Yeah, Nadia, thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. With me on the call are Stefan Klebert, our CEO, and Marcus Ketter, our CFO. Stefan will begin today's call with the highlights of the first quarter. Marcus will then cover the business and financial review. Afterwards, Stefan takes over again for the outlook. Afterwards, we open up the call for the Q&A session. As always, I would like to start by drawing your attention to the cautionary language that is included in our safe harbor statement, as in the material that we have distributed today. With that, I hand over to Stefan.
Thank you, Oliver. Good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our conference call today. Once again, we had a strong start into the year, this time into fiscal year 2023. Despite a record order intake in Q1 last year, we have further increased order intake organically by 3.9% to almost EUR 1.6 billion. With regard to sales, growth was even stronger, organically up to 13.9% to about EUR 1.3 billion. Due to the fact that we are continuously passing on price increases, we managed to improve our EBITDA before restructuring expenses significantly by 24.3% to EUR 172 million. The respective EBITDA margin was up by 120 basis points to 13.5%.
Last but not least, we also increased our ROCE by 3.8 percentage points to 33.1%. On the back of this extraordinary strong performance in the first quarter, we decided to upgrade our guidance for fiscal 2023 as follows. For organic sales growth, we are now expecting an increase of more than 8%. EBITDA before restructuring expenses is forecasted to be in the upper part of the range of EUR 730 million-EUR 790 million. The expectation for the respective EBITDA margin is now raised to at least 14.0%. With regard to ROCE, we are guiding for more than 32%. Please bear in mind that the guidance for EBITDA and ROCE is based on constant exchange rate. Let me now come to two sustainable technologies and solutions for our customers.
You all know that GEA is mainly operating in the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical sectors. Three energy-intensive industries where GEA technologies can make a big difference. We are also able to support other high emission industries on their journey to carbon neutral production. Take the cement or glass industry, for example. We have engineered a process that captures CO2 from production before it is released into the atmosphere. This helps making industrial processes more eco-friendly. There are interesting options allowing for a sustainable use of the captured carbon. It can be safely stored, for example, in depleted oil or gas fields, an approach which is referred to as carbon capture and storage, or the captured carbon may be used as a raw material in industrial processes. This is known as carbon capture and utilization. Those options help to reduce the carbon footprint of the industrial sector.
We offer our customers flexible, small or medium-sized CO2 capture plans. The pilot plan shown on this picture allows our expert to continuously advance the system in cooperation with our customers. Of course, carbon capture is just one lever in an overall system of climate friendly management. We are convinced that it will take us a long way towards a more sustainable future. Let me now introduce another interesting technology to you, lithium production and processing. In view of the growing demand for electric vehicles, demand for lithium is increasing worldwide. Lithium hydroxide is used as a starting material for the production of batteries for electric vehicles. Other applications include photo developers, ceramic products, and the production of borates. GEA is offering technologies for all key process steps in lithium production and has won a large lithium order in the first quarter.
We are equipping additional production lines of the energy storage and specialty chemical groups, Albemarle, for the production of lithium hydroxide. The order value for the two centrifuge packages is EUR 24 million. The filtration and sedimentation centrifuges will be installed at the company's Kemerton lithium hydroxide processing plant in Western Australia. That concludes my first part of my presentation. I hand over to Marcus.
Thank you, very much. Warm welcome from my side. As you just said, we had a strong start into the year with a very healthy Q1 2023. We've even managed to exceed last year's Q1 record order intake number of EUR 1.54 billion by 2.4% or 3.9% in organic terms. Five large orders with a total value of EUR 126 million were received in this quarter in comparison to three large orders totaling EUR 92 million in Q1 2022.
EBITDA before restructuring margin reached 13.5% and was driven by an improved gross margin. Operating costs increased due to higher expenses for selling and administration. ROCE improved further due to the strong improvement in EBIT before restructuring expenses, overcompensating the increase in capital employed. All divisions contributed to this positive development. Our net liquidity declined from EUR 412 million to EUR 274 million, mainly because of the second tranche of our share buyback program, which we finished at the end of fiscal year 2022. Between the first quarter 2022 and year-end 2022, we bought back own shares for a total EUR 170 million. As you all know, these shares are held as treasury shares. All in all, a very successful quarter. Looking a bit deeper into the group performance.
Order intake grew to a record EUR 1.58 billion, a 3.9% year-over-year increase on an organic basis. Three divisions grew their order intake organically, while Liquid & Powder Technologies and Food & Healthcare Technologies reported a decline. From a customer industry perspective, dairy, farming, and beverage were strong again, also New Food has been a strong growth contributor. As I just said, this quarter has seen several large orders. Four in Liquid & Powder Technologies and one in Separation & Flow Technologies. Also our base orders, these are orders below EUR 1 million, have seen an increase year-over-year. Given the strong order backlog at the beginning of the year and the fading of supply chain bottlenecks, sales generation strongly accelerated to an organic growth rate of 13.9% in the quarter.
Service sales grew organically by an outstanding 16% year-over-year, driven by healthy organic service sales growth of all divisions. Also, new machine sales have been very strong, growing by 12.7% year-over-year. Two divisions have been particularly strong. Farm Technologies and Heating & Refrigeration Technologies, growing their new machine business even by more than 20% organically. The service sales share was 36.6%, 0.4 percentage points higher than last year. The strong organic sales growth, combined with an increase in the growth margin, overcompensated higher operating expense, resulting in an EBITDA of EUR 172 million and a EUR 34 million improvement versus Q1 '22. When looking at the EBITDA margin, we achieved a significant year-over-year improvement of 1.2 percentage points.
Now let me continue with the figures for the division Separation & Flow Technologies, which had a very strong quarter. Order intake grew organically by 13.0% year-over-year. Demand was strong in the custom industries chemical, Dairy Processing, and renewable resources, and in nearly all size brackets. As Stefan has told you a few minutes ago, SFT has won a large order with a total volume of EUR 24 million for filtration and sedimentation centrifuges, which will be used at our customer, Albemarle, for lithium hydroxide processing. The order backlog is substantially up by 17% year-over-year and 13% quarter-over-quarter to EUR 670 million, which lays a good foundation for further sales growth in the coming quarters.
Organic sales grew considerably by 14.4% year-over-year, driven by double-digit organic growth rate of both service and new machines. The service sales share, while being already on a high level, increased further by 0.9 percentage points to 46.7% in the quarter. EBITDA increased strongly by 14 to EUR 95 million, and the EBITDA margin improved by 0.6 percentage points to 25.5%. Higher sales, good capacity utilization in the new machine business, and a higher service sales share resulted in a significant increase in gross profit, which overcompensated higher operating costs. Let's move on to Liquid & Powder Technologies. Order intake decreased organically by 2.0% year-over-year, while the customer industries Beverage, Food, and New Food showed a positive development in this quarter.
Dairy processing, chemical, and pharma were below prior years' level. Liquid & Powder Technologies has won four large orders totaling EUR 102 million this quarter, versus three large orders totaling EUR 92 million in Q1 2022. These large orders were received from the following customer industries: two in Dairy Processing, one in Food, and one in New Food. The one in New Food has been the cell-based meat order we talked about during the last conference call. When looking at our order intake performance year-over-year, I would classify Q1 as a strong quarter, even being 2% below last quarter. Q1 2022 was an exceptional quarter, as many orders were placed after a rather soft COVID year 2021. This was mainly the case for large Dairy Processing projects in Asia-Pacific and North America.
Dairy is back on a long-term normalized level with a lot of good small and midsize projects, as well as increased service business. Overall, we see a healthy project pipeline across all our customer industries. Sales increased organically by 2.1% year-over-year. While the service sales grew organically by 11.6% year-over-year, the organic new machine sales declined slightly by 0.4% year-over-year. The high order backlog at the beginning of the year has not yet been processed, as many large orders are still in the engineering phase. This explains the muted new machine sales generation in the quarter and will lead to an acceleration of sales growth over the coming quarters.
Despite the muted sales growth, EBITDA before restructuring expenses rose by EUR 2 million year-over-year to EUR 30 million, and EBITDA margin increased by 0.5 percentage points to 7.8%. Gross profit rose due to improved projects margins while operating costs remained virtually unchanged. Continuing with Food & Healthcare Technologies. Order intake was down by 8.3% organically year-over-year. The decline is mainly driven by the business unit frozen foods due to some larger orders in the prior year quarter. Most other areas in food and pharma had similar order levels compared to Q1 '22. Organic sales growth was 14.9% year-over-year, driven by both a very strong new machine and service sales growth. The service sales share increased by 0.4 percentage points to 32.2% in the quarter.
Despite strong sales levels, order backlog remains at historically high levels, which indicates further sales growth momentum. EBITDA increased by EUR 5 million year-over-year, and the respective margin improved from 9.6% in Q1 2022 to 10.4% in Q1 2023. Gross profit increased year-over-year due to healthy organic sales growth, while operating costs were under proportionally impacted from higher administrative expenses. Moving to Farm Technologies. Q1 has been the fifth quarter in a row with strong year-over-year organic order intake growth, hitting a record order intake level of EUR 253 million. Solid global demand for automated milking and manure equipment is driving the 6.6% organic order intake growth.
Given the strong organic order intake growth in the past quarters and our expectation that the contraction of milk prices as well as rising interest rates will lead to some slower decision-making processes, we might see a temporary phase of moderate order intake growth going forward. The order backlog is substantially up by 14% year-over-year and 19% quarter-over-quarter to EUR 346 million, which lays a good foundation for further sales growth in the coming quarters. Sales increased organically by 24.7%. This very satisfactory development was driven by outstanding organic new machine sales growth of 29.7% year-over-year, and a very healthy service sales growth of 19.9% year-over-year.
Due to the very strong new machine business, the service sales ratio declined by 2.8% to 47.6%. EBITDA increased strongly by EUR 13 million and the respective margin improved to 12.5% from 6.8% in Q1 '22. Gross profit has been significantly above prior year's level, driven by strong organic sales growth and also due to consistent price adjustments during the last month, which overcompensated the increase in operating costs from higher selling expenses. Finally, let us turn to Heating & Refrigeration Technologies. Another division with extremely strong order intake and sales growth in the quarter. Order intake increased organically by an outstanding 32.5% year-over-year.
The strong development was driven by a significantly higher volume of orders in both between EUR 1 million and EUR 5 million, as well as between EUR 5 million-EUR 50 million and good demand in North America. From a customer industry perspective, distribution, storage centers, climate control, as well as marine, have shown good growth in the quarter. The trading environment remains positive. The decarbonization of processes is a strong growth driver, which is reflected in a high demand for heat pumps. Almost all regions with a good outlook and the U.S. in particular look interesting. Also in this division, the order backlog is substantially up by 25% year-over-year and 20% quarter-over-quarter to EUR 268 million, which is great for sales generation in the coming quarters.
Organic sales increased strongly by 19.2% year-over-year and was driven by new machine sales growth accelerating from 7.4% in Q4 2022 to 21.1% year-over-year in this quarter. Service sales showed a healthy organic growth rate of 14.9%. Its sales share, however, declined by 3.5 percentage points to 38.4% due to the strong new machine sales. EBITDA rose by EUR 3 million to EUR 60 million, and the respective margin improved from 10.7% in Q1 2022 to 11.8% this quarter. Gross profit was up year-over-year due to higher sales and better gross margin, which overcompensated the increase in operating costs.
Closing the divisional chapter now with the overview on the EBITDA contribution, and as you can see, all five divisions contributed to the profit improvement. There are, however, differences in the extent of the contribution, and it clearly stands out that FFT as well as FDS have been the major drivers behind the year-over-year EBITDA improvement. In total, EBITDA before restructuring increased to EUR 172 million from EUR 138 million. There's been only a basically zero translational effects impact this quarter. Coming now to another important topic, Net Working Capital. As in the last years, the first quarter is showing the typical seasonal uptick in Net Working Capital from year-end. This quarter-on-quarter increase is driven by an increase in inventories, which in turn is triggered by our strong order backlog.
In a year-over-year comparison, Net Working Capital increased by EUR 77 million to EUR 360 million due to higher inventories and trade receivables as a result of the strong business development, partly offset by increase in trade payables and advanced payments. Despite the year-over-year and quarter-on-quarter uptick in Net Working Capital remain with a Net Working Capital to sales ratio of 6.9%, well below the guided corridor of 8%-10%. Coming now to another important topic, cash generation. Operating cash flow was a -EUR 49 million, which is below prior year's quarterly figure of -EUR 14 million. The decline is explained by the following. Firstly, a higher Net Working Capital outflow resulting from the inventory build-up due to the elevated order backlog. Secondly, higher outflow and provisions of EUR 88 million.
Thirdly, a EUR 46 million cash outflow for others. The provision position contains the outflow of bonus payments for fiscal year 2022, which was, as you all know, a very successful year. In addition, we paid out the first tranche of the inflation compensation payment to all employees in Germany, which accounted for roughly EUR 10 million. The position others includes mainly cash outflows for prepaid expenses and a minor effect from valuing our currency derivatives. The slight step up in CapEx related outflow of EUR 2 million year-over-year to EUR 35 million is in line with our fiscal year 2023 guidance of around EUR 240 million. As a result, free cash flow is - EUR 52 million and below prior year's quarterly number of - EUR 28 million.
Consequently, our free cash flow conversion ratio before restructuring, which is calculated over the last four quarters, has been below the target corridor of 55%-65%, as only 41% of EBITDA was converted into free cash flow. Main reason for the lower cash generation has been the Net Working Capital outflow of EUR 88 million over the course of the last four quarters. However, we expect to be within our cash conversion ratio of 55%-65% for the whole year 2023, even though that might be at the lower end of that range. Net cash, including lease liabilities, declined from EUR 347 million at the end of the fourth quarter to EUR 274 million, driven by the negative net cash flow of EUR 72 million. Let me now talk about our financial headroom.
On the left, you see our debt instrument as well as their respective utilization and maturity structure as per end of March 2023. As per March 31st, merely EUR 1 million out of the EUR 61 million uncommitted bilateral credit lines were drawn and EUR 100 million of a fixed rate Schuldschein loan, which will be due in February 2025. DF's liquidity position is supported with an undrawn committed syndicated credit line of EUR 650 million, with maturity due in 2027. This debt instrument currently serves only as an additional liquidity backup facility for us. To sum it up, we have only EUR 100 million of financial debt. Continuing now on the right side of the slide.
Equity improved because of the higher net profit, resulting in an equity ratio of 40.4% after 37.7% at the end of Q1 2022. The decline in net liquidity is due to the second tranche of our share buyback program mentioned earlier. Adjusted for the buyback, the net liquidity position, including lease liabilities, would result to 444 million EUR. Finally, some good news from our credit rating agencies. Moody's has confirmed our Baa2 rating and has upgraded the outlook from stable to positive in March 2023. With that, I hand back to Stefan with the outlook.
Thank you, Marcus. Let me now come to our outlook for the fiscal year 2023. First of all, we have decided to give no longer a quarterly order intake indication because we want to avoid short-term speculation. However, and I say that very clear, we do feel very comfortable with our current order pipeline. Otherwise, we would not have upgraded our full year's 2023 guidance. As a reminder, the upgraded guidance is as follows: Organic sales is now expected to grow organically by more than 8%. For EBITDA before restructuring expenses, we forecast to reach the upper part of the range of EUR 730 million-EUR 790 million with a comparable margin of at least 14%, and ROCE should now exceed 32%. Please bear in mind that the guidance for EBITDA and ROCE is based on constant exchange rates.
Finally, our roadmap for 2023. The next important date will be the release of our Q2 result in August 10th. Followed by our Q2 results in November. This concludes our presentation and I hand back to Oliver for the Q&A.
Yeah, thank you very much, Stefan and Marcus. I want to hand the call back to you operator to start the Q&A, please.
Thank you so much. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Klas Bergelind from Citi. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Hi, Stefan and Marcus. Klas at Citi. My first one was on the next quarter orders then, but I'll leave that, Stefan. The one I have is really on FX for you, Marcus, to start with. Expectations out there are quite wide, ranging from a negative EUR 20 million, I think, to flat-ish at the EBITDA level. You don't have that much transaction exposure, but sometimes there are some moving parts, which is tricky for us from the outside to gauge. How much at the current spot do you think we should adjust for at the upper end of the EUR 790 at the EBITDA level, no FX impact or all the way down to a - EUR 20 million? I'll start there.
Yeah. Klas, a very good question. Hello. Quite frankly, we feel actually very comfortable with the fiscal year consensus for the EBITDA before the structuring. We are fully aware that the consensus is actually on a reported basis, but of course before restructuring there. We looked at different scenarios in regards to the translational effects. As I said, with the fiscal year consensus, we see here for the EBITDA before structuring, we feel comfortable with that. Translational effects as in the first quarter were basically around zero.
Yep. No, that's good. To get to -EUR 20 million, which is a similar drag, I think, as you had back in during COVID, you need to have quite a negative scenario for FX in the second half. Unless your mix of cost versus income have changed considerably, might not look that likely. Okay. The second one is on the cost inflation. Am I right to think that the EUR 128 million in net cost inflation for the year, that there is some, maybe some downside to that number that it can come in lower given what we see on the cost side? Also, when you think about your price increases, how much of these, if you could remind us, would be tied to that inflation? It seems like pricing out to the backlog is relatively sticky, but curious on any comments there.
When we look at actually the cost inflation on the supplier side, we still stick with the number we set, but we see actually that it might be a little bit less than that. That the direction is actually it could be a bit lighter than the EUR 128 million we mentioned there. On the order backlog and sales price increases, that's sticky. Absolutely.
My third and final one is on the larger order in SFT. We don't see that often. It's in lithium. Obviously, in the short term, maybe the battery outlook is mixed, but in the very long term, it's very solid. If we can talk about the opportunity or if this can grow into something bigger. Also carbon capture, you're providing a slide here. Obviously some of your peers have a much more meaningful exposure to some of these decarb drivers, but it would be really good if you could get us some sort of base level. Like how much of both within HRT, but also within SFT, can we sort of call being green new growth, so we can have a base to work from? Thank you.
Ok Klas, we're actually looking at the green base of revenue there, we have not come up with our own methodology here. That's why we do not give out our own methodology numbers for green revenue and the baseline for that. We're not there yet in that sense, giving out these kinds of numbers because we are openly discussing internally if that makes sense for investors or not, to have our own definition of green revenue and green OpEx and CapEx. We cannot give you a baseline as of today.
However, HRT and also partly SFT just mentioned is of course the business is driven by decarbonization, and which is of course the trend which we are seeing right now in Germany. I mean, every news, it includes CO2 and climate. I think we are absolutely on track with that. We don't give out numbers right now because we have not, as I said, our own methodology for green revenue and business.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from line of Sven Weier from UBS. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is around the guidance increase. Stefan, you already mentioned, you know, when you stop guiding on orders, you wouldn't have done raising the guidance if demand was bad. I was just wondering, it comes relatively early for you guys. We hardly see that for you before that you raise guidance already a few weeks after giving it in the first place. I would just wonder if you could give some more color, what else has driven that? Is it a combination of supply chains improving more than you thought? Is it also that you feel you have now more visibility on demand for infra out in the rest of the year? Or what is it that has really driven such a quick upgrade of the guide?
I mean, thanks for the question. When at the end, I mean, look, if one quarter is in the box, we have nine remaining months, and it's a question of the math at the end also. If we would have stick to the old guidance, your question would have been, "Don't you expect any growth anymore for the remaining nine months if we achieve a growth rate in sales more than 12% in the first quarter?" Then we would guide for a total growth of 5%. That sounds not really realistic. It's very clear that we see a continuous very good business. We have a very good order intake this quarter.
Just remember that last year, the growth rate of order intake was more than 20%, we beat that number again this quarter. We also have a solid pipeline. We also expect that we see a good full year. We also see that on the supply chain, the problems are, let's say, becoming less. We are more confident than, let's say, some months ago that we get all the products we need to execute the order backlog. That all together makes us very optimistic and therefore, we thought it's the right time to upgrade the guidance because we feel comfortable that this is what we can deliver.
Understood. Then I was just wondering when we think about the EBITDA guidance, even if we take the high end now and your growth rate on the top line, it's basically for the coming quarter, that doesn't really imply any more margin improvement for Q2 to Q4. You basically had all the improvement already in Q1. Is that really what we should expect? You have further top-line growth, you have some more savings, I guess. What's behind that?
Well, we said, top-line growth is gonna be above 8%. Okay, the growth rate in the next quarters might be a bit lower than in the first quarter, there, but you can still expect sales growth in the coming quarters. We also said that the EBITDA margin we expect is gonna be about 14.0% EBITDA margin. There's also growth improvements here on the EBITDA margin side. On the other hand, we also have to take, of course, into account that there is a wage cost increases of around EUR 80 million is still to come. We need to factor this in. All the wage increases did not start from January 1st but started beginning of April and beginning of May. This is also coming our way.
The final question, if I may, is just on the motives again of the client's order pipeline. I mean, I just came off another call with another food equipment maker, and we've been discussing around, you know, how much impact is there from the inflation benefits that some of the food and beverage companies are obviously making at the moment. How much does it stimulate also the CapEx budgets? I mean, the answer the other company came away was that they rather see the opposite, that they see the food and beverage companies under pressure from the supermarkets to come up with ever lower costs, and that's driving the investment into more efficient machines and cost reductions on their end. Is that the same what you are seeing?
I mean, first of all, let me say what is, I think, very important. That's also what you can see during the last years. We are in a very stable business environment. I mean, as long as people are living on that planet who need to eat and drink something, we are in a very safe harbor, and our customers will continue to invest. That's, I think, very important to understand. We also feel that there are many additional opportunities for us to grow, be it New Food, for instance, be it the new technologies we just explained, CO2 capturing, lithium. Also the drive and the necessity from our customers to upgrade and invest into more sustainable products.
We just recently announced and disclosed our new Add Better label, which is a fifth certified process for products which contribute significantly to a better world in terms of saving energy or saving water or saving resources. There is very clear, a very clear trend when we talk to our customers. They are very open, and they also need to invest in more resource-efficient equipment, that also will drive the growth in our industry.
Very clear. Thank you both.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Please stand by. The next question comes to the line of Max Yates from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Just my first question was just around what you're seeing regionally. I think in one of your divisions you called out North America being particularly strong. Could you talk more broadly about are you seeing very different trends across Asia, Europe, and North America? Or is it all sort of relatively consistent when you think about your orders?
I mean, North America is quite strong, that's right. Also, the Asian region is still very, very good here. If we compare the regions, I would say, North America and Asia are the drivers.
Okay. Maybe just a quick follow-up, and I fully appreciate sort of you don't want to guide on orders. I guess my only kind of question is when I look at the pattern of orders last year, it was obviously a very strong Q1, and then we kind of ended the year almost EUR 200 million lower by the time we got to Q4. I guess what I was trying to work out is to what extent is a kind of EUR 1.5, EUR 1.6 level in Q1 representative of just strong seasonality? For many businesses, we think about kind of run rates from there.
I guess the simple question is will orders be sort of closer to that kind of 1.5, 1.6 level, or should we be thinking about kind of normalizing kind of down to what we saw the rest of the year? I guess if we think about sequential versus year-on-year, if we stay at these sequential levels, we're gonna see very strong year-on-year growth rates. Any help you can give us around whether this is a seasonally strong Q1 or it's this is a decent run rate.
I mean, we committed in our Mission 26 to a continuously, annual growth, and we are extremely optimistic that this is exactly what we can deliver. As I said, we stop to give indications in the, in a form of quarter to quarter simply to avoid speculations. That has nothing to do with our confidence. We see a continuous, interesting pipeline. We also see a continuous growth in our business.
I guess that comment is extended to orders as well.
Pardon?
That comment around continued growth, I would assume that is true of order intake as well.
Yeah. If I mean, we cannot grow in sales if order intake is decreasing. That's very clear.
Okay.
In the medium to long term. On the other hand, it's also very clear and normal in our business that sometimes a quarter is not the right dimension to really, let's say, judge the performance. Because large orders, when it is about EUR 50 million, EUR 80 million, EUR 100 million or so, they also can easily swap from one quarter to the other. That has nothing to do with our market situation, with our performance, with the willingness to invest. Therefore it is more important to look at the full year.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from line of Akash Gupta from JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, Stefan, Marcus, and Oliver, and thanks for your time. My first one is also on orders. I mean, you have been pretty consistent in guiding on quarterly orders, and you are abolishing this practice, which comes at a time when some of your peers are reporting high uncertainty and talking about customer hesitant to sign off CapEx in the near term due to banking crisis. I wanted to ask if this high uncertainty to convert the pipeline into orders is also playing a role in your decision to not guide on quarterly orders. Should we expect a higher than normal volatility in quarterly orders going forward, at least in the next couple of quarters? That's question number one.
Okay. I can maybe give you a simple answer. The answer is no.
Just to confirm, you don't see any high uncertainty to convert the pipeline into firm orders?
Can you repeat that? I understood that you are asking if we expect a larger volatility in the future, and that was my answer. I said no.
Okay. The second one.
Akash. The decision we made not to give a quarterly order income indication was not based on the volatility of order intake at our competitors. Not at all. We thought this is the time actually to go a little bit, go more long term than just quarterly view.
Okay. You don't see any higher level of, higher than normal level of volatility in the near term?
No.
As some of your competitors are saying?
No.
Okay. The second question I have is on these energy efficient solution, which you have been talking about quite some time. When we look at your orders and particularly base orders, do you have an indication in terms of how much of your orders are driven by these energy efficient solutions which may have a faster payback period and therefore, despite all the macro headwinds we see on the horizon, the fundamentals for this part of the business may be superior than the rest of the group. Any color on that would be great.
Thanks. This is at the moment not such a significant number because, you know, we also know that the pressure on customers is just started with the Ukraine War to really put a focus on energy savings. We are also about launching these products, but we sold already very successfully some of them. For instance, I also mentioned in informal calls the AddCool solution, where we add a heat pump to our spray dryers, which is really a significant saving in energy. That's also a product we sold very successful already. This will accelerate because there is increasing pressure to save energy. I think the minds from our customers are much more open than before to do something to save energy.
An additional pressure is to do something to reduce the CO2 footprint. This will accelerate. The most important message is that GEA is, I would say, really at the forefront in the industry here because we are really focusing on in our R&D on this kind of innovations. We already have a lot of these products available for sale, and we already have achieved some really great successes that customers are accepting and also appreciating that we have this kind of product.
Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Sebastian Growe from BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good afternoon, thanks for taking my questions. It's two. One , those are mostly on the plant engineering heavy businesses. Starting with LPT. When I look at the numbers and it appeared to me like a rather slow start to the year. At the same time, however, that's for the execution. At the same time, however, the order trend has been quite encouraging, starting as of second, third quarter last year. The question then simply is how we should think of the further acceleration and execution in the coming quarters. Will these orders become rather quickly then into revenues or turn into revenues? The same then also for the EBITDA, should we see a sequential acceleration here for that segment in particular?
Yeah. I mean, when we talk about LPT, you know, this is always of the vast majority are large projects which normally take a while between order intake and until we see the full effect in the P&L. We have a very solid backlog here and also say its conversion, which we can expect for this year. There is also a very good and optimistic view that we continue our growth story in LPT as well.
Okay, that sounds good. If we then move on to the other large plant engineering activity with FHT. My understanding is that you had some changes implemented at the or in this segment. Maybe you can talk around that and particularly to what extent we can draw any meaningful conclusions from what so far the track record has been in terms of getting to the 13% to 15% margin corridor and again, talk around the measures a bit, that would be very much appreciated. Thanks.
That's right. That we made some changes in the SFT, also in the management last year. This is simply because we feel that we can accelerate the positive development which we saw at this division also. This is what we intend to do. We reorganized internally some parts of that division. It's simply, let's say, to accelerate our improvement story here. We have a target set in the Mission 26 that this division will achieve a margin 13%-15%, and there is no change.
Thank you for this. Although it's very early days, would you even go as far as that those very implemented changes could have the potential to even go beyond that very target range?
I think first we do the 13%-15%, once we have that achieved, we think about the future.
Okay. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our last question for today. It comes from the line of Rizk Maidi from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the the follow-ups that I actually have too. Number one is in previous quarters you've been helpful in terms of talking about the price increases that you're achieving in your orders versus your revenues. If my memory is correct, we're talking about 3%-4% on the revenue side and perhaps more, 5%-6% on the order. Maybe if you could just comment on Q1 orders, please, and on revenues and the pricing contribution, please.
Yeah. I can actually confirm what you said. I would say in the order intake it is rather a little bit lower, maybe four to five. In sales you are right with the numbers you mentioned. Yeah.
Yeah. Perfect. Secondly, if we think about the EBITDA upgrade and thinking about the different sort of items that you gave in the last sort of presentation, maybe what has sort of mainly changed? I mean, you talked about wage inflation of EUR 80 million really starting from Q2. Any changes on the input cost increase or the pricing sort of assumptions behind your EBITDA upgrades? Any thoughts there will be helpful.
Yeah. I mean, the expectation Marcus just mentioned, that we have calculated or expected number of 140. It will definitely from today's point of view, everything what we see not worsening, rather the opposite. We see even, that it is little bit better perspective for us. That also might help us to come up. Come out with the numbers we are promising.
Okay. Understood. Then lastly, any reason why we should not assume the sort of normal seasonality when you think about Q1 and the full year within GEA?
Can you please repeat or more precise in your question?
Yeah. It's a seasonal business, right? Just perhaps, is there anything fundamentally that has changed in the business that perhaps the previous seasonality-
No, no, definitely not. No. There, there is no, no change. I mean, there is always a kind of seasonality in our order intake on a quarter basis, which you also can see if you look at the patterns in the last years. Also last year we had a seasonality, let's say quarter per quarter, but there is nothing underlying there's nothing which changed or makes us any which makes us nervous about the future or so, nothing. Yeah, we also are looking forward to deliver even better numbers like we guided before, and that's the reason why we also upgrade our guidance.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, and I would like now to hand the conference over to Oliver Luckenbach for any final remarks.
Good. Okay. Thank you for participating in our call. I would like to summarize the key takeaways from today's call. First of all, after a very successful 2022, we had another very strong first quarter with strongly rising sales and earnings and a record order intake. Secondly, we have very promising sustainable innovations and technologies also outside our very robust core markets, food, beverage, and pharma. Thirdly, we feel very comfortable with our current order pipeline, otherwise we would have not upgraded our full year 2023 guidance. Have a nice weekend. Yeah. Talk to you soon again.