Hello, and welcome to the Tessenderlo Group Half- Year 2024 Results. My name is Caroline, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you will have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your questions. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. For today's event, we have Luc Tack, the CEO, and Miguel de Potter, the CFO, with us. I will now hand over to your host, Luc Tack, the CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Good morning, good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today on our half year results release. I will start by talking to you first about some key events that happened in the first half of the year, after which my colleague, Miguel de Potter, will give you in-depth comments on the numbers. So, let me first start by telling you that as of January first, we have a new ExCo. Miguel de Potter has joined Tessenderlo Group as the Chief Financial Officer. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sandra Hoeylaerts, who started on September 2023 as a Chief HR Officer at Tessenderlo Group, has taken up the position of Chief Transformation Officer as of January first.
The new ExCo is as such, made up of myself, Sandra Hoeylaerts and Miguel de Potter. We have been keeping working on new investments and in March 2024 , Kuhlmann Europe disclosed a strategic move by unveiling an investment of approximately 35 million EUR to expand the current ferric chloride production capacity at Loos in France. This investment is to fortify the position of Kuhlmann in Europe as a prominent coagulant manufacturer in Europe, solidifying the position of Loos as the continent's largest ferric chloride production plant. The construction of the innovative chlorination installation is scheduled to commence by the end of 2024 , with the delivery anticipated in early 2026 . Construction works for the Defiance plant are further progressing.
The Defiance plant will produce the leading liquid sulfur-based fertilizers and sulfite chemicals for industrial markets. The Defiance plant is scheduled to start operations in the Q1 of 2025 . In the meantime, the Geleen plant progressed well. The construction of our Thiosul plant in Geleen in the Netherlands at the Chemelot site is in its final stage and is expected to be operational late third quarter of 2024 . So I will now hand over for the key events of the balance sheet and the financial figures to Miguel de Potter. Miguel de Potter?
Thank you, Luc Tack, for this, and thank you everyone for joining our webcast this afternoon. First point for my agenda is the share repurchase program. As you know, in March 2023, we started with our first share repurchase program, for which at the end of December last year, we canceled about 1.1 million of repurchased share. This year, in April, we started with a second repurchase program for a maximum of 2.3 million shares, which you have followed in the weekly press releases, has been going well. In 2023, as you all remember, the activities of Tessenderlo and Picanol Group merged. Picanol Group has had 21.8 million outstanding shares.
Yesterday, the board of directors of Tessenderlo Group decided to cancel those 21.8 million shares held by Picanol Group, as well as the shares acquired during the second repurchase program. For our half year 2024 results, here are the operational key highlights. Our revenues is slightly off compared to last year by nearly 15%. Revenues of EUR 1.389 billion, our Adjusted EBITDA of 150 million, is still an EBITDA margin of close to 11% compared to 12.6% last year. Our Adjusted EBIT amounts to 51.5 million. We have seen, and I will go in details in our business units, an increase in our agro business, EBITDA wise of nearly 36%. Very stable EBITDA in our T-Power business units.
Other segments have suffered a decrease compared to the first- half of 2023. Our capital expenditures amounts for the first half of the year to EUR 75.4 million. You could assume that about 50% of this figure goes to growth CapEx, and the other 50% to maintenance or non-growth CapEx. Our cash flow from operating activities, and I will go in details around that further in the presentation, is growing strong to EUR 172 million, on which we have definitely put a lot of focus on our working capital going forward. Which bring our net cash position stronger than it was in December, to EUR 32.6 million.
If we see now the group revenue per segment, you will see that Agro is 33% of our revenues, Bio-valorization 23%, Industrial Solutions 25%, and Machines & T echnologies, slightly lower than last year, only 16% compared to 24% of our total revenues. The Group's Adjusted EBITDA per segment, our Agro business and our T-Power business, the ones that have not decreased since last year, are amounting to 57% of the total EBITDA, respectively EUR 59 and EUR 27 million of EBITDA. Let me now walk you through the segment- per- segment figure. Agro segment, as you remember, these are our four different brands, Tessenderlo Kerley, Crop Vitality, NovaSource, and Violleau. We managed to have an increase compared to last year. The increase is mainly due to an increase in volumes rather than in prices.
We have an EBITDA margin of 13%. We see that actually, depending on the brand, we have various stories to tell. Crop Vitality, we have decreased margin, and some pressure because of lower selling prices and increased competition, and also some high-valued stock, which I'll come back on. Tessenderlo Kerley International increased, not only in volumes, but also could offset lower prices and increase their margin by lower raw material prices. NovaSource has decreased slightly because of phasing of customer demands, and Violleau has no real material impact on the overall EBITDA of the Agro segment. For the bio-valorization segment, where we have our two brands, PB Leiner and Akiolis.
The increase in sales volume overall could not basically offset the lower selling prices for the different products we bring to the market, mainly gelatin, collagen, fats, and proteins. We were actually starting the year with a very high valued stock. Last year, we had, at the end of the year, significant inventory write-offs. Actually, our adjusted inventory items, actually, that were sold, were made without any recontribution to the Adjusted EBITDA. That was also the case for Agro division. We have no further inventory write-off in the bio-valorization currently, and we also made an investment in Akiolis Iberia that has not been fully contributing to the EBITDA yet.
You might ask yourself, if those adjusted inventory items were not really made, and there would have been a contribution to the EBITDA, what would be the EBITDA then, with both the agro and the bio-valorization segment? I could say that, this would have pushed the EBITDA of the group closer and very close to the result of the consensus of the various analysts that are following our share. In the industrial solutions segments, we have three main brands, DYKA, for the piping and the construction, Kuhlmann for the coagulants, for, mainly water treatments, and Moleko for the mining industries in chemicals. Here our Adjusted EBITDA margin is still double digits, around 10.4%. DYKA Group was the most negatively impacted in our industrial solutions segment, basically due to a lower construction demand in Europe, where DYKA is active.
Kuhlmann Europe and Moleko were basically in line with last year, although Kuhlmann results have decreased slightly because of less favorable market circumstances for one of its products, which is caustic soda, but it's a relatively small product compared to the ferric chloride star product of Kuhlmann. In the machine and technology segments, we have Picanol weaving machine, PsiControl, and Proferro. All companies have a strong interlink, and you can also see that in figures. Picanol weaving machine is currently suffering from the downturn in the textile industries, which has adverse impact on both PsiControl and Proferro, who in the meantime also managed to gain third-party customers that will maybe materialize in 2025 in the figures.
But here, our EBITDA margin has gone below 6%. On the T-Power segment, or only sole, currently sole power plant in Tessenderlo, Belgium, we are basically going as per contract and the tolling contract that, as you know, we have with Electrabel is lasting until the end of June 2026. So the plant is behaving as per contract and with an Adjusted EBITDA margin of near 75%. It's still a very safe and reliable partner in the current energy mix. We are assessing several options for the plant going forward after the date of June 26th. When we do the reconciliation of our Adjusted EBIT to profit details, or Adjusted EBIT, as reported, is EUR 51.5 million.
We have mainly finance costs or finance income of EUR 15.7 million, coming from the sales of our Rieter shares in the first- half of this year, and also from some FX gains that are unrealized foreign exchange gains on intercompany loans of nearly 15 million. Our income tax expenses of EUR 10.5 million mainly relates to our activities in the U.S., which brings us to a profit of EUR 61.4 million for the first- half of the year, compared to EUR 83.4 million last year. Our net cash position reconciliation, last year, we ended the year with a net cash position of 101 million.
This year, with our Adjusted EBITDA and a strong focus of the entire group on working capital, where we improved our working capital by EUR 28 million, and we will continue to focus on working capital in the second half of the year. With the sales of our Rieter shares that were held by our Picanol subsidiaries, and still managing about EUR 80 million of payments to shareholder, and partially to, through repurchase of shares and partially to dividend paid to shareholder, with some strong capital expenditure of EUR 75 million in total, which I repeat, 50% of it is about growth CapEx. We have improved our cash position and net cash position at the end of the year, the month of June, to EUR 32 million.
That brings us to the outlook, and you have read, most of you, the outlook that we published this morning in our press release. We are currently operating in a very volatile environment. Our Adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2024 is 5%-10% lower than the same adjusted EBITDA achieved in 2023. Our CapEx guidance for the end of the year is in the EUR 150-170 million range. Let me show you first the calendar, where you can expect in March 2025 on the 26th, our results, and give back the word to Luc Tack for closing remarks before we take some questions from analysts and the audience. Thank you.
Miguel de Potter, thank you for this outstanding explanation of the numbers. So, as you have all seen, trading environment has been quite tough for us on the first half of the year, you know, generally speaking, but especially also in Europe, you know. In Europe, we remain challenged with construction going down. We have high energy costs and increases of costs in general, you know. Just to give you an example, in Belgium, some of you who are from Belgium know that we have the automatic indexation of labor costs, et cetera.
To give you an idea, on the 2,500 people working for our group in Belgium, over the last two and 1/2f years since the inflation started, we are looking at increases between 22%-25% on the labor cost. Just to give you an idea, 2,500 people, that means that we have to pay for 600 extra people that have been added as a pure cost without producing anything. So, and all of this then, we need to try to automate, but you cannot automate quickly enough to compensate for these increases in costs, and markets are not accepting price increases.
You know, we are confronted with international markets, and I'm telling you, that makes it quite challenging, and so at the end of the day, you know, there are things that we can influence, and there are things that we cannot influence, like this automatic cost increases. But where we can influence, I really need to thank all of the collaborators within the whole group, you know, because we did work very hard on where we could influence things, and we did indeed achieve results such as managing inventories better, reducing working capital.
And this is why I'm happy. I'm even proud to say that we were able to improve in the first- half of the year, despite a very difficult trading environment, to increase our cash position while executing on our growth investments. As you have seen, EUR 75 million and returning nearly EUR 80 million to shareholders through dividend and share repurchase. I think that is a remarkable effort which has been done and delivered by the whole group, and I'm sincerely really thankful for everybody who contributed to this. Going forward for the second- half of the year, a lot of it remains what we have shared with you on the first- half of the year. Trading environment remains difficult.
Cost of money has gone up considerably, so customers are reducing inventories, are buying just in time, because also they are challenged on their working capital. And then, needless to say, we all know what's happening in the construction sector. There also, even if interest rates will hopefully getting reduced in the coming months, the to restart, you have the process of permitting first. People must get permits before they can build, so all of this will take time. Despite these challenges, we are confident that we, as a company, can continue to contribute to society, to contribute to food production, to bio-valorization, to a greener future.
And that is what we are focused on, and that is what we will remain focused on. So thank you all for listening to this, and now we will open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from line, Christian Faitz from Kepler Cheuvreux. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you and good afternoon, everybody. I hope I can ask a couple of questions. First, looking at your DYKA activities, within your industrial activities, just to get a feel for its sales and earnings dynamics, could you share with us the rough split between renovation and new build construction exposure? And then on Picanol, my second question, how does the order book for Picanol look like at present in comparison to, let's say, the average of the last few years? Thanks very much.
I will take the second question first. I am also the president of the Belgian Textile Machinery Federation, and as such, I am also a board member at CEMATEX, the European textile machinery sector. As for Picanol and as for the whole textile machinery sector, the order activity is lower right now for the second- half of the year. We still do not see reinvestment into new capacities or into bigger new projects. The first question was?
The first question on our DYKA activities. How do you see... Well, actually, if you look at DYKA Europe, the activities are pretty much balanced between construction and infrastructure work. Construction, we do not really make a difference between what you mentioned, new builds and renovation, but we do definitely make a difference between infrastructure works and pure construction works. So on an aggregate level, in Europe, it's pretty much balanced. But then when you deep dive country per country, you can see huge differences. Countries like France have much more revenues from the infrastructure. Business countries like the U.K. are much more focused on the construction side.
Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you. There's no further question at this time. I'll hand it back over to you, host for closing remarks.
Thank you all for joining us on this call this afternoon. Be assured, we will keep doing our utmost best to navigate the company through these challenging times as they are, and we will keep you posted on all important evolutions within the company in due course, so thank you all for joining us on the call this afternoon.
Thank you. Have a nice afternoon and rest of your day.
Bye-bye.
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