Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this conference call on Barco's full year results for 2023. My name is Willem Fransoo. I'm heading Investor Relations, and today with me in the room are Charles Beauduin and An Steegen, our co-CEOs, and Ann Desender, the CFO. We are publishing our annual results today under the headline, "Solid Profitability Improvement with Stable Top Line." An Steegen and Ann Desender will take us through the presentation this morning, and this presentation is also available on the portal on our website. After the presentation, there will be room for Q&A, and I would now like to give the floor to An Steegen to kick it off with the presentation.
Thank you, Willem. Good morning, everybody. I'll start with a summary of the group results for full year 2023. Top line sales, we came in at EUR 1.05 billion, which is in line with last year. We saw double-digit growth in entertainment, but our healthcare division was lagging, mainly because of the unusual high inventories at our customers. Book-to-bill remains positive, so we basically entered this year with a very solid order book of about EUR 500 million. Sixty-five percent of our total revenue came from eco-label products, which is up from 50% last year. In EBITDA margin, we landed at 13.6% of sales, which is 1.6 percentage points up compared to last year.
In the H2 of 2023, our EBITDA margin was 14.6%. We had a record high gross profit margin that mainly came from a very favorable product mix, but also, of course, an ease in our supply chain and focused actions when it came to the OpEx control. But of course, we continue to invest in our core initiatives throughout the year. Our net income landed at EUR 80 million, free cash flow at EUR 38 million, and that is net after EUR 11 million restructuring costs. As I said before, we continue to invest in our core initiatives, so we stepped up in CapEx, executing on our strategy. We definitely worked on inventory reduction, and these are efforts and work that is still going on in 2024.
Net cash, we landed at EUR 241 million. Now, I hand it over to Ann for the financial details.
Thank you, and good morning from my end. Starting with the comparison on the key figures, compared to 2022. So in the comparison, you see, and I'm happy to see a lot of green in there overall. So orders and sales landing at the same level as the year before. Gross profit margin up 2.8 percentage points higher. EBITDA 1.6 percentage points higher. Free cash flow higher. Net income EUR 5 million higher, and with that, earnings per share 6% higher. And going into more detail in the following slides on the different figures.
Starting to give a little bit of more insight on the different semesters, first, second, and then full years, and maybe zooming in on this second semester over here. So, landed with about EUR 10 million more sales than the first half. Gross profit, and this is really where throughout the year, you hear the same, on steady improvement across the year, throughout the year, and has been confirmed. So with a step up to 42.6% gross margin for the H2 . And this is throughout the different business units, actually, but with the main uptick into entertainment.
OpEx control, being confirmed here with the second semester OpEx, not higher or, or it's in line and even lower than the first semester, and with that, then landing at an EBITDA margin of 14.6%. Maybe one. I'll go back one, two, and you will see later on in the overviews of the different divisions on the EBITDA uptake of the second semester, that the most important uptake was noted in Enterprise compared to the first semester. Looking into the dynamics of the different regions, yeah, looking at the pie, I would say, you can see that EMEA and Americas are now, yeah, equal in size, into our global sales and accounting for 40% each of our group top line, and then APAC for 20%.
The regional dynamics, it's, yeah, between -4% and +4%, the growth year-over-year, with quite some different dynamics, of course, in the different divisions. So entertainment, landing at double-digit growth, 15%. This is a growth in all of the three regions. Healthcare is growing, both business units in EMEA, but has seen a lower top line in the Americas. Enterprise, landing at -4%, holding quite well, actually, despite the challenging market situation, which we have seen arising in particular as of the Q2. The difference is there or, or I would say, or compared to the year before or equal in EMEA and into the Americas. Then looking to APAC, yeah, you heard a lot about China last year.
If we exclude China from APAC, then this region has really performed very, very strong. And as such, and for all our three divisions, and as such, landing APAC at -4% compared to the years before. Usual graph on EBITDA, but there is, yeah, more the visual. If you can say that the big winner and the whole year and hard work behind is this gross profit margin uptake.
So with that, yeah, landing at EUR 142 million of EBITDA, the net of gross profit up and then contained OpEx increases, offsetting partly, and in the H2 , fully actually, the inflation with cost efficiencies and then, yeah, having higher spends, which you will see in the details more, is has been limited to extra investments to Entertainment . A little bit more detail on net income starting from EBITDA. So you'll see that depreciations EUR 4 million higher than the year before. This is linked to the Cinema-as -a -Service projectors, which we missed out. Restructuring costs, EUR 10.8 million, includes 9.5 layoff costs, which embraces actually diverse organizational efficiencies. And we booked a EUR 1.3 million impairment on inventories related to stopped activities.
Our effective tax rate is being reconfirmed at 18%, and we also hold it there for the next year, you can say, despite the upcoming Pillar Two. So with that net income landing at EUR 80 million or 6.7% in sales. So more details on the free cash flow. Free cash flow landing at EUR 38 million. Looking at our net operating cash flow landing at above EUR 100 million, which is about EUR 70 million higher compared to the year before, primarily coming from the improved EBITDA results. Working capital is still too high at 16.6%. And the main work at hand there is inventories. We had higher trade receivables, which is only linked to the year-end peak sales. So that is cash that is coming out, yeah, now, after year-end.
We had lower trade payables, which now temporarily has an impact on our free cash flow. This is linked to lower component purchases. Inventories started to go down, primarily into components and raw materials, not yet into finished goods. So that's then the clear focus for the next months to come. CapEx, yeah, almost doubled actually to EUR 45 million, which is, as explained before, and is fully in line with our strategy, includes the investments into our new factories, includes cinema-as-a-service. So with that net cash landing at EUR 241 million, which is EUR 23 million lower than the year before. Free cash flow, of course, comes on top.
But this is also net after a dividend of last year, EUR 14 million, and the start of our share buyback, which so far has had an impact on the net cash of EUR 8 million. Next to our financials, we further progressed on our non-financial metrics. We made further very nice steps on our planet-related KPIs as well on the other. Here we pick out three. So the further reduction of our carbon emissions in own operations compared to our baseline 2015, we now reduced our footprint with more than half. We stepped up the revenues of our Eco-labeled products with another 15% compared to 2022, which is really, yeah, all of our new product introductions being Eco-labeled actually, and so naturally, we further improve on that.
The customer Net Promoter Score landing at 48, which is again 4% higher compared to the year before, and worked on all of the different recommendations actually, which we get through this pulse surveys, and with that steady improving on that as well. We have published not only our figures via the press release this morning, but also our annual report is coming out, so check it out. Very nice updates upcoming. And so with that, a little bit more colors on the divisions.
Yep.
And I'll give it back to you.
Yep. Okay, a little bit more detail on our divisions, starting with healthcare. So in healthcare, we saw a decline in orders and sales. Sales about 16%, since 2022.
We did see the gross profit going up with 2 percentage points, mainly again, because of a favorable mix, but also ease of the supply chain costs.
That of course landed EBITDA down 1.5 percentage points because of the top line, the reduced top line, of course. Now, for diagnostic imaging, as you know, we are a leader in diagnostic imaging. These have always been very healthy markets for Barco, and also the markets remained healthy in 2023. But we saw an unusually high inventories at our customers in the diagnostics markets. Why was that? Because in the H2 of 2022, when the supply shortages really eased out and were solved, we got an overdemand, actually, in orders because everybody was anticipating a second shortage wave. That didn't happen, so our customers are ending up with higher inventories, which they're building off now.
Now, for diagnostic imaging, we saw solid growth in the EMEA region, driven by radiology and pathology. We also saw growth in APAC, except in China, where we are of course dealing with the local governments and the budgets, the low budgets of the local governments, but also the anti-bribery measures that are being taken in the medical sector in China. That said, we are investing and continuing to invest in our core initiatives. So one of those is focused factories, as you know. So this is basically where we have a limited set of products in a very highly operational environment, so with high throughputs and very cost efficient.
For healthcare, Suzhou is our volume manufacturing, and we completed actually the full ramp-up of our Suzhou factory, and that is already starting to yield the first improvements on gross profit, coming from cost reduction on our products. We also continue to invest in innovation and in new products, and that is as well in hardware as in software, for diagnostic imaging. So in hardware, we have our 8 MP whole reading display for radiology. We also have this year coming out our new flagship for mammography. And then we have more actually, and these are the most important new displays that we're bringing out. On top of that, within diagnostic imaging, we also have a software platform. You can see this as a management system for IT managers within hospitals.
This is a way with very intuitive workflows, so that they can manage actually their fleet, their install base, and also the calibration of these displays that guarantees actually a good performance over the lifetime of the displays. So this is a very important software platform. It is also an. It has external portals, so it's open system, so we can attach very easily software, third party, our own software to it. And last December, we announced actually a first collaboration with DeepLook, where we basically have now a software application, it's AI-based, that can basically distinguish dense breast tissue versus cancer. So and this is actually for us also a migration more into software from diagnostics point of view. Surgical market, surgical modality, that's of course, as you know, driven by digitalization of the operating rooms.
Here, of course, we had challenges with high inventories, too. We also phased out a very large contract in the U.S., and because of the high inventories in the channels, we're building up a nice funnel to basically replace that large contract. But where we had anticipated we could do this in one year, because of the high inventories, it's taking longer. Then for our product portfolio and the investments we're doing there, we have our Nexus platform, so that is basically our network in the operating rooms, our proprietary network. We saw definitely a lot of momentum on that platform, especially also in EMEA. For new investments, we definitely are looking in more features on our Nexus platform, and also entering this year into the mid-segment operating room markets.
Those are more basic versions of our Nexus, so we come up with a mid-segment Nexus solution. From display perspective, we are definitely working on the next technologies when it comes to panels, but also more disruptive technologies, where we basically start working on interactive displays. So voice-steered, eye tracking, haptic, gesture, touch, that is definitely something that will help the surgeon in the operating room. And then, of course, also 3D displays, which is definitely something for surgical robots. And again, here, Suzhou is very important. The volume of manufacturing that we do there, especially to protect our gross margin in modality. Next one. So, then going to enterprise. So in enterprise, we saw solid orders coming in throughout 2023, and sales landed about -4%.
Now, for our ClickShare, our meeting room experience, we were pretty much in line with 2022, which was in very challenging market conditions, especially onsets in Q2 , H2 of 2023. Corporates are rethinking what they're going to do with their office space. Where in 2022 we saw an uptick, of course, in that there were more video solutions needed because people came back from work, and there were not enough rooms with video conferencing capabilities. So basically, that was all in the first wave. Now, corporates see that the office space is too large, and they're rethinking this. Now, on the midterm, this outlook will be that people... Hybrid is there to stay, but people will come back to the office to have meetings, while for individual work, they will stay at home.
In that sense, we think on the midterm that the office space will actually be more meeting rooms, and since by far not all meeting rooms are equipped with video conferencing equipment, we definitely see a growth here. But ClickShare did very well, so actually we grew market share in the agnostic space in 2023. And that is definitely in, again, these markets, in this market environment was definitely a very important element. Towards the future, what is our strategy on ClickShare? Basically expanding in the agnostic space, so further growing in the wireless space. Of course, taking also market share in the traditional wired rooms, and also finding a strategic path in the in-room systems. You will hear more about that in the course of 2024.
On top of that, of course, we're also expanding our portfolio in ClickShare with different form factors. We were at ISE, that is the AV biggest trade show last week in Barcelona, where we launched our ClickShare Bar. This is basically a ClickShare equipment where we add audio and video capability, and this is really geared towards mid and small meeting rooms. So it's extremely easy to install. With just one cable, you connect the monitor with the bar, and it's very easy to install. This was very well received last week, and this is then also on the market right now. Then for large video walls, we saw actually a very solid order increase throughout the year.
Sales was slower in the first part of the year, but then definitely ramped up towards the H2 of the year, with actually a record high in the fourth quarter. Then for our video walls and for our large video walls, control rooms, we, as you know, transformed our strategy last year. The trend in the control rooms is that the operator will become centric, and that the workflow that you generate and create for the operator is actually the central piece of what you need to offer. That needs to be flexible. So that's why we basically have now brought on the market Barco Control, which is our new software platform. Was launched in April last year. Very well received.
We see first sales also coming up there, and this is basically now the center of what we're gonna do in our control room business unit. Meanwhile, we still have a very up-to-date hardware portfolio in control rooms, where we have, of course, our LED portfolio, but we also launched our very latest LCD solution, UniSee II, in Q3 of 2023, which is also extremely well received in the market. But for the future, more focus on software. And I think when you look then at the EBITDA for large video walls, where in the first half we were still negative, we definitely basically made up for that in the H2, where we turned positive, and for the year, we're close to break even.
Then in entertainment, so entertainment wall is basically building on the momentum that we've seen in the H2 of 2022. So, sales growth, 15%. And overall, of course, also a tremendous step up in gross profits, because all the supply chain restrictions that we had eased out, and that leading also into, like, a big step up in EBITDA to 12.5%. In cinema, building on the lamp-to-laser projector replacement wave, continue to build on that one. Lamp projectors are getting end of life, and of course, with laser projectors, we're offering a much more cost-efficient solution to the exhibitors. Also, our Cinema- as- a- Service, we continue to roll this out, and that is ramping up our recurring revenue in cinema.
At the end of last year, you know that we announced the integration of our Cinionic sales activities back into Barco, and that integration process is running smoothly. And then, of course, for new product introductions in cinema, this is the year that we roll out our laser L ight steering projector. This one basically got already a lot of good reviews from the ecosystem. This is 10x more contrast. It's 1.6 better in efficiency compared to even a laser projector. And next to the Light steering projector, we're also bringing out a new media server. Media server is the playout tool for the movie on the projector, which is a completely integrated media server.
So for exhibitors, they can basically streamline all their operations, operations in this media server, and it is also future-proof for new formats, immersive sound, HDR, so this will also come to market this year. Last but not least, immersive experience. So also here we saw growth, mainly in India and in the Middle East. China, not, because of course, the lower budget of the local governments and still high inventories in the channels, so we did not see growth in China for immersive experience. For all the different verticals that we are in, all verticals did grow, and especially also our simulation business line. Here, for the new introductions that we're doing, we launched last week in Barcelona at ISE, our mid-end projector, the i600.
You can call it the Swiss knife for mid, mid-end projectors. It's a 4K projector. It has high performance, it is really lighter, and it is very affordable in price. So this one was, again, very well received. It's a, it's a house-built 1 DLP projector, and on top of that, we will also bring to the market a new flagship 3 DLP projector. This is, this is an, an 8K projector for, for, for, the large lens. From image processing perspective, last week we brought to market our Encore 3, which is our high-end switchers for event. Double the bandwidth of the, the one that we have currently on the market, and again, very well received, at ISE last week. Also, here, focused factories is very important, so we are basically ramping up our Wuxi factory.
This will be a projector-based, fully automated factory, where these mid-end projectors will be the first one that we ramp up by Q2 of this year. Then just as a summary, Barco, we're a technology company, and if you see the common trends through all our business units for the future, then I think it's summarized in this page. First of all, at Barco, we change paradigms when it comes to visualization, which means towards the future, more interactive displays, 3D displays for that interactivity. That's one of the things that you will see on the roadmaps coming in. Data, as you know, big data, very important. At Barco, with our connected network solutions, we already, of course, help in handling and making use of the data, because we give easy ways to visualize the data.
The future is, of course, to start working with the data and doing data analytics, adding AI algorithms to the data between the source, so the camera, the input, and the output display. So in many of our roadmaps, you will see an edge compute, GPU compute coming in to basically deal with this real-time compute. And this will be then our platform to expand our offering also with AI software. And of course, everything that Barco do is always excelling in quality. It's of course in the hardware, in the image, but in the software, it's also in the whole workflow solutions that we offer. And of course, sustainability is the heart and core of what we do, and in every activity, we embed that. And with that, we can come to the outlook.
So, if you see the investments in our in 2024, that will help us for future growth, it's all about new product introductions. We had already a few that we launched, but there are many more coming. Focused factories, this will help to protect our gross margins. Getting closer to the end customers, to basically create even more opportunities for us in the markets. And of course, the spirit at Barco is one of winning culture, and we care. We care about our people, we care about our planet, we care about our communities, and that's all captured in our sustainability charter. And then for the outlook for 2024, so macroeconomic and market condition remain uncertain. The visibility there is not where it needs to be.
We are assuming that throughout 2024, we see a return to normalized inventory levels at our customer base, and of course, as I said, we plan multiple new product launches over the course of the year. So that's why for 2024, more in a cautious way, we basically expect top-line for the year to be in line with 2023, with a gradual year-over-year increase as of the Q2 . And for 2025, we expect to resume a top-line growth on a full year basis. For EBITDA margin, we expect further improvements and be above 14% for the full year 2024. And then before we go to the closing, a last word on our dividend.
The board of directors will propose to the general assembly to distribute a gross dividend of 0.48, of 0.48 EUR per share, which is up 0.04 EUR versus last year's dividends. With this, I hand it back to Willem.
Thank you, Ann, for this presentation. We're indeed ready to move into a Q&A, and I would like, if you have a question, to raise your hand virtually in the system. At the top of the screen, there is a button called Raise the Hand symbol. I will take you in the right order, and please, maximum two questions at a time. If you have more, you can always queue again. Alternatively, you can also post your questions in the chat, but the preference is to just raise your hand. That's the best. I will start the questions with analyst Matthias Maenhaut. Matthias, you can now unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yes, hello, good morning. Congratulations with the results, too, then from my end. Maybe firstly, on the guidance, could you maybe elaborate a little bit what we should expect in terms of the different divisions? And also, I heard about visibility. Would you say visibility has further worsened, or it's actually improving at this stage? And then a second question is maybe in terms of capital allocation. If I recall, previous calls, there seems to be some M&A that is currently being considered. Is this still the case? How are those files proceeding? And I know it's always difficult to comment on any future targets, I would say, but if you could give us some flavor on what we can just expect, in which terms of...
Is it in line with the present divisions? I would say, if it's something completely different, will there be significant synergies? That are my questions at this stage. Thank you.
Okay. I maybe start on the outlook question, and then feel free to-
No, no, no. Go ahead. Go.
So there are not that over the full years, there are not that many differences throughout the three divisions, actually. If I say over the full year, actually, and, and this is primarily because of the, I would say, the reopening or the softening, I would say, of the macroeconomics that comes for, for most of, of, of all, primarily enterprise and, and, and healthcare. Then the new product introductions throughout the years also in, in the different, divisions. If you look more towards the start-
... the start of the years, and then the divisions which will have to deal with more, I would say, building down inventory levels, and that will have then an impact in the beginning of the year. This is done primarily into enterprise with respect to ClickShare actually, and into healthcare-
Healthcare.
That in particular. But with respect to gross profit margins, capturing further product mix improvements, focused factories improvements, this is yielding the different divisions actually.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
On capitalization, the first thing to understand is that we continue to invest in recurring revenue and in focused factories.
Mm-hmm.
Next to that, yes, we are considering a few M&A deals. That is correct, but we will approach it in a very disciplined way. We are not in a hurry. We want to make sure that we are prudent and careful with this here, with this money.
Mm-hmm. After that?
Okay, thank you. May I, if I may, just one short follow-up item. You do not reiterate the margin guidance bracket in the guidance 14%-18%. Do we need to read something in there or not necessarily?
No, no, certainly not.
No.
This is focused on... So we are not changing that range-
Yeah
for the years to come.
Mm-hmm.
But particularly on 2024, we say, "Okay, it's above 14%." Yeah. No, nothing more to be looked into it.
Thank you, Matthias, for those questions.
Thank you.
Kris Kippers is next. Kris, you can unmute yourself, and you have the word.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll raise two of them indeed. Firstly, if you... One moment, I had a list here. If you look at Cinema- as- a- Service, 25% in 2023, to what extent is this the impact of one big player doing this, or how should we see this evolving? And also, are you now considering to search for external financing solutions on that, or will you do this on the Barco level, still? And then second question, you indeed presented the ClickShare Bar, a nice-
Mm-hmm
add-on feature. The question is: how do your partners actually react to that, in the sense that-
Yeah
are they shocked by this, or is it just a first step and you would do other things as well, and you communicated it up front with them? What was their reaction actually on that? Thank you.
Shall I start?
Mm-hmm.
So Cinema-as-a-Service , so indeed, 25%. As you know, there is one large contract there. That's the AMC contract. We're talking about 3,500 units. But we see more deals and more discussions going, coming in there also. So we basically are growing our recurring revenue when it comes to Cinema-as-a-Service . Will we finance that over time all by ourselves? That is not what we're gonna do, and we will handle that case by case, actually. Yeah?
Yeah.
Then for the ClickShare Bar, very well received. So if you look at the ecosystem, last week, for instance, we had our distributors and our resellers, and also our end customers there. Very well received, because it really targets a particular mid-segment, mid and low-end meeting rooms, kind of segment. So in that sense, it was really an addition to the portfolio that they have today. For our alliance partners, where, of course, we bring now also a video bar to the market, actually, the whole agreement there is that it is an extension of the ClickShare portfolio. So we bring another ClickShare form factor to the market, which has then also audio and video capability.
So in that sense, it is positioned in a way that it is enabling video conferencing with the features on it. So in general, there was common understanding also from our alliance partners that we will basically have a solution on the market.
But more, we have also announced we are open to licensing deals, so that, for which we did one last year, there could be others following.
The same.
No, licensing for ClickShare.
Oh, yeah. Okay.
Yes.
Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. So this was the licensing with Crestron, as you're well aware of.
Yeah.
This is another way that we actually can expand our ClickShare into the market. So in the end, we want ClickShare as broad as possible, embedded in the meeting, in the meeting, environments, and that was another way that we indeed did that. Yes.
Yeah, and I fully understand, but given the fact that your product portfolio becomes wider, and given the press release also mentioning some launches in 2024-
Mm
I can imagine that suddenly the product portfolio gets to such an extent wider that some partners would say: "Why would we team up with Barco in the end when they-
No, no, that was not the case. Actually, it was more in a constructive way that you basically say, "Ah, that maybe also opens possibilities towards the future for their portfolio." So in that sense, no, it was definitely not perceived-
Okay, we should not read too much into that.
Positive way.
Okay.
No, no.
Okay.
Okay, thank you. I leave the floor to the others. Thank you.
Thank you, Kr is, for those questions. Guy Sips, you're next, and you can unmute yourself before you ask me your question.
Yes. Thank you. Also, two questions from my side. You were indicating that the working capital with 16.6% of sales is, is still too high. What is kind of an internal target that you're aiming at? And then in healthcare, you were focusing on, on the phase out of this large contract in the US, can you-
Mm-hmm
Quantify that a little bit? And how do you—yeah, how will you tackle this going forward? Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
The first one I'll answer short. The target is to go to 12% and better, or and lower.
Yeah.
12, yeah.
Yeah. And for the large contract, so yes, this was an unusually large. I think we mentioned last year already in the order of like EUR 25 million, that was just end of life of the product of that customer. And then phasing in and getting into the design cycle of their new product is one of the things that takes time in surgical. And what happened also with this customer is that they still had some of these old systems in stock, so they actually could postpone this new system actually a little bit longer in time. So that's what happened there. For us, it means that we need to make sure that we, that our pipeline, that we are early on in the design cycles of all these OEM partners that we have.
We have good leads there with this particular partner, because this is not the only program that we run with this particular OEM partner. So we have a lot of leads in the funnel. The only thing is now a little bit like, when do they start with the contracts? Because they're still building off their inventories. That's actually the thing. So we see this definitely improving over the course of 2024. So these inventories will come down. Visibility on the market, it's not completely clear, but we see signs, of course, that the stock is gonna build down and that the healthcare sector is getting healthier. And in that sense, yeah, we believe that our customers will build off their stock, and then we can basically convert those leads into actual contracts.
Okay. This, let's say, positive news is also already taken into account in your stable 2024-
Yes
-top-line outlook?
Yes.
Because, again, the design cycles in surgical, they take typically longer than one year. So this is just very long design cycles. So this will start kicking in in 2024, but it will also be for 2025 and 2026. That's the nature of that business.
Okay.
Thank you, Guy Sips. Next question is for Stefano Toffano from ABN AMRO. Stefano, you can unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yes, good morning, everybody. I have quite a few questions, but we'll try to be short. The first one is on the guidance. I, I did not understand your comment about the cadence of the guidance. So flat year-over-year, but you were saying something about improving year-over-year as of Q2, and for the rest of the year. If you can maybe just explain a little bit more. I, I did not quite get that.
Mm-hmm.
The second question is on the large video walls. Obviously, quite good improvement over the H2 . Maybe something on what we can expect going forward, H1 this year, and also in terms of the cadence there of the profitability throughout the year, if you can say something on that. And maybe a very quick one, on accounting-wise, the EUR 4 million extra depreciation from Cinema-as-a-Service . What can we—how do we have to see that for the full year 2024? I don't know if you can, maybe, say something on that.
Okay, perfect. Thank you for your questions. I'll start with the first one, maybe.
Yeah.
So, on the full year guidance, sales in line, and then gradually picking up sales increase as of the Q2 , means that we do see in the Q1 still a lower sales compared to a high comparison basis for the-
Q1
quarter of 2023.
Yeah.
That's actually what it means. Q1 2023, where we were growing year-over-year at that moment, 20%.
20%, yeah.
If you look to the different years, has been also record high Q1 . So that is a comparison basis. This is also because of, yeah, I would say market conditions, which we see gradually improving, but we're not yet there.
Mm-hmm.
And then some impact of those inventories we being built off. So that's where we are, more cautious on this Q1 . The new product introductions, which are being launched over the course of the year, will in particular start to increase or have a positive impact on our orders in as of the Q2 , and then sales as of the second semester. So this is the cadence over the year.
Yeah, correct. Yeah.
Hope that clarifies, Stefano.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And for the?
On the large video walls, we are engineering a massive change, where we go from a hardware-centric, divisional business unit to a software-driven division. It's been driven by the demand of the market to go for higher security. So we expect, we have seen now the change is in a positive direction. It is healthy on margins and healthy on improvements. This will continue over the next few years.
Yeah.
We expect this is the reason why we don't decide to divest this division, because we believe it has potential.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe to complement on the last question then, so increase in, in-
Depreciation
depreciations for 2024, yeah, EUR 2 million higher. So far, not guiding for more, and it really depends on how many new deals on Cinema-as-a-Service -
Yes
then actually do land. So in that sense, as soon as there are, I would say, a tangible more, then we'll give more specific guidance, or change our guidance accordingly in that sense, but not an as big increase as we had it in 2023 of EUR 4 million compared to 2022 to be foreseen in this year.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc Hesselink from ING, you're next.
Yes, thank you. First question is actually on the moving parts for the increase in the margin in 2024. Quite clearly, you have to address the gross margin issues. I just want to check if that is the reason why you expect it to be up year-over-year. And maybe can you talk a bit about how that goes on the different divisions? And my second question is on-
You're-
You're breaking up.
You're breaking up. Yeah, you're back, Marc.
You're back.
Yeah, okay.
The question, we didn't hear.
Second question. Repeat your second question.
Yes. Okay.
We lost you.
Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah, okay, the second question is, free cash flow. Looking at it year-over-year, I think you will have slightly better profitability, so that's a positive. I think the working capital will be better towards the end of the year. Can you maybe quantify a bit, if you talk about going towards that 12%, how much can you achieve in the, in the coming year? And then secondly... or the thirdly, the, the CapEx. What do you expect as a CapEx level, also taking into account what you said on, on Cinema-as-a-Service ?
Yeah.
Maybe on margins first?
Yes.
Yeah. So on gross margin, so I think the improvements that we saw in 2023, favorable product mix, so Charles just said it, so moving more into software, there's definitely ways in our, in our gross margin. That's definitely one element. Yeah, the supply chain, the high PPVs that we had to pay actually when there were shortages, those disappeared, too. So that definitely gave us a boost in gross margin. Also, entertainment, of course, top line doing so well, that has also helped us in stepping up the gross margin there. We plan to continue to step this up over the next years. Of course, this supply chain shortages and the large, the high PPVs we had to pay, those are now out of the system.
We don't necessarily see the component costs coming down further, but what we are now definitely going to leverage towards the future is our investments in focused factories and the fact that we are going to protect actually our gross margins by actually the improvements we can make through our manufacturing, our automation that we have there, our local sourcing of components. So this is basically the actions that we put in place to continue to work on our gross margin.
Towards the outlook, you're looking at the uptake, further improvement of EBITDA margins for next year, then actually, I would say healthcare-
Mm-hmm.
-because of the reasons which you mentioned, indeed, to step up above that 10% EBITDA margin-
Mm-hmm.
which was close, but not being surpassed.
Mm-hmm.
And then the other divisions, yeah, holding to the strong performance, which we have seen over an improvement over, and the EBITDA, which was there in 2023 and in particular than the second semester, yielding further from the decisions taken also in large video walls. So in that sense, that's-
More so there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Second question?
Free cash flow.
Free cash flow.
Free cash flow. What was the question, sorry?
Well, how much free cash flow?
So further improvement on, on the EBITDA margin, as you then can calculate, the working capital going towards 12%. Cash flow, CapEx, we keep in line with the between 50 or around 55 million, 50, 55 million for this year. And then tax rate will be steady compared to where we had it now. So if you calculate that, then we should get to an, yeah, call it towards 10% of free cash flow on sales, actually.
Okay, so do you think the going to 12, you can achieve that in one year, from 16 to 12?
That's what we are going for, internally, yes.
We're stepping up now.
Yeah, but-
It will be throughout the years.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, clear. Thanks.
Thank you, Marc, for those questions. We have Matthias again with additional questions. Matthias Maenhaut.
Yeah, sorry, two follow-ups. Good morning. Two follow-ups. Maybe just on the Cinema-as-a-Service and the 25% share of revenue. Is it correct to understand that 25% share of revenue of cinema is all of the services revenue, and it's not exclusively Cinema-as-a-Service ?
Yes.
And if so-
Yes.
Yeah, and if-
Yes
and if so, cinema, Cinema-as-a-Service , could you maybe elaborate a little bit on sales contribution and EBITDA contribution for the business? That would be my first. And then the second question would be actually on Cinionic. You've opted to buy out the minorities entirely. I've seen that it has not been taken into account in the free cash flow statement, so it's not yet closed. What should we expect in terms of cash layout for next year for this? Is previous transactions a good benchmark? And what can we expect from this integration? Overall, I would say, maybe following up also on Marc's question, is there any room for any OpEx savings next to large video walls? What's the flexibility there? Are there any initiatives being prepared?
What if sales would go maybe softer than expected or macroeconomic and developments would be softer than expected? Is there any self-help potential or planning that's presently being studied?
Mm-hmm.
Can you take answers? Yeah.
Yeah. So, on the Cinema-as-a-Service of included into this 24.5%-
Five percent.
Actually, yeah, you can say we had it at between 22-23% year before. So the uptake is actually relating to Cinema- as- a- Service, right? If your question on the EBITDA impact, then yeah, actually, when you see the increase of our depreciations versus last year, that is actually, I would say, then the particular help you can say on EBITDA. Also have to say that, and you also know that that it is and looking for these more recurring revenues very well, temporary then or in the first year, yeah, it just has an impact, you can say then negative on your top line.
If you would have recorded it all as CapEx sales, instead of the recurring, which we of course prefer the recurring, then our top line would have been more than EUR 35 million higher.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Correct.
Wow!
It's more range. That's that.
... Yeah.
Well, first, on the buying the shares back and then the capital decrease that will follow, that's not going through the free cash flow, but directly into net cash, because it's but anyhow, it's not cash. So that's that indeed still to come and will be in this Q1 . As to the integration opportunities and synergies, yes, there are, and that's part also of the OpEx improvements-
Yes
... which we are seeing.
Mm-hmm.
And taken also into the guidance of, and I did not mention it before, so it's a valid point to add, on this.
But in general, we're actually integrating now sales into the business unit Cinema within Barco. This is what we have done when we started 2.5 years ago in all our other business units, that you put product R&D and sales together in one business unit, depending on which market they're serving. And that is basically to accelerate the go-to-market, to accelerate the connection with the end customers. And this is here now again, you bring sales closer to product supply and R&D, and we see definitely also improvements there towards the end customers in the end.
Did we cover all of your two questions?
I guess. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Matthias.
Kris, you also had other questions?
Yes. Good morning. Small questions still from my side. Firstly, just on healthcare, just to check, regarding the fraud cases in China, what is the actual situation? Because I might have missed it, but where are we right now, or do you see there is an end coming to it, and would indeed the rebound be quite sharp? That's my first question. And secondly-
Mm
... if you look at the factory moves you've done in 2023, and you've taken those costs, I would say more as a recurring operation, of course, but what would have been the hindrance on EBITDA in that level in 2023 in the numbers? Thank you.
Okay.
Mm.
Okay. On the anti-bribery, actually.
Yeah. I think we did a full diligence there of the case, so, so we-
The anti-bribery actions which-
Oh, yeah, and in healthcare. Oh, in healthcare. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes.
Yes. For the moment, this is central government of China doing. We have no impact on that. It's still going on. What they say is that they could relent this year.
Yeah.
You know, a lot of things are not clear because China, new measures are announced after 2022 year. 2022 year is tomorrow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. Then on the impact of the focus factories, rightfully so, Kris, is when you do the moves of what we have done over the course of this year, actually, from Europe, the production-
Yeah. Mm-hmm
... towards China, for Suzhou in particular-
Mm
... it, it had some double costs in the H2 of 2022-
Twenty two
... and the beginning of 2023, actually, but that has now been, yeah, taken out. I would say that the double costs with respect to healthcare are not there. You will have seen that despite the lower top line in healthcare, that gross profit margins for healthcare over 2023 improved.
Mm-hmm.
That's one of the reasons, also helping out there.
It's also one of the reasons that the inventory is too high.
Yeah.
We had doubled up in order to be able to move.
Yeah.
Yes, because as long as you transfer, you have to do that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and so this will also naturally decline next year.
Yeah.
So you're still cycling in relatively easy comp to the start of the year on that, on that side a little bit?
Mm.
Mm.
More or less. Not convinced.
Yeah. No, no, no, it's not convinced. The question is not clear.
Can you-
Can you repeat?
No, because you said you still had some impact at the start of 2023 with the move, double cost, so that means you have a bit of an easy comparison base starting of the year, this year. That's my question.
The first semester.
Still transferring, yes.
The first semester-
Yes
... we said that we would improve margins for the full year. Yes.
Yeah, but-
Yeah, but we feel like-
Still transferring, yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you
... Marc, you also had follow-up questions too?
Yes. Thanks. I have some follow-ups. First, actually, on China in general. I think that was one of the areas that disappointed in 2023. I think visibility is still low, especially now, just what you just said, ahead of Chinese New Year. What are your assumptions in the full-year guidance on China?
Cautious, I would say, but also assumes that in 2023, actually, yeah, quality, we reached a bit the bottom, I would say.
Yeah.
The only way is up on top line.
Yeah.
Yeah, but we have pointed this last year, so we are careful for this year.
Yes, we are. Yes, we are.
So-
So we're cautious in the targets.
We do not further see-
No, we think that if we reach the bottom now, that there are some signs of relief, like box office is coming. But then again, there are also inventories in the channels there too. So same as it as we've seen it in the rest of the world. So we need to be cautious also because they need to build off their inventories too.
That's right.
So in that sense, yeah, we need to see it all coming together. Anti-bribery, hopefully by the H2 of this year also we see a release, but we're not sure. We don't know. So hence the cautiousness.
Okay. Clear then. Okay, maybe talk a bit more on ClickShare. I think you just said that the inventories are still relatively high levels. You are launching a new product. What are you expecting for the full year? I think if you said sort of flat for all the divisions, then enterprise, you still have to the phasing out of the old hardware part of the large video wall. So that sort of implies that the ClickShare should grow. Yeah, maybe you can say a bit more and...
It's the same answer actually as we gave before on a group level there. So, on a full year, confirming, on large video walls, indeed, that has an impact on your top line, but for the better of the EBITDA margin. And then in the first semester, we'll be impacted by customers lowering their inventories.
Mm-hmm.
That will certainly have an impact on the Q1 .
Mm-hmm.
The new products, which we introduced, is primarily being shipped as of the Q2 .
Mm-hmm.
So in that sense, then a gradual improvement-
Mm-hmm
... as of the Q2 and growth. But that is then more, yeah, I would say, further kicking in as of the Q3 to get then flat and first growth as of a full years-
Yeah
... on enterprise level. Yeah.
Okay. Okay, clear. And then excuse me, maybe the last one, a bit like what Matthias earlier asked, also on, on, if you read something into the beyond 2024, you say back to growth in, in full year 2025. Previous guys was always high single digit, growth. Is that— Can you, can you immediately achieve that, or do you then need a sort of build-up period to go back to that high single digit growth?
As soon as we have more visibility-
Visibility
we will be more clear.
Yes.
We learned to be cautious over last year. So in that sense, at this moment, we're not doing, I would say, bold, bold statements in respect-
No
... to the percentage.
Focus is-
The focus is really executing-
This year
... grasping every opportunity-
Yeah, yeah
... and building up further.
Mm-hmm
... I would say the momentum to be able to, confirm the percentage as such.
Okay, great. Thanks. It's clear.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marc. I have no other questions at the moment, so we'll go to the room. If you have any other questions, you can, you can now raise your hand. And I see no hands. There is also no questions in the chat, so we can close the session. I would like to thank you all for your attention today and for your questions. I would also like to invite you to visit our webpage, where our new annual report is live since this morning, with a lot more details on all the divisions. And we would like to close the session here. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.