Good morning. This is the Basler 2023 Earnings Call. We will wait one more minute to make sure that everyone is on board. So it seems to be that the majority is on board here to the call. Welcome again, warm welcome, and good morning to our 2023 Earnings Call. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Hardy. I'm CFO, COO of the company. And before we go into the topic of our today's presentation, I would like to remind you on our disclaimer that the statements that I'm doing here are based on views and assumptions made by the management using information available at this time. These are forward-looking statements by nature, so they are subject to significant known and unknown risk and uncertainties. Yeah, please read carefully the disclaimer, and let's come to the presentation.
The presentation is in the four different sections. We will start with an executive summary. We will then go into the financials, followed by a quick glance at our share development, and then coming to the outlook at the end of the presentation. And then we have, at the end of the session today, also time for Q&A, and I'm looking forward to have a lively Q&A session after the presentation. Starting with the executive summary and starting with the market environment, and it has been really a 2023, a very difficult and challenging year. The markets surrounding, especially in North America and in Asia, the markets were very weak. This is due to a backlash in Corona, in the vertical markets of consumer electronics, laboratory automation, and logistics.
So we were facing a significant downcycle, and this downcycle has been also or had been amplified, in addition by high inventories at our customer's side, due to exaggerating order behavior in the years before due to the chip crises in 2021 and 2022. So there was a lot of distortion in the market. And in China, on top of these distortions, we're also facing cancellation kicking in, especially in the first half year, that were to this extent unexpected. At that point in time, we come to this later on when we have a look at our bookings and billings development over the course of 2023. All in all, as one indicator here, obviously, it's not so easy in our markets to exactly quantify the development of the markets.
But one good indicator that we are usually using is the VDMA industry tracker, so the monthly reporting of German vision companies, vision component companies delivering into the world markets. Looking at this, German vision components industry billings were down by 14%, and bookings were down by 21%. So, double-digit decline in the market. We come to this also later. The European market itself was stronger, but especially these numbers here were negatively impacted by the exporting business towards US and also towards especially Asia. So how was the situation at Basler in 2023? It was definitely one of the most challenging years in our history. Our bookings in total were down by 33%, our billings down by 25%. Next to the impact on the top line, we had also weaker gross margins.
The gross margins went down to 42%, due to low production utilization, consequential effects by the supply crisis because we had to order quite some volume for high prices, and we had high stock then, and we need to eat through the stocks. We had also quite some price pressure in China due to the high intensity of competition there, but also due to the weak RMB, due to the weak local currency. So, due to this unexpected strong slowdown that hit us during an organizational expansion course, we were forced by mid of the year to go into a restructuring. And this restructuring, we entered then into a situation where we reduced roughly our team by 190-200 employees and reduced our current, let's say, break-even point down to EUR 200 million roughly.
With regard to the pre-tax results, we went into a loss of EUR 8 million before restructuring and EUR 22 million, including our one-off restructuring efforts. Yeah, with regard to the sustainability, so the non-financial reporting, we made quite some progress on that side. We are on our journey to become net-zero emission by, in the Scope 1 and 2 by 2030. We also, I mean, have in our aim to reduce significantly Scope 3 emissions, but we relate this to sales as we are a growth company. You also will see that or can see that we made here down on the slide, we made quite some progress on the different ratings with the different rating companies. So we are happy with this progress here.
And you can read much more sound information in our newest sustainability report that is available on the website. I mentioned already we were forced to go into restructuring. It was definitely a strenuous process, no doubt about it. You see the with regard to the size of the team, you see how we reduced the amount of employees over the course of 2023. So we entered the year with 1,133 employees, and we went out of the year, the fiscal year 2023, with 942 full-time equivalents. As you can see, the split has not significantly changed, so we were able to manage to keep also the balance in the company, even in the situation where we reduced by and large 200 FTEs within just six months of time frame.
So the company is in a good balanced mode to now shape further and work on the future together. You see a slide increase of marketing and sales. This was by intention, also keeping our front line towards customers strong, and that is definitely paying off. We are already seeing this. With regard to products, I mean, we invested heavily also last year in new products. Just to highlight some of the topics here, we invested and continue to invest heavily in our newest platform for the mainstream business, so our bread-and-butter business and the ace 2 with new features, new sensors, also supporting new interfaces. We also invested in the higher-end products that we are offering.
The camera line is called boost, and typically, we combine this with so-called frame grabbers, so preprocessing cards that are able to process all the high amount of data that such high-end cameras create. And we also made a lot of progress with regard to our what we call accessories, so the cables, lenses, simple interface cards, and also lighting components. And the real beauty that comes from this selection of hardware products is our, as you know, our pylon software development kit that connects all the different hardware products and enables the customer to embed, let's say, the hardware products, the vision hardware products that we offer with his or her system or device. We also added the so-called vTools, so we are no longer just, let's say, connecting the hardware products, just giving the framework to work.
We also offer optionally our customers the possibility to work with our vTools and solve a vision application. Also on our service offering with regard to the website, we did a lot of progress. We have launched a new website in the second half of the year supporting our, let's say, full-line provider positioning, but also, and, giving the customer a lot of tools in order to select the right products and, and find the, good documentation and support the customer in the selection process and also in the design process of his or her, the system, development. So also on that side here, we, we did quite some progress. This all in all, yeah, is supporting our general strategy.
This is a repetition we are continuously doing here, that we are on a journey from the lower left-hand side here of a single-component camera company mainly focused on factory automation or to factory automation. We are on our journey step by step to increase the product line on the Y-axis here to become a full-line provider and also expand the markets that we address. So, this is here from, let's say, factory automation to all in all computer vision. We have already made a lot of progress the last years. We are fully convinced that this is the right strategy for the future. And we see there is no, let's say, correlation to the current market cycles that we are facing that obviously we are much stronger than what we expected. But we are fully convinced about this strategy and move forward strongly on that route.
Yeah, coming to the financials of last year, starting with our bookings and billings, and here is a longer-term context. What you can see is, when we look in the last two years, we came from relatively high booking levels, around EUR 80 million. And already in 2022, there was a situation that the order entries went down significantly. But you could also see in 2022, we were able to increase the sales and keep it relatively stable. This was due to the backlog that we had in 2022 and also the delivery constraints that took us some time to clean up this backlog. And then in 2023, when we entered, we still had significant backlog.
In the first half of the year, we could also live from this backlog, but unfortunately, what you can see is the order entries went further down. We also got in cancellations in Q1 and Q2 on some with a sizable amount that instantly also reduced further our backlog. Then we found ourselves in the situation that the markets did not pick up in the second half of the year. The backlog was more or less back to normal, and we had a situation that the revenue went down to a level here of EUR 41 in Q3 and EUR 46 in Q4. This was then also when we were able to see and anticipate what's going on. We by mid of the year went into the restructuring. Looking at the different regions because the market situation was very different.
We had a good business situation in Europe. So first half year even, we grew by roughly 20%. In the second half year, the European market cooled down a little bit, but we were still making roughly a side move over the course of the year. We had already a good year in 2022, so the year before. In contrast to this, whole Asia and North America went into a significant down cycle. The regions were down by more than 30% those regions. This also created not only a reduction in top line and in bookings level in total, but also a regional shift. So normally, we are quite above 50% with our Asian business. Long term, it's more in the range of 53%-55%. This went down to 47%.
America's typically is in the range of 20% revenue share, and it went down to 16%. Europe went up from normally slightly below 30% to 37%. So, the European region has made quite some inroads into the revenue distribution and run into this situation. But overall, we ended up with EUR 203 million. The year before, we had roughly EUR 275 million or EUR 272 million, so a significant decline. Looking into our gross margins, you can see here on a long-term track the last eight quarters; it has come down quite a bit, especially also in the second half of the year of 2023. It came further down from a level of 45% before to, let's say, 39%-40%. This is a blended mix of different effects. We have spot-buy legacy effects.
We have currency effects, especially in Japan or somewhat from the Japanese yen and from RMB. We have price pressure in China. But we have also significant, especially in the second half of the year, we had significant lower economies of scale in our fixed costs for the production. And we also, and this is in Q4, we had statistical range reductions in our ERP system. So because on a statistical basis, range reductions are done, depot material is depreciated. As we are coming at the moment from kind of a bullwhip where we have high inventories and low demand, the statistics are kicking in and material is automatically depreciated. However, normally, these materials are not useless.
We most of it can be used later, but we don't know when and, because that's depending on when the demand is picking up and, this specific material is in demand. So we let the reduction done here. So with regard to the earnings, yeah, you can see the effects of the restructuring in the second half of the year. So we kept the company around break even in the first half of 2023. But in the second half, we aggressively started the restructuring. The majority of the one-off effects, we had already in Q3, so with a minus of EUR 16.3 million. And then we had another loss around EUR 4 million in the fourth quarter. Yeah, the P&L at a glance here. We talked already about order entries and sales.
Gross profit also here went down by 35% down to EUR 85.7 million. So you see the huge decline here. The year before, we had EUR 132 million roughly in gross profit. So there is clearly and there was clearly the mismatch of the size of the organization that we increased and the gross profit that went down that forced us into restructuring activities. The EBITDA before structuring, EUR 8.5 million. So we kept this positive also after restructuring, but on the EBIT and EBT, you see that before structuring with regard to EBT, we ended up at minus EUR 8 million loss. And we had EUR 20.2 million, as we projected, including all the one-off effects of the restructuring. Net income minus EUR 13.8 million. And then accordingly, the earnings per share at minus EUR 0.45. Yeah, the development of the free cash flow.
Also, here a little bit longer context. The year before in 2020, we had quite some M&A activities. This was in Q1 and in Q3, so there were extraordinary capex investments. And then in 2023, we were starting the year with relatively high investing cash flow. You can also see that, in Q1, the operating cash flow, due to lower sales, was negative. Also, we got a lot of material inflow in the second quarter. We were able, at least on the operational side, to keep the cash flow positive, but the investment level was higher. So the free cash flow was still also negative in Q2. In Q3, we, let's say, reduced further our investments.
In Q3 and Q4, we were on, I would say, now the low run rate we run the company with, which is around EUR 2.5 million investing cash flow per quarter. You see that by the end of the year, we were able with the reduction in personnel, and also slightly picking up revenues by the end of the year, also to increase again our operational cash flow. We also in this phase in Q4 were able to reduce our inventory levels. Yeah, having a look at the cash accounts here or a year-to-year comparison of the cash flow. So we started the year with EUR 28.7 million cash account. We ended up with EUR 32.2 million.
So the free cash flow was negative EUR 9.2 million, but we refinanced this on the one end with the increase of debts, but also with the sale of treasury shares, so etc. with using equity by the beginning of the year. With regard to net cash, if we look at the net cash without leasing, it was by the end of the year roughly EUR 29 million. So the liabilities to the banks EUR 61 million roughly, and cash and cash equivalents. There is a typo in 32 million. Yeah, with regard to the balance sheet, the overall sum has been reduced a bit, but not substantially. On the asset side, there were some changes.
On the one end, you can see this is in the fourth line that we have our new building that you now can see in the balance sheet since beginning of the year. So the expansion of the building in Ahrensburg and our headquarters led to an increase in the building here. You can see that we reduced the inventory over the course of the year. There is still more potential, but at least we were able, until since we had quite some difficult time in the beginning of the year, in the second half, we were able to start reducing our material, our inventories. And also obviously, the revenues went down, and so the receivables went down quite a bit.
On the liability side, no big structural change with regard to the balance of equity and debts or liabilities, because we, as mentioned earlier, financed the restructuring by, let's say, additional loans, but also by additional equity, by selling treasury shares beginning of 2023. Yeah, let's have a look to the share. I mean, obviously, in such a difficult year, it's no surprise the share price went down significantly from EUR 30 beginning of the year, and we ended the year with EUR 11.5. I mean, this is clear. We have to bring back the company to our, let's say, used growth mode. And obviously, the share price at the moment is relatively low.
With regard to the dividends, yeah, we will propose so as board and as supervisory board, we have made the suggestion for the main shareholders meeting, and we will propose to pay no dividends for the fiscal year 2023. The reason behind is obvious. We have quite a significant loss in the year. And also, we want to, let's say, use all our liquidity and in order to bring back the company to a sound profitability and to a sound growth path. And for that, we decided to propose no dividends. I hope that we get from the main shareholders meeting and also from your support with this decision; it's in line with our dividend policy. Typically, we pay out 30% from our earnings after tax. So we have done this in the last years.
There were always some deviations up or down, but this year, we decided to propose zero dividend. Yeah, then, we are coming to the section, which I think is, yeah, obviously of most interest for the participants of this call, to our outlook. So, how do we see the outlook? So first of all, the assumptions that we are having for this year. We believe that the markets will stepwise recover over the course of the year. It will not be a significant jump. It will be a step-by-step recovery. We believe that the demand is rising gradually over the course of the year. In the first half of the year, we will see this demand will still be muted by excessive inventories.
As we have many customers, it's not that all our customers at the same time go out of their excessive inventory levels. It's a journey where some customers are already out of this excessive inventory situation, and others are still in. But we are seeing that this is still impacting the demand in the first half year, but it's slowly getting out of, or it's slowly less and less muting the demand. The recovery in consumer electronics and logistics is expected for the second half of the year. Also here, we do not expect a super strong recovery.
We see this more happening in 2025, but we are anticipating that the markets in the second half of the year in those two key verticals for us will recover and will be better than the situation we have seen last year. We believe the geopolitical tensions and uncertainties will remain. We need to maneuver through this. And we also believe the high competition intensity in Asia, especially in China, will also remain, since we have pretty aggressive competitors there, and the markets are still very weak. So under these assumptions, we guide for this year a revenue of EUR 190 million-EUR 210 million and an earnings margin of 0%-5%.
So our aim is definitely to be in the profitable zone this over the course of this year, and be in the range of a, let's say, low single-digit earnings margin and working full throttle ahead, preparing the company for a real recovery of the markets. And it will be also this is what we foresee, let's say, happening a step-by-step improvement and giving you clear indication for the first quarter. We expect to be here in the range of EUR 45 million or a little bit less than EUR 45 million in sales. This is below our break-even point. So and the book-to-bill ratio we are seeing at the moment is around 1. So when you compare then the bookings, that we had in Q3 and Q4, you see a step-by-step improvement.
But unfortunately, the markets are not strong enough at the moment that we will be able in Q1 already to be back in the profitable zone. We also foresee to have gross margin improvements over the course of 2024, and this will start already in Q1. And just a side note from our side, the German organizations, they were in short-time work in the first quarter still. We will also end this with the 1st of April. So in the second quarter, we will have also the full capacity available of the company, starting in the first quarter and the 1st of April. How about our midterm plan? We are fully convinced that our markets, the computer vision market, will come back to a growth level of, by and large, 7%-8%, so high single-digit compound annual growth rates.
We are also convinced that our strategy is the right one towards the full-line provider, the solution provider that I mentioned earlier, and that this strategy will give us the possibility to differentiate better in the market, but also to address a wider market space, a bigger pie, and to create more share of wallet or get more share of wallet of our clients. So with this in mind, we are convinced that we can bring back the company to our growth track that we have shown before. Our aim is by 2027 to reach a level of EUR 300 million in sales and to reach this profitable with a earnings before tax level of 12%. So this would then mean to bring back the company to a compound annual growth track of 15%.
Also, our free cash flow, we guide that we can bring this back to a 70% cash conversion rate before acquisitions. So in order to get there, we assume that the markets at the latest will recover by 2025. And we also assume that at least I mean, having geopolitical stress and also an intense competition in China, this guidance is under the assumption that we have still access to the China market. Yeah, and given those assumptions, we are looking forward to reach those 2027 goals. And having this said, I'm also at the end of the presentation and would like to open the Q&A session.
Before we start the Q&A session, maybe some organizational information. You can either use the chat functionality, and I'm going to read your question on your behalf, or you can raise your hand, and we will unmute you so that you can speak to the audience and to our CFO.
Any questions?
Yes, first question is from Lasse. Please confirm also that we have unmuted you.
Yes. Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, Lasse. I can hear you.
Perfect. Thank you very much. Maybe we just if we just start on the guidance. You mentioned kind of book-to-bill around 1, which implies again a sequential improvement in order intake versus Q4, roughly. How do you can you help us understand how you or what's your visibility for the rest of the year? You know, we're now out of Chinese New Year, so I guess you've had conversations with bigger customers in China. So if you could just shed some light on, you know, essentially a year of no orders from these bigger customers, you know, how they think they're investing, especially in light of, you know, you know, the semi CapEx cycle for 2025, etc. So that would be really useful. Thank you.
Okay. Welcome, Lasse. So the situation is, at the moment, when we look into the order structure and also customer feedback structure of the recent weeks and recent months, we are seeing that the orders in Europe are still more robust than what we have expected. When we had earlier calls, I was telling you that we were expecting that Europe, being late to the down cycle maybe, further cools off. At the moment, we are seeing Europe still robust, and Europe is then, yeah, a variety, let's say, mix of applications.
And then we have what you were asking about the Asia-Pacific region and some of our U.S. clients that are very much connected to the semicon, and especially electronic assembly, machinery, CapEx. With regard to this market, we are still lacking even after Chinese New Year substantial order improvements. We get positive qualitative feedback, but it's not turning into order entries. So we are still having, let's say, a weak, very weak situation on in those verticals and those countries that are specifically having big chunks of electronic assembly or consumer electronics. How is the visibility? I have to say, I mean, all of the people we talk about are talking about improvement in the second half of the year. And they are motivated and optimistic.
But, I mean, we have also to be careful, and this is also why we are in our guidance. We choose the guidance as we choose the guidance, because we want to see substantial order entries. What I can tell you is we are not losing business. It's really a market situation.
Okay. Understood.
It's as foggy as I, yeah, as in Q4, actually, to be honest.
Yeah. Okay. Makes sense. Okay. So your guidance this year doesn't really assume a, you know, a substantial uptick in the second half.
Yeah. It's not a substantial uptake. It is an uptake, obviously. I mean, math is easy on that side, but not a substantial one because if these markets come back after, I mean, 1.5 or almost 2 years of down cycle, then they will most likely come back strongly, I that, that I would, you know, suspect.
Okay. Understood. And then just one more question, if I may, on gross margin. I guess the ambition is still to kind of get back to that 50% gross margin that you had historically. What's the—I mean, if we—I guess if I take the period now until 2027, you know, what's the path to get there? Are we going to see a big jump up in gross margin this year, or is this more going to be a, you know, a 2025, 2026 topic?
Yeah. I mean, this is, as you know, margins are really kind of a complex topic, but I would like to give you a feeling here. I mean, we will see, what we anticipate is kind of a journey starting maybe with, I mean, starting definitely above 40% in the beginning of the year and then step-by-step go into the direction of 48%, maybe 50% by end of the year. But, and then you can anticipate a linear it will be a step up, from last year to this year, so from December to January, this what we anticipate because we had quite some homework. Also in Q4, we had the extraordinary effect that I mentioned that we had statistical depreciations then on a higher level.
So we will see a step up towards, let's say, above 40%, and then, step-by-step, we will manage it towards the 50%. And my expectation is to be, yeah, at least by end of the year at a level of around 48%. Yeah. So it should be not a multi-year hike.
Okay. Understood. Thanks. I'll go back to the queue.
Okay. Next question is from Robert.
Hi. Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. I would actually like to dig a little bit deeper into the last question on gross margin. If I understood correctly, the spa I mean, on the one side, you, of course, have the low capacity utilization that put pressure on the margin last year, but another big part was, of course, the aggressive pricing from Chinese competitors. So my original expectation was that maybe, you know, margins would remain depressed for the remainder of the year. So what exactly helped you or helps you will help you to reach to come close to the 50% at least on a quarterly basis in Q4 already?
Yeah. So the one end is we are still, as you know, we are step-by-step eating up material that we acquired for a higher price in the chip during the chip crisis. This will continue as a positive effect. Then on, what we have also done is a year ago we have increased prices in certain markets. But when the demand when we had huge order backlogs and then the demand went down, this never fully materialized.
Also here, we still have a positive legacy effect from all this turmoil in the chip crisis. So we see that due to those, when now the customers order for the higher price, that we will have a positive effect. And then I can tell you, we are already working quite hard on reduction measures since mid of last year. And the first impacts of those measures, the cost reduction measures, will also be already visible in the first quarter. So it's really also that it's not just the external situation. We also have done quite a lot internally to reduce our material costs.
Okay. But at the end, this means you still feel confident that, you know, aside from the temporary effects you just talked about, that you will be able to maintain the 15% gross margin even when faced with much more aggressive competition in Asia?
So this is at least, let's say, a goal that we are having. This is the working point we are striving for. And the answer towards this, let's say, price pressure needs to be to, I mean, first of all, also make business in regions and verticals where the competition level is lower. And the other thing is, the approach of our full-line provider/solution provider to bring in much more value add with regard to consultancy to our clients, to not only compete on a single component level.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. That was very helpful.
No questions in the chat. I can't see any more questions from the audience. Maybe one or two more minutes.
Other questions?
Yeah. We have one more from Lukas, please.
Hello, Lukas. You seem to be still muted, Lukas?
Yeah . You need to confirm to unmute you. Otherwise, you can use the chat box.
Sorry. Would I be able to have a follow-up in the meantime? Lasse, I hear from very many of you. Yeah. Sure, Lasse.
Jump in.
Sure. Just in the meantime, whilst Lukas tries to write his message. Just one more thing on the, I think you have a backlog of about EUR 30 million, EUR 33 million. What's the nature of that backlog? I mean, is this now kind of normal backlog, or do you still have orders in there from, I don't know, the end of 2022, or is this really now a near-term fixed delivery?
This is yeah. Absolutely normal situation, no legacy, no legacies, and near-term. Yeah. And I will and this is also can give you indication. I mean, also since the end of last year, the backlog situation is relatively stable. It goes a little bit up and down, but it's relatively stable on this level. And it's relatively short-term. So the vast majority is of this backlog are orders for, let's say, within the next two or three months. Yeah. So, the customers know that the delivery situations in the markets are very good. So they order really on short notice at the moment.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Okay. So we're going to try, again with, with Lukas. Question was, how much revenue did you include for China in 2027?
Yeah. Good question. I mean, at the moment, we are on a level, let's say, of around EUR 45 million in, in, in, in China. So roughly, let's say, roughly somewhere in between 20%-25% of our sales is realized in China. So what we are planning is that, when we look at the EUR 300 million in our midterm guidance, that China is roughly at the same level of, let's say, roughly EUR 50 million out of it. It's not at, so we do not anticipate to grow our China business again overproportional as we have done this in the last decade due to the geopolitical situation and due to the intense competition.
So we are more, let's say, at the moment, focusing our China business towards customers who are willing to pay a premium, who are interested in working explicitly with Western companies. For example, machine builders, Chinese machine builders who export their machines into the Western worlds and like to use Western components and are willing to pay a premium for it. We are focusing on those clients more and more. And this is why we anticipate strategically that there won't be super high growth rates in the future in China, but we will transform the revenues into higher quality with regard to customer loyalty and also with regard to gross margins. Hopefully, this gives you a good indication.
Yeah. Thank you. You can hear me now?
Yes. I can hear you now, Lukas.
Okay. Then I would like to follow on the midterm perspective. Your previous guidance for midterm was EUR 400 million. So if you take the gap EUR 400 million to EUR 300 million, is this just China, or is there something else?
I mean, obviously, I think from as when we look at the markets itself, we don't see big changes in the long run besides the China topic. China is a structural change. It's a geopolitical change, and there we have to anticipate. For the rest of the markets, we foresee that after all the turmoils of chip crisis, corona, high demand, then backlash, that this will normalize again.
Obviously, after such a year that we have behind us, we are now a bit careful to really figure out what is the new normal when now the swingback comes, to what level is the swingback coming. Here also, this is why it's a midterm guidance. I can't tell you exactly. I mean, it's difficult at the moment to look three quarters into the future, looking really three or four years into the future and predict exactly in what regions we're going to make the business with what verticals and customers is impossible.
But what we are believing in is, besides the Chinese structural situation, the rest of the markets will come back to their normal growth level or even exceed because in regions like the U.S. where you have maybe more chances in the future because more industry is coming back to the North American region.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks.
Lasse, I can still see your hand is raised. Do you have a follow-up question? No. Okay. So we have no more questions from the audience.
Yeah. So then maybe, if there are no more in the chat, Manuela, I'd just ask again whether there are more questions.
I would have one more. Lasse, can you answer?
Yeah. One more. Okay. Lasse.
You mentioned in your presentation, you know, your working capital sort of built down through the year. How should we think about that continuing this year? It's obviously a bit of a strange situation where you're waiting for the market to kind of come back, but, you know, demand is still pretty weak. So how should we think about working capital in 2024? Should we expect that to come down again further to, you know, more normalized level, or, or, or how are you thinking about that?
Yeah. So, when we look at the working capital, I mean, when the markets stay weak, in this sense scenario, obviously, customer receivables remain, let's say, making sideways moves. So there is no big change.
With regard to inventories, even in this situation, we believe we can reduce the working capital or the inventories further, by and large, EUR 5 million-EUR 8 million over the course of this year because we are now no longer in the situation where we have long-term contracts. So our supply is relatively close, relatively. I mean, we have still longer lead times on the supply side than on the demand side, but it's relatively close, so that we are able to manage, let's say, kind of insight, which enables us to, yeah, to further reduce inventories over the course of the year, especially starting in Q2. Q1 is, in that regard, a bit difficult that we shifted over some deliveries from 2023- 2024, but over the course of the year, definitely, we are positive to even in a weak demand situation to reduce further our inventories.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah. Welcome. Okay. If there are no further questions, then I thank you very much for your participation. Looking forward, I think most of you I will see soon in the Q1 report and wish you a nice afternoon and happy Easter time. See you soon. Bye-bye.