Good afternoon and thank you for joining our Conference Call on our Financial Results for the Fiscal Year 2024. I have with me today Gert-Hartwig Lescow, CFO, as well as Tom Fischler and Nikolaus Hammerschmidt, both investor relations. We would like to take you through the results for the presentation that we made available on our web page this morning.
Following the presentation, we will open the floor to your questions. Let's get started on page five for the business highlights. 2024 was a successful year for Dräger with a robust business performance and a significant improvement in profitability. While net sales were slightly below our expectations, we maintained a strong performance, achieving around EUR 3.4 billion, matching the prior year's figure.
This is an outstanding achievement considering that we benefited from strong catch-up effects in 2023, driven by the improved delivery capabilities and a surge in demand for ventilators in China. Importantly, although business in China fell in 2024 by almost half to what it was in 2023, we successfully compensated its impact through substantial growth in the rest of the world, highlighting the resilience and adaptability of our business.
Our EBIT increased by EUR 28 million to EUR 194 million, thanks to our operating business, and also supported by one-off effects totaling around EUR 22 million. With earnings growing stronger than last year, our EBIT margin increased from 4.9%- 5.8% in the full year, ending just above our expectations. Our order intake also developed positively and exceeded the high level of the prior year at around EUR 3.4 billion.
This underlines the sustained demand for our technology for life and gives us confidence for the future. Following our dividend policy, we are going to distribute around 30% of group net profit to our shareholders, resulting in another dividend increase. I will come back to this topic at the end of our presentation. Improving profitability remains our primary focus.
In the medium term, we want to contribute to this by strengthening our innovative power and expanding our business model with expertise in the areas of interoperability and systems business. In the prior year, we promoted the implementation of these goals by introducing more innovations. These included important product improvements such as our new Vista Patient Monitoring System and our updated Babyl eo TN500 open care warmer, among others. Moreover, we started with the implementation of our new site concept in Germany. I'll comment this in a few minutes. Regarding our FDA warning letter, the expected FDA inspection in Hannover has taken place in November, and it did not reveal any formal deficiencies. That's to say, no FDA Form 483 was issued, and that means zero findings.
We are awaiting the final list of the warning letter from FDA, even if it is currently not foreseeable when this will take place. Due to the restructuring within the FDA, processing appears to be delayed. In terms of sustainability, we achieved several milestones in 2024. On the one hand, an Executive Board department for sustainability and quality has been created, which is headed by our new board member, Stefanie Hirsch, since July 2024. On the other hand, we have defined three focus areas to implement our sustainability strategy. Let's take a closer look at this on the following pages. We come to page six, Dräger's impact on people and environment.
Ladies and gentlemen, for us, our guiding principle is technology for life. This means we take responsibility. It gives greater meaning to our work and creates a sustainable foundation for our business model. We are aware that we have a footprint. Of course, we do. We believe that the overall positive aspect of the footprint is larger than the negative footprint. The result of our being, our existence in the world, is overall positive. On the one hand, we improve healthcare with our medical technology and help sick people heal with our devices and services. On the other hand, occupational safety all over the world, we help with our safety technology. The purpose of technology for life gives our work a greater meaning and makes us an attractive employer.
We reinforce this path, the S on the ESG, by offering employees fair pay in addition to reliable and meaningful employment. We also make a positive contribution on the local and global gross domestic product, with the salaries, the taxes, the earnings that we pay out. Around 10% of our net sales is invested in research and development.
On the other hand, here on the left side of the clock, we need resources for our products that are not yet returned to a complete material cycle. We also contribute to climate change as part of our business activities, and our employees are exposed to risk of accident and work and unequal treatment. We also cannot rule out human rights and environmental risks completely. Without ignoring the negative effect on people and the environment, we therefore say we love our footprint. What we also say is there is no sustainability without profitability and vice versa. Our focus therefore remains on our corporate objective number one, namely improving profitability. Our goals remain to increase the EBIT margin by an average of 1 % point every year. Now let's turn to the next sustainability page seven , the strategy.
With the strategy, we're concentrating our efforts on focus topics in the areas of Environment and Society, Customer and Products, and Company and Employees. In these three areas, it's our aim to improve along measurable targets. We are certain that no lasting economic progress can be achieved without social and environmental sustainability in our supply chains and vice versa. Our main goal in the field of Environment and S ociety is to reach CO2 neutrality by the year 2045. To this end, we are actively involved in reducing Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Moreover, we are promoting environmentally friendly and socially responsible business practices by establishing sustainable supply chains. In the field of customer and products, we want to develop new products according to the eco-design criteria and aim to lower their CO2 footprint.
We approach the overarching principle of a closed circular economy through material reduction in the area of product and transport packaging, and through individual pilot studies and actions as part of product development. This enables us to consciously expand our portfolio of environmentally friendly products and services, offering sustainable solutions to our customers. Furthermore, we support the environmental and cost objectives of our customers through innovative and efficient measures. When it comes to company and employees, one of our main goals is to get them the lost time incident rate below 4.0 points by implementing our Vision Zero program.
Hence, we focus on securing employee loyalty and commitment through greater workplace safety and the promotion of health. We also want to strengthen diversity, reaching a female share of 30% in management positions by 2035. We will continue to develop training programs in order to prepare our employees for any future challenges.
Now, please turn to page eight. Ladies and gentlemen, when I talk about profitability and sustainability, I also have to mention our new location strategy in Germany, which aims to optimize resource utilization for domestic operations. Currently, we have 17 sales and service hubs nationwide, employing around 2,000 people. These facilities act as bases for our field service teams and serve as training facilities for our German customers. In addition, there are also so-called customer project locations. That is to say locations that result from individual contractual relationships with the customer. In recent years, our space requirements have changed.
Digital collaboration has grown due to the Coronavirus pandemic and has integrated new forms of work into everybody's life. We are therefore examining the extent to which we can consolidate locations in order to use them more effectively and meet future requirements. We want to create an attractive, future-proof working environment, taking into account the trend towards more mobile working. We are creating locations that are equipped for the future and whose premises are adapted to working methods. At the same time, we keep our focus on the customer. As part of the new concept, we will close eight locations out of the 17 by 20 26 and make changes such as downsizing at four other locations in addition. We are planning to do this with the existing workforce. Our aim is to improve services for our employees and customers.
Of course, there will be some savings from rental and ancillary costs, which amount to around EUR 1 million per year. Our focus is on a qualitative benefit. This includes an improved performance for our customers through the expansion and modernization of our academy capacities and space, as well as the digitalization of the range of workshops and improved processing and capacity management through centralization of the workshops. The full savings per year will become effective for the first time in 2027. In addition, there are further indirect costs, for instance, complexity reduction. This more needs-based use of our resources will also contribute to more sustainability at Dräger.
Ladies and gentlemen, before I hand over to Gert-Hartwig for the financials, I would like to elaborate on our strategic goals in the area of defense and security on page nine. The start of the Russian war against Ukraine has ushered in a new era and dramatically changed the security situation. Expenditure on modernizing our armed forces is therefore being significantly increased. This is a development that will also affect us. Just as the German army is defending our national borders, we also have a mission. We protect those who protect us. We do this with our technology for life.
In other words, products that protect, support, and save people's lives. We already have trusting relationships with important defense authorities, public clients, and as their supplier, also the producers of military equipment. Our aim is to systematically develop these relationships further and to position ourselves as a partner and solution provider in the context of strategic defense programs. In this way, we want to drive forward the structured expansion of our market position.
Unlike in the past, we now have considerable project inquiries and offers in the pipeline, although it's not always certain whether these will actually materialize. These deals also have very long lead times. Nevertheless, our prospects are very promising because we can use our unique expertise and skills, which have made us one of the world's leading manufacturers of safety technology.
As part of its 2024 national security and defense strategy, the German government has defined key technologies that we have been covering in our product portfolio for many years. This includes, for example, breathing air monitoring and supply for military vehicles, sensor technology, and space protection, as well as our personal NBC protection. Our total net sales in the defense business are currently still below the EUR 100 million threshold. However, due to the changed security situation, we expect a substantial increase in the coming years.
We believe that our sales team in this area will be able to more than triple by 2028. With that, I turn over to Gert-Hartwig, who will explain our business development in more detail. I will then turn to the dividend and outlook. Gert-Hartwig, please.
Thank you, Stefan. I would like to extend also a warm welcome to everyone joining this conference call for our results for the fiscal year 2024. Please turn to page 11 for a review on the Dräger Group. As usual, I will be stating currency-adjusted figures whenever referring to growth rates. As Stefan mentioned, demand for our technology for life remains strong. Overall orders increased by 3.4% to around EUR 3.4 billion, with growth in both divisions. In the APAC region, demand declined due to the challenging market conditions in China, impacting almost Western medtech suppliers.
However, growth in other regions allowed us to compensate for this downturn. In Q4, order intake increased by 8.6%, supported by both divisions and across all regions. Net sales remained robust at around EUR 3.4 billion, matching the level of the previous year despite the known basic facts like higher order backlog in the prior year.
Net of currency facts, net sales increased by 0.5%, thanks to the growth in the safety division, which compensated the decline in the medical division. In nominal terms, net sales of the group were stable at around 0.1% below the prior year figure. In Q4, net sales increased by 2.6% to around EUR 1.1 billion, driven by growth in both divisions and all regions except EMEA. Benefiting from favorable pricing and reduced quality costs, among other factors, our group's gross profit margin rose by 1.6 percentage points to 44.9% at the end of the year.
Functional expenses increased by 1.8% in 2024. This resulted, in particular, from the increase in personnel expense owing to higher employee figures and remuneration. Also, the one-off effects had a positive effect on expense development.
As Stefan mentioned, our earnings were positively affected by one-off effects of around EUR 22 million, with around EUR 15 million, the impact in our safety division was stronger than in our medical division, with around EUR 7 million. The total one-off effects consist of positive one-off effects totaling approximately EUR 37 million, offset by negative one-off effects of around EUR 15 million.
The positive one-off effects largely included the sale of a local non-core division in the Netherlands and the sale of real estate in the U.S. in the second quarter . These sales amounted to around EUR 20 million in total. In addition, the positive one-off effects included the sale of a building in Spain in the third quarter for around EUR 10 million. Around EUR 32 million of the one-off effects are included in the functional expenses. The adverse effect includes the depreciation in connection with the valuation of an associate in Q4.
This depreciation is included in the financial result before interest result. All details are included in the annual report in note 40. Including the EUR 22 million from the one-off effects, our EBIT increased by around 17% to EUR 194 million in 2024. Consequently, our EBIT margin rose from 4.9%- 5.8%. In the fourth quarter , our EBIT of around EUR 114 million was also significantly higher than the prior year's figure of around EUR 90 million. The EBIT margin rose by 2.1 percentage points to 10.6%.
The 4-year EBIT development is in line with our medium-term goal to increase the EBIT margin by one percentage point per annum on average. Even when excluding the one-off effects of roughly EUR 22 million, the underlying profitability in 2024 is roughly 5.1%, exceeding a prior year's margin that itself had substantial tailwinds from the China effect and the high order backlog.
We remain committed to our plan to improve the midterm profitability further. The guided 2025 EBIT margin includes an additional margin improvement on the higher end of the guidance range. Our DVA in 2024 was just below the prior year figure of around EUR 54 million. Let us now take a closer look at the development of the 2 divisions, starting with the medical division on page 12. Following a slight decline in the prior year, our order intake in the medical division rose by 1.2%.
This was primarily due to higher demand for our services and warming therapy devices. The lower order value in the APAC and EMEA regions was more than offset by an increase in the Americas and Germany. Demand improved notably towards the year's end. In Q4, orders rose by around 10%, driven by all regions as well as a high demand for ventilators and hospital infrastructure.
A very positive momentum at the end of the year. Net sales in the medical division fell by roughly 3% in 2024. This was due to the mentioned basic facts and the challenging market environment in China, which burdened our overall development in the APAC region. In Q4, on the other hand, net sales rose by 2% thanks to the significant growth in the Americas region.
As a result of successful price enforcement and lower quality expenses, our gross margin in the division increased by 1.1 percentage points in 2024. In Q4, it improved even stronger by an impressive 5 percentage points. This was due to the significant increase in gross profit, mainly because of significantly lower expenses for field actions. Functional expenses increased by roughly 1% in 2024, which can be largely attributed to personnel cost.
The EBIT on the medical division decreased by around 24% to around EUR 28 million, while the EBIT margin was reduced by 0.4 percentage points to 1.5%. In Q4, on the other hand, the EBIT increased significantly from around EUR 39 million to around EUR 56 million, thanks to the good operating business. The EBIT margin was 9.2% after 6.5% in the prior year quarter.
Our DVA in the medical division was significantly lower in 2024 at around EUR -50 million, coming from around EUR -23 million in 2023. I will now turn to our safety division, which delivered another good performance. We are now on page 13. Our safety business continues to grow both in the full year and in Q4. Order intake rose by at least 6%. This was primarily due to a much higher demand for respiratory and personal protection products and the positive development in all regions, especially in Germany.
Net sales increased by around 5% in the fiscal year, with all regions contributing to growth. In Q4, net sales increased by roughly 4%, driven by the Americas region as well as Germany and APAC. As a result of our effective price enforcement, our gross margin in the division went up by 2.1 percentage points in 2024.
In Q4, it increased by 3.3 percentage points. Functional expenses were around 4% higher than in the prior year, mainly due to higher R&D expenses and a higher sales cost in the region. The EBIT of the safety division increased considerably in 2024 by around 28% to reach roughly EUR 166 million. The EBIT margin amounted to 11.3% after 9.2% in 2023.
In Q4, the EBIT stood at EUR 57.5 million, coming from EUR 50.1 million in the prior year period. The EBIT margin was 12.5% after 11.2% in the same period of 23. Our DVA in the safety division also improved significantly by around EUR 21 million to around EUR 104 million, coming from EUR 83 million in the prior year. All in all, a very positive development in our safety business. Let's move on to some key ratios on page 14.
Despite lower operating cash flow, our free cash flow was slightly above the prior year figure at EUR 124 million, next to the higher earnings. The biggest driver for the development was the positive effect from the increase in trade payables, but also a lower investment cash flow due to the sale of the non-core fire and gas business in the Netherlands and the property in Spain contributed positively.
Cash equivalents amounted to around EUR 231 million at the end of 2024, down around EUR 41 million on the prior year figure. Net financial debt significantly improved in 2024 and amounted to EUR 165 million at the end of the year. Net financial debt to EBIT improved as well. With 0.5, leverage is on a healthy level. At the end of the Q1 , we secured an additional loan commitment from the European Investment Bank totaling EUR 100 million.
This enhances our financial flexibility, supplementing our existing unused credit facilities of EUR 375 million. We have maturing debt totaling EUR 100 million in Q3 of this year and Q1 of next year. Capital employed increased by around 5% to around EUR 1.6 billion. However, the improvement in EBIT resulted in an enhanced 12-month return on capital employed of 12.1%, up from 10.9% in the same period of the prior year.
Networking capital was around 13% above the prior year level, just over EUR 740 million. The positive business development, among other factors, contributed to a further strengthening of the group's equity position with an equity ratio nearing 50%. Now, I hand back to Stefan Dräger for the outlook, starting with our dividend proposal on page 16.
In line with our dividend policy, we intend to distribute around 30% of our group net profit to our shareholders. Since our group net profit has increased significantly, we will increase the dividend significantly as well. We intend to propose a dividend of EUR 2.03 per preferred share and EUR 1.97 per common share to our annual shareholders meeting in May. Provided that the group's equity ratio remains at least at 40%, we will continue to distribute 30% of our annual net profits in the coming years.
That said, let's move on to our outlook for the current year, 2025, on page 17. Ladies and gentlemen, with a good demand, robust net sales, and significantly improved earnings, we have a successful year 2024. Of course, our EBIT benefited from the mentioning one-off effects. On the other hand, the positive effects from 2023 were missing. For 2025, we expect a currency-adjusted increase in net sales of 1%-5% and an EBIT margin between 3.5%-6.5%.
Both segments should contribute to net sales growth and a positive EBIT. Taking into account the non-operating special items of the past two years, which have had a positive impact on earnings, the expected EBIT margin for 2025 is in line with our target of increasing the EBIT margin by 1 percentage point each year. With this, I would like to end the presentation and hand over to the operator to open the floor for your questions, please.
Our first question comes from Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Oh yeah, thanks very much for taking my questions, and if I may. Firstly, starting off with tariffs, I guess exposure to the U.S. should not be too significant. I guess we're talking 10%, 15% of group sales.
I was just curious, there was an article in the Handelsblatt where apparently a statement was made that if a 25% tariff would be implemented, that this could impact the operating profit of the group by around a third, which appears quite meaningful. I guess the kind of color that was provided that you talked about kind of long-term contracts that are in place here. The first question would be if you can add some kind of more color to that.
Secondly, just on the defense, the opportunity that you face here, I mean, can you just talk to us, is there any kind of benefit already that you anticipate this year and how tangible are these kind of talks that are ongoing?
You talked about longer-term lead times, but I guess part of the offering could also be shorter-term realized and the kind of EUR 300 million that you talked about, is it just pure in-house estimate or is it also backed up by any kind of potential plans already? Lastly, just on the outlook, can you provide a bit of more color what you have in mind for the divisions, both in terms of sales growth and margin expansion?
Also because Q1 is coming up, I guess in the past it was always volatile and sometimes we had negative EBIT in Q1. Is it something we should also assume this year after the kind of special support factors have been phasing out just to make sure that expectation on the right ballpark? Thank you.
[Foreign language]. Yep, let me start off with your question on the customs. The impact will, of course, depend on any customs raised. In the past, customs in many countries differentiate between medical and safety products. In a scenario where in the future this would not be the case anymore, and in a scenario where, let's say, a flat custom fee of 25% would be levied on our products, mainly imported into the US, that could, based on the earnings, impact our EBIT by roughly a third to a quarter of the total figure we had this year.
Having said that, no such customs have been announced. Of course, we are all also looking on April 2nd into the year how this will change. I believe, or my understanding is that the expectation that going forward there will be a separation of medical and safety will remain in place, but that remains to be seen.
At this point, there is not a concrete impact, but going forward, we have obviously no confirmed plan in our hand what will happen. We will see. That is, the third that you quoted is correct, and that is roughly depending on the amount. This we will, of course, work on to reduce, but given our portfolio and the way we operate, any reaction will not be easy and will take some time.
If I may extend Mr. Reinberg on this scenario. With the same breath, I also quoted earlier today that it is unpredictable what happens in the Oval Office and in the economy. We already do have a scenario by now that there are tariffs imposed on products from China to the U.S., and the U.S. competitor of us has imposed a customs surcharge on the prices in the U.S. dollar charged to U.S. customers to compensate for the tariffs because the competitor has most of his products actually manufactured in China and is suffering from the customs.
We are not affected yet, but we use the opportunity and also implement customs surcharge to the same level that the other guy does. For us, this actually works out as a windfall benefit. It is hard to predict the effect in detail in the future. We will see.
Okay, but just to clarify, because the article mentioned that you can't pass that on because of the contract structure. I mean, I'm a bit surprised because most people believe that they can simply pass it on. Can you do that or not?
No, and yes, we cannot pass it on in a situation where we have it in the contract, like it's cast in stone, it's hard coded in the contract. But we can charge a surcharge. We cannot increase the price, but we can charge a surcharge. If we are the only one, it will probably not be possible. But if major US companies do it, then we can stay in the trailing waters and can do it as well, even if we do not have the extra cost.
Okay. Thank you.
That's it, but you had more questions, so yeah.
I think there's at least one. Your last question was, what's the outlook for the Q1? As you pointed out, Q1 typically is the weakest quarter in every given year. Last year was, in fact, relatively strong, at least if one compares it to a pre-COVID average, about one percentage point more in net sales than we had on average in those five years. That would translate into net sales, in fact, if we were to return to a more normalized seasonality of about EUR 30 million-EUR 35 million, if I take last year's net sales as a guiding impact.
Obviously, the quarter's not quite over. It's very close, of course, but actually the last two days are the strongest net sales figures. Referring to your question on the seasonality, that's what we are currently working on.
I think.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, and I think the other question was if you can add a bit more color on the sales and margin profile for the divisions for the full year.
Yeah, and I think you had a question on the defense impact in-house. For perhaps on the outlook for the division, we do not, if you will, provide a specific guidance, but it is in our plans to see an improvement in both divisions.
The improvement on the medical will be, if you will, marginal improvement on the way to also improve our group margin. Medical will be slightly tough the current year, but not in a stepwise jump. Net sales development will, or net sales growth, we expect to come from both divisions, as we have seen this year with a contribution of, also again, both divisions.
What is perhaps also a key input in there is our weaker net sales and order entry was, as we had communicated previously, due to the very weak development, in fact, decline in China. We expect China to stabilize. This stabilization will, in particular, be more relevant for the medical division than for the safety division.
Your last. On the impact for the defense, this currently is not based on, if you will, confirmed contract, in which case we would have also articulated it, I think, more forcefully, but it is supported by inquiries into contracts. They have not been signed, though. To your question, those are based on our in-house estimates on to what degree certain tenders and projects will materialize. Obviously, they will depend on the funding also, especially from Germany or other countries.
That funding, it appears will increase, but it's not confirmed yet.
Do you expect order first benefit this year?
Possibly in order entry. Net sales, since these projects are typically long-term in nature, net sales will be more at the back end of the horizon.
No problem. Thanks so much. That's very helpful.
The next question comes from Christian Ehmann from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Hello everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I have three at the moment. I had a bit of lingering on the defense segment, or let's say the portion of sales here. Could you remind us what the current margin profile of those EUR 100 million defense contracts is at the moment? Is it equative or is it dilutive, for example? We can have more of an idea how high this impact could be in the future if everything materializes.
The second one would be on the impact of those site closings, the cost savings. Is this already included in your guidance by growing 1% EBIT margin per year on average? My third question would be to the surcharge system, which you've mentioned really with the tariffs. Could you please repeat how this exactly would play out over the next couple of months if we would see a plain 25% tariff impact on imported products? Thank you very much.
Let me start with the last question. I want to caution us a bit to not get ahead of ourselves since we're talking about the pass-on and tariffs that have not even been announced at this point. What we were referring to is, of course, preparation on our sides.
The way they may be passed on depends obviously on the customer segment to the degree that they can be passed on. Roughly, I would separate between medical and safety. In safety, by and large, we are in a market of private consumers, less regulated. It will depend to what degrees also our market companions experience similar effects and will need to pass them on. On the medical side, a significant portion in the U.S. of volume purchased by hospitals is through so-called GPO contracts. They are typically frame contracts that hospitals can use. We are in preparatory exchanges with some of the GPOs to see how to react to such an increase. It was in that scenario that our earlier comment is to be seen because in that GPO scenario, it is not foreseen to ad hoc change prices since we are in a regulated environment.
I would like to ask everybody and ourselves, some patience, to see where we actually do face customs and what volume of customs we face at this point. Your second question was on the site closing and whether the impact of that is included in our guidance. The answer, yes, it is included in our guidance. Your first question was on what the current margin profile is of the defense business.
I would also ask everyone involved for some patience since I would rather not speculate on some contracts that are currently in preparation and see whether they are margin equative or dilutive. It very much depends on the type of contracts. We have to see how we see the growth. Obviously, with such a growth potential, we expect that that will add to our overall profitability in absolute terms. I would, at this point, refrain from any speculation on what that is and perhaps also what country is more profitable than the others. It's too early for that.
However, I could add a little flavor to it. In the past, it did not get so much attention, this sector. Now it gets more attention, and we found some examples with unacceptable low margins. That would certainly also change in the future with our general approach that we scrutinize every single business field and site, whether it contributes to our goal of increasing profitability.
Okay, thank you very much.
The next question comes from Alexander Galitsa from HAIB, p lease go ahead.
Yes, thank you. A couple of questions from my side as well. Maybe one by one, if that's fine. First one, if you could add color or explanation what's really behind the strong increase in G&A in Q4. It's plus 37% year on year. That's the first one.
[Foreign language]. There is no, you see, single thing in particular that makes it special. I would say it's a base effect. As it's planned more constant over the year and the other lines of the P&L are constant over the year. The ratio is TSR in Q1, but there's nothing of significance that you should be worried.
It does seem a bit of an outlier, I think, over the past eight quarters. Also throughout last year, you rarely had it more than EUR 70 million, and this year it's EUR 91 million in Q4. This line just was wondering. Anyways, I'll move on to other questions I have. The forecast for net debt that you have for 2025, I'm just wondering, you expect basically the net debt that includes leases to go up from EUR 165 million this year at the end of 2024 to a range of EUR 180 million-EUR 210 million. You mentioned that this is largely due to higher leases. What looks a bit strange is that you presumably will generate free cash flow for 2025, I estimate maybe at least in the range of EUR 80 million.
Almost EUR 40 million will go down to paying dividend. Theoretically, you should still have EUR 40 million in free cash flow left to reduce net debt. Yet you guide for an increase, which basically would suggest that in this scenario, you plan to add EUR 70 million of lease liabilities, which would be almost, yeah, more than 50% increase. If you can just elaborate what's behind the anticipated increase in lease liabilities to that magnitude. If the consideration of what I said regarding the free cash flow is also correct.
Part of the lease liabilities obviously run differently on the cash flow profile since they go into the investment cash flow. Again, the outflow is over the lifetime of the leasing contracts. There is no unusual increase in that sense that is planned. No extraordinary effect in your quantification. I am with you, w e expect also a solid cash flow for 2025.
Okay, but you would not expect lease liabilities to increase substantially in the, or what's your, I guess, expect? Because I understand that part of the CapEx is cash CapEx, but also presumably you finance part of your fixed asset with leases. So I wonder for 2025, do you really plan a large addition to lease liabilities, or that's not the case?
No, we don't. No. Not, if you will, substantially out of the ordinary, if that's the question.
Okay. Understood. Okay. I think I have another one on maybe China briefly. You already mentioned a couple of things that you expect of stabilization. If you could add any more color or maybe most recent update you see from this market and whether stabilization means in your case return to maybe even slight growth, at least in China.
Stabilization means what you said. We have seen a decline in the turnover in the first Q3 of 2024. Stabilization means just that, low single-digit variation. We expect slight growth in 2025 versus the lower business volume of 2024. Just for the avoidance of doubt, what it does not mean is a return to, if you will, previously seen volumes of overall business. 2025 will, in all likelihood, be still below the 2023 volume of our business in China.
Sure. That is clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Harald Hof from mwb r esearch. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. My question was regarding the Chinese markets, which has just been answered.
Very good. Thank you.
The next q uestion comes from Virendra Chauhan from AlphaValue. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I just have one question around your EBIT guidance for FY 2025. If I adjust your FY 2024 margins for the one-off effect that you have called out, it works out just over 5%. Going with your longer-term outlook that you have provided, ambition to increase the margins by about 1% every year, it kind of comes in closer to 6% and higher end of the outlook that you have provided. I'm just curious what's driving the caution for you to give such a wide range, especially on the lower end. Thank you.
It's the general aspect of being cautious in an uncertain world. As you could see with the examples of the customs, that it's so more difficult than ever to forecast the future. Our goal is to grow by 1 percentage point per year. You are right. It's necessary to take out the one-offs that we had in 2024. Also, in 2023 we had one-offs, which was the resuming of the delivery capabilities after the supply chain shortages of 2022, plus the big effect from ventilation in China after lifting the Corona lockdowns at the end of 2022 when a lot of ventilators were needed. These both effects contributed in 2023.
There we had officially 4.9%. Both of the effects I mentioned contributed approximately more or less than 1 percentage point. The true EBIT for 2023 was more around 3 point some percent. Last year was about 4 point some percent. About the same as the calendar year. From our planning, if we have 5 point X percent for this year, that's in line with our promise that we gave you. We do our best to become or exceed to maybe what you refer to as the higher end of the guidance. Guidance is guidance. It is between 3.5% and 6.5%.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. We have a follow-up question from Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Thanks so much for taking my follow-up. Quickly, if I may, I mean, also in China, I mean, the decline of nearly 50% is quite significant and significantly above what we have seen in the industry. Most players talked about a 10%-20% decline. I mean, I understand that obviously the ventilators are a bit of a special base effect, but it appears also that there is a bit of market share shift happening.
I was just trying to get some kind of color. Is that basically like losing share to local competitions? I mean, in theory, if you put it on the positive side, it could also mean there could be more pronounced recovery potential. That's question number one. Secondly, briefly on ventilators, I think one of your competitors talked about they're going to see most likely in the first half a benefit from certain market access from competitors. I was just trying to get a feeling if you see something similar. Lastly, it's encouraging that the FDA inspection was without any kind of findings. I want to come back to the discussion we had earlier, whether you're willing to also provide a kind of more dedicated midterm guidance, which points to the next three years or so. Thank you.
Okay, Mr. Reinberg, I'm happy to add more flavor to the China question. It's a bit of everything that you suggested could be the root cause. First, there's a great, I would say, depression in China. The customer confidence index plummeted in summer 2022 to a very low level. Since then, there is a perceived recession.
Already there is a deflation scenario today in effect in China. It's well reflected. I think that's maybe not so directly connected for the economists, but I think it's important that the birth rate in China is the third lowest in the world. It's only lower in Korea and in Ukraine. That's because people do not trust in their government and in the future anymore. Given that overall economic environment, the next point is the healthcare system.
Given the demographics, there is the great fear of rising costs for healthcare. Currently, China is at a rate of around 6%-7% spending of the GDP for healthcare. And that's the same level as an East European country. While, as you know, we in Germany are around 14%. In the U.S., it's around 19%.
So there's great fear of the Chinese government that the cost will rise. So many things that have muted our business are put in place to delay or reduce the spending for healthcare in general, like the so-called Anti-Corruption Campaign. So it's possibly also targeted in limiting the overall spending or delaying it because in the current economic scenario, also the government is short on money. And then what effect does it have? It affects all medical device suppliers that are serving the market.
I think spread it out, Mindray, our probably internationally most challenging market companion. They also have for domestic China a - 11% to my knowledge. And another medical equipment supplier, Edan, has - 20% on the domestic China business. With ours, we are coming close to - 50%. That is worse than the domestic manufacturers. Probably Mindray is getting the best with only - 11%, but they are all affected. For the international companies, there is also the effect that after this additional ventilator business and by the ending of the lockdown, the Chinese government realized that medical technology is a key important factor and has classified it as strategic, which is not easily seen or reflected. However, the European Union has done an investigation.
Only a few weeks back from now, in early this year, they have published the result for over one year of investigation where we as Dräger contributed significantly. They found that it's not a level playing field. It's the second action after the battery electric vehicles where the European Union says, "This is unacceptable." It's putting European industry at a disadvantage.
It will have counteraction like maybe Chinese companies will be excluded in European tenders in the future. That is being discussed because it clearly is making life more difficult for all non-Chinese players. Altogether, certainly we will not come back to the pre-Corona level to where we were with our business. Although for this year, we believe it will recover, but only slightly from the poor level of last year. Now, your next question, ventilators.
Yes, we greet the fact that others are leaving the market. That is not our intention. We believe it is a very healthy and sound market where you have a lot of expertise. The grandfather of my grandfather invented the mechanical ventilator. We have the longest experience and the greatest production capacity and are very happy to have it in our market and continue to serve it.
I made a personal video to customers worldwide that they can trust that we will stay. My name is on each and every product. We have good experience in serving these markets. There will be some benefit from others going different routes. The last question on the FDA. The lifting of the warning letter, the last step where we think it is possibly tied to is we have one approval for a monitoring software version. It is still underway.
As approvals for monitoring software were subject to the warning letter, it's quite likely that successfully finishing this one is the proof that all the processes and the site that have been audited successfully with no findings do really work as intended. When this is completed, that should be the last step for the warning letter being lifted.
I think that could be expected late in this current year as that approval by itself, by definition, there's a lot of detailed work and it takes time. It's quite likely that these are tied together because that was the subject from the original warning letter. That is most likely what I think is going to happen. Would you then be willing to provide a new midterm guidance again after it has been lifted?
Yeah.
The warning letter itself has no effect on our business, actually. It has more an effect on the share price and what you as an analyst or investor think than on our customers. However, the product itself, which is under review, where the new version is submitted for approval, that will have an effect on the business. That is much needed in the United States.
We do have it in Europe already. To have that same available for our US customers, that will have an effect on the business. On the midterm guidance, I would say maybe Gert-Hartwig, you can confirm. I would think that is already figured in because we knew at a certain point in time it would come and then the business will reflect it.
Can just confirm that. To the degree that further details are asked for in addition to what we have said, average margin expansion of one percentage point, we will, as we have said previously, review that and look into that. The bulk of the profitability improvement is already encapsulated in that statement.
Perfect. Okay. Thanks so much indeed.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Stefan Dräger for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, everybody online, for your interest and for being with us with this. We are coming to the end of the conference. Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing from you or seeing you sometime soon. Have a pleasant afternoon and good rest of the week. Bye-bye.