We warmly welcome you to our first half year report for Basler. We do this together today, Dietmar and myself. We will share the presentation as follows. I will do the executive summary, the financials, and give a quick glance at our share performance. Dietmar will do the outlook, and we do together then the Q&A session, where we have lots of time. Before I start with the executive summary, I just would like to remind you here on our disclaimer, some legal stuff, that all the statements we are making today are views on assumptions made by us using information available at the time today, and the forward-looking statements we are making by nature are subject to significant known and unknown risk and uncertainties.
Yeah, starting with the executive summary, and starting with the market environment, we see that on the chip supply, this is mostly over. What we are seeing now is this, is the opposite effect we see on the chip stock inventory levels in the whole supply chain, and our suppliers and us and also our clients. We see extensive stock levels at the moment, but the availability of chips is much better. There might be some, some exceptional cases, but in general, the chip supply is better than much better than the last quarters. On the demand side, we see significant regional differences. Starting with China, here we see that the rebound is still waiting.
We only see the solar verticals and the battery equipment verticals that are where demand is good, but all the rest of the market is still in a very muted and very weak. There is still no, no real rebound after COVID in our markets in China. In Asia Pacific, we see also here extremely weak demand, especially due to the reason that this whole area is very much dominated by semicon and consumer electronics customers, these end markets are pretty down. On North American side, it's a mixed. We have here on top of semicon electronics, also a relative weak logistics vertical. In North America, also here, our customers are giving us feedback of extensive inventory levels they need to eat through.
Also here, the market situation continues to be weak in the first half of the year. Different in Europe, totally different picture. We have in Europe a situation where when we look at the European or the German manufacturing index, and some of those are acting globally, but many of our companies have a reach, have a European focus. The industry, the billings are still up 1%, the bookings are down 13%. What we are seeing here is the first half year was strong, but now we see also that bookings and billings are further apart from each other. Looking at the German manufacturing index, just recently from July at 38 or 39, it's on a very low level.
This means for us that we have to expect that the well-running European region in the first half year will most likely go into a different, into a similar situation what we have seen already for months in North America and Asia Pacific, and also in China. How have we performed in such an environment? Our bookings are down by 41%, significant reduction in bookings. To be fair, based on a very high level first half year, 2022. We see this decline in bookings and our billings down by 11%. Lower billings decline, the tailwind, let's say, of the markets are gone. Strong regional differences, also here, as I described in the market situation, our billings in Europe or EMEA region were up by 35%.
On the contrast, or to the contrast, that in the other areas, China, Americas, and APAC, we see double-digit decline of billings, ending up to the in total blended mix of the 11% decline in billings for the first half year. Why is that? Because we have quite a strong, let's say, exposure to the weak verticals and weak regions. We come to this later in the presentation. What we have also seen in the first half year was an ongoing of cancellation. The aggressively placed orders last year were still canceled even in Q2, especially in China. It's mainly coming from China, and we are through the worst here, definitely. Looking forward, we don't expect strong cancellations happening.
Maybe here and there some, but not to the extent what we have seen in the last quarters. Our pre-tax earnings, first half-year, 0.2% earnings margin. We are, we have a black zero in the pre-tax earnings. As you remember, we were in the red zones in the first quarter. We were able to compensate this in the second quarter, mainly due to our saving programs that we have initiated already within Q1, being impacting our PNL in the second quarter. Other than these financials, I mean, we successfully went through the hypercare phase, and Hardy Mehl, we reported about this in the last earnings calls. We flipped the switch over New Year, and then we had a pretty intensive hypercare.
We successfully went through it. The system is running, the big bugs are out. Now it's, it's more, let's say, continue to improve the system, but everything is, is, is working on a normal level. As you know, a couple of weeks ago, we announced that we changed our mode from temporary cost savings to a restructuring programs. We would like to give you some more background information about this. The first background information is the why, so the, the rationale or the reasoning behind. First point, already mentioned, we see that there is a weak market outlook for the remainder of the year in China, in Asia Pacific, and in Americas, as our clients do not give us high hopes for demand that is picking up quickly. They also suffer from extensive stock levels.
On top of this, we now see Europe turning into a similar situation or into a kind of recession. We had great business in the first half year, so we can be very satisfied with that. However, we are seeing now the same signs we have seen 12 months ago from other regions, customers asking for shifting orders, order entries are going down, and therefore, we believe that Europe, as it just turns into the downturn, most likely will be weak in 2024 compared to 2023. We don't believe it's just a one or two-month effect. We believe this will have impacts also on next year's revenue in Europe. We see the continuation of China's economic and geopolitical uncertainties, so we don't see these solved.
We, we need to anticipate the risk involved with that. These are the external factors. When we look internally to our situation, we have to reflect that we had very strong organizational growth. We grew by roughly 45% number of employees in the last three years, from 800 in 2020 towards 1,150, roughly, in 2022. This we have done because we anticipated, especially last year, that our growth path will continue, the strong growth path. What we have not, let's say, expected, especially a year or 1.5 years ago, was also the very high cost inflation for material and also for personnel costs, as these are the main, let's say, cost type in, in our PNL. Both are at around 35%, 35%-40% of our of sales.
Now we are facing the situation that we have built an organization from its size for roughly a business of EUR 280 million in sales. We foresee that with the current market outlook that this level of sales will not be reached before 2025. This means there is a mismatch of organizational size and midterm market outlook. When I mean midterm, it's mainly about next year's outlook. This means for us, we can no longer cure this situation with temporary measures. We therefore decided to go into structural measures, which mainly means to reduce the size of the organization. Giving you some more information about the how, we will give you much more information in Q3 earnings report.
What we're gonna do now in the second half of the year, we keep a tight management with regard to OpEx and CapEx, as you could already see in Q2. We keep this mode of tight management, but on top, we also we shift the mode that we reduce the number of employees or reduce the full-time equivalent a number by and large, 200 FTEs in the second half of this year. This reduction is mainly focused on the regional aspect in Germany and China, as we have also the largest organization in these areas. From a functional perspective, it's mainly realized by reduction in admin, in marketing, in operations, especially on the temporary worker side and operations and in R&D.
We have prepared ourselves, as also mentioned in, in our public releases and also individual calls with some of you before, we have prepared for these measures, and we see us enabled to realize those reductions fast as a management team. The changes should all be implemented in the second half of the year. The strongest impact on the PNL will be in Q3 due to the accruals we will make, and we are fully committed as a management team to go through this phase now in order to be able to start fresh into the year of 2024. Let's have a look to the team by mid of the year. You, you can see here, mid of the year, we were roughly 1,120 people, so end of June.
The vast majority of the employees, or not the vast, but the majority of the employees are working in sales and marketing functions, especially also due to our acquisitions we have made in the past. This in the past year, this mix has shifted more towards sales and marketing employees. Also we have invested heavily in getting on board additional R&D people. 26% of our employees are working in that area, and the R&D quota of the first half year was approximately 18%. Here you see exactly the effect.
We have already invested and increased the number of R&D employees to an extent that would be healthy for a much larger organization, and we have to face this situation and work on this now to cure this misfit that we are having at the moment. Admin, 15%, production, around 21%. We heavily invested, as seen also in new product lines. The first half year, just giving you some impression, I mean, we have launched quite some products, and normally also the second half for product launches is stronger than the first half. On the mainstream side, we have launched the new 18 megapixels sensor or 18 megapixel camera versions on the Ace platform with different interfaces.
On the accessory products, we are continuously bringing new products into our product line. One of the highlights was an IP67 housing for harsh environment. On the embedded side, we worked on connectivity with Basler products and NVIDIA products on the chip side, and made our products compatible to what is called the DeepStream software development kit from NVIDIA, who is one of the market leaders in high-end embedded processing, if not the market leader. We showed a lot of different products on the recent Automatica show, also presented ourselves in a solution provider profile. Maybe you have seen on LinkedIn some of the videos around that. It was a successful show. Under the motto of "Accelerate your Vision," we exhibited there.
On the software side, as you know, we are heavily investing more and more on the software side. We brought a new release of our pylon software with new functionality on the pylon vTools, but also with connectivity and compatibility to macOS versions. Here we are broadening the compatibility. We are increasing the number of image library functions, the so-called pylon vTools in our software development kit, pylon. To put this in a nutshell, and all in all, we are making progress on our journey from a single-component company to a full-line provider, and a full-line provider that is acting in different market fields.
We are continuously expanding our product line and addressing different kind of verticals and also bundling the products together in a way that we offer the customer not only a sort or a range of different components, we offer the customer also subsystems, bundled solutions where hardware products are connected with different with our own software and application know-how or support services at our end. Yeah, coming from the executive summary to the financial part, starting with bookings and billings. On the page you see here in dark blue, our quarterly development of the billings and more light blue or grayish bars on the order entry.
You also have separated here the cancellations that you can see the effect of, of the cancellations from orders that came in the year, in the fiscal year before. Clearly to see, the revenue was in Q1 and Q2 at a level of EUR 55 million-EUR 60 million. Lower than what we have seen in the second half of 2022, and also lower than in the first half of 2022. What you also can see is after the booking started to decline in Q2 last year, it looked like in Q1 that we have gone through the worst and the bookings are picking up again.
After the experience of Q2 and the outlook that I have given you in the beginning of the presentation, we have unfortunately seen that the bookings fall down again to a level of EUR 40 million and a muted outlook. This definitely shows a picture here where we are still at a very low level of bookings, and it looks like it makes side moves for the coming months, and we need to wait until the markets will pick up again. Looking at this picture, we reported also in the last calls, our, let's say, backlog situation, that was extraordinarily high. I can say you that now entering into the second half of the year, we have normal backlog situations, there is no tailwind on our backlog anymore.
The fresh incoming order entries are the indicator for the, let's say, revenue stream of the coming months. Yeah, in total, we realized EUR 116 million in sales. What is absolutely worth to mention is the regional split that have changed a lot. Americas, 16%, Europe, 38%, coming from 25%, first half year, last year. There is 11 percent point shift towards Europe due to the strong market momentum that we are seeing compared to the other regions. Asia Pacific fall down from more, roughly 54% to 46% due to the market weaknesses. On the gross profit side, we are making sideways with little improvement, but making more or less sideways on a low level of 45 percent points, roughly. Main reasons continue.
We still are suffering from spot buys in the past because we are sitting on high inventory levels, and we need to eat through these inventory levels that were with material that was purchased last year for relatively high prices. We also have headwinds with regard to the weak Chinese renminbi. The third parameter is the low production output, the low revenue that you can also see. That means for us, there is less economies of scale for the fixed cost in our production and in material purchase. In absolute terms, when we look at this, we were at around EUR 25 million-EUR 27 million gross profit per quarter. This means for us, even with the measures we are taking, roughly a break-even point.
Looking at the earnings margin and also earnings before tax, as mentioned earlier, before, I mean, we normally come from a level of 12% earnings margin. Due to all the effects, we, and the slow start of this year, we were able to be back in black in Q2. However, only because of strong measures on the cost side, and we were able to compensate with that, the negative number of the year, of the first quarter. Yeah, looking and comparing first half year to first half year, and going through the main parameters, order entry, I mentioned EUR 94 million, minus 41%. On the sales side, less decline, but 11% decline to EUR 116 million. The gross profit, EUR 52 million, so 19% decline.
The gross margin is going down, but also sales going down, so in absolute terms, a double hit. Gross profit margin, 44.8% down by roughly four percentage points. And then the earnings, the EBITDA, 10% or EUR 11 million plus for the first half year, so 50% down roughly, and the other earnings are more or less around zero. The net income is, is also a net loss, minus EUR 1.7 million, due to the different tax situations in different countries. We are still paying taxes, even though we have the earnings before tax are more or less neutral. On the cash flow side, we started the period with EUR 28 million or EUR 29 million, roughly. Cash flow of operations, minus EUR 1 million.
Cash flow of investments, rough, -EUR 8.6 million. Free cash flow was EUR 9.6 million in total, -EUR 9.6 million. Less negative than the year before, very different situation. In the first half year, 2022, we had strong operational results, we were investing a lot in M&A transactions, this was the main effect of the negative free cash flow last year. This year it's more due to the operational business, due to the low revenue streams and the high cost structures on the fixed cost side. With regard to our financing cash flow, we have increased our cash positions here by 16.3%. There are three main activities worth to mention here. We increased our loan position.
This was one element. We also sold treasury shares within Q2, and we paid out a dividend that reduced the cash position on the financing cash flow a bit. All in all, we were ending the period with EUR 35.4 million cash account. That enables us and prepares us for what's in front of us in the second half of the year and financing the restructuring program that I have explained in more detail on the slides and in the first section. You can also see here the quarterly development of the cash flow, just showing it also shows that we are relatively stable on the investment side at the moment with EUR 4 million, roughly, investing cash flow.
We are improving We have improved slightly on the cash flow side in Q2, due to the better operational cash. Yeah, just have a look. Let's look to the share price development. I mean, with the performance we have shown, it's not a surprise that our share price developed below the TecDAX index. Starting of the year of from EUR 30, towards EUR 17 at the end of the period. We had also, this is on the second slide in this chapter, we had a little bit of a change in our holding structures. We had, with Universal Investment, a new one coming in above the thresholds to be tracked. You can see that our treasury share position have been reduced.
It formerly was almost 5% and is now a little bit below 2.5, so it's, it's down. It's, it's shown here as 2%. It's a bit more. It's, it's almost 2.5%. The rest is still the same, with our strong anchor, shareholder family, Norbert Basler and family. We are also in this situation, having a very stable, shareholding structure, supporting what our route and is what we are taking as a management team. This brings me to the last section, and I will forward the outlook for the outlook to Dietmar Ley before we both do then the Q&A session together.
Yeah. Thanks, Hardy. Also a warm welcome from my side to this conference call. Yeah, like Hardy said, we are in weak market environmental conditions right now. As you see from the bookings and also from the billings, we expect those market conditions to continue for a while. We're talking here about the assumptions for the second half of the year. As far as bookings are concerned, we are expecting new orders to stay on low levels, given the low demand from, from the major verticals in semiconductor and consumer electronics, given the low demand from the regional markets in China, in Southeast Asia, and also in the Americas.
I'd say the good thing that we can report here is we see that the order cancellations, which have had significant impact on our bookings over the course of the last couple of months, that these order cancellations seem to come down now. That we expect, let's say, those negative influence or this negative influence to fade out over the course of the second half year. From what we can see right now, and it's not too much that we can see at the moment, as we are not getting a lot of visibility from customers. Looking back to former crises and market, market weaknesses, we expect, let's say, these demand slowness in our important verticals like the semiconductor electronics and also in the logistics, to come to an end, more or less, by end of this year.
The interesting question is then going to be: When exactly is this to happen, and what is going to be the dynamics of that recovery? That is very difficult to tell at the moment. But again, like I said, looking back to historic patterns, those data leads us to believe that the recovery can be expected within a 6 to, say, latest 9 months timeframe. Coming to the geopolitical uncertainties, I mean, we, we see it every day in the news. This morning, again, news from the U.S. limiting Chinese access to American high tech. War going to continue, so those factors will remain. No improvement, no positive momentum expected from there.
We also expect that the, let's say, stiff competition in China is going to remain, especially given the weak, domestic, demand structure in the country itself. As far as gross margin is concerned, we expect slight improvements here. We see tailwinds from positive pricing effects and also from the clearance of, of, inventories that we built up during the delivery crisis, when we had to buy, let's say, extraordinarily high prices for, for critical components. This inventory is going to reduce, so the blended mix of the pricing of those components is going to, to, change to the better. On the other hand, we also see that the ongoing headwinds from the stiff competition in China, this is certainly going to continue.
Other than that, we see that the operational business is, is, facing pressures regarding bottom-line margin. We see the market headwinds. We see the, the, the, the macro factors regarding cost of living, regarding inflation. On the other side, we, we did not mention this here, but it's very important to recognize, we will also see the positive effects of the restructuring program that Hardy was describing in, in the last couple of minutes. This is certainly helping. On the other hand, this restructuring program is also gonna create significant one-time charges, and most of them will be recognized during the Q3. We talk about this then, next time when we meet here. That brings us here to the, to the forecast.
As already announced, recently, those factors led us to reduce our fiscal year guidance for 2023. We have the weak half year 1 performance. We don't see much of an improvement for the second half of the year. We see these extraordinary one-time effects coming from the restructuring activities. That cannot be ignored, and that will, let's say, eat through, like Hardy said, to the bottom line, also to the top line. We adjust both revenue and pre-tax guidance downwards. We expect revenues to end up within the corridor between EUR 200 million and EUR 215 million.
Overall, despite, let's say, the, the slight recovery in the second quarter that we saw here in the numbers, there will be a significant pre-tax loss, characterized from two by two factors, so the slower business, the, the circumstance that the order backlog is mostly consumed, first of all, and second of all, then the one-time restructuring cost charges. As you see here in the asterisks, those will, let's say, amount to a financial volume of something in the area of EUR 11 million-13 million. Significant, as, as you can see. That's it from our side here. As you probably are going to have a couple of questions for us, we turn it over to you, and we'll be happy then to discuss your questions and comments that you have to make.
Please feel free to, to get started with the Q&A session. Thank you.