Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Car l Van den Bussche, Head of Investor Relations for Barco. On the background of a picture with Barco technology of the very recent World Expo in Dubai, we welcome you to this conference call on the results of the fourth quarter and the full year 2021. Today with me and on stage, one of our co-CEOs, Mr. Charles Beauduin, and our CFO, Mrs. Ann Desender. Charles and Ann will now walk us through the full year results and provide extra color on the results, as well as how we navigate the current and next quarters to come. We will do so using the full year earnings presentation, which is available on our investor portal since early this morning. Following the presentation, we foresee time for Q&A. That's it for the introduction.
We'll kick it off from slide three onwards, the exec summary. Charles, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Carl. To all attendees, welcome and thank you for joining. We can summarize Barco's results of 2021 into three main findings. First, we clearly see the recovery of the markets reflected in order growth for all of our businesses and in all regions, which resulted in an all-time high order book. Our sales follow and grow, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. This is not only because of the pandemic, but also due to constraints to the supply chain. It takes us to the second point around profitability. Gross profit margins were down a bit because of component scarcity and transport costs. Our EBITDA for the year landed at EUR 59 million or 7% over. Net income is back to a positive EUR 9 million. I'm pleased with the good evolution on working capital, contributing to a solid free cash flow of EUR 73 million.
Thirdly, looking towards 2022, we start the year with a very solid order book and expect to see this translated into sales. As things are still fluid and may materially change over the year, we stick to our first half outlook only and assuming no further deterioration of the supply chain. We believe we can come close to a 20% sales growth in the first half with an EBITDA margin better than the 2021 performance. Our CFO, Ann Desender, will give you now some more details about these numbers.
Thank you, Charles. Good morning to you all. We start with the overview of the financial highlights. All KPIs in 2021 indicate a positive change versus 2020, with most positive outliers, the growth in orders and the growth in free cash flow. As Charles just indicated, orders are going strong. Demand across the globe is growing again. Our order intake in 2021 reached nearly EUR 980 million, which is up 30% compared to 2020. With the order book at EUR 487 million, we're up EUR 205 million year-over-year. This represents a growth of 73% and an all-time high level order book for our company. The conversion of orders to sales is moving slower, but still shows the start of a positive trend. Sales growth was mainly fueled by our Entertainment and Enterprise businesses while sales for Healthcare were more flat year-over-year.
Overall, sales up 4% compared to the previous year. Our gross profit margin in 2021 declined 1.1 percentage points to 36%. The margin pressure is mainly linked to higher components and logistic costs, especially in the second half of the year. The price increases that we implemented did not yet fully counterbalance this. We kept operating expenses flat versus 2020, and this resulted in an EBITDA of EUR 58.5 million, which gives us 7.3% EBITDA margin. Free cash flow for 2021 was EUR 78 million compared to EUR -36 million a year earlier. The solid cash flow generation is a result of improved operating cash flows and improved working capital. We'll come back on this later.
If we now take a closer look at the fourth quarter, we can conclude that it has been one of the best quarters since the COVID pandemic started, and that we are getting closer to pre-pandemic levels. Compared to the fourth quarter 2020, we can see an uptake of 50% in orders and 30% in sales. Compared to the end of 2019, we're almost flat on orders, but still behind in sales with about 20%. The strongest uptake in sales is made by Entertainment and Enterprise. Both divisions operate in markets that are recovering from the pandemic. In healthcare, we can see a more modest sales growth in part hampered by component scarcity. Charles will now give an overview of the 2021 results per region.
Thank you, Anne. We are now at slide six. Now, let's look at an overview of the 2021 results per region. Both orders and sales grew in all regions in 2021. The Americas registered a good 28% growth in orders, while sales were only slightly up. In entertainment, investments in events and cinema are still slow, with other parts of the market starting to deliver solid results. Companies are also still slow to invest in their workplaces due to prolonged work from home, which is reflected in the results for meeting experience. On a more positive note, we saw a good upside for the deployments of some large projects in large video walls. For healthcare, we had a strong order intake in the Americas, but many deployments were still pushed out to 2022.
EMEA delivered strongest growth, which also helped here still, while we also have here the impact of the pandemic in a number of markets. For entertainment, the fixed install business is doing well, while the investments in cinema and live events are still pushed out. ClickShare delivered healthy growth in a market which suffered still from investment and intermittent lockdowns. Also, large video walls started to pick up with steady growth in the second half after a slow first half. Finally, the surgical and diagnostic markets showed good increases in orders, but were flattish on sales, with spending and deployments pushed into the future. For Asia Pacific, especially China, is doing well in both cinema and immersive experience. Even more than in the other regions, meeting experience remains slow in APAC due to lockdown waves. Also for healthcare, the growth in APAC was limited during 2021.
Back now to Anne to take a closer look at the EBITDA margin evolution.
Thank you, Charles. The waterfall chart visualizes how our EBITDA accretion was realized over 2021. Clearly, top line growth has been the main driver. Gross profit margins were pressured by scarcity in components and raised costs and logistics. OpEx increases were contained to selective investments in R&D and in the commercialization of some selected initiatives. Moving further in the profit and loss statement from EBITDA to net earnings. With end markets clearly recovering from the pandemic crisis, Barco was able to restore net earnings again to a positive number of EUR 9 million. The higher EBITDA, lower amortizations, as well as lower restructuring and impairment costs compared to 2020 resulted in an EBITDA increase of EUR 17 million year-over-year. The effective tax rates in 2021 was at 18%. We are especially pleased with the cash flow generation in 2021.
Barco delivered a free cash flow of EUR 78 million, a clear year-over-year improvement versus the EUR -36 million in 2020. All of the divisions contributed to this stepped up result. Next to the improved gross operating cash flow, Barco was able to reduce its net working capital below 6% of sales. This compared to 11% in 2020. Days sales outstanding improved to 56 days. Payables were paid on average at 62 days. Net inventory stayed essentially flat, the net of decreased finished goods, inventories, and increased component inventories. We opened a new factory in Suzhou, China last year, which was a material part of our capital expenditures amounting to EUR 19 million in 2021.
Our net cash position is now at EUR 310 million, which is a raise of EUR 135 million versus year-end 2020, including the free cash flow and the proceeds of the sale of a minority position. We are now at slide 10, which with our sustainability parameters covering the three pillars planet, people, and communities. The planet metrics concern our own ecological footprint and that of our customers. We see a continued positive evolution in the product portfolio, where each year more eco-labeled products contribute to our revenues. Last year good for almost one-third of sales. The supply constraints that were already discussed did not leave the footprint metrics untouched either.
In 2021, we saw higher emissions from logistic flows, for example, express flights, less sea shipments, and these were partially countered by savings and mobility, which in their turn were a result of lockdown and lockdowns and travel restrictions. When it comes to the people pillar and employability, we started measuring an employee net promoter score via pulse surveys. This resulted in a first score of 38.5, which falls in the category great in the eNPS methodology. We will keep track on how this evolves over time. Finally, when it comes to communities, we have been doing a similar exercise towards our customers for two years now. Customer NPS score remains stable at 47, which also falls in the great category.
We did work to solidify these metrics with more responses and more insights. Over to Charles now with more details on how our separate business units performed last year.
Thank you, Anne, for the deep dive in our good results. As was already clear in the overall results, entertainment showed the highest uptake, with the fourth quarter even moving towards pre-COVID levels, slightly better in both orders and sales compared to the last pre-pandemic quarter, first quarter 2020. The entertainment division delivered a solid 44% increase in order intake and a more modest 6% increase in sales for the year compared to 2020. The slower sales growth can be contributed to the fact that some major renewal projects were pushed to 2022, in combination with component scarcity also pushing back deliveries to customers. This gross profit margin of entertainment improved slightly compared to last year. With good indirect expense control, we see a significant improvement in EBITDA and EBITDA margin.
Taking it by business unit, Cinema accounted for approximately 50% of the divisional sales in 2021, in line with the breakdown of last year. In Cinema, the second half of the year saw theaters reopening in most regions in combination with positive visitor statistics. This is for us a clear confirmation that further growth opportunities in the Cinema industry remain intact, albeit materially delayed. Sales was mainly generated by new build projects in China, the Middle East and other developing regions. Renewal projects were still slow and the major programs have been pushed back. These are expected to start kicking in again as the second half of the year. Moving over to the immersive experience segment, we are seeing the results of the focus we put on to fixed installations, including the expansion of our product portfolio.
This resulted in market share gains and growth in both orders and sales. Demand was particularly strong and growing in immersive digital art experience in museum, where we can claim a leadership position. This helps making up for the events subsegment, which clearly still suffered from COVID restrictions and lockdown measures. In the enterprise division, we saw the effects of the delayed returns to the office with a gradual recovery and strong order intake in the second half of the year. Sales followed this trend in the last quarter of the year. As a result, year-over-year orders increased by more than 20% and sales by 8%. In terms of the sales mix, meeting experience accounted for about 52% of enterprise sales in 2021. For meeting experience, we see a growing adoption of wireless conferencing when and where offices are reopening.
ClickShare registered good recovery, mainly in EMEA, and is now present in nearly 1 million meeting rooms worldwide. This number was 850,000 at the end of last year. Large video wall segments booked quarter-over-quarter progress in both orders and sales throughout the year. We were pleased to see a clear rebound in the fourth quarter, which was driven by large deployments in the Americas. Sales were still somewhat held back by component shortages. In healthcare, we see a solid order growth in line with markets opening up again and hospitals planning in investments and budget allocations for post-pandemic world. However, there, the component shortages and delayed deliveries hit our sales capability pretty hard in healthcare, resulting in a slow conversion to sales. Still, we registered a good order intake of over 20% and helping us to end the year with a pretty strong order book.
The Healthcare EBITDA margins was below that of last year, mainly as a result of higher component and freight costs. We have increased prices also for our Healthcare portfolio, and we expect this to have positive results on our gross profit margin in the course of 2022. For the Diagnostic segment, we especially saw demand grow in the Americas and EMEA regions. Sales were slightly down because of the supply issues and because of a number of deployments that were delayed. In Surgical and Modality, we really see that the markets of digital and integrated operating rooms is growing. In 2021, we further expanded the group of partners we work with and increased our share of wallet with some of these partners. This is also reflected in a very solid order intake.
Sales growth was more modest due to both temporary supply issues and hospitals still somewhat slow in deploying planned projects. Both diagnostic and surgical modality strengthened their value proposition with respectively the world's first stand-alone display for digital pathology and NexxisLive, which is a cloud-based software platform for remote collaboration and education during surgery. For our growth initiative, Demetra, growth has been slow, but with a steady month-over-month increase while we have added partners in the Americas and Europe in 2021. That was it for our 2021 results. It's time to look towards the future now and how we see Barco evolving this year. If we look at our three divisions from a general multi-year perspective, you can see that entertainment and enterprise show a similar track throughout the pandemic. One with a deep decline in the year 2020, followed by a recovery pattern.
This recovery is still ongoing, and we believe it will transform into growth when lockdowns start to phase out. As already discussed, we expect cinema to expand with first expansion in the build, new builds in developing regions, followed by renewal wave towards laser cinema in more developed regions. As for the summer, we also expect the events market to carefully pick up again. For enterprise, we also expect in the course of 2022, employees to be able to get back to the office again. This hybrid position will continue, and in this way, real hybrid home office, or in-house working will become the norm, and we expect that the trend to further support our ClickShare demand. For control room environments, we expect to see stable trend of investment in both critical infrastructure and other adjacent monitoring centers.
Healthcare shows a different track record when the pandemic expressed itself as a period of essentially no sales growth as hospitals addressed the more urgent needs around intensive and COVID cases and postponed investments in other areas. As the world gradually moves into a post-pandemic scenario, hospitals can get back to more normal daily operations, resuming strategic investments and budget allocations, including diagnostics and surgical projects. In short, we expect to see growth in all of our three markets, each at a different pace. Healthcare on a steady growth track. Enterprise and Entertainment to show some more accelerated recovery and post-pandemic growth in the coming two years. As we believe the world is through the worst of the pandemic, we will still feel the effects in the short term, but the longer-term looks really promising.
On slide 17, it will not escape you that our company went through some quite a lot of changes last year. Let me elaborate on that for a moment because it impacts how we approach our future. We are following the strategy update, which we shared in October last year, where we elaborated on what the COVID pandemic taught us and how we can improve and work on opportunities. We have already taken a number of steps, and we'll keep working to make Barco a more effective and even stronger company. We did reset the organizational structure in order to get the best of our workforce. Now already, this reflects in improved customer responsiveness and engagement by our teams. We will further leverage this business unit focus and expect also to see benefits in improved operational and commercial efficiency.
We do see many signals of recovery and growth opportunities across all our markets and regions. We want to capture these opportunities, and we will further expand our market share in a post-pandemic world. We also want to focus on opportunities that lie in China, especially in healthcare and entertainment. We made also a first step there with a new factory in Suzhou. Next, we will also further rebalance investments in R&D and find a good balance between incremental improvements and new growth initiatives. Additionally, we want to expand our manufacturing activities and differentiate where possible while adjusting the way we work in line with our sustainability goals. Our outlook for the first half, and assuming the supply chain challenges will not further deteriorate, we expect the sales conversion to increase and expect that sales to grow with approximately 20%.
This would result into a higher EBITDA compared to the EBITDA of 2021. Finally, a short word on dividends. Our board of directors will propose to the general assembly to distribute a gross dividend of EUR 0.4 per share. As a token of trust in our future, this is a 5% growth, and just like last year, our shareholders will be offered the choice between payment in cash or dividend in shares. With that, I am going to move it back to you, Carl, to guide us through the Q&A.
Thank you, Charles. Thank you, Ann. We are now ready to move to the Q&A session. I'd like to make one addition, which you may have seen in our updated agenda, and which may also be the right platform for some of your longer-term or strategic questions. We do have a Capital Markets Day planned for this year. This is on September 8, and we certainly hope to welcome many of you, and if possible, in person. Okay, now to the questions for this release. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, you may raise your hand in our weConnect tool, and our operator will put you in the queue, or two, you can also ask your question in the chat, and we will mix questions from both the chat with live questions.
Please stick to our traditional householding rules with maximum two questions at a time. In case you have more, please queue again then. We're ready for the first question. Good morning, Sebastian. You're the first in the queue, so we're ready to listen to your question.
Hi, good morning, everybody. I'm happy for your results. Just two questions on my side. First one, happy to see more than EUR 300 million net cash in the balance sheet. Just wondering why there is not yet any consideration of at least a small share buyback. I've been happy to see that you've been buying shares internally also for stock options, but I think at one point it would be quite fair and attractive for shareholders to benefit also from it and from the low valuation. That's the first question. Second one, it's more into ClickShare and especially the strategy in the U.S. I understand that the guys in the U.S. are not yet back to the office, but I'm also questioning the distribution strategy there.
What can you do to maybe speed up the growth and to enlarge the install base, which is still predominantly in Europe? Thanks a lot, and all the best.
Yeah. Thank you, Sebastian, for the question. On the cash situation and cash allocation, I'll first give it to Anne.
Good morning. Thank you for the questions, Sebastian. Cash and cash allocation is each time, and now it has been again on the agenda of the board. Yeah, pleased that the dividend this year has been decided with an increase versus the year before. This is primarily a token of the trust also in the future. With that on the cash allocation and the funnel of opportunities and M&A, I can just say and looking then to Charles, but not only Charles, it's also the whole board, the appetite for acquisitions and to really use that money for sure is still there.
The opportunity of, yeah, when and at the right price, bear with you that this might take some time, but it's not the lack of interest or that we do not want to use this money very wisely. After two years of pandemic, you will also have seen that, yeah, we didn't lose on this money. To the contrary.
Thank you, Anne. On the ClickShare related question, yeah, first, I think it's a very appropriate question. We are spearheading in the EMEA region, actually, bridging the gap quite well with pre-pandemic levels. On the U.S., we're now applying a couple of recipes which are successful in Europe and putting them in action into the U.S. as well. Just looking to Charles or Anne, whether we can add some extra color on that.
Well, I think the U.S. has for, especially for large companies, been much more aggressive in work from home, which means that the need to invest in conferencing and in basically companies has been much lower.
We see that also not only for a meeting experience but also for large video walls that the pickup has been slow. We believe now very strongly that with large corporations again moving back to the office, this trend will improve. The key competitive question is basically you have proprietary meeting room systems like the Zoom Rooms and the Teams Rooms, which offer the competitive landscape compared to agnostic systems like us. This will be the real, if you want, excuse me for the expression, battle in the full market share between agnostic systems and proprietary systems. For the moment, agnostic systems still have the largest market share, and we believe that trend will continue.
Thank you, Charles. With that, I think your first two questions, Sebastian, were answered. Checking in the queue whether we have a next question. Someone coming in. Yeah, I think it was Guy Sips. Can you please put him in the queue? Sorry, Mark Hesselink. Mark, you're on screen, and we're ready to take your question.
Yes, yes. Thank you. My first question is actually on the gross margin trajectory going forward. How do you expect that to move back to the traditional level, taking into account that you took some price measures? I think you're probably gonna take some price measures more during the course of the year, but also a very high order book, which probably will still be executed on the old pricing levels. So how do you see that improving over the course of 2022? And my second question is on the healthcare segment. Very strong order intake, you know, when I explained why the conversion was lower. What would be the time period when you expect that conversion to happen?
Is it fair to assume that the 26% growth, 27% growth of last year, that you will see that kind of growth level for the full year? Or are there things that are also going to be pushed into 2023? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Mark. Yeah, good first question. Would have been mine if I would be in your position as well. I'm sure that Ann will be happy to take your gross profit margin question.
Gross profit margins is indeed you first have your cost increase, and then at that moment that you do see that you yet have to translate this back also towards your end prices because it's there to stay. That's what we worked on in numerous calls with you all over the second semester. I did include or indicate that there is some time lagging effect. We haven't worked on quite a lot price increases also charged through of costs, higher costs to the customers who are also willing to pay that. It is a challenge on the order book, that's for sure. That's an extra lagging effect, but it's not that this full order book is at old prices. It is a combination.
To the positive side and maybe then already hinting to the second semester, we are starting to give now the outlook on the first one. On the second one, it's a little too early. The only thing I do know that at one time, yeah, that lagging effect will turn around in the sense that then these costs and the logistics flows and these broker fees will come down. I do hope we then have some positive lagging effect, vice versa. In what quarter this will follow and assume that that pickup then will come, that's a little too early to tell. It's clear it's a full action point to, yeah, restore and gradually, yeah, defend, certainly defend that gross profit margin.
Yeah. Thank you, Ann. On the healthcare question and the conversion of the large order book into sales, Charles, I see that you're ready to respond.
Traditionally, healthcare has indeed bulk orders, which usually cover one year or slightly more than one year. We indeed foresee a continuous growth, steady growth in the same region as last year for our healthcare division. What we see, the conversion of the order book, we will gradually overcome by redesign, aggressive redesign measures and by actually implementing a whole kind of also manufacturing measures, the shortages that we suffer for the moment from the supply chain. A confident message on healthcare, combined also with the opening of a new factory in Suzhou to specifically then address the Chinese healthcare market, but also to be able to tap into the supply chain in China, which will help us overcome the shortages that we feel in Europe or the Americas.
Yes. Thank you, Charles. Thank you, Mark. If you have more questions, don't hesitate to queue again. Next person in the queue is coming on.
Carl,
Just waiting for the operators. Okay, while we wait, Yessege, we can indeed take a question from the chat. Yeah.
Thank you, Carl. Carl, I have a question of Christophe Beghin. The order intake is strong and a positive sign, which is great. My question is, however, that several companies reported similar signals and some mentioned that as the effect of pre-buying ahead of price increases. Do you see similar reactions at Barco's clients?
Okay, good. I think, Anne, that's a question you're willing to take.
We do have some orders that this is the case, but by and large, it is actually not. Most of the order book is just a recovery of our end markets and us who are capturing that rebound actually. In that sense, there will be to some extent. There also to some extent the fact that they pull forward some orders, that's not too large amount in the whole to assure the supply. In that sense, that's both. It's not largely driven by just having lower prices. It's just a very positive sign of the recovery of our end markets.
Yes. Thank you, Anne. Thank you, Christophe, for the question. Now we have Kris Kippers on the weConnect. Chris, go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my question, sir. First, congrats on the numbers. I've got two questions, actually. The first one, looking at the H1 guidance, I think quite good to see that growth is about to be guided at 20%. On the margin front, the question was a bit asked already directly, but what's the reason to be so prudent in that first half? Is it due to the fact that despite this growth, you see the lagging effect of the pricing applications, or is it also the effect of enterprise? What is the balance actually of both?
Yeah. Question on the-
Thank you, Kris, for the question.
Guidance on the EBITDA margin.
By the same token, the answer, or at least in your first part.
Exactly. Yeah.
It is indeed the lagging effect and see how fast we can turn that around, make that up, actually. As described, uncertainty then on. There is some mix effects into it as well, that are again linked to certain components we missed and how fast we can ramp that up. It is primarily really linked to the call it then recovery of again towards the same gross margins and better.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Then I've got a second question, if I may, on the entertainment. Quite a strong margin already, I think, in 2021. Good surprise, at least versus my expectations. If you look at the history, does it imply that given the fact that you're rolling out more efficient projectors in this part and the cost alignment you've made, that does it imply that as from second half, we could indeed see margins going higher than the previous record levels of let's say 8%-9%? Is that a plausible assumption or is it too early?
Okay. Yeah. On the entertainment margins, you call it a good margin. I think we call it a good step up from the break-even level of last year. We would not call it a good level yet. On the expected evolution, Charles, happy to give you the words.
Well, it's a two-sided story. Yes, we have a more efficient lineup in cinema. At the same time, we have ambitions to grow very strongly in also immersive experiences. The market is ripe, the demand is coming, and we need to not only grow the market share, but also increase our product portfolio to meet the demands of the customers. The two combined will give us potential to even grow sales and therefore also EBITDA. Percentage-wise, we are optimistic, but we don't give clear guidance on that for the moment.
Thank you, Charles.
Thank you.
We're ready for another question in the queue. Normally, this should be Trion coming up. We're waiting for the image. Yep, here we go. Trion, good morning.
Morning, Carl, Charles, Anne, good to see you all. Yeah, I've got a couple of questions as well. Just looking at your guidance, I appreciate you're not giving full year guidance because of the lack of visibility. If we as analysts look at 2019, obviously the last pre-pandemic year, you had 20% growth between H1 and H2. Today we've got strong order intake, high order book. You talked about renewal programs starting in H2. I guess we would hope also some of these supply chain issues that have affected you at the end of last year and the start of this year to ease.
Is it fair to say that we would hope at least to see that kind of seasonality again or maybe even a bit more this year? That's my first question.
Okay. Thank you, Trion. A question where we're trying to get a clue on how the second half could look like.
Well-
Charles.
Trion, I think you read the statement saying that if supply chain doesn't deteriorate and it will not have escaped you that quite a lot of large manufacturers also in automotive, like Volkswagen or Mercedes, declared that they don't expect the situation for integrated circuits to improve during this year. Yes, we are careful because it's an unknown for the moment. The other elements look positive as you quite rightly mentioned. For the moment, we cannot give you more clear guidance on that.
That's fine. Yeah. Okay. That's more than I expected, so thank you for that. Well, my second question was on your slide 16, you talk about looking back and forward. I tried to get my ruler out to look at where you've got enterprise and entertainment, and you have the 2023 levels still, I think, below 2019. Should we read more than we should into that? Are you saying that maybe enterprise and entertainment will not be back to 2019 levels by 2023?
Yeah. We know the slide which you are referring to was definitely not the purpose to give you, let's say, an exact trend line. But more, let's say, an exact line or exact numbers, but more a trend line, how we expect things to evolve, depending on the context, depending on some of the parameters that we already mentioned. Could it grow for some markets a bit faster than drawn here? Could it be slower? Thinking both directions, it can take place, but the overall trend line is indeed indicated here. Anne or Charles, anything you'd like to add?
I think this doesn't reflect any guidance. We are consistent in our communication.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Trion.
Thank you, Trion. We are now ready for a question from Guy. Guy, we'll bring you on the screen in a minute. Yep. We're ready to take your question, Guy. Shoot.
Yes. My question is on the cash position. The cash position, net cash position increased to EUR 310 million. One of the elements was a sale in a minority position. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? I think related to that is, in beginning mid-September 2019, you invested in Unilumin EUR 54 million with the intention to work together with them to develop innovative technologies and new products. How is that working or not working, and what is the situation there? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for the question, Guy. Anne.
I'll take the first part.
You take the first one. Yep.
I'll hand it over to Charles on Unilumin. It is a minority position. We have a couple, it was with a strategic intent, but it is below, or it was below, disclosure levels. In that sense, like we didn't disclose it last year because of confidentiality reasons and below disclosure levels, we are not giving the name now again. It was a position which we now fully sold again with what you have seen, a quite nice upside. It's not just as an investment. As an investment, they're always linked to a strategic alliances.
On the second part of the question concerning Unilumin, we will this year introduce a major new product in the LVX range, which is Truepix, which allows you to align, install, and also maintain LED panels in a very easy way, which is a traditional huge problems for the large LED panels. We have good hopes that this will be successful in the market.
Yeah. Thank you, Anne. Thank you, Charles. We have one more question from the chat.
Yes, we do. It's another question from Christophe Beghin. "Are you still considering some strategic reviews of subunits or is the current portfolio of Barco to remain as today?
Business portfolio question, Charles.
Well, I think it is the role of the board to continuously evaluate capital allocations and the scopes of business as well as the possibilities of internal and organic and inorganic growth. The main concern of the board is to maintain a very strong capital discipline as well with the shareholder funds that are in the company, as well as with the business units and how to proceed with the development of the business. At the moment, there is no particular decisions around these points, but it's continuously being watched and it's monitored by the board to be able to make the best possible decisions in the interest of the business and in the interest of the value of the business.
Yep. Yeah. Thank you, Charles. I think we have one more question in the queue coming in. Coming through now.
Carl, I have another question unless the queue is coming up.
Yeah. Okay. We'll take first the question from the chat. Yeah.
Okay. This is a question from Patrick Milliken. Do you stick to the 2023 EBITDA margin guidance?
Yeah. Question on the midterm financial objectives.
The short answer is yes.
Yeah.
Voilà. Absolutely, yes.
Double confirmation, I'll call that. Okay. We'll try again to get the question from the queue. I think it's Trion. Trion, hello again.
Hello?
Yep.
Hi, Trion.
We can hear you. Yep.
Perfect. Okay. Yeah, thanks for letting me back on again. Just two sort of shorter questions. Firstly, in your outlook statement, you talked about no further supply chain deterioration. Just interested in what you're seeing today and how things compare to sort of Q4 and Q3, whether it's pretty much the same or if you've seen a bit of improvement. That was the first question. The second question was just on the working capital. You clearly improved that significantly last year, basically completely offsetting what happened in 2020 post, after the pandemic started. I'm just wondering, do you see more structural opportunity to improve the working capital, or now you're pretty happy where we are?
Perhaps I'll kick it off, and then I'll hand it over. In terms of quantitative impact in the fourth quarter, it was pretty much in line with the impact in the third quarter, around EUR 15 million-EUR 50 million. But not necessarily on the same product lines and not, let's say, predominantly in healthcare only, as it was in the third quarter. That was a bit more spread across different business units. Then perhaps looking forward, I'll hand it over to Charles.
Well, Trion, the big insecurity is that purchasing people have been able to secure components through brokering and also engineers through redesign. We have no visibility how much brokering we can still do for the future. From there, that we are a little bit careful not to go beyond the first six months in prognosis.
Yeah. Thank you, Charles. I'll just wait a couple of seconds to see whether there are-
Working capital. We still have working capital.
Yeah, working capital.
Excuse me. Ann, go ahead. Apologies.
Trion.
Yeah.
Thank you. For the question on working capital, indeed very pleased on where we got it back below the 6% on sales, in particular on DSOs and the combination of DSOs and then how fast we pay our suppliers. That is there to stay in that level. 56 days DSO, 62 days. That is back at, yeah, what we then call pre-COVID levels already in that respect. When you do look at the inventories stayed flat the year-over-year, which is a good drawdown of finished goods sold or whatever we had in stocks actually there. But an increase in raw materials and components because whatever we can get in and to be ready to ship and deliver on our order book, we do, of course.
With that, yeah, our inventories are still at a quite high level. It's a good mix to have now. On inventory terms, as you will have seen, 2.4%. I do see this as room for improvement. Today, for sure the delivery or delivering on our order book, yeah, is essential, so it will have to go hand in hand. Let's stick on that level of DSOs and AR and inventory. We'll see how it goes. Mind that pre-COVID levels, yeah, we were below 5%. Long term, I always indicated to you my goal is around 5% on sales.
We'll see whether that makes sense this year already because priority is really capturing the rebound and delivering on our order book and getting more orders of course. Always room for improvement, Trion.
Perfect. Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you, Ann. If there are no more questions, looking to Inge for the chat. No. No more questions in the weConnect queue. I think with that, I can conclude then. I'll thank Ann and Charles for hosting the video call. Thank you all for participating. Just letting you go with a small announcement. Our full annual report will become available this morning on the investor portal of Barco. If you would have any more questions or want to take a deeper dive, all the information is becoming available as we speak. In case there are more questions, don't hesitate. We're there to help. Don't hesitate to reach out to us.
We will be road showing in the coming days, in the coming weeks, and probably be meeting with some of you. Thank you for joining, and have a good day. Bye-bye.
Bye.
Thank you. Bye.
Is yours.