Hello, and welcome to the Agfa Q3 2022 results conference. My name is George and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be in listen mode. However, analysts and the press will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register a question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I'd now like to hand the call over to your host today, Monsieur Pascal Juéry, CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you very much, operator. Good morning and hi. Hello to everyone in the call, welcome to this result session. I'm sitting in a room with Agfa CFO Dirk De Man, with Viviane Dictus, Head of Investor Relations, and the executive team that stands ready to answer your questions. Let me first start by a word of context that I believe can describe and explain a bit the set of results we are presenting today. First, inflation is still at a peak in our P&L. Although we are seeing some release in some of the markets, from trade to chemicals or metals, we are still not seeing that in the P&L.
Therefore our pricing today is lagging versus the inflation that we are seeing, and that shows very much in these results. Second part, we have a specific impact from China. China represents globally for Agfa a little bit over 20% of global sales. So it's one of our major markets, and especially for Radiology. We are impacted by the situation in China in terms of COVID lockdowns and economic slowdown. It's difficult to distinguish between the two. Just some statistics I'd like to share with you. It's not really publicized, but at the end of October, and it's still the case today, you've got approximately 250 million people in China still impacted by some constraints, restraints, COVID lockdowns, representing 25% of the GDP.
Needless to say, it has a tremendous impact on some of our activities, and not only radiology, by the way, DPC is also impacted. Third element of context, we start seeing some signs of demand weakness in some geographies and mainly in non-healthcare markets. We are seeing that. Offset is a good example for that. We have a negative volume quarter due to this demand. That's a bit the three elements of context that I would like to stress before starting to discuss Agfa performance. Indeed, if we look at the total group, EBITDA is increasing versus last year, but as you've seen with very contrasted performance. Let me start with HealthCare IT.
I'm gonna detail it, of course, later, but I would say here all the indicators are green. Strong organic growth, strong order intake, good profitability, good mix, and preparing for a Q4 that will be stronger than Q3. Here I'm very pleased with the development of the strategy and the roadmap. Digital Print & Chemicals are clearly a different story, a very disappointing set of results, I have to say. Also contrasted, as you know, DPC is a mixed bag of different activities. Some of them are really the engines of growth, and that is digital printing and ZIRFON, and here we see still very good momentum.
We have, I would say, a good business development, even if for the timing, of course, ZIRFON does not contribute to the result. Actually, it contributes a lot more to the cost. We are spending a lot of money to develop industrially, as I speak. Overall, there we've seen demand weakness in some activities in DPC. DPC is also quite impacted by China. Some of the markets like electronics and PCBs are really centered in China and we suffered also from the lockdown. DPC is also suffering, I would say, from a lag in implementing price increases. It doesn't mean that we're not implementing price increases, it means it takes a very long time to hit the P&L.
Remember it was a similar situation in Offset last year before we started to see the full impact. Radiology. Well, clearly the story is around COVID lockdown here. It's. We thought, you know, that we were going to see a rebound in Q3, but the situation has not changed. Is there an issue with the sound? Yeah, sorry. I didn't change the slide. Indeed. We have seen the impact of lockdowns in China. We thought it was going to be better in Q3. It was not. It was a lot less publicized because it was not a big COVID lockdown in Shanghai that made the headlines.
As I shared with you know, the statistics. Actually it's pretty spread out in China and it continues. I'm gonna say right now that, for the time being, we have no sign. Of course, of policy change, and therefore we are expecting COVID lockdown to continue, as they are during Q4. Even if Q4 for Radiology will be higher, but mainly for seasonality reasons, and also the timing of some account facts. We are not saying that the situation will change. Offset Solutions, a quarter that is also in the continuity of the previous quarters in terms of profitability, but with a different profile. Actually we have less volumes, and I would say good margins. In spite of our volume strategy, it works.
You can see it in the bottom line, but indeed, for the first time we've seen the first impact of an economic slowdown, mainly in Europe. What are we doing? Actually, we are preparing some additional measure to address what we see today as challenges, specifically in DPC and in Radiology Solutions. We have a plan that actually is almost ready and will be presented pretty soon to within the group, in order to quickly get back to our level of ambition in these two divisions. Also addressing, of course, the fact that Offset will soon not be part of the perimeter of the group. I take the opportunity to repeat that we are expecting to close the Offset transaction.
I've read in an analyst report this morning that there might be a question mark. There is no question mark. Actually, the buyer is very keen to do the closing as soon as possible. We have a technical point that we need to solve in North America related to IT systems that is really the critical path to the closing. I repeat, there is no back close, there is no uncertainty, and if anything, the buyer is keen to close on a timely basis. Let me now quickly comment the numbers. If you look at Q3, modest growth in terms of top line, but very contrasted. Growth in DPC, growth in HealthCare IT, double-digit growth in HealthCare IT, by the way, corrected from currency.
In fact, decreasing top line for Offset and decreasing top line for radiology. When you look at the overall equation of the group in terms of margin, you say, well, basically it's about stable margin at EBITDA level at least, compared to last year. Here, that's where we have a strong contrast with Offset and Healthcare IT doing better than last year and DPC and radiology doing less well than last year. Very, very contrasted set of results, and I'm gonna come back to that. Below EBITDA, you still see the cost of the transformation of the group. As you know, we are in full swing in terms of IT transition as well as the creation of our global business service organization.
This is reflecting, I would say, below the line in the non-recurring and restructuring line. In contrast, indeed, very different situation business by business. We are still growing in DPC and HealthCare IT, but DPC for the time being, this growth doesn't translate in the bottom line. Radiology, well, I said it, we were impacted by the lockdowns in China. It has an impact on the consumption of film of about 20% for us, and China is our first market. It has a tremendous impact on the overall film activity. HealthCare IT, I'm gonna come back to that and detail to you a bit more and disclose to you a bit more numbers regarding especially the forward-looking indicators like order intake.
For gross margin increase at the group level, no issue, but again, a very contrasted situation. We have a situation where price increases have been done and completed totally in Offset, where it's still a lot of work in progress both in radiology and in DPC. We are committed to do it, and we are putting more actions. But it's fair to say that the difficulty for us is to keep up with the pace of inflation. Now the inflation that we are seeing is more about salary inflation and especially the Belgian situation with indexation that makes it quickly to the P&L and makes it a bit difficult for us to reflect this in our prices on a timely basis.
If I now turn to the cash performance, I will leave it to our CFO, Dirk, to comment on this number.
Yes, thank you, Pascal. For Q3, as you can see, the adjusted free cash flow was positive at EUR 20 million, sufficient to cover the pensions, but there was also a heavy restructuring and non-recurring quarter, with the free cash flow netting to -EUR 11 million. Now, if you look at the trade working capital, although you will see that working capital still increased in Q3, in a later slide, but there was no net cash impact, actually slightly positive. The CapEx was maybe a bit higher than what we would normally see, and that's basically driven by the fact that we were doing some front-loading buying CO2 certificates that actually will be covering the year 2023.
Accounting-wise, these are capitalized and then consumed as we are using these CO2 certificates. Maybe the last comment to make, restructuring and non-recurring, quite a heavy quarter, which is really demonstrating the fact that some of our transformation projects are ongoing in full swing, and particularly the ICT transformation and the finance transformation, which basically means a lot of costs are also related to, let's say, the knowledge transfer, the shadowing, in order to transfer the internal activities to the outsourced teams.
Now, another note I would like to make in the quarter, so we do not have a separate slide for that, but in Q3, we managed to further de-risk the U.K. pension plan, and that's with most of the remaining liabilities, and that was done through another buy-in transaction, and we were able to do that without any cash contribution. This is actually similar to the operation we did some time ago. This time we saw a market opportunity with all conditions pointing in the right direction. We took advantage of it, and actually it was a good thing because that window of opportunity closed very fast when the U.K. financial markets went into turmoil.
We're really happy to have been able to perform this transaction, and this means that almost all of the U.K. pension plan is now fully de-risked. If we move to the next slide, just the year to date, and obviously the key comment there is that our trade working capital is still quite heavily weighing on the cash flow of the year. This is a big increase. We were hoping to see already some improvement in Q3, but that trend hasn't turned yet, though we do predict that there will be a working capital reduction in the fourth quarter, although not fully to last year's level. I will get back to that when we talk working capital.
On the next slide, you can see the net cash position. There is again a slight decrease, and maybe also a reminder that in the previous quarter, in Q2, we also completed the transaction regarding Inca. Moving to the working capital, it remains at a high level also in Q3, and that's driven basically by all the factors we already discussed in previous quarter, quarters impacting the inventories. This includes inflation, foreign exchange, supply chain and logistics issues, and as Pascal mentioned before, added to that, we also started seeing economic demand slowdowns in certain markets, but especially in China and in Europe, which basically means that demand was a bit less than predicted, and therefore inventory stays at a high level.
On the other hand, we made good progress on trade receivables. Trade payables are remaining at a good level. Overall, the impact is limited, but obviously, our expectation was to see that coming down already in Q3. Now, we do think inventory levels will go down in Q4, and we know inventory levels will go down in Q4, but we do not expect net working capital to be at the same level as previous year. The two key reasons for that already are higher exchange rates, which obviously creates a higher cost on the balance sheet, but also the Inca acquisition, which in Q3 was around EUR 20 million of extra working capital that was added already in June. That is still there and is a part of the comparison versus last year.
Now I hand back to Pascal to discuss.
Thank you.
The additional details.
Thank you very much, Dirk. Indeed, strong inflow of working capital to be expected, but certainly not to the level of last year for the reasons you explained. Okay, let me turn first to HealthCare. HealthCare, as you see, very pleased by the results. Good organic growth. I told you at the beginning, I told you that for this year, our objective was to have a positive organic growth for the business. I can say that it's gonna happen, and Q4 will be also a strong quarter and even stronger in terms of bottom line. The mix of what we are doing is quite good overall. Overall, I think the team is executing quite well the strategic roadmap.
We have now, I would say, strengthened the team in North America. If you remember, a year ago, this business was mainly run from Europe. Today, it is run from North America, and I would say, half of the leadership team is now based in North America and in the U.S., where the main opportunity is. If I want to give you more color regarding the results, I'm gonna discuss more, in fact, the forward-looking indicator, which is order intake. We are following the order intake based on the last 12 months basis.
The order intake of the last 12 months has increased by 16% versus the previous period, which shows you already that this is a forward-looking indicator that we will be growing actually this business. It stands at a level of EUR 122 million today. That's quite a high number and gives us visibility for the next period. It's not only the increase. It's also the quality of the order intake. In fact, when I look at the quality of the order intake, we are looking at our high value streams. The high value streams is basically our own IP software, as well as managed services.
When I look at the quality of this, it represented a year ago, less than 30% of the total order intake. In 2022, at least the last 12 months, actually it does represent almost 40%. It's not only the volume of order intake that is increasing, it is the quality of order intake also that is increasing. It gives us confidence going forward regarding the evolution of the business. Overall, for Q4, we are expecting actually our best quarter of the year. We are in the middle of the quarter and for the time being the execution is okay and on track. That's a pretty positive message. Dentistry solution is a different message.
Actually, it's rather an issue for us. You see a correction from currency. Our sales are below last year. This is strongly influenced by the film business. Within the film business, really the performance in China, as already discussed. We are also challenged in terms of margins. We have no possibility to increase price of film in China. Let me be clear about that. This is what reflects also here. We are doing price increase in all other geographies, but I think we have more to do, and we will continue to do price increase during the course of 2023 to restore our margins. All this being said, we had quite an okay quarter for DR.
We retrieved a top-line growth double digits, in fact in a market that is still a bit volatile. Overall, clearly for us, the key is China and pricing in this activity. DPC. Well, DPC is complex. As I said, we try to give you more details about what businesses within DPC we thought was really the growth businesses. Mainly everything that relates to environmental condition, among which they are found, but also some key chemicals going to, I would say, electronics and/or electric vehicle. As well as digital printing. Overall, we have still in DPC a number of more mature businesses related to non-medical films.
Very contrasted performance of these businesses. Still growing top line. We are still growing this business top line. The issue is, we have some of our activities which have suffered from a slowdown, and we are also lagging in terms of price increase implementation. That reflects very strongly in the margin. Don't look too much at the gross profit and SG&A. Actually, the Inca integration, sorry, has messed up a bit the numbers in between gross profit and SG&A. SG&A is overstated and gross profit is also overstated, therefore. The main point that we are working on in DPC is to put together stronger price increases as we see the inflation hitting us quite significantly.
This being said, there are also good things happening in DPC. We have actually signed the first contract for Inca machines. We have a couple of contracts that are already signed. We are on track also in the development of the next machine, which is a single pass packaging printer. That's not gonna be impacting before a couple of years. We are fully on track with the industrial development as I speak. Overall, I would say, the Inca acquisition proceeds as planned. We are confirming, you know, the potential we've seen at the time of the acquisition and probably has even a slightly improved view, especially on the existing printing range of Inca.
This being said, there is also it's costing us a bit short term because we have decided actually to take over the sale of the machines from Fujifilm a bit early, which is costing us a bit short term because we are not able to because there is a lag between order taking and revenue recognition. At the same time, we have chosen to do that because we are going to be able to plug our own inks in these machines. That's also another good news. We have now an ink set that is approved and therefore we're on track to deliver the plan as discussed. ZIRFON is also very dynamic.
Of course, we are proud to have won an innovation award, you know, by the essenscia association in Belgium for latest technology. It's a good external recognition, but more important than that, we have a lot of customers trusting us and I can confirm that this is a business that in 2023 will be multiple times what it is in 2022. Here again, we are in a situation where we spend a lot of cash actually developing this production and this product, you know, as I speak. For the time being, the contribution is very negative into the results in 2022 and hopefully will turn positive next year actually. We are seeing the impact of the weaker economic environment, Europe and Asia.
Some of our businesses for electronics in DPC is really in Asia. We are not immune to the economic environment, and also the COVID lockdown. I would say even within VPC, quite contrasted, we are taking action. Not only price action, but we are also looking at refocusing some of our key activities within VPC. I expect that we're gonna turn the ship pretty soon. Might be too soon for Q4 but all the actions we are preparing should definitely impact Q3 2023, sorry. Offset Solutions, slight, well, the same story as the previous quarter. Now you see that level of pricing is established. However, you see that the top line are still negative excluding currency.
We have a positive impact in price, and we have a negative impact in volume. It's partly, of course, our own willingness to drop volumes which are not profitable. There is an element also of economic slowdown that we are seeing in China and in Europe. That's pretty clear. You see the impact of the price increase. We gained four points of gross margin. We have SG&A under control, and adjusted EBITDA, therefore, a lot stronger than in previous quarter. We don't see any change in trend for the fourth quarter. I think we are gonna continue in this area. In a nutshell, how do we look at the next quarter on the outlook?
Well, two businesses will do better. Healthcare IT, stronger quarter of the year is expected. Radiology also will do better than in Q3. However, I stress again, situation of the COVID lockdown is still not resolved, so it's more a seasonal effect than an export impact. The underlying trend of the consumption in China is not changing for the time being. That's the two businesses that are expected to do better sequentially, quarter -on -quarter. I insist on that. Offset will continue its course and DP&C will remain complex in the Q4, even if we are gonna be sequentially, hopefully, improving the results. That's what I want to stress.
Just one word on sustainability. I think it's important as well. For the time being, we are on track with most of our objectives for sustainability in terms of personal safety. We are on track for reduction year -on -year. We are not fully on track in the hiring of women, where we're still lagging behind our ambition level. Maybe we are too ambitious given the mix of industries we work with, but indeed that's probably something that we need to look at. We have started a DEI policy actually. Diversity, Equality, Inclusion policy. It has been kicked off in the group through employee resource group approach.
In terms of CO2 projects, we are implementing CO2 reduction projects and this year, I believe we're on track to reach objective, which is an absolute reduction according to the Paris Agreement. I would say we have restarted our EcoVadis assessment. We did it for the first time last year. We had a bronze medal. We have specific improvements from this year. The idea is to improve year -on -year, but I've not set any specific goal at that time for the company. We have a sustainability roadmap. It's extremely important for us as well to be positioned in the right way for all our stakeholders, and we are very active in this. I'm gonna stop here.
Time for questions and I will be happy with the team to answer any questions you might have.
Thank you much, sir. As a reminder, if you're an analyst or a member of the press, you can ask questions by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Once again, please press star one. First question today is coming from Alexander Craeymeersch, calling from Kepler Cheuvreux . Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good morning. I have a couple of questions. First, you mentioned that customers are postponing their investment in industrial inkjets and decor printers. Could you just give us a feel on how long you expect them to postpone these?
How long this was in previous cycles. The second question would be, you mentioned that the first contracts for Inca machines are entering. When are these expected to deliver revenue for Agfa? Because you mentioned the year, but if I remember for the Agfa machines that's a little bit less normally. Also in that extent, what type of margins do you expect on these? If you could just remind us on how much your wages are of the cost and how much and when these wages are going to be indexed forward. Maybe a final question just on the Offset Solutions segment.
If there is no uncertainty on the divestments, I'm just wondering why you did not post Offset Solutions under the IFRS filings. Thank you.
Okay. Very good. All right. Thanks very much, Alexander, for your question. Customers for decor printing, I would turn to Vincent to answer the question.
Sure. Thank you, Pascal . So, on that question, I think it's different region per region. We clearly see that Europe, which is an important market, where currently you see the decor printers themselves or the construction companies themselves are seeing a slowdown there in demand and people spending. When people spend now in construction, it is about insulating, it is about making energy transition and solar panels and so on, and for the moment not in decor. For Europe, clearly we see a slowdown. Difficult to say how long this is gonna take, but personally I don't expect that for Europe to be much better in 2023. That being said, outside of Europe we still see good traction and I'm pretty confident that there the demand will continue.
It will not be impacted by a recession, but there is actually a continuing demand there. I think for decor printing, it's also for you to understand very different situation versus, for instance the other Inca machines that are addressing an existing market. There indeed, coming to your second question on the Onset machines, we have our first contracts which are now coming in and which should hit the P&L in Q1 maybe even, but we wanna be prudent on that. Maybe even because it's with logistics and where we already are in the year, there could be already some hitting end of this year, but it will be as of Q1 next year.
Margins on Onset, you want to..
Yeah, I don't think we have a I would say a habit of disclosing specific margins on specific equipment. All I can say is that on the Onset the margin is higher than what we have on our existing or previous portfolio, let's say.
Yeah. Absolutely, I think that's a good answer. It's a higher margin that we have on our portfolio. Also remember that our business model is to make our money through service and ink, which actually will kick in with these sales. Indeed, on decor, be careful because it's a new market. It's a market entry and people are switching to digital.
Basically they are telling us right now, "In the current market context, it's not that urgent for me to switch and to do that." I'm sure you're reading the press and you've seen that Unilin has decided to shut down their plant actually in Belgium for a few weeks for lack of demand actually. That's the kind of environment in which we operate, unfortunately. However, on the solution itself, I mean, it's recognized by the market and I think we have extremely good prospects, actually when the market will reopen.
Correct. I think it's fair to say there as well. We launched our European machine there, let's say just before the summer at the moment that actually the recession slowdown was starting. We had actually very good response indeed from our customers who have been testing the solution, who are very happy with the quality. I'm pretty sure that this is gonna come back with a vengeance when indeed the demand starts. The products have actually already been proposed also in the shops to final customers. Digital printing has in terms of roadmap already been adopted now by our customers, but very clearly for the moment demand is down. It is very different versus maybe two or three years ago when people were thinking of going there.
Now they have made that switch, but they don't want to invest now because of the economic situation.
Good. On offset indeed, but you're talking at an IFRS technical point. Actually, to make a long story short, we don't need the conditions to do that yet, 'cause we have this point that we need to resolve in the U.S. related to the [LPC council, and so.
Maybe just to reiterate, IFRS 5 is applicable when the business is ready for sale in its current condition. At this point in time, we're not meeting those conditions. There is the carve-out in North America, which is mainly an IT-driven project that we need to finalize. There is also the structure under the Offset company, enterprise company is not yet completed, so that means the subsidiaries still need to be moved sometimes from one legal entity to another. It's not a big deal, but it still needs to happen on certain entities. Finally, we also have in this whole carve-out, which is quite complex, a lot of transfer of personnel that actually is going into two directions. That also needs to be completed over the next weeks and months.
I do think we may be meeting those conditions by year-end.
Yeah, we need to confirm that all the conditions are met for also to have the accounting treatments accordingly. Of course, we do this in close consultation with our auditor, KPMG, to make sure that we follow all the right rules. Again, it does not mean that the deal will not go through. These are technicalities that we cannot do for the time being. As I said, the deal is going through, and we are working, I would say, in good collaboration with the buyer.
Okay. Thank you. On wages.
Wage. No, I've not forgotten the wage. It's a bit difficult to answer your question globally because it's very much it depends business by business. If you take-
Just for Belgium alone, then.
Sorry?
For Belgium alone, then.
For Belgium alone. Let me answer in a different way, if you allow me. A typical year of salary inflation for Agfa would be EUR 12 million- EUR 14 million a year, more or less. Globally, okay? Salary inflation. This year it's gonna be north of EUR 20 million, actually. With Belgium making the most of the difference, actually. That's what I can tell you. Now, the share of wages is very different business to business. In Agfa IT, all our costs are wages, almost. Vast majority. We are talking with people. And then it's business by business. We have different needs.
I would say the businesses that are using a lot of Agfa people are typically BPC more than the film business, for instance.
Thank you.
At least you have a global view on the impact of indexation of Belgium, which is fast and extremely difficult to reflect as fast in our selling prices. We're gonna get there, again, but it's gonna take a bit of time.
Thank you.
Does that answer your question, sir?
Yes. Thank you.
Thank you much, sir. We'll now go to Mr. Guy Sips calling from KBC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I have two questions. First one is on the non-recurring costs. Can you give me some more clarification on the amounts and the timing of them? The second one. Yes, sir.
Yeah. I think, Guy, the line is very bad, but I think you're asking about the non-recurring and restructuring costs for the year. I think our previous guidance was around EUR 60 million-EUR 65 million. I think our new guidance would probably be in the north of EUR 70 million , let's say EUR 70 million -EUR 75 million . That will be mainly driven by the fact that we probably need to do some more actions regarding the divisions that Pascal was mentioning before.
Second question is to clarify that also in the fourth quarter, in the full year 2022, you will not report Offset Solutions as business to sell. It will be reported as it is today.
No, my expectation is that we will in Q4.
Okay.
Yeah.
Can you?
To be confirmed.
Yeah, to be confirmed.
To be confirmed.
Okay. Thank you. Can you also give some more clarification on the impact of offsets? The offset deal on the working capital. The working capital as a total will come down, but as a percentage of sales will go up. Can you give us some more granularity on that?
Uh, good-
Not on the top of my head, no. No. We may need to do some follow-up on that.
We can do some follow-up with Viviane on that, of course. I can tell you that in Q3 actually, Offset inventory increased due to two factors. We've seen a volume decrease that was higher than was projected. Also we were preparing for Wisbech shutdown. Offset was a negative performer in terms of inventory development during Q3. We expect to get it back under control in Q4. For the numbers, Viviane will tell you.
Yeah, if we need to give a rough number, it would be around EUR 200 million.
Okay. Thank you. Two other question from our side, if I may. One is on the dynamics in hard copy film in China. Is it because of postponement of health treatments? Or is it that inventory is going down and in the pipeline and because it's more difficult for you to enter the country? Or is it a combination of both? What are the dynamics?
No, it's purely people cannot go to hospitals. We are not seeing changes in the demand pattern for film. By the way, not only in China, but in any of our major markets, we are not seeing any change of pattern of the usage of hard copy film. In China it's purely because people cannot go to get treatment, cannot go to hospital. Pretty mechanical-
Mm-hmm
impact.
Do you expect some catch up later on or is it just yeah?
No, what is lost is lost.
Okay.
I have to be realistic. What is lost is lost. That you might have some pent-up demand, you know, maybe, but I'm not counting on it, frankly speaking, you know, people will not come back. What is lost is lost and will not come back.
Okay. A last question is, can you comment on the recent M&A activity in healthcare IT in the U.S.? We saw UnitedHealth Group acquiring Change Healthcare. What are the impacts for Agfa in that field?
What is the impact for Agfa of the UnitedHealth Change Healthcare merger? None. Absolutely no change. In fact, Change indeed has a business operating in the same space, but United did not, so there is no change in the competitive landscape, so to speak. The only thing that I can comment is, Change is now publishing their numbers for medical IT business, which is useful for us as a benchmark, of course. Apart from that, there is no change.
Okay. Stick to your investment ambition of high EBITDA margins in HealthCare IT in a few years' time, or?
Although we are still confident about it. No, no. Frankly speaking, we told you this year it's a consolidation year. Don't expect a huge EBITDA increase, but we wanted to turn the tide on really the top line growth. We did the management transition, as you know, that was quite important. We wanted to find back the momentum in the market. I think this is being delivered. Actually, the level of EBITDA will be quite similar, if not probably not identical, but similar to the one of last year. We have turned the tide on the top line. The order intake is well-oriented, and the management team is in place.
We have achieved everything that we wanted to achieve. I confirm that we will continue our profitable growth strategy. What gives me confidence is the fact that we continue to make progress in implementing our Enterprise Imaging solutions. We are solving, I would say more and more, the issues we might have at the beginning of the development of the product. We are getting better at implementing. Very bullish, you know.
Okay. Thank you for this. Thank you for the explanation.
Thank you much, sir. We'll now take questions from Maxime Stranart calling from ING Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you, and I hope you can hear me well. A couple of questions on my side as well. To start with, on Agfa HealthCare, so looking at the consensus standing at EUR 20 million, you're at EUR 10 million over the first nine months of the year. You expect a strong quarter in the fourth quarter. I would like to hear a bit more about how you feel about this consensus and if it's reachable over the, like, well, last.
W-
Last three months of the year. That would be my first one.
We feel good.
Okay, perfect. Pretty clear on that one. Secondly, you mentioned that the inability of Agfa to increase prices in China. Could you share a bit more what could be the impact compared to, let's say, the traditional year pre-COVID, let's say 2019, for like the sake of comparison? Or does this translate in terms of margin and sales, if possible?
I want to make sure I understood your question. You want to quantify the impact on China?
Yes, exactly.
That's a good question, of course, if you ask me to go back to 2019, I cannot do that from the top of my head. I would have to look at it over the past three years. The impact on China is about 40% of our sales in hard copy films. So actually, you know, just to give you the impact of this year, I mean, if the film is decreasing, the volume of the film is globally decreasing by 10%, meaning in fact it decreases by 20% in China. Well, you can look at the impact by looking at the margins that we have on this product.
If I lose 10% of my sales, I'm losing 35% of this 10%, you know, in terms of profit, and that's a volume impact. On top of that, you have a price impact in China that's coming from two elements. First, the provinces that have gone through the VBP are now operating at a lower price than the average of the market. That probably represents today about 20% of our volumes. You have the impact that the fact that the cost to make film has increased tremendously. We cannot increase price in China, and therefore, we've seen margin compression in this area that was a bit eased by the strength of the renminbi. Overall, extremely complex, Maxime.
To make a long story short, I would say that the vast majority of the impact on the EBITDA of Radiology indeed comes from China.
Okay. Perfect. Very clear. Thank you for the clarification. Finally, looking at offset, still a strong quarter, but if we compare with the second quarter of 2022, identical sales, but margin at EBIT level dropping by roughly 80 basis points. How do you see that evolving, let's say for the fourth quarter of 2022 and 2023 as well, waiting for the closing of the deal? Thank you for that, and it would be all for me.
Okay, 2022, I think will be online with Q3. Maybe Vincent, you want to add, so you expect a Q4 that is similar to Q3, right?
Q4 will be similar with Q3. You know that we are taking some actions to reduce working capital.
Yeah.
That's the only additional impact, so quite aligned. For 2023, we are still in the whole exercise of this.
Yeah.
It's too early.
We are finalizing, I would say, our so-called budget discussions. Although 2023, it's probably not gonna be a full FX year, that's for sure. It's a bit too soon to share that with you at this point. Q4, similar.
Perfect. Thank you for your answers and have a nice day.
Thank you, Maxime.
Thank you, sir. The next question is coming from Kris Kippers calling from DP. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. A couple of questions still from my side. Firstly, if you look at the comments you've made, logically regarding indeed the cost impacts you're suffering from, to what extent the extra measures you are taking, to what extent can they be rolled out rapidly? What would be the implied cost effect of that going forward? I think it will be certainly only visible as from, let's say, Q2 next year or something. That's my first question. I'll put the other ones afterwards. Thank you.
No, no. Good question, Kris. Obviously, you know, I've not announced anything internally, but just the principle that we were working on it and give an early warning. I would say that we needed to make some adjustments. It's a bit difficult right now to share any impact with you. You're right. I mean, if we do things, it will be gradual. It will be starting from very early actually, from the beginning of the year. Some of the actions will only kick in probably in July. The ramp up of all the impact will take one semester, so to speak.
This being said, in terms of impact and improvement that we want to see in our businesses, and I'm not talking about the social impact. I think you are talking order of magnitudes of, you know, tens of millions euros , between, well, low tens. I'm not saying it's. That's what we are looking at here. That's what we are looking at in terms of actions.
Okay, very clear. Of course, just a quick question on CapEx also on the cost base to be sure, because it's a ramp-up business, of course, but just to have an idea, what is the amount of money you're putting in the numbers currently and how much does it weigh on the segment in itself? Or is it just minimal as a total?
When you say how much money do we put, you mean how much do we spend to make it, to ramp it up?
Yes.
To be fair, you know, it's we are spending more than the sales actually in terms of technical resources and CapEx. We are spending OpEx and CapEx right now. We are spending CapEx in order to strengthen, I would say, the industrial capability of the existing line and this is already a few millions. We are spending OpEx because, of course, we are babysitting and we are still spending R&D, development, engineers' time in order to further improve and scale up our process. When I look at the total we are spending, it's quite high. Next year it's gonna be different.
I think we will continue spending, but it's probably going to be more to build the next unit, in fact. Also the level of business of ZIRFON next year will be very different. We are seeing today at least as a business multiplied by four or five in 2023 compared to 2024. I would expect ZIRFON to start making a contribution, I would say. We will still spend a lot of money to develop ZIRFON.
Okay, very clear. Just a housekeeping question from my side, also checking on the segments. You feel quite comfortable on both radiology and healthcare for Q4. Does it imply that we could land for both divisions combined, for example, not too far off from the Q4 level we witnessed last year, which was about EUR 20 million for both, or is that too aggressive? Thank you.
No. It's what you say is not out of reach.
Okay, very clear. Those were my questions. Thank you.
Thank you much, sir. As we have no further questions at this time, I'll let you call back over to Monsieur Pascal Juéry for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you.
Thanks a lot, everyone. Thanks a lot. I appreciate your presence with us today, and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Thank you much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's call. Thank you for your attendance. Have a good day.