Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Mota-Engil full year 2023 results presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listening-only mode. After the presentation, we will run a Q&A session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star five on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Pedro Arrais. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon to you all for attending this call where we will present the full year 2023 results of Mota-Engil. With me, I have Carlos Mota Santos, the Chairman and CEO of the company, and José Carlos Nogueira, the CFO. As usual, the CEO will start the presentation with some key highlights, and after that, I will make the presentation of the bulk of the full year 2023 results. Mr. Carlos Mota Santos will present after that the chapter four and five regarding the concessions strategic insight and the final remarks and outlook. At the end, both members of the executive committee and the board will be available to all your questions. Mr. Carlos, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for attending the call. I would like to start by the slide that is regarding the key highlights. During 2023, we reached a turnover of slightly over EUR 5.5 billion. That is almost a 50% increase when compared with the 2022 year-results. But most important, we did increase over 50% our profitability, namely in terms of EBITDA, reaching EUR 837 million, and an increase over 100% in terms of net profit to the company. So that is around 2% net profit margin. Our backlog, we finished the year with a backlog almost reaching EUR 13 billion. So we did increase our backlog during the year despite a very, very sound turnover during 2023. We closed the year with a net debt of EUR 1.75 million. That is below our target of 2x net debt over EBITDA.
So we improved from the previous year from 1.7-1.4. And also in terms of debt, the gross debt was almost EUR 2.8 billion. That is also below the target that we established for 2026 of 4 times. So we reached, by the end of the year, a gross debt over EBITDA of 3.3 times. In terms of CapEx, we did slightly above EUR 500 million, in which 76% of that CapEx that we'll explain later in more detail, 76% of this CapEx was in gross and long-term contracts. We had an improvement in our cash flow coming from operations of EUR 80 million. So we closed the year in EUR 688 million. That is an increase when compared with 2022. And also a quite remarkable performance in terms of equity, almost an increase of EUR 200 million in our equity.
And we reached the 10% of financial autonomy, equity over assets, 2 points or 2% above 2022, and towards the objective, the goal that we have established for 2026 that, as you know, is above 15%. So moving on to the next slide, we would like to remind you that during this year of 2023, actually in June, we did a review in our goals for 2026, namely some of them that I will stress here. That is to reach the net income, the net profitability towards the group to 3% by 2026. As I said, we are paving the way towards that goal. We reached during the last exercise 2%. Another strategic pillar that we have is to have a much more strengthened balance sheet.
In that sense, we reviewed three main goals, two of them regarding the debt, net debt over EBITDA, gross debt over EBITDA that I already explained to you. Also, we are doing the journey to increase our financial autonomy by 2026 by over 15%. This is a very important goal for us in order to have a more robust balance sheet for the future. Last but not least, as I have been telling you in the last opportunities, we are very much focused on the cash generation, not only in terms of profitability but then turning that profitability into cash. We want to reach the 16% EBITDA by 2026. We did improve from last year from 14% to 15%. As I had the chance to explain to you last year, we did not decrease the profitability between 2021 and 2022.
What we did or what happened was that we had a much bigger contribution from the engineering and construction in 2022 when compared with 2021. And of course, as you know, engineering and construction has a lower EBITDA when compared with the service sector. Nevertheless, in 2023, also with a very high contribution, as we are going to see in the next slides, coming from engineering and construction, we did improve our EBITDA from 14%-15%. That will give us a picture or a clearer picture that we will for sure reach the goal that we established and reviewed by 2026 of having what is the 16% EBITDA margin by 2026. And also, as you know, one of the goals that we have is to improve our cash flow.
We did improve our cash flow coming out from operations consistently from 2021 to 2022 and now from 2022 to 2023. We are still paving the way towards that objective. What is our future? To be very focused on the core markets, in bigger projects, in concessions, and in long-term contracts, thus promoting a higher efficiency, but most importantly, to increase the profitability of the company. Now that we concluded the transaction that we announced with Urbacer, we are now the sole shareholder of our environmental companies.
In that way, now we need to extract a greater value coming out from that business, namely not only increasing the profitability and the growth in our international activities but also extracting and creating more value in our home business here in Portugal, coming out from the waste treatment concessions, and to be able to create new business in different contexts, in a new context, in the energy transition period and cycle that we are living, but also in the circular economy that is going to be more and more demanding. In terms of profitability, as I said, we are very much focused on increasing the profitability in order to have a more resilient and a more robust balance sheet. In that way, we did an important disposal of an asset in 2023 that the transaction will be concluded in 2024.
That is the disposal of our Polish operations, namely the operations in engineering and construction and in real estate. We are waiting only for the approval from the competition authority in Poland so that the transaction can be concluded. We will continue to do our asset rotation policy in order to create more and more value generation. That will be speeded up during this year as I will have the chance to talk about in the slide that we are going to present at the end of the presentation regarding the concession strategy that we are now materializing and that we will have in the future to come. So thank you very much. This was the key highlights. I will now, sorry.
Also, the last slide in the introduction, that is also, as you know, ESG has been a top priority in our strategic agenda, in our strategic plan. We are very much committed towards our goals in terms of ESG targets for 2026. And I would like to share with you a score that we just received for S&P Global Ratings in which, between the three parameters, environmental, social, and governance, we, as you can see in that slide, we are above the industry average. So when compared with the industry, we are in a higher position than the average. So this gives us confidence that we are doing the correct works towards to become even more sustainable towards our stakeholders and with our business. Also, I would like to stress that we have a very high score in terms of data availability.
That shows the total transparency that we have with these issues towards the markets and throughout our stakeholders. So now I just finished the introduction. I will pass again to Pedro Arrais so that he can do the results overview. So thank you.
Thank you, Carlos. I will suggest that we move to slide 7. Here, you can see the breakdown of the P&L and highlighting a record level of production in the second half of 2023 when we achieved a turnover of almost EUR 3 billion, a very impressive figure, and putting the company in a very different and higher stage of dimension when you look to the record level of the full year 2023 with EUR 5.55 billion of turnover. The EBITDA margin, as Carlos said before, increased to 15%. It's also important to mention the significant increase of EBIT with more than double year-on-year to EUR 560 million.
Even with the impact of the expected increase of debt interest costs, the company achieved an increase of 120% growth year-over-year in the net profit to EUR 113 million, a record level in the 77 years of history in our company, and showing the second consecutive year with a relevant improvement in the net margin, double in only two years. Moving to slide 8, we can see here the detailed performance by business units where we can see the relevant growth resulting for EC division with an increase of 54% year-over-year and with all the regions having double-digit growth and presenting improvement in its operational margins reflecting a combined impact, in fact, on growth and higher profitability at all levels in the EC division.
As expected and in line with the guidance given to the market regarding that 2023 was the transition year when which we concluded at the end of 2023 the transaction with Urbacer and with a lower activity in the international segment, this division presented a turnover of EUR 518 million and a resilient margin of 21%. In the more recent business areas like Mota-Engil Capital and MEXC, we should highlight the increase year-on-year of 27% in turnover and in line with the driver of diversification of the company. Moving to slide 9, we can see here that the company sustained record levels of backlog. With this achievement, it is important to highlight that, as I mentioned, 2023 was the second best-ever commercial year regarding the EUR 6 billion awarded, only surpassed by.
We have been awarded with EUR 1.6 billion that are not included in the backlog considering that these contracts were signed after December. With these contracts, if we consider the 1.6 with the figure of EUR 13 million, we should consider here a very comfortable ratio of backlog and EC turnover in average to almost three years of activity in EC division. Moving to slide 10, I will not elaborate on that, but you can see here the relevance of the core markets in the list of the major construction projects currently in backlog and in segments like railway and industrial engineering. Moving to slide 11, here, we can see the total CapEx presented of EUR 513 million with the growth and long-term contracts representing 76%, mainly channeled to environment.
That increased year on year from EUR 76 million to EUR 112 million regarding the 2022-2024 investment plan in EGF, the treatment company in Portugal, and also in Africa, mainly in industrial engineering and in contracts that are generating cash flows since the beginning of exploration in the cases of these recent contracts awarded. Important also to mention then, I'm here since 2008. I'm here 16 years in the company, and I never saw such an impressive and positive result in the EC maintenance CapEx, roughly representing 1% of the turnover of this division. This reflects a very efficient management of the heavy equipment being in this sense a relevant contributor to the improvement in EC margins overall and allowing higher capacity of the company to allocate investment to growth and long-term contracts. We can move to the slide 12.
Here, we can see a stable working capital evolution with cash conversion measures supporting this positive evolution during the recent years in which we can highlight the higher contribution from the growing relation with export credit agencies, with DFIs that improved our performance regarding working capital management. In fact, the consolidation in the recent years of the improvement of working capital management allows the company to achieve in December a solid, very positive ratio of -3% in working capital by itself. Moving to slide 13, we can see here the year-on-year improvement on the free cash flow from operating from EUR 688 million, an improvement of EUR 80 million on year. And here, you can see that the record level of EBITDA generated, the cash needed to support increase of CapEx and the payments of other financial costs and taxes.
In this sense, the increase of debt that you can see here are only related with the investments that the company decided to make in concessions and in other strategic investments where we will further present the capacity of the group to generate capital gains for the company and future investments that are generating cash as a result of the asset rotation strategy after the construction stage on these greenfield projects. The increase here is related on that with a very positive evolution regarding the cash flow from operations.
Moving to slide 14, we can see here in looking to the debt evolution in more detail, it's important to mention that the debt evolution is aligned with the strategy of value creation reflected first in a controlled level of net debt EBITDA of 1.4 times, the best ratio in more than a decade, and aligned, as I mentioned, with the goals and the targets to the strategic plan 2022-2026 that I remember that this net debt EBITDA is below 2 times. At your right in the slide, you can see the same evolution, the positive evolution in the ratio regarding gross debt to EBITDA in 3.3 times from 4.5 times in 2022.
Moving to slide 15, we can see here the positive evolution also in the liquidity position of EUR 1.4 billion in December, improving the figure from 1.2 in 2022 with these amounts surpassing the non-revolving financing installments for the next three years. Worth to highlight that from the debt with maturities with less than one year, EUR 236 million is already refinanced or refinanced shortly. Also important to mention, average gross debt maturity of 2.5 years and the 7.6% of average cost of debt in line with the increase of interest rates worldwide and also reflecting the increase of the height of local currency debt in core markets in Africa and Latin America, as you know, with higher rates comparing to Europe. Moving to slide 20 where you can see the results and the performance by each unit.
Again, starting in Europe, we can see here that this division presents a very resilient capacity to growth, namely in Portugal that represents 69% of total turnover in Europe and with a stable margin of 8%. Also important to mention, the positive expectations regarding relevant projects starting in the recent contracts awarded in Lisbon Metro and in Lisbon Oriental Hospital, but also the first two tenders of the high-speed train where we are fully convinced that the consortium led by Mota-Engil and only with Portuguese companies will present a very competitive proposal for these tenders. Regarding 2024 onwards, it's important to remind you the agreement closed at the end of 2023 in the Polish operation, as already Mr. Carlos Mota-Engil said, with an enterprise value of EUR 90 million that we expect all the authorizations until the end of the first half of 2024.
Moving to slide 21 and moving to Africa, we can see the double-digit growth in the main markets in the region that represents 62% of total turnover. As you hear, it's important to mention the improvement of profitability in this region with an EBITDA margin of 21%. Also important to comment with you that the risk mitigation scheme still is very robust in Africa considering that 98% of the contracts are financed by multilaterals or public guarantee financed by financial institutions. But it's important to look to the future and see the positive outlook for the region considering the backlog of EUR 7.1 billion. To conclude the EC division, we move to slide 23.
Here, you can see the performance in Latin America that showed a very impressive growth of 81% in turnover to EUR 2.75 billion with Mexico representing EUR 2.25 billion of turnover, the main markets already in 2022 and now in 2023, but also with Peru with a growth of 23% year-on-year and Brazil more than double its figures of turnover in the year with these three markets with a very positive evolution. With a backlog of EUR 4.4 billion and with relevant opportunities regarding the nearshoring in Mexico, the infrastructure plan, investment plan in Brazil opening a positive outlook in the region with more visibility of unlocking value from the concessions in Mexico starting in 2024. Moving to environment, and we already made an overview, it's important to comment that the turnover was down 7% but mainly impacted with the reduction of the international segment in this business.
As we explained before, it's important to mention that 2023 was a transition year, as you all know, where we have the conclusion of the transaction between the two shareholders that put some of the new opportunities on hold to have the positive evolution starting in 2024 with the total autonomy of Mota-Engil regarding the collection and treatment business. We are fully convinced that we will be able, as in the past with more strength, to implement a new cycle regarding waste-to-energy projects to leverage and maximize value from the existing assets.
Moving to slide 27 and for last here in the business overview, we can see here the positive contribution from Mota-Engil Capital and MEX with a growth of 27%, as I mentioned to you, to EUR 134 million of turnover and an EBITDA of EUR 12 million reflecting the positive contribution from the services, mainly from the services business in Mota-Engil Capital and the real estate projects in MEX. We will pass now to chapter four and to present the concessions strategic insight. For that, I invite Mr. Carlos Mota Santos. Thank you very much, Pedro. As we've been mentioning in the last few months or last year, concessions is one of the important growth drivers that we have for the future. We've been having a long history and experience in terms of infrastructure concessions.
It has been an important driver, an important tool not only in the past in Portugal but also in the recent years in Latin America, namely in Mexico. With this slide, the most important message that I want to pass to you is that the book value of our concessions, namely the Mexican concession that is the example that we are using here, are undervalued when compared with the real value of the assets. This is not a wishful thinking that we would like to tell you, but actually, this is made up with an asset test based on recent market transactions where there is this value upside.
Just to mention to you, we did transactions that are to be concluded, with itself that are to be concluded during this year that are waiting for the competition authority in Mexico that reflects increase or upside of 1.85 times when compared with the book value of three concessions that are mentioned here in the slide that is Autopista Cardel-Poza Rica, Autopista Tuxpan-Tampico, and also APP Tamaulipas. There's a concession in which we sold a small stake that has an underneath value of 1.77 times when compared with the book value that is Autopista Cuapiaxtla-Cuacnopalan. It's the first one in that slide.
If we take a look into the concessions that are still under development, that are still in the construction phase, and that, as you know, our policy, our strategy is to do the asset rotation, we can do an average between these transactions or transactions to happen in a short term to do an average of what is the value when compared with the book value and see that we could have an average value of 1.81 that undercovers more than EUR 100 million of even value of our book value only for the Mexican concession. So this is only to give you an insight that we are starting to materialize what we are being telling you in the last opportunities, that we are building up a strategy for our concessions portfolio in all our markets or in the different regions.
Just to remind you that we have concessions not only in Latin America but also in Europe and in Africa. These concessions are important because of the two main reasons. One is because they leverage construction contracts and construction contracts with bigger margins because we are able to take or to grab differentiated opportunities. And also, and most important with this message that I want to pass to you, is that we are creating value. We are able to create value, and that value creation only takes place, of course, when we do the asset test of selling to the market.
But you can expect that in 2024, there's going to be an acceleration of this asset rotation, namely in Latin America, and we'll give you more updates in the next opportunities about what we think is our real value that is underneath the book value of our concession portfolio. Also, I would like to stress about Europe, about Lineas. As you know, Novo Banco that has been our historical partner in Lineas previously in Ascendi announced the sale of his stake of 40% to a new partner that is Serena. Serena is a Spanish infrastructure fund. This transaction is waiting for the approval of several recent conditions, namely competition authority and also the authorization from the grantor.
The most important thing is that with this new strategic partner that, just to highlight you, Serena is our partner in the Lisbon Oriental Hospital concession that, as you know, we just signed the contract in January. With this new partner in Lineas, we can again revive Lineas and also be a strategic tool towards new opportunities. I would like to share with you that now Lineas is in conditions to participate in the high-speed train projects through, as you know, through concessions here in Portugal. We have built up a Portuguese consortium of six construction companies that will also participate in the concession and also Lineas.
So we will participate through two different ways, through the consortium, construction consortium in the concession company, but also through Lineas now that we are to be closed the transaction of Novo Banco is to be closed and that we have a new growth story towards more opportunities for the future. So I think this is important not only because there's a potential upside with this transaction that unlocks also even value in Lineas, but also because Lineas now has a growth path towards the future. I will finish with, before the Q&A rounds, I will finish with some final remarks and outlook and guidance for 2024. So if you please move to slide number 31, just some final remarks. We had a very strong commercial and operational performance in last year.
We have a very sound and solid backlog that will anticipate and anticipates, gives us visibility for the future revenue, not only for 2024 but also in years to come. Most importantly, this is a backlog that has the characteristics that we want, bigger projects with higher margins and with a positive cash flow profile. Our activity is at record level with improved profitability. This is a path that we want to maintain, not only the growth that is not going to be so expressive this year, but the most important focus, once again, is to improve the profitability. Just like I mentioned, we revised our goals for our strategic plan last June, and we are already delivering some of the goals, some of the targets, namely the ones related with debt control.
We want to continue to strengthen our balance sheet, so a very focused strategy towards the generation of cash. We improved EUR 80 million year-over-year our cash flow coming from operation. But we need to continue to do this towards the improvement of generation of cash to keep both ratios that we have for the debt control under control. So as I told you, we are going to continue to be below 2x every year in terms of net debt over EBITDA, and we are going to continue to be below 4x every year in terms of gross debt over EBITDA. Also, in terms of financial autonomy, we reached 10%, double digits. That was a goal for 2023.
But as I mentioned, we need to continue to do this track in order to improve the financial autonomy that, as we've recently revised, is going to be above 15% by 2026. Our investment was geared in long-term and large projects in gross Capex. It was at 76% of the total Capex. That is an investment. It was very important not only because we are talking about contracts, gross contracts that are already there or were already at the turnover and profitability. So our contracts that are already being in operation, but also in terms of long-term contracts that we are talking about, the waste treatment investment and also the industrial engineering, namely the Contract Mining. In terms of financial markets, we concluded the transaction with Urbacer, and now we can speed up what was foreseen in our strategic plan.
We are waiting for the agreement from the competition authorities in order to conclude the transaction of Poland. We are expected to have these authorizations during the first semester of 2024, and we'll continue our asset rotation policy in concessions with even more visibility during this year. Moving to slide number 32 in terms of some guidance for this year, we are going to have a turnover growth that is paving the way towards the EUR 6 billion target that we have for 2026. Our EBITDA margin will gradually grow in order to reach the 16% on 2026, like I said previously. We are going to be even more selective when concerning our commercial policy to be very focused in projects that can enhance us in terms of profitability and as important in terms of cash flow or cash flow profile.
We are going to be focused on organic cash flow generation. We are going to continue to strengthen our balance sheet and the capital structure organically. And is expected to have during this year CapEx oversells around 9% ratio. So to our stakeholders, to all our stakeholders, we are moving towards the targets that we announced for 2026 in a sustainable way with a sustainable growth in every aspect of the way, financially speaking, but also with compliance with our sustainability policy. And just to finalize, the board just proposed the general meeting is going to be held on the 18th of April. The board has just recently proposed a dividend per share of slightly over EUR 0.12 per share. So thank you to all of you. And now myself and José Carlos that is here with me are available to answer all your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the Q&A session starts now. As a reminder, if you wish to ask the question, please press star followed by 5 on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from the line of Miguel González from JB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I got three. First one on CapEx. You invested EUR 17 million in concessions. I wonder if you could provide how much of this equity of this CapEx is equity and whether that investment in Mexico is already included here. And also related to concessions, my second question is whether you could provide an indication of how much equity you expect to deploy in the coming years for the concessions which are currently under development. And finally, regarding margins in Latam, I guess the strong margins delivered in the quarter are not required. So just to clarify whether this includes any capital gains for asset rotations and maybe know what's your view on the margin evolution in Latam for this year. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much for your question. José Carlos will answer the questions. If I understood, there's four questions. Actually, I think it's four questions, but we'll try to answer all of them. If any doubt is remaining, please speak again, okay? José Carlos.
Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here with us today. Regarding the first question and the equity stake in this EUR 117 million of concessions, we are talking about two concessions. We are talking about ASPAO and Autopista Pirámides-Tulancingo-Pachuca. And they have an average debt ratio equity to that ratio of 30%. Regarding the concessions under development now and in our order book for the next years, I would say that that ratio would be roughly the same, of around 30% to be committed in terms of equity to the following years. In terms of the margin for Latam expected for Latam, as Carlos was saying previously, when generating concession projects in Mexico, we are talking about generating better margin in our construction activity and on top of that, to add value when rotating the assets.
So in terms of our expectation and bearing in mind that the type of projects that we expect to participate in the near future regarding the nearshoring situation which we are living now in Mexico, we are expecting more complex projects in terms of added value. We expect as well, based on our budget, to increase that margin again. So I would say that in terms of margin to be generated regarding these construction projects under concessions, it will be roughly the same.
I don't know if we answered all the other questions. I'm not sure because you also had some questions about the assets.
No, no, no. I'll answer. But just a clarification maybe on the equity contribution for this year. You said just 13% of this EUR 117 million is equity, right? So EUR 50 million?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Okay. We should expect like EUR 15 million more in the coming years related to equity investment?
That will be fairly true. But I just like to stress to you that these two concessions that were mentioned, that is Pyramids and ASPAO, are two concessions that we fully consolidate. And our expectation is during this year, not consolidating anymore because we are going to sell and become minority shareholders of the concession. So this is part of our asset rotation policy. That is not different from our asset rotation policy. That is not different from what we've been doing in the last years. But of course, now with a bigger portfolio that has more visibility, but also is going to be more visibility to this asset rotation policy because, as I said previously, most of them are going to be concluded and into operation or be part of during this year.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Filipe Leite from CaixaBank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hello, everyone. I have three questions, if I may. The first one is related to page 29, the slide on concessions, and namely the Autopista Cuapiaxtla-Cuacnopalan concession in Mexico that you mentioned that the transaction was already completed, concluded. Can you tell us when the transaction was concluded, if it was this year, 2024, or already in 2023? And if the EUR 76 million that you mentioned in the graph was effectively the cash-in to Mota-Engil from the sale of this specific asset? Second question, in terms of CapEx, and namely the CapEx on the long-term contract. And in the hypothetical scenario of no new contracts awarded during this year, if we can see the CapEx of these activities still above EUR 100 million per year, or if we can see a significant decrease on CapEx of these long-term contracts.
And last one, if you can tell us the amount of prepayments that you have in your balance sheet at the end of the year? And also for reference purposes, the amount that you had in last year. Thank you.
Hi, Filipe. Thank you for your questions. I'm going to answer the one related with Autopista Cuapiaxtla-Cuacnopalan concession. Then José Carlos will answer the one related with Capex and the one related with prepayments. Related with Autopista Cuapiaxtla-Cuacnopalan, we did sold a small stake in the concession. To answer your question, we didn't have the cash-in of EUR 76 million. This transaction was already concluded. The transaction of the small stake was concluded in 2023 with this implicit value, so 1.77x when compared with the book value. But I can share with you that during 2024, we are going to sell this concession. It's going to is a concession that is becoming into operation during this year. During this year, we are going to dispose the concession of Autopista Cuapiaxtla-Cuacnopalan.
That we have a minimal target that is at least this small transaction of a small stake that we did still in 2023. I hope that I clarified your question. Concerning long-term contracts, Capex, and the prepayments, José Carlos will answer your questions. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Filipe. Regarding the CapEx of the long-term contract, namely those regarding industrial engineering, I cannot hide that, of course, when having more contracts regarding this contract mining or industrial engineering, we are talking about, on one hand, long-term contracts but high levels of CapEx. The good thing about this new contract with year-round clients, it's important to emphasize, is that they have its peak of investment on the very beginning of the deal, meaning that we have to invest first and to give the guarantee to the clients that all our capacity and equipment means are there available to deliver the 24/7 operations during the maturity of this kind of contracts. But then, of course, we will collect later the turnovers and debits coming out of these transactions.
This year, 2023, was especially a good year in terms of signing new contracts to year-round clients, talking about the extension in our project contract in South Africa for Vedanta, which is called the Gamsberg Mine. Another two named Lafigué and Séguéla in Ivory Coast for Endeavour and Roxgold. And a new one in Senegal called Boto Project for Managem again. Of course, with no new contracts regarding this industrial engineering, we could expect, if it was the only contribution, not to have this level of CapEx. And 2023 was positively affected by the signing of these contracts. But we have to look at the other activities that we have here in our business conglomerate, let's say. First, the environment sector, namely EGF, in which we have a model with revenues on asset-based. So that's why we improved.
We had conditions in 2023 to improve our CapEx in order to collect and to invoice more. Regarding the concessions, I cannot hide as well that being a strategic harm of our activity, the more we invest, the more CapEx we will need to support this asset creation in order to add value and rotate then. Going to the last question regarding the advance payments, we had an evolution regarding the advance payments of EUR 131 million coming from EUR 913 million in 2022 to EUR 1,062 million in 2023. The thing that I would like to emphasize here is that every advance payment that we collect, they have a specific purpose based on two main things. The first one, a more, let's say, aggressive procurement strategy with which we can control the price changes when buying the materials, goods, etc.
When needed, the acceleration of our works under execution in order to comply or, in a better sense, to anticipate the execution tenor of each project, which means that we are saving costs. There's no advance payments related with nothing affecting specifically the net debt because when we collect, we have to apply them. If you look at the evolution of the payments to the suppliers, you will see where they are applied. The performance of our projects reflect that margin as well.
Okay. Thank you, Filipe. I don't know if you've been clarified.
Yes. Yes. Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Artur Amaro from Caixa Banco de Investimento. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. I have two questions, if I may. The first one relates to the environment business. Just to clarify, the revenue decrease and the EBITDA decrease was related with this investment of international activities. A subsequent question related to this, there's an order book of EUR 300 million. How much of this is Portugal and how much of this relates to international activity? And the last question, if I may, it relates to the concessions and to Lineas, as far as I am aware. In the first half on the report, the consolidated accounts you have on the balance sheet, EUR 87 million related to this 60%. Now you say EUR 79 million, so it's more or less the same. I don't see any line in this table related to Lusoponte. Is it possible to have an idea of how much is the book value of Lusoponte?
These are my questions. Thank you.
Okay, Artur. Thank you for your questions. So concerning the first two questions, that was about the environment business. The performance in this year of 2023 was worse than 2022, basically because of two reasons. First of all, it's because on 2022, we have a better than expected or better than the average performance, mainly in the international activity, and namely in Angola. So during 2023, I would say that was not a worse performance in Angola but was, let's say, an average performance in Angola with a decrease of negativity that impacted when you compare 2022 with 2023. Also, another reason that was explained by Pedro Arrais a little while ago, 2023 was a transition year. Only the transaction of Urbacer was only actually closed in the last days of 2023. So it was a transition year in which we already sold, but we didn't conclude the transaction.
With some of the key decisions, namely some implementation of commercial and strategic decisions, were not able to occur. Of course, that didn't allow us to be as agile and as sound as we wanted to be in terms of management. Nevertheless, that is overcome. We are now the owners of 100% of the stake. We can expect for this year to start to implement and to have the positive contribution of several synergies that we want to make, not only in terms of simplification of our structure but also some savings that we want to have in terms of overheads and in terms of efficiency of our operations and more detail or more profound integrations with the back office of Mota-Engil Group.
Concerning the second question that is about the order book, the EUR 300 million that is expressed, just let me remind you, this is only for waste collection services. So there's no value here concerning EGF activity. We do not account for the backlog, any turnover coming out from concession, not only environmental concession but any kind of concessions. But to answer your question, EUR 115 million of this order book, 115, is for Portugal markets, SUMA. And EUR 185 million is from international markets that, as I just to recall, we are talking about Brazil, we are talking about Angola, we are talking about Ivory Coast, we are talking about Oman, and a little less contribution coming out from Mozambique. So this is the contribution for international and Portuguese activities towards the backlog of EUR 300 million.
Concerning Lineas, your question was what is our book value if it's EUR 86 or 79? The book value that we have for Lineas, for our stake, is EUR 79 million by the end of 2023. And I'm sorry, but I will not disclose what is the composition between the Lusoponte book value and the other, okay? I'm sorry for that, but. Okay. No, no, no problem. So just a quick follow-up, Carlos, if I may. So when I look at your accounts on this EUR 79 million, I don't have the breakdown as I have the breakdown of the half of the year when I told you about the EUR 87. I see several lines there, APP, several concessions in Latin America. I see Martifer, the stake in Martifer. And then I see a line, others.
My question is, is the Lusoponte included in these others, or I'm not looking at the right table? Lusoponte is included in the line that is concerning Lineas. So Lusoponte is under Lineas. So when you see others, you're not looking at Lusoponte. Okay. That's clear. So this EUR 11 million, it's different. It's a different thing. No. No. Fortunately, Lusoponte works a lot more than EUR 11 million. I know. I know. I did my back of the envelope. Yeah. But it's not. And I reached completely different figures. I was just clarifying that Lusoponte was not under this line. Very clear for your understanding. No. It is not under this line. The Lusoponte is under Lineas. And the book value by the end of December 2023 was of EUR 79 million in terms of book value.
You'll have some more highlights on what is the potential underlying value of Lineas when the transaction of Novo Banco is concluded.
Yes. Just to finalize my intervention, there is news from 2022 that Atlantia sold 17.21% to Lineas and to Vinci for EUR 54 million. So by applying some proportion, of course, you get a different valuation and a much higher valuation for Lusoponte. Thank you. Very clear, Carlos.
Okay. If you want to also, we can explain or elaborate a little bit more on that transaction that was occurred by Lusoponte. But I think we can elaborate in a direct answer from Pedro Arrais to you, okay?
Of course.
To explain a little more.
Thank you, Carlos. Once again, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Artur.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star, followed by five on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of João Vermelho from Bestinver. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good afternoon to everyone. It's always a pleasure to be on this call, as you know. First of all, congratulations for the astonishing results. My question is very straightforward. I've noticed that minority interest charges in the P&L increased significantly. I suspect it comes mostly from Nigeria and Mexico. But I would like you guys to confirm if you can. Thank you.
João, always nice to hear. Today, we didn't ask the question about prepayments because someone was ahead of you. So you have a different question.
Exactly.
Carlos is going to answer the questions about the minority interest. It's good to hear. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, João. It's good to hear from you. Regarding the minorities, of course, in a year with a major contribution from Mexico, Nigeria, and Angola as well, it's right to you. And it's true that you are right that it comes from those operations. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, João.
There are no further questions from the conference call at this time. I hand over back to you. Thank you.
So this is, again, Carlos. If there's no more questions, we are always available to answer further clarifications and further questions that you might have through Pedro and through Maria. And hope to meet you soon personally. And thank you for attending the call. And see you. Thank you. Bye-bye.