Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the D'Ieteren Group 2022 Full Year Result Conference Call. I now hand over to Mr. Francis Deprez, CEO, and Arnaud Laviolette, CFO. Gentlemen, please go ahead.
Thank you. Well, good evening or good afternoon to all of you for the publication of our full year results of 2022. Three main messages on 2022 we'd like to talk to you about. First of all, it has been, of course, a very uncertain and inflationary environment in 2022, and our entire family of businesses have been very agile in that environment, thanks to really highly engaged people across all organizations. I want to say a big thank you to all of them for that flexibility and that agility. Second message is that we have delivered record results, basically more than 50% above the previous year in our favorite KPI, the Profit Before Tax Group Share. To be precise, we increased it with 50.9% and reaching EUR 733 million.
We are guiding for the new year, so for 2023, an adjusted profit before tax group share of around EUR 900 million for 2023. The third message is that we plan and we propose to increase our dividend per share to EUR 3 , an increase of almost 43% vis-à-vis last year, which we'll of course propose to our general assembly at the end of May. If I give a bit more meat around those record results that I mentioned, and I immediately go to page four of our presentation that you can find in our website or that you got through the distribution mail. Starting with sales. Our combined group sales increased to about 43%, and that has been a nice acceleration in the second half of the year.
The first half of the year was about +30%. Second half of the year was about +56%, leading to almost EUR 12 billion. EUR 11.9 billion is the total number in combined sales that we have achieved. If you look at the contribution of the growth of the different activities, they have all been between 10% and 20% of growth. It's of course the first year where we have TVH fully in there for 12 months. We also have five months of PHE in here. If I look at all the other percentages of growth, they are between 11% and 20%, the highest being Belron with +20%. All around 18% between Moleskine, TVH, and PHE, and even Auto +11% in terms of sales.
The translation of that into the adjusted operating results, again, a combined figure here, is an increase of over 51%, leading to almost EUR 1.5 billion. Similar picture as in top line, meaning the second half of the year showed a nice acceleration where we had a growth of almost 67%, when it was still about 38% in the first half of the year. I think here, the EUR 1.5 billion composition, of course, there is a full year deviation here. There are the five months of PHE in here with EUR 71 million, but there's also nice increases at Moleskine with more than 72% growth, and even Automotive, a very nice +35.6% growth, and also Belron, a growth which is higher than its top line at 21.6% growth.
That shows us basically the breakdown of the EUR 733 million PBT group share that I talked to you about before. You can see that we went from EUR 486 to EUR 733. All activities contributed to the growth of that number. What I think is nice to note that if you compare the composition of the column on the left on page six to the composition of the column on the right of page six, then you see that the contribution of Belron, which was still about 72% of our PBT last year or two years ago in 2021, has basically become 59% now in 2022. That means that the non-Belron activities, Auto, TVH, PHE, and Moleskine together, contributes 41% of our total PBT.
In that sense, our portfolio is more balanced, if you like, compared to where we were still in 2021. The positive contributions, you can actually read from the chart in detail. I will not elaborate on or to that here. The free cash flow, that's page seven, has been somehow different from the years before. We have a lower free cash flow number, both in the group share and in the combined number over 2022. That's about EUR 166 million combined, about EUR 48 million a group share. Three main effects explain this decrease in free cash flow. One has been the big inventory effect that the photo finish of the 31st of December has given us at Auto.
At D'Ieteren Auto, we suddenly started receiving quite a large number of vehicles in the last days and two weeks of December, which we were not able to distribute in time to our dealers and to the end customers. As a result, we had easily a EUR 200 million+ effect from those deliveries on the picture of 31st of December. A second effect in the lower free cash flow has been the M&A at Belron, where we spent about EUR 160 million on 2023 bolt-on acquisitions. This is of course something that has also an impact on it, on the free cash flow at the end of the day, if we added all that.
Thirdly, we have seen across most of our businesses, it's true for TVH, it's true for PHE, it's also true for Belron to some degree. To avoid disruption in the supply chain and to try and buy raw materials or components earlier in the year, before, let's say, the price increases that were happening to do so, all of our companies have actually invested in somehow higher inventories and in more inventory, and that has also had an effect on the free cash flow generation when you take it for the full year. That's a bit of explanation on why that number has been lower in 2022. We for sure anticipate that to increase in 2023.
On page eight, the debt structure or the net cash structure at the group level and at the different activities is the usual table that we show here. At the bottom right of that table, you can see the corporate level net debt or amount that is there, which is of course a negative amount, meaning we still have some cash at hand at the group level. It's about EUR 635 million if you include the shareholder loans that we have towards TVH and Moleskine. If you exclude those, there is a pure cash, if you like, a pot of about EUR 322 million at the end of December last year.
That takes into account, of course, the fact that we have paid for PHE after the closing in August, that we have paid our dividends in June and received dividends from our activities throughout the year as well. On ESG, very nice progress in 2022. We're very proud that we won the Sustainable Growth Award from the Euronext Brussels over 2022. That also our Sustainalytics score improved from 11.6 to 11.3, and we kept the AA score at the MSCI. That we have actually continued to develop and work a lot on all sustainability strategies at the group and at the activity level, and you hear more details about that in a minute as we go through the activities.
I suggest, Arnaud, that you take us through the highlights of Belron 2022, before we continue.
Thank you, Francis. Good evening or good afternoon, everyone. As you mentioned, very strong growth at the level of Belron with a top line growth of 20%, which is organic 12.8% with a significant contribution from currency with a 6.8%. In terms of geographies, the North America market has been growing at a very significant pace, +16% organic. If you add ForEx on top of that, we land at a 28.7% growth for North American market. Eurozone has a steady growth of 7.2% organic, and the rest of the world has contributed to 12.3% organic growth. That growth was based on volumes.
Volumes themselves, you know, following gain of market share, even if we had some capacity issues, you know, because the attrition rate of our employees was relatively high in the full year. We had kind of capacity challenges, but notwithstanding that, we've been able to generate significant volume growth. If you add the recalibration volume, and you consider that those volumes are adding up, it gives a 7.3 total volume growth for the group in 2022. The good news also is that we continue on the value growth trajectory with another increasing value of the windscreen that we replace and repair in an inflationary environment.
It was not easy to pass on to the customers the price increase that we have had on the glass cost, but we've been able to do that relatively well. Of course, the ever-increasing windscreen technology is helping the mix in general with on top of that recalibration. The ADAS recalibration has had a significant growth in 2022. Again, it's a repetitive performance, you know, growing sales by more than 30% and having reached a penetration rate of 30% on average on the year. We continue also to make progress with what we call the VAPS, the value-added product and services, with an attachment rate increasing to 23% coming from 21%. We've had good follow through.
You remember, you know, at the half-year results, we said that the H1 was a bit challenging and that we were more hopeful to convert sales growth into higher profits with a better follow through in the second half. That's what we did. You know, the operating margin is higher in H2 than in H1 at 18.5%, leading to a full year EBIT margin of 18.2% coming from 18% in 2021. It is notwithstanding the fact that, you know, we are embarked into a very important transformation journey with an important program that will last till 2025, 2026. That program, you know, has burdened the cost structure, you know, by EUR 69.7 million, close to EUR 70 million, which is an increase of around EUR 27 million compared to last year, which is relatively significant.
This translates into a margin attrition of close to half a percentage point. The improvements that we see this year is also linked to cost discipline. You know, in a lot of our cost items, we've been able to be disciplined and put some pressure on that front. Again, the contribution from ADAS recalibration and VAPS is also adding to the margin as those are at a higher incremental margins. The adjusted PBT group share, which is an important KPI for us, also, you know, grew by 23.6%, which is again higher than the sales growth. Good follow through on that front also. Adjusting items, I won't spend too much time on that. You know, you can take your time in order to read them.
You will see there is in the finance, and we already alluded on that during the first half results, you know, there is a large FX impact on the appreciation of the dollar on our debt, which where we had to put it through the PNL till September. We've restructured a little bit the way we report there, and that will go through the equity account in the future. No more volatility on the PNL coming from there. For the rest, you've got the various details of the various adjusting item, especially on the orders which are relatively important, but no big change compared to last year in terms of methodology or even no change.
The free cash flow and net debt is also a good cash flow generation, especially when you look at just the EBITDA minus CapEx. That was a very strong cash flow conversion. As you know, we detail much more the free cash flow on our side. We go all the way through the real free cash flow. There it was a relatively intense year in terms of M&A with EUR 160 million of M&A spend. That was in Spain, in Scandinavia a little bit, and in the U.S., essentially 2023 acquisition for a total of EUR 160 million. We had some higher cash costs for adjusting item, and that was mainly the payment of the bill of ThankYou last year, which was paid in 2022.
We had negative impact of working capital because of supply chain issues and growth in our volumes. We have a little bit of buffer inventory in order to make sure that we can deliver the customers. We had higher CapEx because we have increased the footprint, we opened new stores, and we invested in additional ADAS equipment. That explains the lower free cash flow for the year. We have also distributed a dividend in August of last year of EUR 404 million. There has been also an appreciation of the dollar, which has had a negative impact on debt with an increased debt. Well, however, the leverage remains more under control. You know, we are at 2.95x EBITDA, which is totally under control.
You may remember that we've had the rating outlook increased by S&P by the end of the year, which bodes well for the future. The latest development, you know that we are embarked on the transformation program. That's a very important one that defining for the future of the company that will put us ahead of any service company in terms of quality of IT infrastructure, and that will hopefully lead to multiple opportunities for the future. We've invested quite significantly, you know, close to EUR 123 million in 2022. We have so far invested a bit less than EUR 200 million on the program. We have resized the program to around, you know, EUR 400 million. There is a scope change.
There is some inflation in the cost as we've seen in 2022, there are also some currency impact on that. We are very enthusiastic about what the program will give in terms of contribution in the future. Still, as we speak, you know, having costs more cost than benefits. We continue on the Belron acquisition strategy. I've mentioned that already. Very important news, you know, Gary Lubner, the fantastic CEO we've had for more than 20 years at Belron, has now not left the company because he's still a board member, but he has been giving the torch to Carlos Brito, who is CEO since the 1st of March. Really, the ambition of Brito and the whole management team is to build an even better Belron for the future.
The outlook for 2023, and that's the case for all the activities. You know, we've assumed relatively benign or tough, in fact, macroeconomic environment, so kind of no growth scenario. It's not yet recession, but we've been relatively cautious on that front, and that's the case for Belron, but that's the case for all our activities. We expect that inflation will continue for a while, and that the average exchange rate will remain. You know, the assumption is that it will remain at the level of December of last year. We are still expecting for Belron significant growth, you know, high single digits, due essentially to some volume because we'll continue to gain market share, but also positive price mix impact and again and again, the higher penetration rate of ADAS recalibration and VAPS contribution.
In terms of profit, we continue our journey of improving returns, improving margin. We're expecting at least 150 basis points increase in the EBIT, in the operating profit margin. This is linked to the good contribution of the growth that we are expecting to have, in top line with a good fall through, with still, you know, very conscious, mitigating, cost mitigating measures. We won't have big benefit from the transformation program yet. That will be more visible in 2024 and beyond. There won't be any negative scissor impact of higher adjusted cost of the program because we'll be a little bit below what we have experienced in 2022.
The free cash flow, we expect a significant increase in free cash flow, once again driven by EBITDA growth, improved working capital because we see that the purchase conditions are getting better. You know, the delay before getting the goods is shrinking, which is good for us. We had a little bit of buffer inventory, and we continue to invest quite significantly in our footprints in a lot of countries, and we continue to invest heavily in ADAS equipment in order to answer the demand. Very important topic is ESG journey for all our activities. The one of Belron does not make any exception. We call that responsible business at the level of Belron. We are trying to build, you know, a kind of circular company, circular economic company.
We've improved quite significantly the level of glass recycling in 2022, reaching 89%. That allows us, by the way, to achieve one of the KPI we have for the sustainability-linked loans we have issued, and that is one year ahead of the targets, which is, once again, great work done by the team on that one. We have submitted an SBTi CO2 long-term reduction targets, and we expect the validation of SBTi hopefully this year. We are making big progress in terms of creating a safer environment and healthier environment for employees. We are measuring that and hoping to make big progress. The objective is really no harm for our employees. Making also progress in diversity, equity, inclusion. That's high on the agenda.
We are hiring a lot of female technicians, you know, because we provide them the right tooling, the right training in order to be performing well. We've got an increase of close to 30% of female executives in our respective geographies. We have completed 37 suppliers audit in 2022, which is ahead of our targets. We, as you know, we are great giving back organization. Total given back is EUR 8.5 million, and among that, there is EUR 2.2 million for our long-standing partner, Afrika Tikkun. You see also the great performance in terms of employee satisfaction in a very, very tough social environment. You know, in 2022, we've been able to increase what was already a record level above 86%, you know, 86.2%.
NPS went down a little bit, marginally. It's an issue we want to tackle, of course. It's still a great NPS, but we always want to make progress there. Also, CO2 emissions group one, two, three, has been going down marginally. Don't forget that we have also higher volumes. Happy also about the trajectory of our ESG responsible business framework.
All right, let's continue with D'Ieteren Automotive. I need to go to page 20, where you can see that the market has been actually quite depressing, in Belgium last year. Just look at the last 10 years. Finishing the year with 366,000 car registrations, that's more than 200,000 less than a year like 2011, to just one example here.
Nevertheless, a lining of hope in H2 because the 171,000 was already a bit higher than the 150,000 of the year before. Hopefully from now on, we're back out of that valley of tears and we get more cars delivered. Of course, the bottleneck was the production of cars, not the sales of cars, because on the sales of cars, we've continued to do very well. The market share in terms of the cars delivered has been lower, 22.5%. However, the market share of the cars ordered is actually a bit higher. In that sense, we feel commercially quite fine with this market share number, even if the deliveries were not yet there in 2022.
The market share, you can see the evolution basically between net and gross. It doesn't make much of a difference last year. They're very close to each other. The mix of cars in the Belgian market on page 21 has continued to follow the trends of the last couple of years. That means increasingly new forms of energy, of course, for electric, hybrid, CNG, LPG. We're talking about more than a third of the market now, 35%, of which a third or so 30% are full electric. That's really rapidly increasing as a share of the new car sales. The buyer mix continues to be more and more skewed to B2B, 64% now, and only 36% B2C. That has been going on for a couple of years, but it's particularly been marked in 2022.
The SUV mix also keeps growing up. We're now really at a 50/50 between SUV and other vehicles. In terms of market shares for us at page 22, the decline in market share was mainly attributable to Škoda in the biggest, where we lost 60 basis points. 43 basis points at the brand Volkswagen, where the popular models like Golf, Tiguan, and Passat are getting a little bit later in their life cycle and therefore creating a bit less excitement there. Audi was actually a very good and solid year at 7.2% market share with good models and its electric models for sure, the A4, the SUV. SEAT and CUPRA combined basically very close to what we say it used to be without CUPRA, so about 2%.
Porsche share increased further. It's almost getting to 1% in the market. That is actually quite nice and has been helped by the Macan and the Taycan in particular. Our market share of D'Ieteren in the full electric vehicles remains to be very high at 26%. We're very happy with this. We have a good offering in full electric vehicles. Think about the Škoda Enyaq, of course, the e-trons, the ID. family at Volkswagen, et cetera, and Taycan as well, of course. In terms of results for D'Ieteren Automotive in this very depressing car market, we're actually very happy because not only did they manage to increase their sales at 11.4%, and that despite a decreased delivery of 3.5% less than 90,000 vehicles that were delivered.
Especially the margin has actually moved nicely, and they have a profit gain increase of 35.6%, which leads to a return on sales of 3.9%. Getting quite close to the 4% we always gave as an outlook medium-term for Auto. As you may recall, in H1, they were actually above the 4%. While we of course knew that H1 was very much skewed to a Porsche Audi mix, and at least that mix has become a little bit more normal in the second part of the year.
In terms of free cash flow on page 24, there we had actually a photo finish, which was not very pleasant for D'Ieteren Auto because there were suddenly an awful lot of cars arriving by train and by truck from the 19th of December onwards, and which lasted until the 6th of January. That actually made the photo finish on free cash flow not look very good. We saw, because of the sudden acceleration of deliveries, a swing of over EUR 200 million in our free cash flow evolution. At the same time, there was a bit of CapEx, of course, about EUR 34 million. There were some acquisitions, around EUR 11 million, this also had a little bit of impact on our overall free cash flow for the year.
What went very well is our interactions with the factories in terms of the credit notes that we typically have. Within there, we actually the management of D'Ieteren did a very good job at managing these outstanding credit notes downwards, and we're very pleased to see that. In terms of latest development at Auto, well, we do start seeing this acceleration of deliveries, as we speak, I would say. It's still quite lumpy, so some cars that you think are gonna take a year to be delivered suddenly arrive earlier, and others that you think are gonna only take four or five months suddenly take longer. The lumpiness at the factory levels is still there, and we don't have much control as D'Ieteren Automotive to influence that.
I think at least this normalization is slowly but surely happening, will take its time during 2023, but at least will definitely help us because, as you know, our order book is record high. It was over 100,000, 107,000 actually, at the end of February of this year. This is boding quite well for the months to come. We've also done six acquisitions at D'Ieteren Automotive, typically around newer forms of mobility, yeah, around taxis, around solar panels with Go-Solar, around bikes at Lucien. This has also changed, and it's continuing to change a little bit the profile of D'Ieteren Automotive.
Last but not least, we are celebrating this year the 75th anniversary of our partnership with the Volkswagen Group, which started in 1948, and which some people who have visited our gallery may be very familiar with. The outlook for this year is a market in terms of deliveries and registrations of 460,000 vehicles, so clearly higher than last year. Given that we have a backlog of 107,000, we do anticipate a +30% growth in terms of sales for D'Ieteren Automotive. It includes some market share gains, and it includes, of course, the continued growth of certain newer mobility initiatives. We do expect the margins to slightly erode because this kind of model mix that was abnormally skewed to premium models will of course start to normalize more and more.
Of course, we've had some pressures on salaries, et cetera, with the Belgian inflation and automatic indexation that we had. As you also know, we had a Salon de l'Auto again physically this year, which is of course something we have not had in the last three years anymore. There are new products coming in, as you can see some pictures on the bottom. Our free cash flow should be better and should be positive again in 2023. We should not have this big photo finish issue hopefully this year than we had last year. On ESG, not only is Auto working on ESG through its portfolio of mobility solutions, the Microlino that we're distributing, EDI are selling the charging stations, 6,800 of them were installed last year.
The acquisition of Go-Solar, which contributes to basically generating sun energy at home or at work when you charge your electric car. Of course, the bike retail network, which is, we are at 14 stores now in March 2023, as we speak. Apart from that, D'Ieteren Automotive is also working on its own environmental targets, its own SBTi targets for CO2 emission, its own diversity policy, where they also increase the number of women in leadership positions, and to continue to generate an attractive and a good people engagement score with 86%. Customer satisfaction scores, you know, the sales side to develop positively on the after-sales, a little bit downwards. On CO2 emissions, a 15% decline that delivered in 2022. PHE, Arnaud?
Thank you, Francis.
You get on the block.
Exactly. You know, the newcomer in, you know, family of businesses. You know, we are very happy to have them on board. It was a great onboarding, by the way. The quality of interaction we have with the management team is really outstanding. You see here in their first contribution. It's not full year because we consolidated them since the first of August, so it's only five months in our accounts. Once again, very good performance in general. You know, top line growth close to 70%. We gained market share in every single country, in France especially, where we continue to make a difference, but we continue to grow quite strongly in Spain, Italy, in Belgium. Overall, everywhere, you know, strong growth.
We've had a solid margin in terms of EBIT on the period, you know, 7.4% margin. We've got a contribution to our KPI adjusted PBT group share of close to EUR 39 million for the period. The cash flow was positive before acquisition, you know, with a EUR 29 million positive, but we made EUR 36 million of acquisitions. The free cash flow according to our definition, which is deduction of everything, in fact, arrive at EUR 6.1 million. We look at, in fact, a little bit different parameter than the PHE one, because we've got a holding company on top of that we include in all segments reporting.
The net debt increased slightly due to the negative free cash flow generation linked with the acquisitions essentially, and also the buffer that we've taken for nearly all our companies in terms of inventory, because the priority was to serve the customer in a challenging supply chain environment as everywhere. For the full year, you've got a view of the very strong organic growth. On top of that, you know, we've made significant acquisitions, so top line plus 15%, close to 9% organic. Adjusted operating results of EUR 178 million, comfortable margin of 7.9% for that type of activity. EBITDA was at EUR 279 million. What is important to report here, it is without Mondial Pare-Brise.
You know that, before sanctioning, agreeing the acquisition, the European Commission imposed on us some remedies, one of them being the sale of Mondial Pare-Brise. That sale has been achieved at the beginning of the year. We've deconsolidated from the accounts of 2022 Mondial Pare-Brise. Mondial Pare-Brise is not anymore in the sales figure, nor in the profit. The adjusted profit before tax group share for PHE, if we had consolidated on the full year, is close to EUR 87 million. As I mentioned, strong contribution from PHE for the first five months. We hope, of course, for the best for 2023. I wouldn't go into too much details about the free cash flow and net debt, once again, because it's not totally representative of the full year.
This is only for the last five months of the year, you've got the main aggregates here. We continue to invest, by the way, in terms of CapEx, because it's not such a capital-intensive activity, want to increase the footprint. In general, we invest in new technology, in IT systems. We've got, as we rent nearly all our premises, we've got a few capital paid on lease liabilities. We paid taxes this year at a significant amount because the company is much more profitable, we always have relatively significant interest costs because the company has a debt level which is sub-investment grade as we speak.
In terms of latest developments, speaking about debts, you know Moody's and S&P have increased the rating on our debt, which is good news. We hope to continue on that path. We've done the requested disposal of Mondial Pare-Brise, and that was for a nice amount. We are very happy about the outcome. We continue on the acquisition path, you know, nine in total, three in Spain, five in Italy. We continue to increase the footprint in Spain, where we see still a lot of opportunities. In Italy, we made big progress in covering the whole market. We believe that we are now number one in Italy, which is quite an achievement. We've made one acquisition in France of one of our independent distributor at the end of the year.
We, as for all our activities, we continue to invest heavily in sustainability capabilities. We'll develop a full team there also for PHE with new KPIs to be disclosed hopefully in 2023. The outlook, once again, same macro environment. You know we are not expecting growth from the economy in general, so it will be a little bit more challenging than in 2022. We continue to expect a high single digits organic sale growth. This is essentially market share gains, some price increase linked to the increase of or purchase of goods. We and we are going for stable EBIT margin essentially now because we'll have higher energy costs. You know, the energy costs were kind of capped in, for the full year of 2022.
We will have higher energy costs for 2023, and also the inflation on personnel is increasing. You know, in some countries like Belgium, we've got indexation. In France, we are negotiating with our social partners, and that will lead to higher personnel costs. Free cash flow should improve versus 2022. It's essentially growth in EBITDA and also in the working capital, which will lead to a higher free cash flow.
For PHE, also have been a very pleasant opportunity to see them operate for a full year now, in 2022. On page 34, you can see that they, in terms of sales, they ended up at EUR 1.6 billion top line, which is a more than a 20% increase compared to the year before. The composition of the 20% is to a large degree for 13.4% organic growth across the different regions and across the different verticals. America, EMEA, materials handling, construction equipment, so quite a lot of positives. The one negative, of course, has been less business in Russia slash Ukraine, given the war situation over there with a EUR 17 million negative impact that we've seen.
There's also been some contribution from M&A activities into that sales number, 1.7%, and some foreign exchange effect, a good 5% into that. This sales ended up leading us to an adjusted operating results, which was 14% higher than the year before. Reaching EUR 257 million. That basically is a 15.9% margin, slightly lower than the year before, and that's mainly due to inventory write-offs that we have seen. Let me take some water, sorry.
We've been speaking a lot today, you know this is. Your voice is fading away.
The voice is fading away, exactly. If you were to look at the EBITDA margin, however, you would see that the margin there has gone up. It's really this inventory write-off that has led to the slightly decrease in the EBIT margin. The PBT contribution on our group share, if you like, has therefore been EUR 98 million for the year. The free cash flow at TVH, it's a bit similar to what Arnaud mentioned about PHE. They have continued to invest in inventory to basically avoid supply chain issues, to avoid price increases throughout the year. To make sure that they are the one-stop shop, which they are to their customers, it allows us to gain market share, basically.
This has been supported by continued investment in in-inventory and also some, trade, receivable, capital being tied up. This is a major explanation why the free cash flow in the end has been negative at -EUR 53 million. What also contributes to that is some substantial CapEx. About 5.8% of sales has been invested in CapEx. Part of it was a bit of a one-time effect, given that the new headquarters, the hub in Waregem, have now been finalized and opened. But there are also continuous automation initiatives that have been happening in several of their warehouses, amongst which one in Waregem, to take the most notable one.
Now, thanks to the good EBITDA generation, of course, there were positive free cash flow contribution there, and it leads to a net debt overall of about EUR 900 million in the case of TVH. What are important to development at TVH? Already last year, that continues very much this year, is the big digital transformation program called Innovatis, for which in this year, a first wave of new softwares are expected to be implemented in a first lead country, I would say, first country, which will be in the United States. At the same time, TVH has continued to do some acquisitions. Just two examples here, the U.K. and Portugal were ones that were actually closed formally in last year.
As I mentioned before, the Russian operations, of course, we had to stop them, and we are in the process of selling them to the local management as we speak. Outlook for TVH, again, similar to PHE, in this limited demand environment and inflation, we do anticipate a high single-digit organic growth. We do anticipate a broadly stable margin expectation, where somehow the cost increases can be compensated with, let's say, price through initiatives. Last but not least, the free cash flow should be improving vis-à-vis 2022 as you get to a more normalized level of investment into inventory. There will be continued costs on CapEx and on Innovatis for sure, but still overall, the free cash flow should look a bit better compared to 2022.
On ESG, there is now a comprehensive sustainability strategy in place. It's been aligned with all the stakeholders and clearly defined. First, let's say, measurements in terms of carbon footprint has started to happen, which can now become the basis to define objectives and ambitions. They have also won a EcoVadis bronze medal last year, which basically shows that in the way they interact with suppliers and as an actor in the wholesale and machinery and equipment industry, they are really standing up there. People engagement has been very pleasingly at a high level of 81%. Customer satisfaction went up with 10 points from 40 to 50. net promoter score. Very nice to see. On CO2 emissions, we are gathering, as I said, the numbers which will become the basis for measurements.
That's TVH. Let's go to Moleskine maybe as our last of our five before we go to Immo and the group.
Yeah. Thank you, Francis. Moleskine, the return to profitable growth continues with top line increasing by close to 18% for the full year, with 11.3% organic and 6.5% FX impact, you know, due to the strength of the dollar. In terms of segment channels, you know, wholesale continues to be the main channel with a bit more than 50% of the total sales growing at 13%. very strong growth for the strategic partnership channel with a growth of 34%. Retail, you know, was reopened in 2022, not everywhere, you know, because in Asia we had still some COVID restrictions, retail grew back by 43%. E-commerce softer after the boom of the COVID years, you know, a softer performance of the e-commerce channel.
In terms of geographies, the stellar performance from the US which has generated a sales growth of 29%, followed by Europe, you know, EMEA 15%, APAC was softer again due to COVID lockdown and restrictions. In terms of results, you know, as you know, the gross margin contribution of Moleskine is very high. If we have good sales growth, disciplined cost, it translates directly, you know, into much improved operating margin. You see it here, you know, we've increased operating profits while sales are growing 18%, operating profit has grown by 72%, which corresponds to a margin of 14.8% compared to 10.1%, and we expect that to continue. The free cash flow has been also relatively important.
You know, we've paid a little bit of interest on our shareholder debt, but it landed at EUR 17.3 million. Before interest, you know, it was at EUR 21 million, so good cash conversion of 88%. We have no more net bank debt, you know, because we still have EUR 15 million of bank debt, but we've got close to EUR 27 million of cash, so we'll easily and quickly reimburse the bank and before refinancing the company. The latest developments, we continue to increase our leadership, we believe in the notebook segment, which remains competitive. Happy about the strength of the brand everywhere, you know, and especially in the U.S. when you see the growth. We've been able to position some interesting gifting products which bodes well for the future.
We believe that's a promising product category for the group. We've made big progress in terms of writing pens, you know, with the partnerships we have with Kaweco. The Smart Writing Set continues to grow, so new development on that front. For the channels, it was a bit softer with Amazon, as with all e-commerce partners in general. Strategic partnership went very well, especially in the U.S. again, and we are happy to see that the retail channel is growing again at a very steady pace for the company. The outlook, once again, the macro environment, you know it. We assume similar exchange rate than the one prevailing at the end of the year. We're expecting to grow sales by at least 15% in 2023.
That's mainly, you know, there will be some value increase in the mix of products and some price increases. Once again, due to the nature of the activity, we're expecting faster growth of the adjusted operating profit. We expect it to be in terms of margin above 20%, and we continue to manage very finely the cost structure. The ESG journey, we continue there. In terms of circular economy, we've been able to recycle much more than the year before, you know, with 72.5 tons compared to 11 tons, so that's a very good progress. We've also kind of redesigned, repurposed, more than 25,000 notebooks that we've given to nonprofit organization. Well, 27 of them, in fact.
We commit to SBTi for Moleskine also. We'll be submitting our carbon reduction targets by this year, by 2023. We are really taking important measure in order to reduce our carbon footprint. We are doing much more nearshoring of production, you know, closer to the customer markets. In terms of sustainable procurements, you know, we receive all the necessary certification in terms of social and environmental, especially for the quality of paper. Moleskine is quite unique in terms of gender representation, with 60% of top and middle managements which are represented by women. We've got, you know, more than 15 nationalities, so it's a very, very diverse environment, as you can read. On corporate and unallocated, I won't enter into too much detail, but you see there that we're also making progress.
That activity is contributing to the profit. It's marginal of course, but you see here the progress that we've made for the real estate activity and also, I would qualify, you know, the central cost as frugal, as you know. Good progress on that front. I leave the final closing remarks to Francis.
Thank you, Arnaud. 2022, another successful year for sure, thanks to the PHE acquisition on the one hand, and then very nice progress in all of our businesses in terms of their results, their agility and their engagement. Our KPI, Adjusted EBITDA group share, is 2.5x higher than it was in 2019. Second year in a row we increase it more than 50%. At the same time, we keep looking for new growth pillars as part of our origination strategy. We made nice progress also on non-financial side with ESG in particular. 2023 will be challenging for sure. Continuous inflation, uncertain macroeconomic environment, but we are guiding for around EUR 900 million adjusted profit before tax group share.
A nice increase again vis-à-vis last year, and we are comfortably on track with that vis-à-vis the midterm target that we have outlined to you in April of last year during our investor day, where we gave a bit of a view towards 2025. With that, I suggest to open it up for your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from Michiel Declercq from KBC Securities. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, thanks for taking my questions, Francis and Arnaud. The first one will be on Belron. Overall, again, a very nice set of results. I'm just thinking a bit about the outlook for 2023. You guide for, let's say, high single digit growth. This is about what you usually said in your 2025 guidance. With all the inflation that you still need to pass through, I think it looks a bit at the lower end. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on this? 'Cause this is more like a growth number that you have seen over the past years as well. That would be my first question. Is this a bit of a counter effect between inflation and volume, let's say?
Then the second question is on the general strategy of Belron, of course, with the new CEO that started earlier this month. What will be his focus? Can you maybe say what will be his short-term focus? Should we expect additional cost savings on top of the transformation plan? Will it be more expansion-focused, or maybe preparing it to go public? That would be my second question. Maybe a very small one on the sizable amount of acquisitions that took place within Belron. Can you give how much inorganic volume growth we should expect from that in 2023? These would be my questions.
You wanna take the first one on the single-digit top line?
Yeah. Once again, we've got some embarked inflation, you know, in. We are not expecting to increase substantially the price, you know, in 2023, except if market conditions evolve, you know, and that there are additional inflationary pressure on the cost of glass, on labor cost and so on. We assume the relatively subdued inflationary environment, and we are entering into 2023, you know, with embarked inflation in our sales, you know, which is relatively important. Indeed, you know, we are. Once again, I lay the framework about the macroeconomic environment. You know, we are not expecting that the markets will have volume growth in general, but we are expecting to gain market share, okay?
As usual, you know, the price mix impact for Belron will be favorable and the ADAS contribution will continue to kick in. This is why, in that kind of environment, you know, we are guiding for a high single-digit growth rate, which is, I think, realistic in the current circumstances.
Your second question is on Brito's focus for 2023. Well, the handover actually happened last weekend, so it was a very energizing moment when he took over the baton from Gary. He basically has been running around already in the last seven, eight weeks, visiting countries, talking to many people internally, but also starting externally. His first focus will be to basically continue the current execution of everything Belron has been working on, both in terms of the Fit For Growth digital transformation program, as well on what we're guided here for, is to do at least a 150 basis points increase in the margin. The margin focus will for sure be there.
Of course, in the very short term, it will be trying to materialize what is all the whole teams are basically working on for the moment. We will of course take our time with him in the months to come to also start reflect on, let's say, five-year strategies and so on going beyond, but this is really very, very early days to say, "Well, what will that lead to?" For the moment, his focus is on get on board, which he has, and work with the teams on delivering the plans that have been outlined for the 2023 budget. Then we'll use that as a basis to then, of course, work further from there. On your third question-
There is a clear ambition, you know, from him and the whole management team, as we said, you know, to build an even better Belron for what it means. You know, there will be, as mentioned by Francis, probably a new plan in the future, but the ambition is really to continue to improve the performance of the company.
I mean, basically, his first reflections have been, one, a confirmation of what he thought he was going to find by coming into the company, and second, to see more opportunities than he even thought before when he arrived. When and how to capture those opportunities, both in the marketplace and inside in the company, I think will be part of the reflections of the new year plan on what makes sense at what point in time. Really, this is his very first early reflections, and we should give him the time to just arrive and get to grips together with the leadership team of Belron around the business as it is. Your third question, the acquisition-
The acquisitions, you know, the contribution will be around 1%, you know, not far from that.
Okay. Can I maybe quickly ask a follow-up on the first question? Did I understand it correct, that there is not a very big inflation pass-through, or that it will be very limited?
It's mainly less volume. It's mainly not much volume.
Not much volume.
Not much volume.
The inflation here is more embarked inflation, you know, that we've negotiated in price increase, that we've negotiated in 2022 first half, second half. That will be, you know, continuing to have a positive impact in 2023.
I thought that it was more like a gradual process, that it took sometimes two to three years, depending on all the insurers. Now you're saying it's basically the impact that you had in 2022 that will continue to have its impact in 2023, right?
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. You know, because we renegotiate nearly all the contract, you know, because of what happened in 2022. We knocked on all the insurance companies' doors, you know, in order to rediscuss the terms and conditions, and we've been relatively successful in that area.
Okay. I think it's quite impressive that you keep to your margin growth outlook despite not having this massive inflation pass-through. Congrats with that.
Yes. You know, and if we need to increase the price again, you know, we'll do it of course.
Okay. Good. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from David Vagman from ING. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening, everyone. I hope you can hear me. First, two question on Belron. On the first one on Belron is on the margin dynamic that we're seeing. In a bit more longer term, I would say that 2023, and I'm referring here more about the CMD guidance, you know, the 23% EBIT margin target that was disclosed back then. It seems to me like it has become quite conservative because if I understand correctly, you'll be getting close to 20% EBIT margin by 2023. You have the benefit coming of the transformation plan essentially to materialize that. Let's say 2%.
And you've got still the ADAS story still has got to fully unfold, quite some benefit every year from the price mixing improvement. That's essentially, I would like to hear a bit of your thinking on that, your view on that. Second question on Belron, as Michiel was noting, there has been a bit of a step up on acquisition in 2022. In the big scheme of things, it's not major of course, but still. Could you explain a bit what has been going on? Is it, does it mark a bit of an acceleration on M&A? What about, you know, the mix effect that you see due to more competition? That's my second question.
Last one, on working capital, and that's both for, let's say maybe Auto and TVH, what could be a bit a normalized level of working capital for from these two businesses? It's probably preferred for Auto. Yeah, what could be, you know, like. I think for TVH, they had some ambition to decrease working capital, if I remember correctly. Yeah, if you could come back on these targets, some quantification could be helpful. Thank you.
Okay. On the margin dynamic, I mean, we're at 18.2% margin now. Medium term is at 23%. That's still 5 percentage points to go. There's still some hard work to be done. Yeah. It's not automatic, that's for sure. We have had that rhythm where we typically could do about 1.5% per year. If you project that out, that basically takes you until 2025 more or less.
For me, there is no reason today to start deviating from the outlook towards the 23% that we have set in the capital market day, based on what we know today, meaning Fit for Growth, meaning what we're working on for this year and the kind of normal, continuous improvement that we do on any line item in the P&L. If I put all of these things together, this remains nicely on track, and there's no reason today to kind of put out any different number, I would say, at this point in time. On the M&A, you wanna say something on that or?
Yes. As usual, you know, you need two to tango. There were more opportunities to close M&A transaction in 2022 than in 2021. We've done them essentially in the U.S. where we have been able to complement the footprint of our acquisition. This is merely kind of organic CapEx. It's organic M&A, in fact. Those are not very big acquisitions, not very sizable. Those are important for to improve our footprint in the region. We did a more strategic acquisition in Spain, you know, with Cristalbox. Once again, we are not divulging any multiple. There is a bit more competition for the assets, you know. There is one group in Europe and then another one in the US which tries not to emulate us, you know, but try to also make acquisitions.
That has increased a little bit the multiples that we need to pay. Once again, after you look for synergies and things like that, you know, those are accretive acquisitions. No, no big change there.
Yeah, on the working capital normalized levels for Auto and for TVH. I mean, in TVH, we know that the working capital level is of course, strongly influenced by the inventory levels that they have and that they hold. I think also there we have given medium-term targets to kind of get to that, the level, the low. I mean, they are above 40% today. We wanna, of course, get more into the 30 something levels at some point in time. Now, part of their commercial strategy is to have quite a lot of inventory. I think they will also, if you were to benchmark them, they'll be a bit higher than you would, because it's so intricately part of their, of their economic model and their commercial model.
There is, of course, a couple of percentage points to go down from where they are today. Also,
Just to continue, maybe on TVH, you know, we are currently working with the management in order to do a new five-year plan.
Yeah.
Okay? They will define new ambitions in terms of top line, in terms of margin, in terms of working capital intensity. We keep that for ourselves for the moment, David. Sorry for that. For Auto , you know, the year has been massively skewed in terms of inventory by the end of the year deliveries of Volkswagen Group. We've got a great order book, so at some point, we expect the cars to be delivered. They were, you know, in the last month of the year, as mentioned by Francis, kind of over-delivered. And we cannot supply or distribute those cars, you know, in December to our end customers. That has created a massive impact, negative impact on our working capital.
Once again, the good news is that those cars are older, so we are not producing inventory, which is potentially dead stock. You know, if those cars are older, there is always an order behind that, those cars. We know that we'll be selling them. You know, even, you know, in January, we still receive more cars, but we were able to deliver much more cars. We had a relatively massive swing, positive swing in terms of cash influx in January. Once again, as we mentioned already during the whole last year, it's a battle in the dark about the deliveries. Sometimes you can have massive influx, and so we need to manage that.
A period where we see less cars, we need to be, to keep, as mentioned by Francis, agility in our system. Want to come back to TVH, because, you know, in the results you see at the level of EBITDA and at the level of EBIT, there is a EUR 26 million write-off inventory. We believe it's still good stuff, you know, but it is due to the very conservative valuation of inventory quality of the company. Just imagine what the performance would have looked like if we had not that kind of write down last year.
Thanks very much. Well, indeed, two very quick follow-ups. The first one on, you know, Belron. I understand it's true, it was getting close in a way to 2025. It's quite a step up to move from 18%- 23%. My view was a little bit that indeed you've got this 150 bits that you get naturally, I would say, in a way, from ADAS and price mix improvement. Okay, maybe at some point, just the incremental improvement is getting lower. I was thinking that you already had it, 150 this year, without the benefit of the transformation plan. For 2024, 2025, you get it on top. That's, I understand that remains the target.
Just to be clear, you know, once again, at 2025, it's getting nearer, but it's not, we are not yet there, okay. As you know, in the world we live in, there can be a lot of volatility. Once again, when we disclosed initially the transformation plan, we said that it would add 2% margin, EBIT margin, in 2025, okay. On top of what we would have achieved at that moment. Indeed, this is why we stick to the 23% EBIT margin, and, you know, still happy about that.
Okay. Thank you. Last follow-up, so on Auto. In the end, do you think it has become the new normal for Volkswagen, you know, to deliver you a bunch of car at the very end of the year? That we should.
This has been a very abnormal situation, and we really hope that the normalization will be there by the end of this year. Again, it's still very lumpy, and therefore, today we're not at that situation. No. At some point in time, we really hope it gets a bit more stable again.
Okay. Thank you very much, both.
We've got a massive order book to deliver, right?
Yeah, true. Indeed. Indeed. Thank you.
The next question comes from Kris Kippers from Degroof Petercam. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. A couple of questions remaining from my side. Firstly, looking at inflation that we've seen across the year, of course. To what extent actually would we cycle still difficult quarters? Could you share with us what is happening also, perhaps on the deflation side? You see transport costs going down, raw materials a bit easing. Is there some relief we should anticipate gradually towards the second half, for example? My second question would be more a question for the management team. Given now that the numerous assets with TVH and the PHE that have been added, to what extent is management involved in a 100% basis on managing these assets? Or what is the spare time you could still spend on potential new transactions? How should we look at that from the holding perspective?
Thank you.
We didn't plan for deflation. In our budgets, as you said, we plan for a macroeconomic environment with limited volume and with continued inflation. That's what we planned for. Of course, we will observe and monitor throughout the year what may happen around either cost items that might get cheaper or. They are not gonna change, so to say, the strategy of what we're trying to do. It may just allow us to do certain things a bit more fastly or differently than originally budgeted for. That's not our base scenario, I would say, for the year. On the management, I think you're speaking about the corporate team, us. Yes, of course, we spent-
Correct.
Time onboarding PHE, we have been very much involved in TVH. We have organized ourselves in such a flexible way with our small team of 20 people here that we can do that. We can follow those and dialogue with those activities intensively, while at the same time continuing to pursue our origination activity. We've been doing that since the last, five, six, seven years, and we'll continue to do so, and we organize ourselves for that. We can easily, we recruit a couple of people, we can have some internal promotions. We set ourselves up in such a way that we can actually, manage the portfolio now of five plus one activities, where we only have three plus one, two years ago.
It's still not a heptathlon, and we may go for a decathlon at some point.
Of course.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Emmanuel Van Lanschot Kempen from Van Lanschot Kempen. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Good evening. Emmanuel here from Van Lanschot Kempen. A few questions from me. I will do them one by one. First, I have a few small ones on Belron. What is the ADAS penetration at the end of 2022?
The ADAS penetration-
ADAS penetration, 33% at the end of the year. Okay? 33% at the end of the year, 30% average.
Yeah. Okay. You mentioned that there was a company in the U.S. that is also trying to do M&A. Could you disclose which company that is?
You know, it's already well-known, I guess. You know, Driven Brands is relatively active. You know it's been acquiring a few companies, the last 24 months.
Okay. In terms of regional expansion, has your view changed on that? Because a few years ago you were saying, "Yeah, let's focus on ADAS and U.S. and Europe." With Brito coming in, I guess there will be more focus on potentially expanding into LATAM and maybe Asia. Is there any new insights on that topic?
No new insights, so maybe not. Regularly, the team is revisiting geographies that potentially could be good for Belron, and I'm sure Brito will himself want to understand as well, "Hey, why did you say no in the past, or when do you say yes in the past, and what makes sense here?" At this stage, there is no change in focus to suddenly do things because there is still an awful lot to do in the geographies in which we're in.
It's not for a lack of work or for a lack of focus or attention that we suddenly say, "Oh, let's now go and try and do something else." It will be revisited as it has been done in the past, and then what will come out of it's very too early to speculate on that. As you know, we also with franchisee operations in quite a number of countries, and it is a very low-cost way for us to kind of get our feet in the water and sense what's going on in different markets. This is a good opportunity, and that team is very active and continues to be very active as well.
Yeah. Okay. Moving to TVH. On the inventory write-down, is this something that is always high? What is the kind of normalized level, and what is the main reason if it is substantially higher? Why, why is that?
On what dimension of the inventory?
The write-down.
The write-down.
The write-down. Yeah.
What you need to understand also is that indeed, you know, we've increased the depth and the breadth of the inventory. You know, by entering new markets, we increased quite significantly in construction equipment. There, you know, you build inventory, you can have a rotation of we know a little bit less that segment of the market. You build inventory. Maybe initially it rotates a little bit slower, and then you take, because it's a very strict rule, you know, and a very stringent rule that we apply, and then you've got higher write-off in the beginning. I'm not expecting that to be a trend on the contrary. I think we should enjoy in 2023, not a reversal of the write-off, you know, but probably lower write-off.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you. Another general question on your guidance. You guide for low volume growth or limited volume growth for most of the activities. Could you disclose how the year started? I heard many companies stating that the first months of the year were not that bad. I just want to know if the first two months were a bit ahead of the full year guidance.
We are happy about the start of the year for all the activities in general.
Okay. Two remaining questions. One is on CapEx. Could you maybe, especially for the big portfolio companies, give a little bit your guidance on CapEx and maybe also on cash interest costs, given that rates have gone up a lot.
In CapEx, there is nothing particular, I would say, in CapEx compared to other years. At Belron, they were at 1.5% last year in 2022. I think this is more or less the rhythm that they are on for the moment, between 1% and 2% is what they always had, I would say, in terms of CapEx. At TVH, it was 5.8%, and they will continue to do CapEx, both on physical hardware, automation and I think for the Innovatis program. There is no real fixed range, but I would say they will probably remain in a similar order of magnitude for the moment. PHE, it's at 2.3% CapEx that they had last year.
Again, this will probably be similar, I would say, steady for the years to come. In Moleskine, it's very minor anyway.
Emmanuel, we are investing, you know, quite significantly, and we increase the CapEx on Belron. We mentioned footprint in ADAS. That will continue. That will be a little bit higher in 2023 than in 2022, okay, but not significantly higher. As mentioned by Francis, we see that the TVH journey, you know, is really of significant growth, and that demands, you know, increasing the footprint, having bigger warehouse, faster logistics, so more automated warehouse. We continue to increase. Once again, this is to build sustainable growing businesses, and we are very happy to support that kind of investment. For PHE, it's relatively, you know, stable in terms of percentage of sales. No big jump or no big swings to be expected on that front.
Okay, thank you. Maybe the last question on the interest costs. I don't know if anything has changed there with respect to the maturity profile. Yeah. Should some companies,
There is no maturity cliff. That the first point, you know. We have no refinancing to do before 2025. The big one, you know, is for Belron, but that's more for 2028, so we've got plenty of time to do that. Well, Belron is not the most leveraged because PHE is more leveraged, but Belron, close to 70% of the interest are fixed, you know, are hedged from variable to fixed. This is a good news, and we continue to deliver very strong free cash flow. EBITDA growing, the leverage ratio will continue to come down. On PHE, we've got maturity in 2025, so it's closer, but not for tomorrow. There, it's mainly fixed interest rates.
For the variable part, you know, we've taken an option which caps the Euribor to a certain level, which protects, you know, against further increase in the interest rates. We continue to manage that in a careful manner.
Okay, thank you.
I have to wrap up more or less now because I think time is going. Urgent questions, or was it, we're done?
We have no more question.
Okay. All right. Well, thank you all very much. A good evening to all of you, and looking forward to continuing the dialogue with you in the days, weeks or months to come. Have a great evening.