Good afternoon and welcome. Welcome to our webcast about the Bekaert results for the full year of 2021. A warm welcome to Taoufiq and myself to this webcast. It's a special webcast under special circumstances. I recall two years ago, we woke up once in February, and we learned the virus is changing our private lives, our professional lives, and our economies. We had to learn to deal with a lot of uncertainties and ambiguities. In the recent hours, we learned again that we have a VUCA environment. This VUCA environment in over the last two years, while we thought the coronavirus will go away and new events are coming up, has taught us how we deal with these ambiguities and uncertainties.
I'm very proud to say today that we are really, I would say, we'd like to share the impressive results we have been able to achieve under these circumstances. When we look on the journey of our Bekaert over the last years, you see we started in 2018. With an EBIT which was about 5% lower, even lower than the 5%, and ending up in the year of 2021 at 10.6%. When we compare the ROCE starting with 8% and coming up with 23.7% in the year of 2021, I think this is really reflecting, I would say, a very impressive milestone on our journey, and this is a sustainable journey. It's a journey which we started in 2019. There was a lot of work done on the leadership, the way we lead capital allocation.
We created in 2020 a valuation agenda, and we talked about performance, transformation, and co. The year of 2021 was characterized that we would like to go creativity beyond steep. When we look at the numbers, you know, this is something which is a result of hard work, dedication, and engagement of our 28,000 people. It's a sustainable performance, what we have seen. You might say comparison with 2020 might not be appropriate, but I think this is why we put in 2019, which was a significant, I would say, an excellent year as well, to show the improvement. Two things you might remember of these slides. The first one is we have achieved great performance across the board from the top line to the bottom line. You saw our ROCE figures and the deleveraging are stronger than ever.
What you can also see is the 2021 performance exceeds both what I said before last year, but also the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. In overall, we resulted in sales of EUR 4.84 billion, and this is when you compare to 2019 +12% and 2020 would be even 28%. The EBIT is now with 10.6%, really jumping up another 5 percentage points from the previous periods. 23.7%, what you have seen before on ROCE. The earnings per share is a very strong one, going up mostly tripling to 7.14, and deleveraging continues to 0.61. This performance, what we can see is on the next slide, it goes across the board.
You know our four divisions, Rebar Reinforcement, Steel Wire Solutions, Specialty Businesses, and Bridon-Bekaert Group, the BBRG. Rebar Reinforcement costs the EUR 2 billion. Steel Wire come close to EUR 1.8 billion, and Specialty Businesses as well, BBRG, roughly about EUR 500 million. Most important is when you look on the lower line, you see between 2018 and 2021, Rebar-
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I apologize for the technical disruptions. Good to have you back again. Allow me to go back to this slide. This was about the four business units, about the revenues. Really high sales they have achieved in all areas, EUR 2.1 billion for Rubber Reinforcement, EUR 1.1 billion which is, I think the all-time high we had in Steel Wire Solutions, EUR 500 million for the Specialty Businesses, and EUR 500 million for the BBRG. I think the underlying, the last line is maybe the most important one. When you see the development of the EBIT underlying percentage covering the years 2018 to 2021. Here you see the improvement of Rubber Reinforcement coming from 9.1% in 2018, delivering 11.8% in 2021.
More impressive even when you look at Steel Wire Solutions coming from 3.7-ish, going up to 11.3 in a very difficult environment as well. Also Specialty Businesses now coming from 6% of EBIT underlying now to 14.7. Last but not least, maybe this is the most impressive one, BBRG. As you know, many of you know the story of BBRG. We were negative and now coming up almost to 10% running, heading for 9.3. We have this diversity in business units, which gives us a very good balance in all the segments we are in. When we now look to the areas where we look at representing our business in the regions, you see Latin America taking a huge portion of 34%. Here it's followed by 28%.
Asia-Pacific is covering 26%, and North America, 12%. When we now look on the sales for the end market, of course, high in automotive with our steel cord business is much well represented and strong there. Followed already by construction, basic materials, agriculture, our diversity in energy and utilities, further to equipment and consumer goods is complementing our portfolio offering to the markets. Now let's go to the topic of the environment we have been facing in 2021. What I said before, it was not an easy environment. Supply chain interruptions, cost inflation, energy hikes, geopolitical events, COVID-19 was still around, labor scarcity. What we did is how we responded, and it looks that our execution paid off tremendously. The closeness, the customer proximity, and the commercial excellence with discipline in a disciplined way, we continue to work forward.
Further, our footprint adjustments, operational excellence, how we serve the market, supply chain topics, and all the processes in our factories. Further, of course, elaborating efficiency improvements in our organization. One topic I would really like to thank our marketing and sales people, the pricing discipline. We have seen cost increases on variable, logistic, packaging, energy, and they have done a fantastic job to make sure that we have been able to pass on these cost increases and secure our margin. Of course, from the financial point of view, effective working capital and cost control were crucial elements to keep this performance.
We did not only look on the day-to-day performance, we were also looking what is really important to secure also the future of the journey in a way that high performance is given, accelerating our transversals on digital sustainability and innovation. We have seen that we have a quite diverse, and you know this very well, environment of our business units in all the sectors we are in, allowing a good balance of regional topics, of product areas. For example, Rubber Reinforcement, we have seen a solid tire demand overall, very strong in U.S., very strong in India. On the other side, of course, seeing that China is softening, and we have seen also export business was a little bit weakened as we have seen before.
When we look on Steel Wire Solutions, again, strong demand across all the regions. There was a big boost in price and also in demand in Latin America. We were benefiting as also in many other areas about the reverse globalization, because we could really prove in 2021 the closeness to our customers. Not depending on only from one country to export, we could serve locally their needs. On the other side, of course, we have been also facing some raw material shortages in U.S. Sometimes COVID with people in quarantines have given us a hard time to make sure the production is up and our customer gets the service they need. Specialty Businesses, I think it was really amazing to see the improved performance in the high-end filtration and also in the hydrogen market.
I think here we have a quite unique technology position, and we see that the market like to see that and they are coming in with higher demands. We also picked up in eco-friendly combustion solutions, but of course on a global, being a global business, supply chain constraints are still with us. BBRG recovering very well, the energy and mining markets. We have a record increase of the order book for the ropes business. We are very proud of this. I think we never had this rope order book business as before. Of course, there have been areas where there have been a weakening demand, mainly in OEMs. You know, there's still this chip shortage around, but I think it's gonna catch up in the year of 2022.
When we now look on what we said also to secure the future, and this is really about investments in digital innovation and in sustainability. I think the most crucial part is that we really are digitizing our company, and we get a data-driven company. Yeah. We're increasing really the way, and you see here six plants, we are really increasing the way how we run manufacturing, how we look at the processes, how we really, in a smart way, improve the manufacturing. We have developed and launched already three portals, which we are using to have a much higher customer engagement and much higher customer proximity in these portals. We see already a higher growth in ordering via online than we would see in analog, yeah.
Of course, artificial intelligence is one of the future, where our predictability, our forecasting is somehow also progressing in the way and give us a much better base to work on. Sustainability, it's not only about sustainability, it's about environment, it's about sustainability, and it's about the government. We have a clear strategy on, in our ESG. It's about green energy. It's being a part of the solution. It's making sure that we have energy-efficient operations, and that we not only cover the Scope 1 and 2, which are our internal ones, it's also that we look on what can we do in the Scope 3. As you know, this covers the suppliers, and this covers also the customers as well. We also look, you know, for pilots. We started in India and in Spain with solar farms.
We have done already to prove the concept with our plant in Turkey, and this project was called We Know What, to make sure that we have the right ideas and the right set up. Our SBTi targets are submitted, and they're under evaluation. We expect in the fourth quarter to get a response to that. In addition to the ESG, we want to be market makers. This is really about where we see areas, maybe not in the next two, three years, but I think there are areas and there are trends, there are mega trends we want to be in. This is hydrogen, this is all about data. It's about pre-measuring, for example, on remote services for ropes, but also to be capable to make digital twins for our core processes.
This then would allow on a platform also to provide services, further processes and services to our customer. I think this is where we also look to be, I would say, quite advanced, and we already have one company, bold, as you know, which allows us to have the supervision of ropes. When we say in the summary, smart, sustainable, and safe wins, and I would like to give you a selection across the board. We have achieved the first in underground with steel fibers for the Grand Paris Line 16. Our BBRG teams delivered crane wire ropes for two vessels used to install offshore wind turbines. We are supplier of flat galvanized cable armoring wires for the subsea cable as a part of the EuroAsia project.
This connects now Greece, Crete, Cyprus, and Israel, and you can imagine what the circumstances and specifications of this cable armoring wire is to be in the sea over a very long time. In Colombia, our solution is a part of the connection to the capital Villavicencio. Bekaert delivered more than 3,500 tons of Dramix 3D for 18 tunnels. You can see clearly the balanced portfolio I mentioned in the beginning. Now allow me to express my thanks to our Bekaert teams who ensured that our plants run well, they served the customers well in an environment we have described before, who ensured that we make our customers successful. The teams I would like to thank, they're continuing the journey of transformation and growth agenda.
I also, of course, would like to thank our customers for the loyalty and trust. Our suppliers, they give us confidence, and they supply us in a very difficult circumstances where sometimes raw materials were short, and we have been able to keep the supply chain up. Of course, our investors for their trust and confidence in us. It's really a true end-to-end connection when we look on the whole value chain. This journey is not an ending one. It's a continuous journey, and it doesn't end here. We will continue to work on performance, on transformation, and growth, and we're really excited to go further up the hill and to take the next milestone. I hope and I'm sure that we achieve another milestone in the history of Bekaert. Thank you very much. Now I am handing over to our CFO, Taoufiq.
Thank you very much, Oswald. Good afternoon, and thank you very much for joining the call. I will be elaborating on some of the very strong financial metrics that we have delivered this year. Just before starting, I just wanted to make some introductory remarks because I think that strategy and the execution that we have been conducting is yielding results. You will see it in the financials that we'll be presenting. I think that more importantly, in a context where we were dealing with significant VUCA constraints, the strategy has allowed us to reposition the company towards a stronger situation. You see it in our balance sheet. We have been opportunistic when it was required. We have been very disciplined when it was needed.
You see it in some of the metrics as well that we will be discussing. At the end, I think it's important to say, and Oswald has touched on that our growing performance is really a translation of the fact that we're walking the talk. Let's go into sales, and I will further explain some of the underlying business drivers behind these statements. Overall, when we look at the sales, when we did our midterm guidance, we were guiding for sales of EUR 5 billion+ over the cycle. With our current performance delivered in 2021, we are not far away anymore from that, so we'll be at EUR 4.8 billion.
We are at EUR 4.8 billion with a significant improvement versus last year. Our sales are up 28% versus 2020. We're up 12% versus 2019, which was a kind of more a normalized year. We see as well a very strong momentum when we look at the combined sales at EUR 5.8 billion, so not far away anymore from the EUR 6 billion that we had as guidance. There are several catalysts which have crystallized this level of performance. The first one is the volume. Unlike last year, where our sales expansion was primarily driven by volume, this year it's only the second catalyst, but it's still driving roughly 9% of the top line expansion.
The major driver in 2021 has been related to the very strong performance that we have delivered in terms of managing with the right level of discipline of pricing. We have been able, in a context which has been characterized by strong cost push inflation, to push the prices and to have a top line expansion, which has been also translated into a gross margin contribution. The last or the third element explaining the good performance that we have in sales has to do with our pricing and mix.
We have referred several times to the fact that we are working on segmenting in a more intelligent way our portfolio of applications, and this is yielding great results that we see in 2021. I will later on further elaborate on the specific metrics by BU. Just would like to drill down a little bit more into the P&L and looking at some of the additional metrics. Can you please? Thank you very much. The first indicator is the gross profit. You see a significant boost in gross profit, EUR 886 million, so EUR 304 million up versus last year. That's more than 50% expansion.
In relative terms, I think that this figure doesn't tell the story, but I think that if you look at the evolution since 2019, I think that there we have story. Two years ago, we were delivering a gross profit in the range of 13.6%. We have further improved it in 2020, and we have reached almost 16%. We're delivering an improvement versus 2020 of 280 basis points at 18.7%. Again, a very good performance that we're very proud of. Looking at this performance by BU, RR and Steel Wire Solutions have both improved their gross profit margin on sales by 300 basis points, respectively at 15% and 18%. Very good performance overall.
Specialty Businesses and BBRG generate respectively a gross profit margin of 30% and 22%, so they continue to perform above the company average gross profit percentage. Drilling further down into our overheads. Our overheads have improved in percentage and we have reduced them by 50 basis points. In absolute terms, we have an increase of EUR 73 million. These increases are all due to non-recurring one-offs. The first one is related to the fact that we have the phase out versus last year of some of the mitigating COVID-related actions which have allowed us to offset some of the overhead costs. Obviously, this is not happening anymore.
We had also to adjust some of our compensation-based schemes and incentives in order to adjust them with the level of financial profitability that we're delivering this year. The last item is related to some tactical spend, mainly related to innovation, digitalization, and sustainability, where we have involved some external consultants. That's for the metrics I wanted to touch on on this specific page. I think that the next page does give a simplified view of where we stand in terms of EBIT build up. Obvious metric is the significant boost that we have in terms of underlying EBIT.
EUR 243 million incremental contribution in 2021, bringing us at a 10.6% EBITDA on sales. In absolute terms, that's corresponding to an increase of 90%. A quite strong, very strong figure in terms of EBITDA delivery. This has been the combined effect of several factors, as you can see it. We have the contribution from volume. We have captured the operational leverage coming from the volume increment that we have. We have been, as I mentioned as well earlier, a quite strong focus on the pricing. And we have been very successful in mitigating the inflation effects that we see in many of our input costs.
Last but not least, the smarter product segmentation that we have been working on is leading or is also contributing to this boosting in performance. We have some drags in the overall EBIT buildup. This is mainly related to some costs and the phase out of the cost. We have a EUR 95 million contribution which was coming from last year that are not replicated this year. We have been able to absorb them and still be able to deliver on the significant EBIT improvement for 2021. Now, looking at the detailed performance by business unit, I will start with the Rubber Reinforcement. Rubber Reinforcement has grown their top line by 27%.
With the same profile as what I described for the total company. It's primarily driven by strong pricing discipline. We had also a revenue expansion which has been driven by the volume. The mix also has contributed there. A quite balanced mix of levers explaining the very good performance that we see in terms of sales. When we look at the performance across the regions, we have significant growth rate across some of the key geographies where we are present. In Southeast Asia, we have been able to grow our business by 50%. In EMEA and North America, we have grown by 40%. China in value, we have an expansion of 12%.
The picture is a little bit contrasted when we look at the volumes in the case of China, where the volumes actually have contracted by 5%. We had to deal with some headwinds when it comes to our business in China. Mainly related to the fact that the domestic market was a bit softer and had lower exports out of China, mainly related to the shortages in containers and also the increasing freight cost. Despite these adverse factors in China, margins have been very well managed overall. In a context as well where the domestic market was characterized by an overcapacity and a stronger competition. Competitors were running after volume as you can expect.
I think it's very important to look at, as well the level of performance we're delivering in 2021, in relation with where we were in 2019. If you look at the sales, we have grown by 5%. When you look at the profitability metrics, our gross profit has grown by 36%, our underlying EBIT by 44%, and our ROCE has gained 8.3 percentage points. Overall, a very, very strong performance. Moving to Steel Wire Solutions. Steel Wire Solutions is also reporting a significant boost in the top line, so in the range of 37%, on the back of a very strong pricing and mix effect, which is contributing overall for 28%.
There's also a volume growth of roughly 9%. Volumes have surged in Latin America by almost 20%. We have elaborated on that throughout 2021. Also a significant growth in EMEA by 9%. On the other side of the chart, North America has somehow contracted, so we have a drop in volume of 10%. It was mainly related to some shortages that we had to deal with in terms of raw material, but also in terms of labor. This has led to this contraction in volume. By application, the demand has remained quite strong in agriculture, in construction, and in utilities.
We were kind of worried about the situation with the automotive sector, but we did see a rebound in 2021 versus the 2020 level. Again, the business being truly a global business has benefited from some of the global trade tensions that we see, both in terms of supply chain, in terms of also fiscal or tax-related trade barriers that we have seen. The diverse footprint has really been a key asset for us to drive this performance upward. The EBIT has more than doubled thanks to the many different contributions coming from the volume. The business that we see in Latin America has been a significant contributor in this performance.
There as well, I think it's interesting to look at the performance of 2021 in relation with 2019. While the sales have increased by EUR 370 million roughly, we see that the gross profit has more than doubled. We have multiplied by four the underlying EBIT, and the ROCE has increased by almost 30 percentage points. Again, an impressive level of performance delivered by Steel Wire Solutions. Moving to Specialty Businesses. Specialty Businesses is also reporting a very solid in-sales increase, 22%. We see a strong momentum across the three segments of the franchise.
In building products, we saw a very strong demand growth, primarily in Europe, and a strong effect coming from the boosting pricing and mix, which has been translated into a sales expansion of roughly 25%. In fiber technologies, we have achieved as well a sales expansion of 25% on the back of the strong business performance in Asia, and also the high-end filtration and hydrogen markets overall, which have performed very well. Combustion business has been also very good, and we have expanded the sales by 10%.
Again, comparing the level of performance of 2021 versus 2019, EUR 62 million sales expansion were translated in terms of profitability by a gross profit, which is increasing by 23% and underlying EBIT at almost +40% and a ROCE which is gaining 10 percentage points. Last but not least, BBRG. BBRG, as well, a very solid sales increase versus last year, 13%, mainly driven by volume, equally split between the ropes segment and the advanced cord. Very important to mention that during 2021, we saw a significant increase in the order book for the ropes business. Between January and December, we saw an incremental 96% increase in the order book.
A very important indicator for us to judge on the solidity of our projections for 2022. By application, we see we saw a very good level of performance coming from the demand in crane and industrial markets. The oil and gas onshore business in North America has recovered. It was kind of sluggish in 2020, but it's stubborn. It's back to a level where we wanted it to be. Other applications, such as fishing and marine, continue to be quite resilient. In advanced cord, the OEM automotive business has recovered during 2021. It's kind of slowing down again in Q4 of 2021, but overall, we're picking up.
We did see a solid demand as well from the elevator and the hoisting business, overall. When we look at the trajectory that we see in terms of profitability in BBRG, I think that it's clear that the profit restoration plan and the turnaround actions that we have taken are yielding results. We're moving from a situation where BBRG will soon become accretive in the total profitability of the group. Last year, it was still a bit dilutive, but we're very confident that we will be accelerating this level of performance.
Again, looking at the performance from a historical standpoint, you see that versus 2019, we didn't grow that much the sales, but what an amazing performance when it comes to to EBIT for the gross profit have soared by 44%. Sorry, the gross profits by 44%. Underlying EBIT is almost four times as high as 2019, and our ROCE is 98% higher compared to last year. Many things to be very proud of when it comes to BBRG. To summarize and to elaborate on some additional metrics for the P&L. You see a very strong boost in the result after tax.
Standing at EUR 343 million, an incremental EUR 213 million roughly versus last year. We're obviously paying more taxes because, I mean, our profitability is boosted. Having said that, our ETR is back to a normalized level, so 28% in 2021, and we are projecting to see it stable in that range for the foreseeable future. Now moving to the balance sheet items and the working capital. Another record performance, I would say. 12.6% working capital average on sales for the year. Very, very strong performance. If we look at the working capital as of Q4, we are at 40%, so relatively stable versus last year.
The 12.6 is a significant improvement versus the average that we have delivered in 2020. We were kind of worried with the evolution that we were projecting in inventories. I mean, we had a boost in activity, which was driving an increase in tonnage, but also the fact that the raw materials were more expensive, needed to be reflected in the valuation of the inventory. In absolute terms, we have an increase overall in the inventory values by roughly EUR 438 million. But this is mainly driven by these two elements that I have referred to. 60%, if we exclude the FX impact, which is embedded there, which is roughly EUR 54 million.
If we exclude this element, there is a 60/40 split between increase in absolute terms coming from tonnage. In terms of accounts receivable, we have been very diligent in managing our accounts receivable. We haven't increased significantly the level of factoring versus H1, so we're closing the year in the range of EUR 225 million of factoring. Overall, our level of payables in percentage—receivables, sorry—is improving. We have been following very tightly the overdues, the payment terms. We have been motivating in a nice way our sales teams to make sure that we collect faster than what we used to do.
This is yielding some very good results as you can see in the evolution of the accounts receivable, payments, accounts payable. You're basically reflecting the evolution primarily driven by what's happening in the inventories. It's the main component that we have in the accounts payable. All in all, a very strong performance when it comes to the working capital at 12.6%. We don't think that this is the normalized level of performance. You might claim that I already said that last year when we delivered 16.4%. We want to remain cautious because we want to make sure that we have the right level of working capital to allow the business to operate at the right level. We can elaborate later on that.
But 12.6%, I think that it's a level of working capital which leaves very limited low-hanging fruits to still tackle to further optimize it. Translating this into cash and net debt. Thanks to the results in working capital and as well from the EBITDA contribution, we are now holding EUR 677 million in cash on hand. This is after EUR 480 million of EUR 460 million of debt reimbursement, out of which EUR 380 million was the convertible bond that we have reimbursed in June. Very strong cash position, which is allowing us to reach a debt leverage of 0.6, roughly.
Half of the multiple that we were reporting in 2020. To conclude, I think the relevant metric here is the earnings per share. Obviously, all these improvements have a knock-on impact on the EPS. Very happy and very proud as a team to report EPS multiplied by three at EUR 7.14. As a result of that as well, given our strong balance sheet position, given the cash generation, given the performance that we foresee in the short term, we have proposed an increase of the gross dividend by 50% compared to last year. Our board has approved a dividend of EUR 1.50.
We have also heard the commentary expectations from many of the analysts following us and also some of our investors. We are also launching a share buyback program of up to EUR 120 million. We're finalizing the arrangements and should be formally announcing it in the coming weeks. Outlook. That was a very difficult one actually. I read some of the comments from some of the analysts this morning. We would have hoped to be able to guide more accurately, and I think that we would have been in a position to do it probably two weeks or one month ago.
With what's happening currently in terms of geopolitical situation and all the knock-on impact that it can have on many of our businesses that we cannot measure, we cannot anticipate. We want to remain again rather cautious. I mean, we're still confirming the guidance that we have given. We still project an expansion of our top line at 3%+. We are still committing to a margin level, which will be at 9%-11%. We will need to see how we will mitigate some of the tailwinds, the headwinds that we're facing. We have really brought the demonstration that it's something that we're becoming quite good at. We had to deal with the COVID, we had to deal with raw material inflation.
Now probably it will turn into something else, but we have the agile and the reactive organization to allow us to do that. I think that confirming the guidance that we have given one year ago, almost a year ago, is another sign of confidence on the potential of our business. Okay. With that, I think we can open it for Q&A.
Perfect. Maybe before we start, there's just one housekeeping issue. Just to let you know that this meeting is being recorded and published for replay on our website later this afternoon. Second point is, I refer to the safe harbor statement in the presentation, which applies to the content and statements made by all the speakers. I'm now going to open up the floor to questions. The first question is from Wim. Wim, if you could unmute your microphone, turn on your camera, and if you could raise maybe a maximum three questions, that would be great.
Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask questions. My first question would be on Rubber Reinforcement, please. Can you elaborate on the market conditions you're seeing at the start of 2022 in the various markets? Obviously I'm definitely interested in your comments on China. Michelin is hinting at a little bit of improvement recently of the passenger car tire market in China, so I was definitely wondering if you also see a similar picture. That is the first question. Second question is on wire rod prices availability and competitive dynamics linked to that. I recall that you benefited in 2021 from a better sourcing diversification than some of your competitors. I was wondering if you could update a little bit on that.
Third, would be the impact of inventory valuation effects on EBIT. There was a significant boost in 2021. If the graphs I'm tracking on Bloomberg that suggests a slight decline of raw material prices are true, then is it fair to assume that we will see a reversal of the positive inventory valuations already in H1 2022? Those were my questions.
You want me to start on the first question?
Yeah.
Thank you very much for the question. It's about Rubber Reinforcement and how we see the market evolution in the different markets, I think was your question. China was a little bit soft and weak. I think it even started in the second half of the last year. Always the demand bends a little bit. When you say about the best case, yes, we see a recovery. We have also seen a quite stable, maybe on a little bit of lower end in China on the truck tire business. We assume some, I would say, further stimulus from the China government to keep here the demand up. I think in the second half, this is what our prediction is, there might be a further ramp up.
Today we are, because of also less exports, we for sure have a lower demand as we would have normally in the booming times of China. When we go outside, we see, and you have seen it before, we see very good demand in India, for example. We have done a fantastic job in 2021. Honestly, this was one of our highlights we did not explicitly refer to, but for sure they're not only the financial but also the market positions we could gain there. We see it further when we stay with our, let's say, companies, Big Six as we call them. You know them, the traditional big tire companies where I spent also 15 years in that. I think there's good demand further forecasted on this level where we are in.
I don't see a major disruption in those areas, but of course, as we are also honest, the macro environment and circumstances we're in, we don't know. As of today, and I think also the first quarter shows also that the pricing is quite still favorable. We have a lot of costs, as you know, on energy and on many other topics. Here, I think we are in discussions with our customers to make sure that we can have a margin management as we would like to see. China is for maybe the one single question mark, and I think China is changing overall. It's not only in the markets, it's also in the political situations. We don't see it being strong in the tire, in the truck tire market, a bigger change there.
The sec-
The second one, you want to take the wire rod prices?
The next two.
Okay. In terms of wire rod, again, you know we are in a very fluid environment, so it would be like reading in a crystal ball, but we do have assumptions. We see what is happening so far. I think that we have different type of evolutions depending on the regions that we look at. If we look at Europe and Americas, the markets and the prices overall have been peaking at the start of 2022. There is still an increase versus the level that we saw in 2021. Having said that, there is a gradual better balance between the supply and the demand in this specific region. We are not expecting a significant drop of the current level of pricing.
The reason being that, we don't think that when it comes to the wire rod pricing, the level of pricing will be driven by supply and demand. I think that it will be more driven by the underlying cost associated with the wire rod. It will be iron ore evolution, energy cost, potentially transportation and so on. That's for Europe and the Americas. As far as Asia is concerned, the spot price has started to decrease in 2022, but we do see potentially the possibility that the prices will be pushed upward.
This is mainly due to the fact that some of the input costs associated with wire rod, such as iron ore, coking coal and so on, will be impacted and will increase. The demand as well will potentially increase in Asia. You know that the steel production and whatever is contributing to the carbon emission has been tightened in terms of production in China as during the Olympic Games period. What it means for Bekaert, looking historically at the situation. Now the prices as they stand now are roughly 55% higher compared to the pre-pandemic period. A significant increase.
We do expect a continuation of the increases overall during Q1. We're banking on a stabilization for the balance of the year. It will be very hard to tell you whether it will decrease for the balance of the year in Q3 and Q4. The next question is related to the FIFO impact. Actually, we don't want to call it FIFO impact anymore, and we will elaborate on that later on during the year. We looked at it from all the possible angles, and I think that we're progressively reaching the conclusion that more than a FIFO impact, it's a purchase price variance impact, because we're valuing anyway our inventories at standard cost. I think that FIFO is probably a terminology where we should rethink.
Having said that, indeed, 2021 significant so-called FIFO impact in the range of EUR 116 million. Given the evolutions that I just described, we might see still a positive impact during Q1, nothing close to the levels that we have seen in 2021, and it will probably come to a neutral level if the prices don't increase any more for the balance of the year.
Maybe add one on the first questions, because I forgot to mention, you know, we have the original equipment tires and we have the replacement tires, and I think when the chip shortage maybe comes to an end, of course, the OE, the original equipment, they will also pull up, and I think some of the tire manufacturers are referring to this one. When we see the replacement tires, I think this is going on very well.
Okay, very clear. Thank you for all the explanations, and congratulations with the good results.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, the next set of questions is from Emmanuel Carlier of Kempen.
Yes. Hi. Good afternoon, all, and congratulations as well with the great turnaround. Three questions from my end. The first one is on profitability. I think if you exclude the FIFO effect, the underlying EBIT margin was around 9%. If you try to split it up in H1 and H2 was a bit softer than the 9%. If I look at the midterm guidance that you have, it's still 9%-11%. You're actually saying that profitability in 2022 will be better versus the second half of 2021. I think it would be very helpful to better understand what will drive that profitability improvement. That's the first question. Then a second question is on volumes and price mix.
On price mix, assuming that the wire rod prices would stabilize at these levels, have you done the calculation what it would mean in terms of the full year effect on price mix? With respect to volumes, looking at the tire builders, I think most are guiding for around 2%-3% growth. I guess that's a good guidance for the Rubber Reinforcement business. But I would love to hear some volume guidance as well on the other BUs. Then the final question is on M&A. Of course you cannot comment too much, but I would like to get a bit of a feeling on the progress you have booked with respect to M&A over the last couple of months. Thank you.
You want me to start with three?
Question number three?
Yeah. On volume.
Emmanuel, you have asked four questions.
No, 3.
3? Okay.
Three.
Yeah. It's three or four indeed. No. Yeah. Sorry for that.
Yeah, yeah. Go, go.
You know, Emmanuel, thank you very much for the last question. I would like you know, this has a bigger context. You know, when we started eight and 24 months ago, we started with this platform transformation program, Cora. You know, to lay out the basis and to transform where we need to go in digital and sustainability and innovation. The last part was the growth part. You're absolutely right, I cannot tell too much. Yeah. I don't want to disappoint with this one, but we had a— Well, we have a short list, a long list, about 30 companies, and we have a short list about 10 companies. You know, it is also a little bit linked to the issue, how deep is the wallet, how big is the wallet of Taoufiq? Yeah.
This is always linked to it. One year it was different than it is this year. This also changes what we have in mind. The principle is very clear. There are topics where we would like to strengthen the core, but it does not make sense to do the same over the same. You know what I mean? We also want to go in adjacent. The other part is where we say, "Hey, let's go in this digital solution. Let's go in this hydrogen," et cetera. These are things which are more long-term orientated as well.
What you think about is not only in M&A, Emmanuel, it's also where we have joint developments, where we need to go for partnering, and where indeed we would say, "Hey, this is a clear M&A target." As you know, those targets, this has to be developed. It's not that we say you can do in two to three weeks or two to three months. It really takes time, and we want to do the right move.
We are not under urgency. I think we will continue to perform and transform, and we will continue to look in the markets which are the targets, and we have about 10 where we have to go in a deeper analysis. It doesn't say that these are the final ones, but which fit in the end markets we want to serve. This is really about future of construction. This is about differentiation in the, let's say, in energy, but it's also what I said before, looking to strengthen the core. Yeah. You can imagine this is a lot of work, what we are doing in the background. We have to understand the market, the market dynamics, who is also willing to join in, to partner and to go ahead with Bekaert . Yeah.
Intensive work on this third pillar of the growth part is done here. Of course, let's be also very frank, there should be a much, much more asset light topics, yeah. Less CapEx intensive. I think this is also going beyond steel. This is what we say. Let's go beyond steel. Let's look for alternative materials. Let's look for alternative solutions which are part of the smart digital solutions we are offering. In one example, you might have seen before, VisionTek is that one, and we are looking on some other areas where we can have more services out of the digital solutions, but not our fixed, the real important ones.
No, but you can still answer a very important one. What about the tires volumes?
The tire volumes?
Yeah. You had a question on volumes and tires volumes, Emmanuel, right? If I'm not-
Yeah, I think on the tire volumes, you kind of indicated that you expect to go back to growth. I think that one is quite clear. It's more how you look at volumes for the other business lines.
Yeah. Okay. I will start with your first question, the profitability, H1 versus H2. Historically, H2 is a low month or low six months for Bekaert . We have very strong months in performance in H1. H2 tends to be lower for two main reasons. The first one is that you have in the middle the summer vacation, you have the year-end vacation, and you have also some activities which are seasonal, mainly related to agriculture and construction, where we have a drop in the volumes associated with that. But that, I would say, that's what is structural.
Beyond that, we had also some specific situations happening in 2021 H2, which will also have an impact on how you will be able to compare them to H2 of 2022. First thing is that we started having a drop of the volumes in China throughout H2. It's a drop which obviously had an impact on the fixed cost absorption and our cash conversion costs did suffer from it. What will change in 2022 is that we're expecting that China will be back online with normalized volumes in H2 2022, and will therefore allow us to have a better level of performance in terms of cash conversion cost. That's mainly the primary driver. We are also working on mitigating plans should this not happen.
For the moment, we wanted to avoid taking stringent measures to reduce the cash conversion cost because we were thinking about the time that it will take us to ramp up and things like that. Having said that, there's no holy cow, and if we see that the ramp-up of the volumes are not coming within the framework that we're currently aiming at, we will take measures to stabilize and to mitigate the impact on the cash conversion cost. The other aspect, and third aspect is that the impact on the cost on the some input costs like utilities and so on, started hitting us badly as well in H2 versus H1. We didn't suffer that much from it during the first part of the year.
In the second part of the year, we started being impacted. You know, you have some period of inertia before starting tackling this. We started implementing negotiations with the customers to be able to pass on some of this cost inflation. Now it's up and running. You have a delay where we couldn't do a full offset of this or a right level of offset for this energy and electricity and so on. That's basically the explanation behind the profile of the profitability in H1 and H2.
That's clear. Thank you. Maybe the final question was a bit more color on how you look at the volume trend for the other business lines.
Sure. Sorry about that, Emmanuel. Indeed, when I look on SWS, yeah, I mean, this is a geographical business, as you know. You know, when I see LATAM, I see North America growing well. I think there has been quite a strong demand there. I see it also for Latin America North. Europe is going to, I think, remain on these levels what we are seeing today. If there is a little bit of a cloud, and this is also a little bit of a geopolitical topic, it is maybe a little bit on Chile. You know, they have been tremendously contributing in last year to the overall success of SWS, and this is what we are watching today. You know, here we need a little bit more time to understand, but it doesn't look so bad today.
This could be a certain part of uncertainty in these markets. When we talk about Specialty Businesses, honestly, it's a smaller part of, you know, it's 10% of our business. We see in all areas, if it is our filtration business, if this is our construction business, we have a fantastic improvement on our housewire business, which we had a very special focus on, belongs also to the Specialty Businesses. We could turn around the combustion business, was also very successful. They have a very strong demand throughout the four sub-business units. Yeah. This will continue. When you talk about filtration, where we have the hydrogen, here we see, of course, on a lower scale, really a very strong demand because of the technology we have.
You know, this is this membrane which is coated and allows then the production of hydrogen through electrolysis. Here we're looking to some very nice things, what we said before, on getting capabilities in for coating, et cetera. This is something which will be explode in the next three to five years, but for sure we're on the right trend. We are also looking, you know, hydrogen is about a race of the technology to get the costs down. Here we are participating in this journey and making sure that we are on the right trend. When you talk about BBRG, the ropes, you have seen the fantastic recovery. What I mentioned before, we never had such an order book of this magnitude, if I remember-
That's right.
This is what we see here, that there is a recovery. This is of course linked to the oil and crude price as well. You know, it's about $90-$100, and this is also different. Here I think we are quite confident, especially I think the second quarter should be a good one, what we see from the order book they're writing.
All in all, on a group level, you would kind of expect, yeah, I would say a slight volume growth in 2022, unless we would go to a recession, of course.
Unless China, you know, we are the VUCA elements we are in. This is how I would. Yeah, absolutely, Emman.
Thank you.
Thank you, Emman.
Okay, the next set of questions are from Frank Claassen of Degroof .
Yes. Good afternoon, all. Three questions, please. First of all, on Russia, if I'm not mistaken, you have a plant there. How important is this plant and what is the current unfortunate situation? How could that affect your operations over there? Secondly, on Latin America, you've made very strong growth there, also because you gained market share. How are the local competitors doing now with the supply chain, with the wire rod availability? Do you see them coming back? What is your view on that? Finally, could you help us maybe with the CapEx number for 2022? What is a rough indication and what are the main growth projects for this year? Thank you.
You want me to start with Russia?
Sure.
Russia is for Russia. We have the plant in Lipetsk. It's one of our younger plants. It's 10 years old. It's about 500 people. It's mostly, I would say, it's tire and a little bit of Dramix. All the business we do is for Russian customers. Yeah. There's no export outside. When we talk about wire rod supply, when we talk about energy supply, this remains within Russia. Of course, we are looking at what the exposure is, and of course, it's a small percentage of all our sales. It's one, we have about EUR 70 million sales over there, so it's a minor part. At the moment, of course, we see. Of course, it's too early to say, but it cannot have a very big impact on this because of the size.
Of course, if Russia would shut down energy, it would cover the whole Europe. It would be a completely different game. From our point of view, from our operations, we see currently and also not in future. What's interesting is the demand in Russia is very strong on bead wire, on tire cord, and we have been asked by a lot of local customers really to expand there. Yeah. And it's also from the cost position, a very good plant what we have there, but it's only Russia for Russia. So we don't expect really a different one. I think your second question was about LATAM, about competition coming back. You still see China. This was, I would say, in previous years, I would say the main driver for price FX was the China exports. And you still have the logistics.
Sometimes the container, the freight is of higher value than the content what is in the container. We don't see in the next months that the logistics and the, I would say, container availability is really changing significantly. The second thing is, it's not about just the supply chain, it's also about the customer relationship. You know, we have done a lot of digitization, we have done a lot of end-to-end integration, how we come together with the customer. Is there an uncertainty because we haven't. We had a new election in Chile, you are absolutely correct. Will there be a change of tax? We don't know yet, huh. As of today, we don't see a big differences, but we think we have a cost, also a cost competitive situation.
It's not only that the market maybe is not so fluid as before, but I think we have done a lot to improve and to be cost leadership, because there will be a point of time that maybe competition get up, and we have to be prepared for that. Yeah.
I think the third one was on CapEx. CapEx. We're anticipating a level of spend in the range of EUR 200 million. You asked me a question about the main projects. The ones that come to mind, it's the ramp-up of Vietnam. We need to finalize the plant there. In BBRG in the U.S., you know we have closed Pointe-Claire in Canada.
We're centralizing our production in the U.S., so we're looking to ramp up some additional capacity, so we will invest in BBRG U.S. In fiber technologies as well, we will do some investment to scale up our capabilities. Very good demand, as you can see from some of the results and information we shared earlier. This will be some of the top investment projects that we will be aiming at.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Heather.
Okay. The next question, set of questions is from Ronald. Ronald, if you could maybe mention the name of your company.
Yes, Ronald Evers, ABN AMRO. Although, I'm here instead of Martijn, as Martijn is skiing today, and he asked me to handle his questions. Lucky him. Thank you very much for giving me the time to ask his questions. First of all, my question is related to the JV you have with ArcelorMittal in South Africa. I think it did extremely well. EUR 108 million net profit, and Bekaert owns about 45%, if I'm right.
Yes.
It is net cash EUR 13 million, 13. How much of the profit can be paid out in dividends? Was that 70% historically?
Um-
My second question.
Go ahead.
My second question, because I only have two, and that's a question for Martijn. That's basically also on the supervisory board, and if there will be any changes expected in the next couple of years, and then he means the level of independent directors versus the, let's say, non-independent directors. Thank you very much.
The last one.
One more.
Answer the last.
Yeah, yeah, the last one. You will start with the joint venture?
Yeah.
Yeah.
On the joint venture, this is Brazil, actually. Our joint venture is in Brazil. As you rightly noticed, there's a significant boost in performance. A part of it is related to one-off event. Actually, it's a tax credit that we have been able to capture. It's roughly EUR 34 million, sorry. We haven't received the corresponding dividends related to that. It's supposed to come during 2022. We're aiming roughly at our dividend, which is corresponding to our participation percentage in the result of the year.
Thank you. Will 100% of the dividend be upstreamed?
Sorry?
Basically you'll get 45% of the dividend upstreamed and 100% of the net profit will be upstreamed.
Correct.
All right. Thank you very much indeed.
Yes.
Yeah. I think there are two members of the supervisory board for the entire year. I think this is for the Asia region, and I think this is about replacement. This is not up to me now if you're here, and I think you are, you have been awaiting this response to this one, and it maybe takes a little bit more time until we have the AGM.
Super. Thank you very much indeed.
Welcome.
Congrats with the great results.
Thanks a lot.
Hey.
Okay. The next set of questions are from Alexander of Kepler.
Good afternoon. From my side, congratulations on nice results. Most of the questions have been asked already, but I was just wondering on the Rubber Reinforcement segment, there you have a super-tensile and hyper-tensile tires. I was wondering how this market is evolving and how much is this as a complete part of the Rubber Reinforcement segment, percentually?
Percentage, I think it's more.
20% and growing.
Sorry?
20% and growing.
I wanted to say it's 20% and growing. Why is it growing? Because it's contributing to sustainable solutions. Because the tire industry, they have two desires, lighter weight and less rolling resistance. Both of them are contributing to this one. Here, I think we are quite unique in the technology. We get a lot of requests from our customers, and this is increasing. In the environmental topic, this is one of the topics. We are working together with, I would say, all of these tire companies because they have all the same aim, less rolling resistance and a lighter tire, Alexandre.
How is the margin difference between the two?
Now, of course, you aim for a higher margin when you have a higher value offering. Yeah. This is very clear. Yeah. I have difficulties unless I look to my CFO to disclose any margin of this one. Of course, otherwise we wouldn't do it. We also, to be honest, yeah.
Just a small correction. Actually, 20%, that's the ultra-tensile business. So this is-
The higher. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. That's the high-end, when you look at all the premium products. That's basically 40% of the total portfolio. It was 40%, two years ago. Now it's in the range of 44% of the total portfolio. 20% is the high-end, the ultra-tensile application. They're coming definitely at a premium price.
Yeah.
That's all we can say.
I think we also see in China higher demand on this high performance, I would say, tensile that we have today. Yeah. This is also one where we see getting more out of the commodities coming into the higher end and in the premium segment.
Okay, that's very clear. Thank you. Maybe or to follow up on my colleague, Emmanuel, what was again the leverage you're aiming for if you, if you're looking at targets, M&A, et cetera? If you lever up, what is your net-leverage guidance?
Uh-
That you could maximum obtain? In other words, how big is the wallet?
How big is the wallet? This is what you say.
We have stress-tested an EBITA leverage of well an EBITA multiple of three times.
Three times, okay.
With very stringent rules to reduce it back to 1.5 in 24 to 30 months max.
Yeah. Okay. Maybe then as a last question, could you maybe elaborate some or give some additional insights on the larger projects, and the order book for that you have currently?
The order book, I think the large projects that you have. It's
Maybe we can show up the slide, I think.
Go back to the slide.
Yeah. You know, please remind there are a lot of smaller projects and there are a lot of big projects. We discussed sea wind power, for example, is one. We see, I would say, in general, I would say, the mining industry is picking up. You know, we took just one of the examples, but we have many more of them which are in the order book of BBRG.
We have a deeper insight. Yeah, we have the interconnector, the subsea cables for this one as well.
It's only on BBRG, I think.
Yeah. It's only on BBRG that you are asking the question, Alexander, or do you have something else in mind?
BBRG is one of the key segments that I'm interested in.
Yeah.
It's also an overall question. If you can
Ah.
Put this in absolute, absolutes a little bit, it would be nice.
I mean, the BBRG is the only project-driven business that we have. That's why, I mean, we have a closer visibility on what's going on. The rest, I mean, you see we're making reference to some products or some projects in Specialty Businesses, but they are not projects as such. They are not long-term or mid-term. You know, it's an order we receive, we deliver it, and usually we close the deal, except if there is a big infrastructure project which is going on for a long period of time. That might be the case specifically in the Grand Paris Line 16, which is a long-term project which would require from us to support the civil engineering work for quite some time. The rest is ad hoc spot on orders and contributions we're making.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
It's fine. Thank you.
Okay. The next set of questions are from Stijn of ING.
Yes, yes. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity. Unfortunately, I cannot put on my camera. My system would crash. That wouldn't be helpful.
We have experience with that.
Yeah. I think it was me who crashed the presentation earlier on. A couple of questions, if I may ask them one by one. My first question touches upon the question of Emmanuel on the second half profitability. Can you help me understand? When I combine the EBIT bridge on the first half that you provided, then and this, and the full year 2021 EBIT bridge, I deduct a negative impact from the reversal of COVID mitigation measures in the second half of EUR -111 million. That is the result of EUR 16 million positive of cost improvement in the first half, and then this EUR -95 million that you have over the full year. Can you help me understand this number of EUR -111 million in the second half?
Because in my knowledge, then the majority of the COVID mitigation efforts were in the first half of 2020. Why would it show up in the second half bridge?
You lost me a little bit, Emmanuel, with the figures that you were referring to, so we will have to reconcile them. I mean, what I have in mind as a delta in terms of COVID mitigating actions is EUR 95 million spread throughout the year. We started capturing some of these COVID measures, I think it was towards the end of Q1, and we benefited from it until the middle of Q4, basically.
What I'm trying to understand is why this bucket of COVID mitigation didn't show up in the first half bridge.
We need to check that. I'm looking at my documents what actually was.
Because there you also only have a positive impact of structural cost improvement action of EUR +60 million.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, uh-
We will do the reconciliation. Stijn, we'll get back to you. I will look at it together, and we get back to you on this one.
Okay. Okay, good. My second question is on volumes in RR over the second half. If you look at Q3, there were -5.5%, Q4, there were -9.5%. What is the underlying number for China for those two quarters?
So-
I would assume that is beyond. I mean, that is more negative than the -5.5% and the -9.5% that you report.
Yeah.
Can you get me a sense of the depth that we are seeing currently in China?
The volumes in China have basically dropped between 5% and 9%. This is what we have. We have compensated half of the Chinese drop by incremental volumes in Europe. These are the high-level metrics that we have. We can break it down for you by quarter, and we can send you this.
Okay. Yeah. Helpful. Sort of a question on FIFO or purchase price variance?
Yeah.
As you would like to call it from now on. I understand that this is a moving target, but can you help me understand if the wire rod price would be stable for the full year, compared to the end December 31 price?
Yeah.
Would the impact in the bridge that you would show at the end of 2022, would that be EUR 0 or EUR -120?
No, it would be zero.
It would be zero. There's only a negative impact if the prices are trending down again.
Exactly.
Okay, understood. Final question, if I may. That's a fourth one, but it's a short one. Can you put a number on the sales exposure to Russia and Ukraine or the wider-
Yes.
Eastern European region?
No, it's only Russia for Russia, isn't it?
It's only Russia for Russia.
EUR 30 million.
We have one plant, it's EUR 70 million. That's 1.4% of total company.
Okay. That's it. All right. Thank you.
Thank you, Stijn.
Bye.
Okay. If there are no more questions.
No.
No.
I guess we were told it was an old time.
Okay. In that case,
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay. Thanks, everyone.
We'll get back to you with your reconciliations.
Yeah, great.
Oh, Emmanuel. It's Emmanuel. Emmanuel has seen the question.
Emmanuel?
Yes. Sorry. These are very, very short questions to answer, I guess. On working capital, I'm not sure if I fully understood your comment, Taoufiq. Did you mention that the working capital to sales will be sustainable going forward?
Well, what we're saying is that at 12.6 average, we think that we're reaching really the rock bottom of what we can do. We really put a lot of pressure to stress test how far we can go. Depending on the evolution of the business, we might let it go by 1% or 2%. That's why I'm more aiming at a stabilized working capital in the range of 14.5% rather than a 12.6%. This is on average full year.
Yeah. Okay. Helpful. Thanks. Then on costs, could you quantify the number of cost savings that is not yet included in 2022? Because you did quite some optimizations at the end of two 2020.
Yeah
20.
Yeah.
I think it's around EUR 12 million, but, yeah.
It's basically EUR 22 million that we do not see yet completely in the P&L. 10 million is coming from the recurring saving after the closure of BBRG or Pointe-Claire BBRG in Canada. This is a restructuring which has costed us roughly the same amount, so it's paid back in one year. Belgium has costed us EUR 22 million . We have a payback of two years, so we're expecting a recurring saving year on year of EUR 12 million.
Then I think in the presentation, you mentioned that there was some kind of potentially one-off costs. You referred to tactical spend related-
Yeah.
to innovation and digitalization.
Yeah.
Could you quantify the amount you spent on that? And is this something that will recur this year as well?
No, it's purely cost of consulting. I mean, these consulting activities have stopped. We have spent EUR 10 million-EUR 12 million in consulting activities associated to these areas. We don't see an immediate need to reduplicate this cost again in 2022.
Okay. Yeah. These cost savings will also be quite important.
Yeah
in terms of profitability improvement and yeah.
Yes. Yes
That makes sense. Yeah.
Yes.
The really final question from my end is on the associate line and the minority line. What is the best way to kind of predict that? Because I guess that in both lines you benefit as well from FIFO effects. Is the best way to predict that going forward to look back towards a kind of normalized profitability level? Or do you believe that these businesses have also structurally improved?
I think that it's an improvement which has been definitely driven by the demand situation and the material or the raw material prices. Because it's businesses associated to areas where we do not see major structural changes from the market, the demand or anything like that. To our knowledge, we don't think that they have done significant changes to their operating mode. They have been historically very strong and very good contributors in our results. I would look at it from, you know, a normalized perspective, assuming that significant part of this improvement might be coming from raw material side.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you. I have actually one really final one. This is on the wire rod prices. If prices stabilizes from at current levels, how much would that be kind of positive impact with respect to sales? Because I did the kind of numbers, and to me it looks like you would still have a kind of tailwind of maybe 10% on a full year basis.
That's about it. Yes.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks a lot for that.
Okay. Thank you, Emmanuel. Have a good weekend.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
Thank you all for your participation. Our next appointment together is on the eleventh of May at the annual general meeting. In the meantime, I'm sure that we'll be meeting either at conferences or one-to-ones.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.
Thanks.
Thank you. Bye-bye.