pay some taxes, and we also have some interest that we need to pay. I think that's what we will keep for the time being, but we don't have an aim to deleverage the company. We still have an aim of being below 2 times.
Let me just make it very clear. We have the ambition to return all the proceeds of the earnings of the company that we convert to cash to shareholders 100% if possible. It has been a true pleasure doing buybacks in 2022. The fact that we could purchase about 9% of our own company and eliminate those shares was absolutely a fantastic feeling.
Super. Many thanks.
Thank you, Stig. The next question will be from the line of Ulrich Bach from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Yes, hello, Jens and Michael. First question on this cost-cutting procedure that you alluded to. Can you please just confirm that you expect your fixed cost level to be flat? Is there any variability depending on whether we will see volumes decline 2% or 5%? That'll be my first question. Then second question on the yield. Can you perhaps just shed some light on the composition of this yield structure? How much is purely related to the level of the rates, and how much is more fixed pricing, you know, customs and other kinds of services? Thank you.
It's Jens Lund here. Hello, everybody. When we look at the cost-cutting, I actually don't like the phrase cutting. It's basically that we adjust the capacity to the volumes that we produce. As an example, if you sit in a department, you produce index 100, you are 10 people. If we are down on volume, so we produce index 90, we need to be 9 people. What happens, you know, as a general rule of thumb, what happens is that people are very focused as your bosses on what is going on on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, quarterly basis on the productivity measures so that we have the right conversion ratio. We've been having this focus. I've only been here for a little bit more than 20 years, it's been the same ever after.
This adjustment already started in Q4 last year, and it's continuing into this year. Depending on, as you say, is it 2% down for the year or 5% down, these mathematics will apply, and we will of course govern it from the top. Accountability is basically our middle name, and we're very accountable when it comes to this. You can rest assure that we will protect the conversion ratio. When it comes to the yields, is it rates or is it basically our fees? I think it's basically mostly related to the yields or to the rates, because of course now capacity is not, what can I say, as tight a resource as it used to be.
We won't be able to, what can I say, to make the same trading gains that we've done previously. Our fees, let's say to do a customs declaration or sell an insurance or whatever, they are very stable in their nature. It might be that it will be a little bit harder just short term to increase them. Normally, what can I say, if the cost base go up on the production cost of these, basically the fees, they also have to increase. Otherwise, we have to deliver higher productivity via digitalization in order to protect, what can I say, the conversion that we have on them. I hope that answers that question as well.
Thank you so much. Very clear.
Thank you. Like, the next question will be from the line of Alexia Dogani from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Good morning. It's Alexia here from Barclays. Just two for me as well then. Just following up from the Jens Lund comments just now on the conversion ratio. Obviously, you know, you've said that in the first half, volumes will be weaker than in the second half. Given your prior comments on the GP yields, most probably the GP yields will be weaker in the second half than the first half, given kind of potentially an exit rate closer to your medium-term target. How quickly are you able to adjust, I guess, your cost base to reflect the GP yield reductions? I assume with kind of a service intensity coming up, maybe volumes are improving a bit, but not to the extent to offset the GP yield decline. Are you kind of mindful to that dynamic as well?
Should we expect for RNC for the year conversion ratio to be kind of bottomed at 50%? Should the quarters be broadly similar? Sorry, that's quite a long first question. Secondly, just on the shipping industry, obviously we are going into likely a very challenging backdrop for them, given they don't have the similar ability to adjust their cost base. As a large customer, how do you feel at potentially the risk that they go into losses, the industry goes into losses next year? How does that matter to you? Is it a positive or negative or neutral? Thanks.
Just take the last one first. We have basically no interest in the profitability of the shipping lines. This is not meant in a kind of a disrespectful manner. As long as they have the funds, and I'm sure they have that from 2022 to continue to invest, to produce the services that we and the shippers need, then we are happy about this, and we will not go into speculations if they will go into losses or whatever. You probably have much better views on that than what we have. What we have said, though, is that you're right, market dynamics have changed.
We are of the opinion that we need to stay loyal to the shipping lines that supported us during 2022, where access to capacity was difficult. The ones that helped us back then, we will help now, and I think this is also only reasonable. I don't know, Jens, if you would continue a little bit on the conversion ratio.
I think you can already see it in the Q1 numbers that we've already taken out costs. This is something that is very dynamic. It happens on a daily basis. The vast majority of the, what can I say, adjustments, you know, will be made by just normal turnover, staff turnover, that you have in a department. There'll probably be a lag of two, three months, because you have to be certain when you reduce the capacity. I think that will be the lag impact that you will see. We should be fairly quick on that.
It may lead to that we have a little bit lower conversion in the first part of the year than we will have in the second part. To put percentages on it is very difficult, but I think that's how the numbers they should basically pan out at the end of the day.
Thank you.
Thank you, Alexia. The next question will be from line of Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Good morning. With Agility now integrated, where are you on M&A plans? If you could generally talk about the M&A environment in the forwarding market. Second question on yields. Could you give an indication of what was the exit rate for Air & Sea yields in the fourth quarter? Just a clarification. Did you just say that the second half yields will continue to decline while volumes could improve? Thank you.
I'll talk a little bit about M&A. We are ready to do M&A. We've concluded the GIL integration in a world record time. I'm very, very happy with the way that the organization have embraced GIL, the way we have done it. All the support functions, finance, IT, I don't wanna mention anybody else because I will leave someone out, have done a remarkable job. It's a sizable company we have acquired. It's many tens of thousands of employees we have put onto our platform. It tells us that we have a scalable situation, which we are very happy about. From principal point of view, we are ready. We have been for some time. What we need now is to kind of get some sort of alignment between sellers and buyers.
It has been a little bit difficult. It's no surprise in 22, where results were very high also. We were always of the opinion that this was temporarily. Now we will see that. It's at least reflected in our own guidance. If you get 1 or 2 quarters under your belt, you will also see it in the actual reported numbers. Then we have the expectation that there will be an alignment between the two parties, so there can be some sort of consensus around the table and deals can be done. We go into 23 full of optimism also on the M&A side. Will we be successful? We cannot promise that. We don't know. There will be different opportunities that we will pursue.
What we can say is that the, I don't know, 25-year-old strategy that we've had in DSV, that we want to grow through acquisitions, that it makes sense, that is 100% intact. We think that we can demonstrate that we have generated value for all stakeholders, not least shareholders, through M&A. Basically why stop that now? Maybe, Jens, I don't know if you wanna go in further into the yields or there was.
The yields the thing the yields, I think what I can explain that a little bit. We will not, you know, go into specific numbers on what was it a specific day. We will refrain from that. Of course, I think in Jens Bjørn's comment was basically that, you know, we will probably see a little bit higher yields in the beginning of the year, as you alluded to, and then perhaps better volumes in the second part, but also a little bit lower yields. That's basically a confirmation from our side.
Thank you.
Thank you, Munee. The next question will be from the line of Michael Thrusesen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Yes. Thank you very much for taking my questions. First, I would like you to talk just a little bit about the journey ahead of us in terms of the Roadway Forward. Also if you can tell us if any costs that have been or will be incurred from the change of just the new trend but more management system. That's my first question. Secondly, I want to continue a little bit on the sub-suppliers on the ocean side here. As we're entering 2023, is there anything that you are doing different versus a normal year? I mean, obviously, you're probably doing things very different from the past two years when just getting space has been so difficult.
Just from a contract view, you know, are you thinking about being more short to market than normal? Or are you using maybe the lower rates to maybe add a little bit of contract or any flavor that you can add on that please? Thank you.
We will also, for competitive reasons, not go too much into how we contract with our carriers. I guess we can say a couple of things, Michael, and it's a good question. One is that we are probably slightly shorter than what we have been. We have been tempted many times to go long, but history tells us that it's a short, sweet ride, and then it turns out to be can be disastrous in the future. We are a little bit shorter than what we have been.
Maybe a point which is also important to emphasize and to mention, for all of you, we do not carry anything into 2023 from 2022 when it comes to agreements with carriers, which are not kind of mark to market. This is something which is very good to be able to establish, that we do not have a lot of agreements, which are priced in a previous market environment, that carries into 2023 or 2024 for that matter. It's all been kind of aligned, so we start the year in a way where we are kind of being priced according to market conditions. Jens, it's your little baby, of course, Roadway Forward.
It's our, all of ours baby, you have a special interest, maybe you wanna.
The thing is, you know, what happened during last year was, of course, there's two angles on, in particular, the Roadway Forward project. One is this European group, its network from a physical point of view, how we develop moving the cargo. That's progressing according to plan, and we've basically more or less all the lines up and running and, you know, it's basically a price from zone to, or postcode to postcode, a lead time, you know, and how that works. That's all set up and structured. On the IT side, we need, you know, to automate more of these processes now that we have this fixed structure.
Here we have not made the progress that we had expected because we did not get any deliverables from our IT vendor at all in 2022. We've gotten them now, the 22 deliverables, and they are already deployed into production, and we need 2 releases more. Once we have these 2 releases in place, called 23.1 and 23.2, it's a very good way they invent how they do the releases so that we can follow on. When we have them, then we don't need more development, and then it's basically a rollout game. It slowed us down, this was a year on the project. When you have these projects, it's very important that you don't accumulate this cost in the balance sheet, but you expense it as you go along.
It's probably also hurt the cost base a little bit on Road during the year. That's how it is. We can't capitalize costs and then, you know, have some big problems sitting in the balance sheet. That's a little bit on the Roadway Forward, and we're still equally optimistic about it. In particular, the traction we have on the commercial side. I hear on some of the lanes where we've established this, what can I say, higher quality service and product and better visibility, that we are up to 300% on the volume. Of course, it's not all the lanes, but it's definitely good news and, you know, carries over to all the other lanes. I think we have a plan that we wanna grow faster than the market.
You have to remember that it's only a certain proportion of the Road business. It's probably between, around a little bit less than 15% of the volume in Road that is this kind of groupage. It also has to grow fast if it really has to have a meaning. I'm quite comfortable that we will continue this because it definitely is very welcomed by our customers, and this is what matters at the end of the day. Whether we will be able to get the conversion up, that depends on the infrastructure that we have available to support the production. As I said, you know, we will also make that happen. It just takes a little bit longer.
We also have to say that, you know, not all things work out just exactly as they should, but we're making progress.
Great. Thank you very much for answers both my questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. The next question will be from the line of Lars Heindorff from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Yes, thank you. A couple questions regarding Road and Solutions and also a little bit about the guidance. Now in Q4, you experienced a sheer decline in Solutions in the revenue. That actually comes past a, I think, two or three quarters where you had +10% organic growth. So maybe a few words on, on development there in Q4, which appears to be sort of, declining, a little bit faster at least than I had expected. Then on the same line, you expect, roughly flattish, markets for Road and Solutions into 2023. Maybe a few words on that. What will that mean in terms of volumes?
I know you don't disclose shipments, but, maybe you could say a little bit about the price development in, those Road and solutions, and how that will impact the top line.
I think, if we take solutions first and development in the revenue, it's clear that, you know, as the economy has slowed a little bit down, we've seen that we actually produce more or less the same number of order lines, but the mix has changed quite a bit when it comes to that last. Let's say, you know, that you had a certain number of activities per order. That has definitely come down. We still ship with a high frequency. There's a lot to do, but we make a little bit less money. I think on the utilization in the warehouses, it's a little bit down compared to what we saw in the previous quarters as well.
We also get a little bit less storage income. I think these things filter through with. We probably also have some regional differences where we had an exceptionally good start in the Middle East last year. That also helped us quite a bit. That's been. It's been okay, but it's been a little bit slower this year as well. We talked about the or you asked about, you know, how do we see volumes into the next year. It's clear that there will probably also be an impact for Road and solutions, but not as dramatic as you would see it for the ocean side. We, we do expect, you know, that it'll be a couple of quarters here where activity will be a little bit lower.
Hopefully it should get a little bit better as we progress during the year. Actually, some of the indications that we have on solutions, I've asked Brian Ejsing a couple of times, you know, "How are we doing? How is the activity?" He's actually fairly confident now. He's a confident guy, if you understand what I'm saying. He's fairly confident when it comes to that. I also think that the Road team, even though it's a little bit less busy and perhaps easier to get capacity, they're still also confident. This kind of flat, little bit positive development, this is probably what we're looking into. We will then adjust the capacity we have available accordingly, so that we continue to show some strong financial numbers.
Just to follow that, you have announced a few price increases in the Road, at least, towards the end of 2022. Will that carry into 2023?
We try to hold on to the price increase. Some of the large customers, of course, they push back and I don't think that we will get, you know, dramatic extra income. I think we've also increased the yields, and now perhaps the push will be towards the suppliers as well as if the capacity situation allows us. We're not 100% certain where that will lend out yet with the suppliers. We will have to see.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Lars. The next question will be from the line of Marc Zeck from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. First question would be on net working capital. Do you expect another, let's say, significant release of free cash going into next years as, let's say, the line rate is ongoing? Do you feel like most of the capital release from rightsizing net working capital is already done? The second question would be more on the, let's say more general side in the freight market. Do you expect any impact from the dissolution of the alliance between Maersk and MSC in terms of? Was it more difficult when Maersk decided to, let's say, not service freight forwards anymore to the same extent as previously? Did that impact your booking with MSC as well?
Do you expect that to improve or is it just too early to tell right now? Thank you.
I can take for the net working capital first. Maybe Brian can take the second question. In terms of net working capital, it's clear that we have worked you can say in order to rightsizing payment terms and supplier payment terms and so forth. Also impacting by the freight rates. I would say that we will not be in the low 2 times or 2%, we will neither be in 3.5 like we were last year. I think the rightsizing, I would assume, would be around 2.5-ish general, as a general rule.
The 2M Alliance, it's not appropriate to comment too much on that. As far as I understand, the separation is planned for 2025, that's a few days out in the future. We don't, as such, do not expect it to have a big effect on us. We have had separate dialogue, of course, and negotiations and relations with each individual carrier. As such, we don't expect it to have a big impact on our business.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marc. The next question will be from the line of Sam Bland from JP Morgan. Please go ahead, your line will be unmuted.
Thanks. Thanks. Second question. I've got 2, please. First one is sort of an Air & Sea question. We've seen the Sea spot rates come back, I think more or less to where they were before COVID. Air looks like it's still a bit higher. Can you just talk about whether you see reasons for Air to stay higher for longer, and then how that feeds into your yield guidance? The second question is on this short spot effect. We were talking about that through the second half of last year as well. I guess we have seen unit margins come down quite a bit. Does that say that the short spot position sort of hasn't worked as expected, or is it that unit margins would've come down by more if you didn't have it? Thank you.
I would have a hope that it's the last thing that you say is correct. We believe that being short is the right thing to do. It has definitely protected the proportion of the GP that stemmed from the port to port. We are believers in that. You are right, it has come down, but it's come down to a level that we had anticipated. For us, there's no drama in the development we have seen. When it comes to air, it's also right that the yields have dropped at a slower pace. It all remains to be seen what happens now in 2023.
We are a little bit concerned that also, we'll see, I would not call it an acceleration, but a continuation in the, the declining yields for air freight. We will see some overcapacity also. We have not seen it yet, but, of course there's always the risk of irrational pricing behavior if you sit on assets which cannot be utilized. We don't have any assets which are not utilized, but, it's a little bit speculative to go into. We have to see. We have not seen anything yet, but, of course we are following the situation very closely. I think that is basically as much as we can say about that at this moment in time.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Sam. The next question will be from the line of Rachel Short from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Hi there, guys. Thanks very much for the call. My question has already somewhat been addressed around M&A plans for the next year. I was just wondering if you have any kind of ideas or limits on sizes of deals you might be going for, or the level of transformation, or if it's just sort of an opportunistic outlook for now. Thanks.
The answer is basically no to that question.
I thought as much. Thank you.
Not meaning that we don't wanna answer it, but meaning that there are basically, in principle, no limits. I didn't want to be rude or disrespectful, just to make that clear.
No, no, not at all. Thank you.
Thank you, Rachel. The next question will be from the line of Sathish Sivakumar from Citigroup. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Thank you. I got two questions here. Firstly on solutions, right? Obviously, you operate based on a sale and leaseback model there. Given the current rising interest rate of funding costs, how does it going to impact the, say, cost of solutions leases as you look into all the years into 2023 and 2024? Do you see inflation or rising cost of capital there, impacting the operating lease cost? The second one is actually on the air freight. Obviously, you clarified that you're not carrying anything from 2022 to 2023 in terms of capacity arrangement with the ocean freight. How does this going to impact the block space agreement that you have, say, for instance with Qatar, where you actually buy, like 6 months up, in terms of capacity?
Any caller around that would be helpful. Thank you.
Yep. I think I'll answer that. On solutions, right now what you see under warehousing is that, if you speak to many of these companies like Panattoni or Prologis or whatever they are called, I think they are sold out. I think that is their, what can I say, view on the market. It's clear that right now the market is softening a little bit. I'm not, what can I say? The rent that they will charge is not necessarily that correlated to the yield. I mean, that would've been nice if when the yield was low that they would have said, "Then you also pay a low rent," if you understand what I'm saying.
They said, "No, no, capacity is needed, so you have to pay more." Of course, now you are in a situation where there's a little bit less demand, so they speak more politely to us than they did before on the leases. It's not a big swing in the balance of power, I can tell you that. I think we'll probably see that the significant increases will taper off. There might be a slight reduction on the rent cost. Of course, we have contracts with our customers, you know, that are aligned with what we have with the landlords. Otherwise, you would run a very big risk when you operate a business like this. I hope that answers your question. On the BSAs, yes, we have BSAs in place here and there.
They are always supported by back-to-back arrangements, so that we don't sit on big uncovered risk. That's in reality how we contract with these carriers. It's been a model that we've been using for years and years. Both us, the carriers, and certainly also the customers are very familiar with that.
Okay. T hank you.
Thank you, Satish. The next question will be from the line of Nicolas Mora from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Good day, gentlemen. We're seeing Air & Sea volumes declining, but warehouse utilization is still high, and activity in retail and e-commerce is also slowing. How does this factor into your idea for the shape of the destocking throughout the year? Do you think we'll see an orderly destocking or perhaps some undershooting there? Also continuing on Solutions, regarding the cost base, what are your thoughts regarding your long-term conversion ratio target given the development of the cost base in the fourth quarter? Can you also comment on the certain one you flagged in the presentation? Thank you very much.
On the destocking, and the inventory levels, it's very difficult for us to find clarity and clear KPIs to use. Of course, shippers and our customers have been very conservative during 2022. They could not unfortunately rely, as they were used to, on our services, so they did stock up to safeguard themselves and their supply chains, which is fully understandable. You raise an important or an interesting point, this be undershooting. We don't have any knowledge that points to that fact. It could also be driven by different verticals that some would actually go lower on inventories as supply chains stabilize. We simply have to follow that during the year.
I don't know, Jens, if there's anything you want to add on the Solutions side.
It's clear that when we run and operate the Solutions business and also with the little change that we did, you know, also to the methodology in Q4, I don't think you can extrapolate on that. You have to look at the whole year. Then, of course, it's clear that from a financial targets point of view, it's, there's still some ground to cover on Solutions. We have a lot of programs where we digitize our services further so that we drive up the productivity and not least in the back office part. So that should help us to get there.
It's not as dramatic as the Roadway Forward program, but we are definitely aligning our system landscape and adding different types of productivity enhancements into the way that we produce our services. That is in reality what should take us, you know, towards our targets and hopefully achieve them.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Nicolas. The next question will be from the line of Cristian Nedelcu from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Thank you for taking my questions. See, to move of normalization of profits, mean that the first half EBIT will be meaningfully higher than the second half. Second one, also staying in NMC, I tried to calculate the cost base per unit. I'm getting something like 15%-20% higher the levels and the inflationary pressures, but I also meanwhile your volumes doubled, no longer have the complexity cost of the congested supply chain. My question is: where do you see this production cost per unit stabilizing, versus 2019 levels over the next couple of years?
If you look at H1 and H2, how are we gonna fare on the income? It's clear that there'll probably be a little bit of tailwind still from higher yields in the beginning, but then I think, you know, you'll have headwind on the volume side. When you go into Q2, I think the yield issue will have stabilized slash normalized, but then we will get growth. Of course, these things, they will balance out, and I think we will be, at the end of the day, more or less, as we normally see, it swings sort of 48%-49% in the first part of the year and then, you know, the remaining part in the second.
I think it should stay in that, ballpark. As you say, the production costs in Ocean have been, what can I say? Impacted by COVID. Of course, we are working our way back to the same productivity we had before. There's one thing that you have to remember as well, that the service catalog is not the same.
We offer, what can I say, more services to the customer now, than we did in 2019. There's a lot of development on different types of value adds that we are doing, you cannot necessarily compare it. Could be that we have growth in customs formalities or we do have growth in that we do more purchase order management, activities, et cetera. This is then something that requires more staff, but it also gives us a little bit higher yield. We shouldn't expect, you know, that everything can be 100% compared to 2019.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Christian. The next question will be from the line of Robert Joynson. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Good morning, everybody. A couple of questions from me, please. Apologies, I did miss part of the Q&A before, so apologies if I'm repeating anything. Firstly, on the guidance, the EBITDA guidance provided today is obviously in line with consensus, which is good, but equally it is lower than the DKK 20 billion that you talked about at the Capital Markets Day as being a kind of floor level for future years. Obviously the macro hasn't been great since last May, but equally it hasn't been that bad either. The consumer's holding up quite well and certainly bear case scenarios for 2023 now appear less likely. Could you maybe just talk about what has changed in your thinking since last May?
Is it mainly volume assumptions or is it that freight rates have pulled back by more than you're anticipating or more quickly or any other factors there? Second question on Solutions EBIT. Could you maybe just talk a bit more about how we should think about that going forward relative to the DKK 2.7 billion produced last year? Should we be thinking about that level as sustainable going forward or should we be thinking about the past few quarters as more of a sweet spot for contract logistics businesses in general that saw quite meaningful help from the market? Thank you.
Robert, we don't, as you know, guide on particular divisions or countries or anything like that, it's difficult to say. We don't expect the Solutions division to go big time in reverse. If they're gonna make this year exactly 2.7 whatever, I cannot of course say that, I don't think it would be too unrealistic to assume a somewhat similar result in 2023 as what we saw in 2022. We see nothing that concerns us or scares us in substance in Solutions, we're pretty happy about that. I will take a bullet now for Michael and explain a little bit about the DKK 20 billion.
Michael is very happy because somebody took a photo when he said the famous DKK 20 billion on the CMD, and in the background you could see the PowerPoint presentation which stated that the basis of that statement that Michael came with was growth in volume going forward. Now when we say that we expect transportation volumes to decline between 2% and 5%, of course the situation is different. It's not really the yields. I think we have the same yield assumptions as we had back then. Maybe we did, to be totally fair, we did not. Maybe we did not see the inflation maybe hitting. Maybe that could explain 1 percentage point, I don't know.
The main factor that has changed this philosophy is the volume development. Of course, Michael, you are free to elaborate if you want to say more about it.
I think you perfectly well explained. It is primarily volume, obviously.
Thank you, Robert. The last question is a follow-up from Alexia from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Hi, thank you for taking the follow-up. Just on when we think about 2024, 2025, should we expect 2023 to be the reset and we grow from there? Do you think it could be a little bit of, kind of a prolonged rebasing? Thanks.
I can only say that we've never experienced that it takes more than a year to rebase. So, if we can base, what can I say, our projection on that, I think it will be the same. I think there was, I can't remember one of the analysts that said that actually people were a little bit more, what can I say, less negative, not positive, but less negative on the outlook. I think that will then of course support, what can I say, that 2023 will be the trough.
A 100% agree.
Thank you.
As there are no more questions, I will hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.
Thank you. I don't as such have a lot of closing remarks, apart from thanking everybody listening in to this conference call. It's been great speaking to you this morning. We'll meet a lot of you on roadshows in the coming weeks now. As always, if you have follow-up questions, and I know a lot of you do have that, please reach out to your investor relations contacts in DSV. Again, if anybody from DSV listening in, thank you very much for all your hard work and your efforts in making this an absolutely fantastic year, 2022. Also for making a foundation for a good guidance for 2023. We really appreciate this.
With that said, we will pack up our bags here in Denmark now and wishing you a good day. Thank you.