Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for being here and participating to this conference. I am Michaël Ohana. I'm the CEO of Prodways Group, and I'm pleased to share this presentation with Laurent Cadenat.
Good evening.
Laurent is our CFO. We are going to present you the 2022 full year results of Prodways Group. We are pleased to say that once again, we're going to present you record results and an acceleration of the development of the company. Just quickly, the summary of this presentation. We'll make a quick introduction where you will see already the first figures, but the detail will come later. We'll also present you the supportive long-term trends that we foresee now in the global industry of additive manufacturing, and particularly in the scope that we are covering in industry and in medical. We'll also present the highlight on major operational successes that we made last year and that are already starting beginning of this year, which is already very good news for all of us. Laurent will present you the record financial results of 2022.
After that, we'll also spend some time on explaining how we're going to accelerate the business in the market of several opportunities that we're going to present you. Of course, we will present you at the end of this presentation, the outlook and the guidance for this year. For sure, like always, you're welcome for questions that we will answer with pleasure at the end of this presentation. As an introduction, first of all, the figures, I'm not going to comment them in detail. We will have plenty of time to do that. Just what we want to put really as a wonderful results is the percentage of revenue growth. We made 14% revenue growth in 2022 compared to the previous year, which is, we think, a good performance.
Quite important to measure the fact that the EBITDA also progressed with an increase of 29% on the EBITDA, you see the value in the slide. Which is also key for all of us is the cash generation with an increase of 71%. Concerning the values and the growth, Laurent will explain that during the financial part. Just to remind for ones who discover us, who don't know us very well, we have two divisions structured around five operational units. The system divisions is usually what we call products and solutions that we provide to customer who want to produce by themselves. They need three type of solutions. They need, of course, the machines, the printers, which are industrial, very accurate printers for specific needs.
There are of course the materials that are used into the printers, so the 3D materials. Of course for them, some of them also use software to make the design of the parts, products, that they are developing. This system divisions is mainly for that. We also have sometimes customer who are not ready or who are not big enough to produce by themselves or just because they decide to make some prototyping or testing of a solution. In this case, they are more customer of the product division that we have, where we are producing parts for them on demand. This is a 3D digital manufacturing. It is also called sometimes service bureau activity. We have another operational unit called Medical Integrated Businesses, where we offer product for specific businesses like audiology, podology, or dental labs.
Those are the two divisions with the five operational units. We made a long-term ambition development plan. We will talk about it later. Just to say that the vision that we have in Prodways Group is clearly to be able to propose to the market the most complete technological range on digital manufacturing solution altogether. This is what I was explaining just before. When you have software, printers, materials, and the capability of producing parts specifically for customers who need some prototyping or mass production, we have this vision to provide them the best possible portfolio. The mission is also very key, and you will see that later. This mission make really sense compared to the trends of the market. Today, we see that our customers are looking for proximity.
When they are preparing a new innovation, a new product, they want to work with a company which is close to them, both geographically, also culturally, and having the ability to be close to the team, which is helping them to make their business work. Proximity is a key point. This is one aspect of our mission. The expertise of our team is key because clearly what they expect from us is to accelerate their innovation. All the additive manufacturing trend today in every industry is about acceleration of the innovation. Making a design quicker, having a prototype quicker, having a product quicker in order to be able to define if the product is good enough or if it needs some change or modifications.
The second big point of the mission is not only to be around prototyping, which was the beginning of additive manufacturing, but now we are working with our customer who have the maturity and the business models to produce custom mass products. When we talk about mass production, we are not, of course, at the level of the production of traditional injection, for example, but we already now have more than thousands of parts, sometimes, hundred of thousands of parts, which is already quite significant for some of our customers. Now with this vision and mission, we are supporting the long-term trends on the market that we are identifying. For 3D printing, we have this first trend of nearshoring.
In fact, our customers and partners want to reduce the risk of the supply chain, you know, activity and reducing the lead time, particularly with the uncertain geopolitical context that unfortunately we've seen the last years. It's true, in any aspect of industries, the customers, the partners wants to minimize risk, and having the possibility to produce close to their facility geographically is something important for them. Additive manufacturing is helping that. It's easier, of course, to have a quick production of a product, having the machine or the supplier of the product close to you. We give here an example, you know, the dental lab, who were very busy before the crisis of COVID and were very busy, particularly in China.
Some dental labs decided to switch from outsourcing their prosthetic in China to 3D printed dental model in Europe in order to be sure that they will not have any problem of transportation, of any cases of supply chain disruption. It's easier to produce locally, and printers are helping for that. Printers as well as materials, of course. The second big trend that we see is a faster time to market. We already say that when I say that we are looking for helping our customer for innovation. This means also to go quicker, to be ready quicker, and to be able to validate or not a product development as soon as possible. Reduce product development phases, and we address expectation of new generations.
For sure, the trend that we all see today is the environmental, global, important aspects, where by using additive manufacturing, it's possible to seek more responsible production processes, and or social criteria. Also because of the nearshoring, also because of the quality of the material that will be reused or recycled, and any options of reducing also the energy consumption of the manufacturing sites. There is also a trend, which is globally that 3D printing could benefit from industrial plans in the U.S., in Europe, where I'm not going to go into detail here, but many countries decided to support globally manufacturing more digital, and this includes plans for helping the additive manufacturing solutions and products on the market.
We are also, of course, looking at that very carefully and benefiting of those trends globally in the U.S. and in Europe. This slide is very interesting in terms of explaining the different level of maturities of our customers and partners. In fact, we all expect, and we are all waiting our customers to be on the right of this slide, which is the mainstream phase. Mainstream phase mean that our customer have the maturity, the business model to be able to produce mass production. This is clearly the goal, and the aim of Prodways Group is to help our customer on this phase simply because our products are industrial printers, very accurate, very fast, and are designed to help our customer to improve their productivity and to be able to produce quickly with a very good quality.
This is needed for big customer who need industrial printers and also the material which is working with that, and also all the service which is going with this, the maintenance, spare parts, et cetera. You know that in Prodways Group, the application today, which is one of the main application we are covering, is the clear aligner from the dental space, and almost all the biggest provider and supplier of aligners are our customers today in dental. We also are working with customer who are in the transition phase or even some of them are in the development phase because they will come naturally to the mainstream. The transition phase, it's needed of reliability on the product, good quality, and also economic equations for any application.
It's difficult with a very small printer or with desktop possibilities to have a reliable, long-term, stable quality on the long run. This is why some of our customer who maybe started with another technology decide on the transition phase to contact us to see how we could help them to become more mature and to be able to go on the right path. Here on the applications, we already see some applications on any series for production, marketing trials, still some prototyping, but which is very interesting for us is to see all the industries in this transition phase. Today, of course, we still have dentistry. We will come to that.
Medical devices, but on the defense, robotics, aerospace, automotive, so this is where the future will come on the mainstream, but for the moment, they are still on the transition. This is, of course, concerning two of our divisions, system and products, because we are in the middle of proposing the machine, the material, the software, but also proposing and manufacturing parts for the customers. On the development phase, here we are still on the traditional, I would like to say additive manufacturing original business, which was prototyping and R&D, where we still have many, many customers and many potential applications and industries, looking at starting their project on development phase. We see here the pace of the adoption of our customer, arriving from development to mainstream.
On digital dentistry, which is one of course of our main activity today, we see also very good trends. I mean, we still are at the beginning of what digital dentistry will be in the years to come. First, the level of percentage of dentists who are sending digital impressions accelerates, you see on the left. Also this mean that they are equipped with intraoral scanner, that they are now used to take the scan to the patient, and they are used now to send the STL file to the dental lab, which was still not the case, you see here five, six years ago. Only geek dentists were using this technology. Today, it's becoming the common rule to use those technologies.
Everything will be digital, and it will be STL files, and it has to be after used by labs able to re-take those files and be able to print the models. You see also on the right here, for this dental market, that the number of patients who needs an orthodontic treatment is estimated about 500 million people, where today the number of treatments identified is around 4 million per year. We see that the potential of growth of those activities is still very big, is still huge, and here we talk only about orthodontic on this part. On the other side, we also see what is happening on dental implants treatment.
It's estimated that around 2 billion implant treatment are needed worldwide, where today almost 32 million treatments are covered, which means for Prodways helping our customer to produce the dental model, because you need a model, printed 3D if possible, is better, to be able to produce all the aligners or the different crowns over the implants that will be used. The model is the key for any dentist. When we see that, we can say that today Prodways is in a very strong position to thrive on those five points. First one, we have a very strong differentiating technology with MOVINGLight, combining, I told already, high precision, very fast printing. It's an industrial product ready for customer who are now ready for the digital revolution and digital manufacturing solutions.
We also have a proven capacity to acquire and to retain customer through quality products. We are proud to have in our customers the most prestigious number one leader in their industry, which mean that they want and they need to work only with suppliers which have this level of quality and certification and processes to develop their products. We also have an expertise in certification and regulatory compliance, which is key today, particularly when we work on the medical space. We need to have full compliance for the materials and products with all the CE marking, the MDR Medical Device Regulation in any country. It's clearly a know-how. It's an expertise for people who already know this aspect.
It's very time-consuming and only with a high level of knowledge and teams it's possible to acquire and to get those certifications. This is today a big value advantage of Prodways Group. We also have a proven and profitable business model. I will let Laurent in a few minutes show you the results. We are also proud to have identified this business model. Last but not least, we have a financial discipline which is not always the case of our peers. Here we are not going to compare. The objective is not to talk about that. I would like to say that if you take the average EBITDA margin of our peers in 2022, the average is -35%.
We have to say that we are quite proud today to have in our industry a position which demonstrate that we choose our business model and we are managing it correctly compared to other player in the industry who are doing now what we did already a few years ago. It's an important point to notice for us. When we're saying that, it's also now Sorry. Important to speak about the operational successes that we had. They are quite major, and they are also preparing what we're doing this year. I would like to spend few slide on that. First, on our system divisions, so remember, systems is printers, material, and software. We have quality operations, and we had commercial successes. On machine and material, we are continuing to benefit from the booming dental market.
We made a growth of 23%, revenue in 2022. You see here on the photography, we're talking about models to produce and to thermoform the aligners. Also, we are starting now to sell our printers for dental application beyond aligners, so it's also very important. What we say beyond aligners, it's we are printing for the customers, or they are printing with our machines and material models, on which they can do crown, bridges, surgical guides, or any prosthetic that they need to produce. This is becoming more and more important because the dental lab are becoming bigger and bigger, so they have more volumes, and they are transferring from the transition phase into the industrial phase using our machines. Also, the success on the certification process, on the new Medical Device Regulation.
We obtained the certification for our material division, material operation unit, which is really a wonderful and exceptional results. On the software part, we are also pushing very hard and deepening our partnership with Dassault Systèmes, and we are also proud to say that Prodways Group ranked tier one supplier for 2022 on the Dassault Systèmes portfolio, which is not the case of all the resellers of Dassault Systèmes. We are really happy, and I would like also to use this opportunity to thank all our team for those results, in system division, machine, material, software. All the results we present to you today is really the work of the complete team and the dedication of our personal.
To continue on this wonderful trend of 2022, we have to say that already, this year, we began to have a new order for three additional printers with a global player, OraShine, which is a company in the US, which is dental worldwide, in fact, a leader, and who also is buying Biotech Dental. I wanted to remind you here, in fact, the long process of those projects, because it started in 2020. They had a starting of mass production of clear aligners. On 2021, they were making benchmark and trials, looking at all the available technologies to see what is best on the market, what is available, what works, what is not working, and also with the financial equation. First order end of 2021 for eight printers.
Q1 2022, six additional printers. In Q4 2022, OraShine acquires Biotech Dental, which by the way, is also a company which was choosing our technology, so both are today working with our technology. This show that a project like that takes time. It started 2.5 years , almost three years ago. After, when we see the process, it's clear that using this technology is something which is on the long term. In 2023, with the three additional printers, MOVINGLight, the fleet of 17 printers, is in place and will be operational.
Also, with that, it consumes our material up to 20 tons of resins per year, which is also clearly part of the model to propose the machine and the material together. Those kind of projects, which are successful projects, we already have a number of discussions for the future. It's very, very interesting for us. It's very positive. It shows that the maturity of the market, sometime it takes time, but it's moving, and clearly we are on the very good trend. We have other players who want to benefit from the mass production markets inspired by clear aligner application, but not only for this application. This is creating opportunities for us.
Today, we are under discussion, preliminary discussions, quite advanced in some cases, of all together around a potential of 100 MOVINGLight printers, which is important. The previous example show that those kinds of project take some times, but when they arrive, it's for a long time, and it's very for industrial and professional reasons. Those projects are covering several industries. As I said, not only in dental, but also in industrial, global medical, automotive, and of course, this would consume also some tons of material and resins. For the product division, also, we had an increase of activity. It was boosted by M&A. We have a large, a larger base of customer.
Also, we increased order in small series versus prototyping, we are completely in phase with the mission I presented you at the beginning. We are now going into small series and not only prototyping. We also have a first eco-friendly 3D material launched in production and other coming on R&D and testing. We said about M&A. Yes, we had a successful integration of Auditech, you know, the audiology activity. Also, I would like here to thank all the team and colleagues of the product divisions for the wonderful work they achieved in 2022 and that they're already achieving this year. Of course, we are also rewarded on some of our ESG strategy, where we had some progress.
Here we see the Gaïa Rating, where we increased 14 points compared to the previous year. This is a key element of all our teams. We're working on that on the site of production to be more responsible, also on the training, sensibilization of the teams and the managers, to have all the ESG objectives and ratios to improve. Also a deeper analysis on the emission of CO2 that we are now making in every site, in order to make an action plan to reduce those emission soon. That's for the first part, and I will let Laurent Cadenat presenting the financial results.
Thank you, Rafael. Michaël.
No problem.
Sorry. It's a very, a good pleasure to present you these figures. First of all, we will start with the systems division, with the strong growth and exceptional incomes. I remind you again that the system division includes 3D software, 3D printing, and the written materials and services activities. The system division's recording EUR 49 million for the year, an increase of 12% of revenues on a comparable basis. This performance reflects fairly consistent situation within the division, with the historical medical business and in particular the MOVINGLight and the associated material businesses increasing the contribution with high added value.
As a reminder, systems, year 2022 is marked by an atypical seasonality with a strong first half of the year, particularly in materials and software. On these subjects, as a result, the first quarter of 2023 will be lower than last year, which marks a return to normal. The current EBITDA is 17% compared to 16% in 2021, including, as last year, a one-off income of about EUR 0.9 million. On the product division. The product division recorded revenue of EUR 32 million, up +17%.
The division benefits from the contribution of digital manufacturing and audiology, both at +20% of growth and suffered from Cristal Dental Lab, who lost its main customer, as we mentioned, when we raised our figures for the last quarter of 2022. The EBITDA equals to EUR 4.3 million, + 53% compared to 2021, and the current EBITDA margin is 14%. On slide... The next slide, as you can see, you have the whole picture of the P&L of the group for the full year. The group continued to improve its operational performance and to steadily increase its turnover. In 2022, the turnover reaches EUR 80.7 million.
The group therefore records an increase in turnover of + EUR 10.1 million or 14% compared to 2021. EBITDA has increased by EUR 2.5 million compared to last year. The marginal increase in turnover has enabled the company to generate an EBITDA of almost 25%, thanks to good control of the structure cost. For an example of this good control, the head count increased only by 4% during the year, including the impact of Auditech that we bought in July. If I will go deeply into this P&L, some additional figures. Depreciation and provisions amount to EUR 5.6 million, up + EUR 0.6 million compared to last year.
The EBIT, as you can see, was EUR 5.8 million, up EUR 1.5 million compared to last year. I would remind you again that 2021 and 2022 include the exceptional one-off for roughly the same amount for both years. The financial result is relatively stable, minus EUR 0.5 million in 2022 against minus EUR 0.4 million in 2021. Tax are minus EUR 3 million against minus EUR 1 million in 2021. Finally, as you can see, the net results is positive and amounts to EUR 1.5 million, up plus roughly EUR 1 million compared to 2021. Cash is one of the significant improvement of the year.
The cash flow from operations reached EUR 10.2 million in 2022. As you can see, the cash flow from operations has increased since four years, except 2020, which was a very specific year due to the COVID crisis. In 2022, the EBITDA conversion in cash flow from operations equals to roughly 90% versus 76, sorry, 67 in 2021. Sorry.
By the end of the year, the group is in a very good health in term of finance with a good level of available cash of EUR 14 million and a short net debt of EUR 3.4 million. The change in working capital, with an increase of EUR 4.4 million, is coming from two factors. Again, the change in seasonality, and second point is the inventory increase in machine and in materials. Regarding investment, EUR 3.2 million investment without any acquisition, roughly EUR 7 million with acquisition. This level of investment is 11% higher than last year.
In conclusion, what I can say, the group has achieved record figures, and is in a very good financial health with a positive operating profit up +174% with EUR 14 million and a very low net debt.
Laurent, thank you very much. It's very impressive. I have to say that I want personally to thank you, to thank the team, and to thank all the colleagues of Prodways Group, because almost every figure had a two digit growth KPI. Everything is going very well. It's very exciting, and this is why we are going now to talk about how we're going to accelerate this business in the market of a lot of opportunities.
Because we want to build on this wonderful 2022 year to prepare the future, which will be a wonderful future. Just a reminder, we have several phase in the life of Prodways Group. The first phase was the creation in 2013, one employee, zero revenue, and just the creation and the constitution of Prodways. It took four years to start this first phase of having new development, integrations of technologies, of patents, and developing the first products. This first phase took four years, after we started a second phase, 2018 until 2022, with a consolidation and a wonderful effort made on profitability, on rationalization, on also deciding where will be the effort in terms of investment and what is a good business model.
The end of this second phase brought us to the situation of today, EUR 81 million revenue, 11.4 EBITDA with 480 people. We are now thinking about the new phase. This new phase start for us in 2023. We're going to ramp up revenue, and we are going also to make some acceleration in development on R&D, also accelerating the organic growth, also by investing in sales and marketing. For us, it's a key moment for us in the life of the group, starting this wonderful, exciting new project of this new phase. Concretely, why now?
Because you've seen the good results of Prodways in 2022, we are today ready, we know that the processes, the team, the tools, the products are ready for going to something more aggressive for the future. Also because this is not something we are pleased with, it's a fact, as I told already a few minutes ago, the majority of our peers are facing difficulties because they are doing now what we did a few months and a few years ago. We have already talked about the average EBITDA margin of our peers also the fact that they are now consuming some cash. We have a lot of information which is completely public on the head contradiction of some of them.
One key element which was also surprising us, it's the withdrawal from European areas from some of our peers from the U.S. who decided to stop the European investment. Which is for us the good momentum and the good timing to go further because customers come to us because they look for a partner in Europe, but also in the U.S. We also have the presence in the U.S. To be able to go with them for the next phase of this industrial maturity. We have done an exercise during the year with all the management team, but not only.
This exercise was done also with almost every employee of the company, where we define what would be our plan and what are we able to achieve in 2028, by, you know, putting together our sales organization, our operations, our M&A strategy, our vision on the product portfolio, our investment on R&D. The results comes to this kind of ambition. Clearly, the ambition is to be able to reach a revenue around EUR 200 million in 2028, always keeping the idea of having a EBITDA margin around and over 15%, which is key. Our growth plan is always a profitable growth plan, and this was one of the key element for the exercise.
How to grow profitably means making some choices, some decision, and of course, working on every operational unit very smartly to define those potential element. The company will be stronger clearly, because we think that in this ambition, we could reach those EUR 200 million revenue with margin over 15% EBITDA with circa 800 people. Also very important is the amount of CapEx needed, which is we think reasonable, circa 5% of revenue per year for R&D and production capacity. Today, we see that we can also self-finance part of it with a strong cash flow.
This is the plan that we ambition to do in the next years, thanks to the good results of 2022, the trend we see this year, and the future motivation and excitement of our team to be very proud, very happy, to work in this company at that time of the industry maturity. How we're going to do that? Some growth relays. First, the medical sector is still important for us, it's key. We expect EUR 100 million revenue potential for Prodways in this in this plan, where clearly the addressable market is still very big. It's EUR 2 billion. Our plan is ambitious, but really realistic when we see where we start from. We have, of course, a MOVINGLight technology.
We also have our know-how and certification, all the pre-previous element that already talked about. I'm not going to repeat. What is also important is we're not looking only at the clear aligner or the digital dentistry, but we also open to other medical devices for this first segment. The second segment is the segment of the industrial customers. New materials are coming. We are positioning industrial printers in some of those industries, and we see new applications coming on electrical vehicles, robotics, automotive, aerospace, optics, et cetera. This could bring around a EUR 70 million revenue at the plan as an ambition. Through the geographic expansion, because you know that we are looking really to grow geographically.
We have today the technology, the portfolio, the team, the know-how, and the good solutions to go in new territories, new geographies, in several businesses. Odeology, one of them, 3D software. It's true in all the 5 business units where we think that geographically we have a potential to grow, and this would bring almost EUR 30 million in our plan. This is where we are today. We see that we have a lot to do. We are very confident for the future. New initiative already are starting this year and are laying the groundwork. We are already today investing in sales and marketing, so in order to be able to cover more widely those territories and those product range. It started.
You see we have 80 recruitment plans for 2023 all over the group in every different geographies and different areas. We are also launching new innovative products and material. We launched already the new denture material. It was announced in March at IDS, which is the most famous exhibition for dental worldwide. Also we have new versions of printers to come during the year. We also are targeting R&D to improve the productivity. This, we are doing it together with customer, which is also very good news to make R&D smartly with customer who ask us to test some new possibilities in order to improve their productivity. We don't do that alone. We always work with customers to try to understand their pinpoints and to find the solutions to cover them.
Also, our sites need sometimes some extensions. This is also very good news because we are improving and increasing the production, and we need some capacity to be able to cover the needs of our customer. And this also is not spending too much around a EUR 2 million CapEx over the next two years. It's something very reasonable and completely mastered by our management team. When we say that, this is one of our last information, what is the outlook and the guidance for 2023? How explained, 2023 is the first year of our BOOST program. BOOST program is a five-year-and-a-half plan where we think this is now the good time to invest. It's a good time to have new products, to have sales and marketing team, to have new options of discovering territories.
Our guidance for 2023 is a revenue around 10% growth, excluding new potential acquisitions. This will take into account the positive trend of the activities and certain caution in the current macro economic context. We have to be cautious, but still, we have also to be realistic about the fact that the trend is good, that the product trend is good, that the answer from the customer is good, and the pipeline is good. Around 10% growth sounds for us a good guidance for this year, having in mind that we're going to invest and to prepare the future. In terms of profitability, we have a guidance around 12% current EBITDA margin, thus improving versus the second semester H2 of 2022.
Despite the beginning of the investment of the new development plan that already started at the beginning of the year to make the plan feasible. We didn't want to lose time, we started already the investment plan at the beginning of 2023. This is a financial calendar that you can find easily on our website for the next information to come. I will let you look at that and look at that also on the website. I want really to thank you all of us for your participation, for your presence at this call.
I hope you are as excited as we are on the results we are showing, because we are still very concentrated, but honestly, we are very happy about what happened and how the team and our customers and partners worked with us during this year. Now please, you're welcome to ask any questions, and we will try with Laurent to share and to be able to answer your questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Dear participant, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one. To withdraw your question, please press star two. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll take our first question from Kévin Sidhoum from ODDO BHF. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, and thank you for the deep presentation. I will have four questions, please. First on the stock that has increased significantly in H2 for the reason you mentioned. Should we expect the working cap to be for the stock and then the working cap to be fully normalized in full year 2023? Second question was about the minority stake that was mentioned for the sale of a minority stake that was mentioned in the press release. Can you disclose the company name and why you intend to sell that stake? I will have also two questions on the new BOOST plan. First on the EUR 200 million revenues targeted for 2028. That represents basically a 16%.
Is it fair to assume an annual run rate of 10% inorganic, and 6% or less of M&A to reach that target? Last question on M&A. Can you develop maybe further your M&A strategy? Basically, will you continue to target more likely bolt-on acquisition or could you consider more strategic deal during the plan? Thank you.
Thank you very much. You want to answer the first questions, please? Go ahead.
As you want.
Yes.
Regarding the working capital, as mentioned, is already reducing since the beginning of the year. We expect not to be normal by the end of the year, but not so far, between a range of 3% or 4% of our turnover by the end of the year.
Okay. Minority stake.
The second question?
Yeah.
Yes, the minority. This is the only company we have into our perimeter, which is below the 70% that we will sell normally before the end of the week.
You can find it very easily on the documents. The reason why we want to sell this minority stake is because it's a company which originally started with our printers to make their business. Today, this company is competing with almost all our big customers. We thought smart to say that now it's a level of maturity that those companies are so good in terms of volume and presence on the market, that having a minority stake as Prodways Group in a company producing parts competing with our big customers was not maybe the best idea. There was no obligation to do it. We had no questions or no any remark from any players, we found it the good timing to do it now.
It's also in line with the three phases we presented before. You know, customers start with a development plan phase. In this development plan phase, they are looking for partners, industrial partners who have the technology. Sometimes they call us, they ask us to take stake or to participate or to make an industrial partnership or to invest in their company. The second phase where they are bigger, they understand how it works, and they are able to produce more. In this case, they are in a phase where they make their own business and start to have revenue, customers, and are becoming bigger. On the third phase, when they become a key player on the market, they are competing with other players who are using our technology.
In fact, it's a good question because it shows exactly what we presented before, the evolution and the maturity of our partners. In this case, we had minority in this company, and today the good time, because this company is not anymore a small one starting, it's one of the leader, and we are also selling to other leaders. For the third question about the Boost and the EUR 200 million revenue, it's an ambition. I want to be very clear on that. It's really an exercise that we made collectively as an ambition.
If I'm going to tell you if it's 10% growth, 6% M&A, it's difficult to say, but I think your assumption is more or less realistic because we see that on organic growth, this is more or less what we did in 2022. What we give as a guidance in 2023, so it makes sense. Now, on M&A, yes, we already have identified some potential interesting companies. For the moment, we are focusing on the same kind of acquisitions we've made in the past. You know Creabis, you know Auditech.
You see the kind of companies where the revenue is from EUR 5 million, EUR 4 million-EUR 10 million, which is absolutely profitable. This is a key element, where we can create very strong synergies, in terms of productivity, in terms of supply chain, in terms of sales and marketing, which make quick value creation, of course. As we told you, the environment is moving a lot. Some of our peers are in difficulties. If there is a potential bigger strategic acquisitions or, yes, projects to work with a company in a side, size, sorry, bigger than what I just presented, it's something we're going to look at also. It's not in the ambition of the plan, but we know this may happen. You know, 5 years, it's a long period.
A lot of things are going to appear. I can also tell you honestly that companies which are profitable and having a business model like we have now are called very often, or at least people are looking at what we're doing. We know that some potential discussions may occur. For your last questions, I think I answered already. The further M&A strategy, yes, I answered. First, in the plan, we have identified several companies like Creabis and Auditech in terms of size and spirit. We are also ready and open to look at bigger strategic moves.
Thank very much for your answer. Maybe a quick follow-up question on your last, on your last answer on M&A. In case of a bigger deal, of a more strategic deal, will you consider raising equity, or do you think cash and debt will be enough?
I mean, it's really difficult to answer today.
Depend on the price.
on the deal. It will depend on the price. It will depend also on the board decisions. Today we are quite confident that the M&A that we are doing, we are strong enough today to absorb. Now we don't know what will be the future, and we have all different options. This is where we are in quite comfortable situation today because we are able, even if we need to raise, to have the good fundamentals to find the money necessary. Also we are always going to prepare a clear integration synergy plan and business plan to drive, like always, but to be consistent on the opportunity of those acquisitions. Everything is open.
For sure we have room for larger debt, so if needed, I think that it will be quite easy to find money with our bank or partner.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you for for your answer.
Thank you. Thank you for your question.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, please press star one to ask for a question. We'll pause for another quick moment to allow everyone an opportunity to ask for a question. There are no further question on the line. Please proceed. There are no further question on the line, sir. Please proceed.
Okay. If there's no other questions, thank you very much.
Thank you, sir.
We have one?
Yes.
Okay. Okay, we have one question.
Hello?
Yes.
We'll take our next question from Eric Blanc. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Okay.
You hear me?
Yes. Hello.
Hello.
Sorry. Just two question. First, on tax rate, I am a little surprised by the amount of tax you paid. Can you explain a little? My second question is also on accounting, is about R&D. You said that you are going to have EUR 3.2 million in term of CapEx, I mean in R&D. What is the balance between R&D capitalized and R&D amortized for 2022? I have another question also. You want to-
Yes, please.
To answer?
Give us your last question, and we will answer the first three.
My last question is more general. You are in a business where, in materials, I think there is an inflation part. Can you give us an idea of the amount of inflation in the growth of 2022, and what could be in your forecast of 10% inflation in 2023? Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps there is no inflation. Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Okay. I think that's amongst answering the two first questions.
Yes, please go ahead.
Tax rates. please refer to the, to the,
In French.
Yes, the free cash flow table in our documentation.
Yeah
as you will see, there is a split between in term of tax. The charge of the year, what is in charge and what we pay. The EUR 3 million in term of charge, and we pay only, if I remember well, something like EUR 1.4 million.
EUR 1.4 million.
EUR 1.4 million, yes, exactly, million EUR. The main impact is the depreciation of some assets, we add in the account, by the end of 2021.
You mean, credit tax assets?
Exactly.
Okay. Why is that? You have to revert your forecast in terms of profits?
In one company, yes. Therefore we need.
Okay
the accounting rules obliged us to.
Depreciate
such of assets.
Very clear.
Okay.
Okay.
Second questions, related to our R&D, and the split between capitalization and the charges, if I remember well, your questions. This is again into our documentation. What we have into our P&L is roughly EUR 2.7 million in term of R&D, including amortization. This is the amount for 2022. It was something the same, roughly the same, something like EUR 2.9 million, I think, in 2021.
Mm-hmm.
In term of CapEx, EUR 3.2 million, including R&D. It's not only R&D, but it's most part of R&D. You have all the figures into the documentation. I don't remember precisely the amount of R&D capitalized. It is something about EUR 2 million. EUR 2 million capitalized, and into the P&L you have EUR 2.7 million, including amortization.
EUR 2 million amortized also?
No, less than.
In amortization?
Less than that.
In depreciation?
Less than that.
Okay.
For your question about about inflation, yes, like everyone, we have seen inflation. Just to remind that the discussion we had in 2022, we started to work on this inflation subject very early on three subjects that we started to anticipate. First one is the energy cost of energy, where we renewed, rediscussed, and renegotiated with our energy suppliers in the two, three main factories where it was significant in order to have those price increase reduced and absorbed on 2023 by renegotiating long-term contracts or by changing supplier. It was done. We've discussed that in a previous meeting. On the energy inflation cost, it was absorbed and well managed upfront.
The second area on inflation, it's on the supply of parts or material or monomers for example, our material division where we buy these products. Here also, we anticipated by negotiating long-term contracts in order to be able not to face too important price increase from our suppliers. Also, in any case, we also increased our prices, of course, in every division and in every operating units. We wanted to cover the potential price increase we face from suppliers or by having renegotiation of long-term contracts, securing the volume and the price, and also, adapting our prices to our final customer who understood and accepted big majority without any difficulty this price increase due to inflation, for sure, because they understand globally the situation.
Unfortunately for the economical context, our competitors also are facing the same problem. The price increase was not seen as an aggressive or other reaction from Prodways. It was seen as, unfortunately, a normal e-evolution of the market needs. The third aspect on inflation is on the salaries. We also had to planify and to increase some salaries during this year, 2023, which was planned and budgeted in the plan. Here also, we compensated it by increasing our prices to the market. The impact of inflation is covered globally by the three actions we anticipated on energy supply contracts long term, and salary increases.
What kind of number we can put on this price increase or the increase of the cost? Is that the same?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. It's around 5% as an average.
For 2022?
For 2022, it was less than that.
It was less in 2022.
Mm.
We started those actions in order to have of this 5%, effect on 2023.
In 2022, the charges where we suffered the most from inflation were energy. It's a low part of our P&L.
Okay.
It's, it is.
When you say long-term contract from, for, plastic and energy, that means 2024 or also, or you are covered on 2024?
Yeah. On some contracts, the long terms could be two or three years.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
There are no further question on the line. Please proceed with your closing remarks, sir.
We think there is no more questions. Thank you very much for your participation. It was a big pleasure to share this presentation with you. Thank you, Laurent.
These recorded figures.
Yeah. See you soon for the next results of Prodways Group. Thank you.
Good evening.
Good evening. Bye-bye.