Our homepage under Investor Relations. And if you want to have the annual report in a printed version, then please send us an email, then we will forward it to you. We have, of course, a list of people who already have said they wanted it, and we will ship that as soon as the annual report is out of the printer. But let's go to the presentation. Will you—
Yes.
Go through the slides, Rasmus?
Sure. I can also add that if you have any questions, sort of during the presentation, you're welcome to add them in the chat room, and I will publish them as we go along. The first slide here with Group Management.
Tilde and I are here, and Søren and Lars are busy with our customers today, so they're taking care of the customers. Take the next one. We sold our products in 98 countries last year, so we are back having customers in Ukraine again after we were—we didn't sell anything the year before. We have now subsidiaries in 12 countries on three continents, so we are in North America, in Europe, and in Asia, and we are 2,351 committed employees in average during the year, so approximately 150 less than the year before because we have had to trim the organization and adjust the organization to the lower demand we have seen. We are making surface solutions and plastic solutions, and we have a number of products that we call proprietary products.
We sell them under our own brand, and they make up for approximately one quarter of our sales. Unfortunately, we didn't sell as many home products last year as we had hoped for, and the remaining 75% of the business, we are subcontractors, and here we are making customer-specific solutions. We work within a number of different technologies, so we always have the right technology for our customers. We try to act as an innovative, reliable, and competitive partner for our customers. Please take the next one. The picture here shows one of our own products that is a test kit Meditec makes in Helsingør in Denmark. Next one. And if we start with this, we call the big picture, then the interest increases that took place during 2022 has really hit the real economy during 2023. So we have seen a slowdown in the economy.
Our customers in general have reduced their stock level. They've also built up safety stock, I think, during the COVID period and the period where it was difficult to get the goods you wanted. And now things have eased up again, and then with high interest rates, people have got a strong motivation to reduce their inventory, and that has, of course, led to a lower sales from our side. And then we have finally ourselves received a bigger bill from the banks on our debts because we have approximately DKK 1 billion in debt, and when the interest rate goes up, then that hits us. And you can see that on the P&L. So, our earnings per share has, unfortunately, decreased with 25% despite our sales is only down with 1.9%. We have taken good care of the customers.
We have also been able to get new customers on board. We have spent a lot of time and a lot of energy and money on innovation and product development, so we have launched new products. We have new products in the pipeline ready for launch, and we have helped our customers to develop new products they are launching. We have had to reduce our capacity, so we had to say goodbye to approximately 150 good colleagues. We have decreased earnings per share as a consequence of the lower sales, a bit lower margin, higher depreciations, and higher interest costs. But we have not had to tie up more money in working capital, and therefore we have been able to increase the cash flow from operation to DKK 350 million, which is approximately DKK 100 million more than the year before.
We have increased our equity with almost DKK 200 million, and we have been able to increase our net interest-bearing debt with DKK 4 million. After we have spent DKK 200 million on investments in new capacity, we have spent DKK 36 million in dividend to shareholders and spent DKK 12 million in buyback programs. Then I think, I will, ask Tilde to take us through the features, and then I will come back with the outlook for 2024. Tilde, please.
Yes. In 2023, we had a small decrease in the sales, ending up at DKK 2.6 billion. Sales from own brands was DKK 620 million. EBITDA decreased by 7.8% to DKK 441 million, and the EBITDA margin was 16.9%, a decrease of 1.1%. Good. Profit before tax decreased 25%, ending up at DKK 200 million. That also made the earnings per share decrease 25% to a level of DKK 13 per share. The net interest-bearing debt decreased.
Equity increased by DKK 200 million to DKK 1.463 billion. This is a picture of some of our fenders. It could be to protect the boat. This is how we have developed through the years. We had revenue in 2017 of DKK 1.9 billion, and 2023 was DKK 2.6 billion. EBITDA has been increasing during the years, also EBIT. Equity has also decreased, increased. We are very glad that cash flow for operation are DKK 360 million.
Cash flow for investments is a bit lower this year, DKK 178 million, and cash flow from finance activities is DKK 216 million. We have an equity ratio of 48.5%. Go to the next. Here you can see the development in revenue during the years. We have a small decline this year, but it has been a steady growth. EBITDA has also increased from DKK 50 million up to DKK 450 million. If you go to the next one, EBITDA margin has almost doubled through the years from a level of 8%-16.9%. Profit before tax has increased during the year, but we have had a decline this year. That is less activity. It's a higher interest rate, also higher depreciations. We are almost on the same level of net interest-bearing debt versus EBITDA. We are in 2.3 this year.
And maybe, Tilde, I could ask a question here. What are sort of your—what are you aiming at in terms of net interest-bearing debt to, to EBITDA? What is sort of the limits?
We have a limit at 3.5, but we really want to be at the level we are now.
Very good.
Revenue from own brands has declined a little. It's ergonomics solution, animal housing ventilation, guidewires, medical package, and other industrial standard components. The sales to cleantech has increased this year, and the sales to healthcare is almost the same, as a little decrease. Revenue from other demanding industry has the same level, and food-related industry has a small decline. In Q4, we had growth in healthcare, but during the year, there was a small decline. Cleantech is almost the same level in Q4 but have a growth of 8% during the year. Food-related had a drop of 5%-15% Q4 and 12% of the year. Automotive have—it looked like a huge drop, but actually, it was also very good the year before, so but in the all year, it was 5% down. Other demanding industry was up by 14% in Q4 but had 5% decrease totally over the year.
We are glad that in Q4, the sales of own brands increased almost by 2%, but we had a drop of 12% during the year. The picture on the one on the right is one of our own products. It's small vials from MedicoPack.
Could you perhaps put a few words on what is driving in demanding industries? What kind of industries is that, and where do we see the growth at the moment?
Well, it's a rather small part of the total business. What is in the industry? It is furniture. It is sport and leisure. It is outdoor activities. It is satellite communication and a number of other things that does not fit into the four other ones.
Very good. Thank you.
This is how the customer groups are. We have 40%-43% in healthcare. We have 31% in cleantech. We have 12% in food-related, 5% in automotive, and 18% in others. We have one customer this year that accounts for 12.6%, and last year, there was no customer over 10%. The 10 largest customer accounts account for 46%. The year before, it was 48%, and the 20 largest customer accounts account for 65%. It's down with 1% compared to 2022. Go to the next. This is where we are located, and where the sales is. All the blue dots, the small one, that is our production facilities. We have 14 in Denmark. We have six in Poland. We have two in China. We have two in the U.S., but are currently working on building a factory in Atlanta. That is not on the map yet. We have a factory in Latvia.
We have two in Slovakia, one in Sweden, two in Finland, and one in Thailand. We have some sales offices also in the Netherlands, in Sweden, in Canada, and Norway. We have 14% of the sales in North and South America. We have 9%-29% in Denmark. We have 49% in the rest of Europe and 8% in Asia. We are hoping that the plant in Atlanta will be finished mid-2024 and up running in the end of 2024. This is some of the acquisitions we have done in the last 10 years. All of them have been good companies, good management, and we are very glad that we had the opportunity to work with these companies. In 2005, we had 30%, almost 40% of the sales outside Denmark. Now we have 71%. Employees, there was a 25% outside Denmark. Now we're up to 71%.
Number of factories, we have closed down one factory in China and merged it together with another one we had in Shanghai. And so we're down with one this year, but next year we—or this year—we will be up to 18 again with a new plant in Atlanta. Share price has unfortunately declined a lot. We are sorry about that. We're aiming to pay dividend of DKK 3 this year, the same as last year. I'm going to take the next one. In 2023, we almost increased the number of shareholders with 1,000, so we went from in 2015 have 900 shareholders to in 2023 have 4,200. We have the same big shareholders like last year. We have Schur Finance. We have Frank Gad. We have Odin. We have Lannebo and ATP. Almost 1/3 of the shareholders is outside Denmark. And if you take the next one.
Despite we have not been able to let the top line grow, we have been busy making proposals to the customers because we have a number of customers who want us to help them to get rid of wood and metal and glass and substitute with plastic and composite. So we have a lot of things in the pipeline, and we hope that will become reality during this year. We manufacture globally with a powerful team, the right equipment, and the right technology, so we can help the customer in North America, in Europe, and in Asia. And with the new factory in Atlanta, we can also help the customers with injection molding in North America and also with injection molding in clean rooms.
Our customers focus on core business and outsource plastic productions, and we are ready to take over the customer's in-house production and use our skills and our scale to help them get a better solution with better quality, lower cost, lower CapEx, lower OpEx. Customers want more and better suppliers. Our ambition is to be the preferred supplier, so when the customers want to reduce the number of suppliers, then it's our ambition that he continues working with us. And we can only deserve that if we give him an excellent service and competitive prices and help him in creating value. And then we have a strong exposure to industries in structural growth, and that is healthcare, cleantech, and the food industries because we're getting more and more people on the planet. We want a longer life.
We want a better life, and we want to create a cleaner and greener planet. Here you need a lot of advanced plastic solutions to make all that happen. Let's go on.
Q4, we had hoped for a little more sales than we managed, but we still had a growth in the sales. We had an EBITDA of DKK 170 compared to last year. It was DKK 124. Profit before tax ended up at DKK 72 million, a bit lower than the year before. We had very nice cash flow from operations of DKK 70 million and DKK 360 million full year. We had DKK 175 million investment that is a bit down or much locked down from last year. And the equity ratio was 48.5%. Go to the next one.
The picture here shows an offshore windmill farm in the Baltic Sea owned by Vattenfall, and it's called Kriegers Flak. We have had the honor of building a lot of plastic solutions that go into each of these turbines. We believe that there is a strong growth case for offshore windmills as well as onshore windmills in the coming decade in Europe, in Asia, and in North America and South America. Let's go to the next picture. Well, it is a difficult world. We have wars going on in Ukraine and in Gaza. We have the high interest rates. We have an inflation that is coming down, and hopefully, the central banks can soon start to reduce interest rates again. They are still much higher than they were in the previous decade. We have volatile energy prices.
But despite all this, we hope that we can continue the growth we created in the fourth quarter. So we aim at and to have a growth this year between 5%-15%, maintain a healthy EBITDA margin between 16%-19%, and a bottom line pre-tax between 9%-12%. So if you translate that into money terms, then it is a growth in the top line, and it is a growth in the bottom line. But of course, there are uncertainties in the economy. Next.
Very good. I think we should have a bit time, for the sustainability part here also.
You go.
Yeah. We aim at being carbon neutral on Scope 1 and 2 in 2030. We have reporting on Scope 1 and 2 since 2020. If you go to the next one. We had a lot of pages in the annual report explaining a lot of what we're doing about the sustainability. If you go to the next one. It's very important that, of course, we produce plastic, but we don't produce plastic bags and plastic cutlery, plastic straws, disposable plastic bottle caps. We produce good solutions that last a long time. This picture that is two container ships that actually have fishing up plastic in the ocean.
We have supplied all the fenders that keeps the net floating. We have also good solutions on what you can do with the plastic that is collected from the oceans.
This is some products that we can produce out of consumer waste. This is a fence made of plastic. Let's go. This is a new solution for mats that is recycled. So we all use old mats to make new ones, and it can be between 65% and 100% of recycled material. The next one. This is pallet lids made of 100% recycled plastic. It's made of our own production waste from the MedicoPack. To the right, there is TPI Polytechniek that are made of 90% of recycled plastic, and then there's 10% virgin material on top of it. This chair is made of 75% of recycled plastic and 24% of wood, and it's produced by SP Moulding. The next one. This is Nycopac have developed a sleeve system. It's instead of using wooden pallets, you can use plastic solutions.
And then you can see in the picture in the bottom that the truck goes out with a lot of goods, and then it can be packed and go back, and then it can be used again and again. So it's important to state that we are not a part of a problem, but we are part of a solution. In cleantech, we produce insulation, renewable energy, reducing energy consumption. In healthcare, we have diagnostic equipment, guidewires, ergonomic solutions. In food, we have farm ventilation process equipment. Automotive, we have lighter and more energy-efficient vehicles, and plastic we can replace with metal. We have in 2023, 14% of our consumer consumption of plastic is recycled plastic. And if you take the next one.
And take the next one. Yes. Because this here is a brand new picture of our brand new factory in Atlanta, in the United States. And this picture here is from last week. We started, we bought the land during 2023. We started pull process and got started. We had casted the floor and the foundations before the year ended, and now we have erected the steel this year, and we are putting cladding on and making roof. And we hope the building will be ready in the middle of this year, and then we'll start to put in machines, and then we'll start to produce goods for customers in the second half of the year. It is a major investment for us because it's a building of more than 11,000 square meters, and we own the building. We own the lands, and we will put in machines.
It will take a while to fill it up with production, so we have found a local company who is renting half of the square meters, in the first years, and then we'll concentrate on filling up the other half with production. We hope that a number of our existing customers who have sales in North America will consider and go with us so we can produce it locally, for the North American market and thereby reduce the CO2 footprint. That has been part of the investments we made in 2023, and more investments will follow in 2024. Yep. That was our presentations. I hope there will be a lot of questions.
Very good. Thank you very much, Tilde and Frank. Yeah, maybe looking at this, I think the production facility already in place to the left, that is not yours, right? It's the one being built.
No, no, no. That's the other one.
Because they have, I can see, they already have solar panels on the roof.
Yes. It's a very nice area in Atlanta. It's called Peachtree City, and there are very nice buildings, and there are also housing communities, but and then you can see there's a lot of forest.
Very good. And also just when we are at this picture with the new production facility, is there sort of any benefits in terms of how the products are taxed when you have the production in the U.S. compared to if you were shipping them from, for instance, Europe or China?
No, not really. There are some of our products, that, you have import duty on, at the moment, but, nobody knows what will happen in the future. So I think, from a CO2 perspective, it's a good idea to localize the production. So we are trying to localize more and more production in North America for North American customers, in Europe for European customers, and in Asia for our Asian customers. And in Asia, we have now, factories in China and in Thailand. And in Europe, you could see on one of the previous maps that we are in most of the European northern European countries with either production or sales or both. So this is this is not tax-driven. We have not, applied for any subsidies, and we are not, it's not a tax scheme. We, we are here to make good solutions for customers.
Very good. Let's turn to some questions from the audience then. There shouldn't be anyone in the audience who have some questions. Please add them to the chat, and I will publish them accordingly. I think there were a few slides on or a few questions. I'll just move back to this slide on your on this one for the Outlook 2024. There were a couple of questions here relating to this. Let's see what we have here. Could you comment on the visibility for revenue going into 2024?
The visibility is low. We are a subcontractor, and we have very short order horizon. So in general, we have an order book that is approximately four-week sales, but it can be spread over several months. So in reality, our visibility is a couple of weeks only. But we believe that most of our customers have been through a period where they have had to reduce their inventory level. And the good thing about inventory reduction is that you can only reduce it to zero. Then you need to start to buy again if you want to be able to ship. And we believe that most of our customers are now in a situation where they need to buy again to continue to operate. Then we still see good growth in a number of the industries we're serving. That means the healthcare industry, and it is the cleantech industry.
We also believe there is in the food industry. There are, of course, a lot of volatility. So we saw, during 2022, 2023 that gas prices went up. So then we have been very busy with people who are making heat pumps. Now the gas prices are down again, and now the heat pump business is not that busy anymore. But then there are other things that are popping up. So people are very, very fast in moving, and that is also affecting a number of, you can say, the customers, in the short term. The good thing is that we have kept all our customers, and they are all paying the bills. So we have not lost any money. We have not lost any customers, and we have not lost any money on receivables.
In general, I would say all our customers are good, solid companies with good management that they're doing well within the industries. That's also why we believe that we now can look into quarters again with growth. We also stated that when we sent out our Q3 announcement, that when we said we expect growth in Q4 and in the following quarters, and I must admit, Tilde also mentioned that the growth in Q4 was lower than we expected when we said this. But I'm happy that we ended up having growth. We had headwind from currencies also in Q4. In general, last year, approximately 1% of the was missing from our sales due to currency headwinds. So that is half of the decline in sales that came from currencies.
Very good. And also, a couple of questions relating to this. There was one here with improvements seen in Q4, 2023, continue into 2024. And how should we understand the no growth in Europe that you're stating on this slide? And also someone asking here if you could elaborate a bit on the assumption underpinning your 2024 guidance, especially in relation to the bottom and the top end of the range.
Let's start with the no growth. Maybe we should elaborate on that one. We see low growth or negative growth in the areas around us, the German market, the Swedish markets. But at the end of the year, well, we probably have seen growth in Europe. So maybe we should change this for the next presentation. But my point is that there's very low growth, and in the markets near to us, we, we have actually seen economists that are in the reverse. Yeah, if you translate the bottom line here, then we, we are guiding a sales somewhere between DKK 2.7 billion-DKK 3 billion, and we are guiding a bottom line between DKK 250 million-DKK 350 million. And if you compare that to last year's figures, then we guide the growth on top line, growth on EBITDA, and growth on bottom line. Can we do more than this? Yes.
If we can get the orders, I think we have the tuned organization that can do more than this. But of course, there's uncertainty in the economy, and the global picture is foggy, and, we have two wars going on. So a lot of things can happen that we have not in our estimate. But, I think interest rates have peaked in Europe and in the U.S., and there are more central bankers who talk about, reducing interest rates in the future than they talk about increasing interest rates. They still talk about it as a in the future and not in the present, but, the future will soon become the present.
Very good. And then moving a little bit over to sort of the M&A, I think I'll move to this slide because, as we can see, not a lot was added here in 2023. Someone is asking here, was that on limited M&A activity in 2023? Is that on purpose, or was that on purpose?
We saw the interest rates going up. That means it is more difficult for us to calculate the investment here. But actually, we were drinking a lot of coffee. We were still looking for opportunities, but we didn't find a good match where we could get a good company at a reasonable price. So therefore, we decided we could buy a lot of companies, but not companies we wanted to buy at the terms we could get them on. So therefore, we decided not to buy any companies and then focus on organic growth. So we decided to build a factory in North America. We have reduced the net interest-bearing debt, and we have got a stronger and more healthy balance sheet. So we are ready to make acquisitions going forward, and also to continue to pay dividends to the shareholders.
If we cannot find good candidates to buy in the future, and if we can improve the profitability, then I think we will also look at share buyback programs again in the future. But when interest rates goes up and you're sitting with DKK 1 billion in debt and a declining EBITDA, then we have to be careful. Hopefully, we are now in a situation where we've seen EBITDA going up again. And if we can continue to reduce NIBD, then we will soon get to a very comfortable level. We are still at a good level. We are 2.3 in net interest-bearing debt to EBITDA, and we guide between 2 and 3.5. So we're in the comfort zone.
Very good. And relating to this, you also briefly touched upon it, Frank, but somebody asking here, do you expect to do acquisitions in 2024? And do you look at acquisitions is another question here, but you said that earlier. So, but in terms of acquisition, the question also goes here, if so, would you finance it with cash or shares? And also, what are the multiples for at these potential targets?
We have nothing big on the plate right now. So I think we have the things we are looking at currently is something we can finance out of the money we have. Maybe we can add a bank loan. If something bigger pops up, then, of course, we will look at financing it with issuing new shares. We have issued new shares back in 2006 to buy a company, in 2015 to buy a company. And as many of you might remember, also in 2020 to buy a number of the companies you see here on the list. And I think we can also get the support from the market. I hope we can get that if we have something that we need to finance going forward. But here and now, there's nothing on the plate.
The mandate our board has will expire end of this month. We will ask for a new mandate at the AGM in April to get a mandate to issue new shares to finance new acquisitions going forward.
In terms of multiples.
I hope the shareholders will support that.
Yeah. Sure. And in terms of multiples, if I look at it, if we look at sort of yourself on the last 12 months, I think you were trading around 5.0 or something like that on an EV/EBITDA. And if we look at the forward-looking numbers, it's probably between 6-7 for yourself. But what kind of multiples are you looking at in terms of these targets?
We have been buying these companies at around 5.0, and I think I think we are not trading at 5. I think we are trading higher on this. You're very optimistic, but there is a point in this. The point is that if our own share price is so ridiculously low that we are trading at something that is close to what we can buy, then we should look inwards instead of outwards because that has a lower risk. In other words, if we come to a situation where our own share price is so low that you can buy that at the same multiple as you can buy other companies, then I would prefer to buy own shares instead of buying foreign companies because we know what we have. We know what we are.
We don't know what we are buying. Having said that, I'm very happy with all the companies we have acquired. We've got good companies with excellent teams on board, and they're doing a fantastic job every day. And we have also appetite for more if we can get it at reasonable terms.
Very good. And then, a question related to sort of your own brands. Perhaps we should go back to this one. There were a couple of questions relating to this, and they were as follows. Do you expect own brand revenues to grow faster than subsupplier revenues this year? And also, which of your own product groups do you see most growth potential in over sort of the next two to three years?
We expect own brands to grow faster this year than the total business. That has also been the case in the previous years, except 2023. Basically, we take 2023 as an exception, if you look at this picture here. We hope that we in 2024 can be back on the track, and the track being the development from 2019 to 2022. We expect all our own brands to grow this year.
Very good. And one final question before we conclude here is, if you could give an update regarding China. We did not see the expected pickup. And after the reopening in the beginning of 2023, did that improve during the year? And what is sort of the current status on China?
We have consolidated the two factories in Suzhou near Shanghai during the year on one side. That has given us a better cost lower cost space, and still plenty of space to expand and a more lean and more efficient organization. We have actually seen sales develop very well in China despite all the difficulties. We had difficulties in the beginning of the year where Corona really hit China, and some of our colleagues were locked up either at home or in the factories. And one of our factories was also opening a hotel in one end of the production area, because people were not allowed to leave the building. So they were staying onsite for more than a week, and we had to bring water and food to them every day.
Then they were running production, and we were able to keep all our customers happy. So they got what they wanted on time. And all our own people did a fantastic job, either from home, remote on a computer, or in a factory where they were living 24/7. And we have seen, if you take the end of the year, then we have seen growth in our injection molding business, and we have also seen growth in our rotational molding business, a little bit growth in vacuum forming, and a small decline in our fluorination business. And I expect that we will see growth this year in China again as a big picture.
Very good. Let's conclude by that. We'll end the presentation here. Thank you very much, Frank and Tilde, for this presentation.
Thank you very much for joining. Have you any questions? Give us a call or send us an email. Thanks.
I also want to thank those of you who joined and also for the questions you had today. You can find the presentation, the slides on the webpage of SP Group. And also, we will upload this presentation on different platforms afterwards should you care to see it again. By that, we conclude today's presentation. Thank you.
Thank you.