Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the publication of the annual results of the fiscal year 2023-2024 of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Ludwin Monz, CEO of Heidelberg.
Yeah, thank you, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Heidelberg's conference call on our full year 2023-2024 results. We are very pleased to welcome our investors and analysts in this call. Our first slide shows the outline of today's agenda. I will start with a brief summary on our performance in fiscal year 2023-2024, and then I will report about the just-concluded trade show at drupa 2024 and an important strategic announcement that we made at the show. Afterwards, my colleague and CFO, Tania von der Goltz, will take you through the financials in detail, followed by an update on our Value Creation Program. And finally, Tania will conclude with our outlook for the new fiscal year before we welcome your questions. So I would like to start with the most important message on our financials, which is also given here on the slide.
Heidelberg has achieved its guidance for fiscal year 2023-2024 despite substantial challenges in the last quarters. In the course of the fiscal year, the overall economic development remained sluggish, driven by a high interest rate as central banks continued their restrictive monetary policy. Additionally, ongoing geopolitical tensions and increasing global trade frictions had a slowing impact on the global economic development too. As a consequence, companies in the capital goods sector recorded declines in order intake, which resulted in a lower utilization of their production capacity. At the same time, companies had to deal with substantial cost increases. Achieving the annual targets under such adverse circumstances was the result of great financial discipline and a team effort during the last fiscal year. So let's take a closer look at our numbers. Orders received decreased by 6%, partly due to some currency headwinds.
At constant currencies, the organic growth rate was -3.7%, marking a better performance compared to our peer group and demonstrating the benefits of our unique global reach. Reported net sales were down by 1.4%, which is in line with our guidance that anticipated a flat year-over-year development at constant currencies. In fact, at constant currencies, we even recorded a slight increase of 0.6%. This development was characterized by a decline in volumes, but also by a positive impact from our pricing initiatives, which compensated for the increase in cost. In total, we were able to keep the adjusted EBITDA margin on a stable level of 7.2%, meeting our guidance for this KPI. Fortunately, we anticipated the challenges of the fiscal year very early on, which allowed us to put in place a comprehensive performance management program.
We call this program Value Creation Program, which ensured improvements at all levels and contributed substantially to our financial performance. These efforts were particularly visible in our free cash flow, which was strongly positive at EUR 56 million, marking an important milestone for us. In contrast to prior years, we did not record inflows from asset disposals such as property sales, so the free cash flow and its improvements are based on our operational performance. When adjusting the prior years for inflows from these asset disposals or similar items, we achieved the highest free cash flow in a decade. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, so much about our financials. More details will follow in a few minutes provided by Tania. Let me now talk about the trade fair drupa 2024, which was just concluded a few days ago. We are pleased to report that drupa was really extremely successful for Heidelberg.
We were able to present our solutions to both commercial print and packaging clients. In the slide, you can see some impressions from the show. In total, the number of visitors even exceeded our expectations by far, demonstrating the vitality of our industry. There were 170,000 visitors to drupa. However, in the end, it is all about collected leads and orders. I'm glad to report that we were very satisfied with the results. Numbers will follow from Tania in a couple of minutes. Some of you visited the trade fair personally and had the opportunity to get a firsthand impression. So let me highlight four new product innovations that we presented. They not only demonstrate Heidelberg's innovative strength, but also show that our market position and our customer relationships themselves are important assets. Firstly, Heidelberg presented a new strategic partnership with Canon on inkjet digital printing machines.
We introduced two new products to the market that will be fully integrated in the Heidelberg ecosystem. I will present more details in the next slide. Secondly, we introduced a new generation of our offset printing press XL 106 to the market. This machine allows our customers to reduce their cost by increasing productivity. It addresses the shortage of labor of our customers by highly automating the management of the print shop. And this new printing press is much more sustainable as it reduces waste and consumes significantly less energy. The third innovation of strategic importance that we presented at drupa was our Boardmaster. The flexographic printing press has been designed for high-volume folding carton customers. It boosts their productivity and increases profitability and competitiveness. Boardmaster will be adapted for flexible packaging, where we want to capitalize on our existing customer base too.
Finally, the fourth innovation that we presented at drupa was a StackStar C, a cooperating robot. It also contributes to easing the shortage of skilled labor. The innovative cobot helps customers to perform basic duties in post-press, and it is very flexible in use. Now, let's come back to our new digital inkjet press, which is an important milestone for our commercial printing solution segment and a turning point for its prospects. Until so far, Heidelberg has traditionally focused on offset printing in this segment. As you know, we have seen a continuous decline of this market over the past years. The reason is that some customers, at least slowly but steadily, transitioned from offset printing to digital printing. As Heidelberg did not have an inkjet press, they had to use third-party solutions.
With the Heidelberg Jetfire generation, Heidelberg closes an important strategic gap and creates a unique market position, being the only provider seamlessly integrating both worlds of offset and inkjet printing into one. Moving this barrier does not, does also mean that Heidelberg will increase its addressable market towards digital inkjet printing, which will be beneficial for the segment's financial performance. Let me add one more thought on the cooperation between Heidelberg and Canon. While Canon has the technologically leading inkjet press, the company is lacking access to the graphic arts market segment. Heidelberg, on the other hand, has very close customer relationships in this segment and the industry-leading service organization, but does not have an inkjet printing press that meets the requirements of the market. Therefore, the cooperation is highly synergistic, and I'm absolutely sure that both parties will benefit from this partnership.
Yeah, so much about drupa and from my side, and I will now hand over to Tania.
Thank you, Ludwin, and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Before going into more detail of our full year performance, let's take a look at the latest trends in our fourth quarter. Overall, we recorded a sequential upward trend in orders received, as well as a strongly positive free cash flow. Starting with orders received, which totaled EUR 596 million in the fourth quarter, exceeding the prior year's figure by 3.7%. At constant currencies, the year-over-year improvement was even at 5.6%. Compared to the third quarter, orders received showed a strong sequential improvement of 20%, which is particularly driven by a solid performance in Asia-Pacific. Net sales were at their peak within the fiscal year, totaling EUR 710 million, and were slightly higher than in the previous year's fourth quarter. However, the trends in the previous quarters continued.
Sales volumes were declining, but our pricing initiatives compensated for it. Adjusted EBITDA margin was at 5.2%, which is below prior year due to a weaker capacity utilization, as we slowed down our production, anticipating a weaker first quarter in terms of sales. Let me conclude this section with a look at our free cash flow, which strongly improved year-over-year to EUR 109 million. In particular, the operating cash flow showed a significant increase in the fourth quarter due to our strong net working capital management, which was based on an improvement in DIO and DSO. As a result, the free cash flow improved by EUR 47 million compared to prior year's fourth quarter, when adjusting for an asset disposal of EUR 26 million in prior year's fourth quarter. Let's now switch back to the full year's view, starting with the performance of our segments.
Overall, our Packaging Solutions segment delivered a strong and resilient performance, increasing its share of group sales to over 50%, namely 52% for the first time. We expect further growth also in the upcoming years. Orders received were almost at EUR 1.2 billion, recording a year-over-year growth of 3.1%, driven by a solid performance of our sheet-fed product and first orders for our new Boardmaster. The segment's net sales increased by 7% year-over-year, totaling EUR 1.24 billion, while the adjusted EBITDA margin was almost flat at 8.2%, reflecting higher R&D cost for ongoing initiatives. In contrast to Packaging Solutions, Print Solutions recorded a decline in orders received of 13.4%, amounting to around EUR 1.1 billion. Net sales decreased by 8.6% to around EUR 1.15 billion, while the adjusted EBITDA margin slightly increased to 7.7%.
Actually, the print solution segment historically shows a strong dependency on the overall economic environment, while also being impacted by a notable switch from conventional to digital printing technologies, which we will address going forward with our partnership with Canon and our Heidelberg Jetfire inkjet machine, leading to further growth in the upcoming years. Lastly, the Technology Solutions segment. We continued to face a challenging market environment. Orders received and net sales were at EUR 10 million, declining by around 55% year-over-year. The Adjusted EBITDA margin was negative, totaling EUR 18 million after EUR 60 million in the prior year, reflecting our ongoing efforts in developing new products and refining our sales structures. And in addition, this figure also includes the negative EBITDA portion from Zaikio and Printed Electronics of approximately EUR 5 million, which we decided to discontinue.
Let's switch to the next slide, which shows our regional breakdown on the left-hand side. Overall, let me comment that we faced headwinds from the FX rates, and of course, mainly in Asia-Pacific and Americas. As Ludwin Monz mentioned earlier, the sales of the group totaled EUR 2.395 billion at current FX rates. Considering the headwinds from FX rates, we ended up at constant FX rates with sales even above the prior year, totaling EUR 2.449 million. And this comes from Americas, which was stable at a slight increase in sales, while EMEA showed a stable trend year-over-year. Orders received showed a growth in Asia-Pacific, whereas EMEA and Americas fell behind a strong prior year. But now, let us look into more detail region by region, starting with EMEA. Orders received were at EUR 1.13 billion.
The Eastern European markets showed a positive trend, while markets in Southern Europe were somewhat weaker, which is largely attributable to the overall economic slowdown and the well-known hesitancy to invest ahead of the drupa trade fair. In total, orders received declined in EMEA by 8.9% year-over-year. However, given the solid order backlog, net sales were almost in line with prior year, totaling around EUR 1.2 billion. Now, shifting our focus to the Asia-Pacific region, where orders received improved by 7.6% year-over-year to EUR 642 million. At constant currencies, the increase was even at 15.4%. Especially China recorded strong momentum in the fourth quarter, which will give us some headroom to increase sales in the region over the next quarters. However, Asia-Pacific sales stood somewhat in contrast to the positive development in orders received, trending 4.5% below the prior year for the total year at current FX rates.
At constant FX rates, we saw a growth of 2.7%. Let's finish this section with a view on Americas. Orders received showed a weakening trend, declining by approximately 13% to EUR 515 million, mainly caused by the U.S. market after a very strong prior year. Nevertheless, net sales built on a solid order backlog from the prior year and even increased by 2.3% to EUR 588 million. At constant currencies, the increase was even at 4.7%. Now, let's switch back to the group figures. Our EBITDA bridge, which illustrates our resilient year-over-year performance that was enabled also by the value creation program. To start with a comparable base, the prior year's reported EBITDA was adjusted for non-recurring items totaling EUR 34 million due to the sale of two properties, as well as an asset contribution to our joint venture with Masterwork in China.
Accordingly, prior year's adjusted EBITDA totaled EUR 175 million after 12 months, corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 7.2%. From this point, declining sales volume resulted in a weaker capacity utilization in the current year, causing a negative margin impact of approximately EUR 46 million. Additionally, inflated costs weighed on adjusted EBITDA, impacting it by -EUR 30 million, mainly as personnel costs recorded a year-over-year increase due to higher tariff wages in Germany. However, we anticipate these negative margin impacts at an early stage by increasing prices, improving manufacturing costs, and maintaining a very strong cost discipline safeguarded by our value creation program. These measures strongly contributed to the gross margin improvements of EUR 61 million that we recorded last fiscal year, while other miscellaneous effects contributed another EUR 12 million to the year-over-year EBITDA margin improvement or development.
Overall, Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 172 million, representing a margin of 7.2%, which is in line with prior year's level and in line with our ambition guidance despite all headwinds. Reported EBITDA was at EUR 169 million as we adjusted for a net impact of two legal disputes totaling -EUR 4 million. The next two charts are focusing on the transition from reported EBITDA to earnings per share. Please note that we are now referring to reported figures without adjusting for non-recurring items. The year-over-year difference in reported EBITDA is also reflected in EBIT, which totaled EUR 91 million, as depreciation essentially remained at the previous year's level. Our net financial result was weaker compared to prior year, resulting in increased net financial expenses of EUR 36 million, mainly due to non-cash interest expenses related to our pension provisions. They were higher, totaling EUR 23 million.
However, interest expenses on financial liabilities remained quite low at EUR 5 million, while other interest expenses experienced a year-over-year increase, primarily due to transaction costs related to the refinancing of our revolving credit facilities we executed last summer. In total, earnings before taxes amounted to EUR 55 million. Finalizing the transition from EBITDA to earnings per share, now moving to the tax result, which improved year-over-year as effective tax expenses on income strongly benefited from a release of a transfer pricing provision totaling -EUR 6 million. Conversely, deferred tax expenses increased by EUR 7 million year-over-year, totaling -EUR 10 million. Overall, net income was at EUR 39 million compared to EUR 91 million in the prior year because prior year's net income included non-recurring items totaling EUR 34 million and benefited from lower interest expenses on pensions.
When divided the net income by the number of shares, earnings per share were at EUR 0.13 compared to EUR 0.30 in the year before. Let's continue with our cash flow, starting with the operating cash flow. Overall, we saw a significant year-over-year improvement based on a stabilized EBITDA performance as well as on our strong working capital discipline. While the adjusted EBITDA was in line with prior year, the cash out for tax and interest items were slightly higher. The change in net working capital contributed EUR 40 million to the operating cash flow in fiscal year 2023-24. We were able to reduce net working capital to 19.6% in relation of net sales. The year-over-year improvement in this position totaled EUR 190 million compared to prior year.
Basically, we recorded a decline of down payments as order backlog was lower year-over-year, but we were able to compensate this by reducing inventories along the value chain and optimizing our receivables. Continuing with other items amounting to EUR 70 million, which mainly included cash out for pensions as well as adjustments for non-cash items such as the release of the aforementioned tax provision. In total, operating cash flow was at +EUR 90 million, marking a very sound improvement of EUR 50 million compared to prior year. Let's finish the cash flow section by looking at our free cash flow, which was the highest level for more than 10 years when adjusting the prior year's for non-recurring items.
While the improvement in operating cash flow was carried over from the prior slide, one can see that investments were at EUR 65 million in the reporting year, slightly below prior year. Inflows from divestments mainly related to the sale of demo equipment from our showroom totaling EUR 25 million. Please note prior year included cash in from asset deposits of EUR 96 million, which reflects a non-recurring item we have not repeated this year. Compared to prior year, cash inflows from divestments were therefore, as just explained, EUR 81 million lower as they did not include the aforementioned impact from property sales totaling EUR 96 million. In total, free cash flow was at EUR 56 million last fiscal year, marking a significant improvement compared to the prior year and the best free cash flow in 10 years when adjusting prior year's for cash inflows from non-recurring items.
Let's conclude this section with a view of some balance sheet figures as presented on page 70. First, our equity improved to EUR 527 million, representing an equity ratio of 24.9%, mainly due to the positive net income, which was cushioned by an increase of the present value of the pension provision as discount rates were 20 basis points lower year-over-year. In total, the pension provision amounted to EUR 688 million, which is a slight year-over-year increase as the cash out of the provision was partially overcompensated by the aforementioned increase in present value due to the change in interest rate. Now, moving to the right side of this chart, our net financial position improved due to the strongly positive free cash flow, while an increase in leasing liabilities of EUR 27 million had a negative effect. In total, our net financial position improved to EUR 77 million.
In addition to our positive net cash situation, we still have sufficient headroom in our RCF, which has recently been extended to EUR 350 million with maturity until 2027. In summary, I can say Heidelberg builds on a basis of financial strength, also due to our successful value creation program. Now, I would like to take the opportunity to provide you an update on our value creation program. The last fiscal year has demonstrated that our initiatives are paying off, securing Heidelberg's solid financial performance even during times of weak market conditions and headwinds. Delivering on our ambitious capital markets guidance is particularly important given Heidelberg's history of volatility in this area. Overall, we successfully managed to counteract rising costs while navigating our high fixed cost base during a period of declining volumes. However, maintaining a stable Adjusted EBITDA margin year-over-year required some effort.
Even more notable and challenging was the improvement in the free cash flow, marking an important milestone in Heidelberg's recent history. As aforementioned, the free cash flow was the highest level in over 10 years if the free cash flows of the previous year were adjusted for non-recurring items included therein. This improvement in free cash flow has also strengthened our already positive net financial position, which is now, as aforementioned, at EUR 77 million, providing a strong basis for resilience. However, let's finish this section with an outlook on our initiatives and priorities that we plan for this fiscal year that you can see on this slide. Therefore, I would like to highlight three topics in particular. The first one is on safeguarding our short-term financial performance.
To this end, we will continue to focus on the implementation of efficiency measures at all levels of the company in order to further counteract the annual increase in personnel and material costs. The second priority will be on preparing the implementation of structural adjustments within our Heidelberg setup. In a first step, this means we will strengthen the market mechanism within our value chain, targeting to outsource certain parts to third-party suppliers as a first measure, in particular those with uncritical IP and valid supplier markets. In addition to this, we will closely align our value chain with local demand, which means an increased focus on our Chinese manufacturing footprint to serve the demand locally. Thirdly, we aim to strengthen key strategic functions such as our service business, leveraging on our strong installed base by increasing our contract coverage.
In addition, we aim to build up a business excellence team that will secure the implementation of all the initiatives. The value creation program is our answer to structural changes and short-term challenges and headwinds we are faced with. Already in this fiscal year, it demonstrated to be an effective, significant contributor to our short-term performance and paving the way for structural changes. It will help us to increase the company's financial headroom, strengthening the ability of financing innovations such as shown at the drupa. Talking about the drupa, this brings me to the outlook section, which I would like to start with the impact that our drupa presence will have on order intake. Overall, we expect order intake to show a solid upswing in the first quarter of the new fiscal year, compensating for the shortfall in the third quarter of the last fiscal year.
On this page, you can see the quarterly order intake of the last fiscal year as well as the indication of our expectations for the first quarter of this fiscal year, highlighted in blue. We actually expect order intake to be around EUR 650 million in the first quarter, representing a 10% increase year-over-year. Additionally, we have collected around EUR 300 million in soft orders, which are expected to convert into firm orders over the next weeks and months. This will help to report a solid performance, particularly in the second half of the new fiscal year. We expect a kind of weak start to be followed by a strong second half. The volatility of the quarterly order intake has been kind of intensified by the drupa, which will cause the known seasonality of sales and profitability also in this fiscal year.
When reviewing Heidelberg's past fiscal years, one can observe that the second half of the year typically experiences higher sales volumes while profitability peaks in the second quarter due to certain accounting factors. We expect a similar seasonality pattern this fiscal year, but with an even weaker first half and a stronger second half. Especially in the first quarter, we will see the impact of the relatively weak order intake from the third quarter of the last fiscal year. This means that sales in the first quarter will likely lag the comparative period of the previous fiscal year significantly, with Adjusted EBITDA margin and free cash flow also expected to be negative. However, this will be considered in the guidance that I will provide you on the next slide. Even though market conditions remain challenging, Heidelberg expects a stable development also in the upcoming fiscal year.
The overall economic situation remains weak, with interest rates remaining high. Companies in the capital goods sector face challenging times ahead. However, Heidelberg's net sales are forecasted to be in line with the previous year. Adjusted EBITDA is also expected to be at previous year's level, which was at 7.2%. Overall, we anticipate higher personnel and material costs in this fiscal year, especially due to a tariff increase of around 3% of our German workforce. In addition, a lower capacity utilization due to a slight decline in sales volumes is also expected to negatively impact the EBITDA. Our response to this will be the continuation of our value creation program to continue implementing price adjustments and efficiency initiatives at all levels of our company, which will be, as just mentioned, safeguarded by our value creation program.
However, when comparing our performance to a broader peer group, which, given the still subdued overall economic situation, is on average expecting a decline in sales and adjusted EBITDA, we can build on the strong performance recorded at drupa and our efficiency initiatives from our value creation program, and we expect a stable development also in this fiscal year. Having said this, I now hand over to Ludwin again.
Yeah, thank you, Tania. That was quite some information today, certainly caused by the drupa and the year-end. So I'm looking forward to the discussion. Before we go there, I would like to share a few thoughts with you on my own behalf. As you have probably heard, I will be stepping down as CEO of Heidelberg at the end of June for personal reasons and will be leaving the company.
My successor will be Jürgen Otto, who will take over the management of the company on July 1st. This step was not easy for me, especially as Heidelberg is a great company and I have been able to work with an excellent team. However, I'm pleased to be leaving Heidelberg at a time when we have had an exceptionally successful financial year. We have repositioned Heidelberg's strategy and launched a comprehensive performance improvement program, which has already made a significant contribution to our results in the past year, which Tania just presented. I'm therefore very optimistic about the future of Heidelberg. So, dear analysts and investors, I have always enjoyed meeting you. I would like to thank you for the good cooperation, and I wish you personally and, of course, Heidelberg all the best for the future. This concludes our presentation, and we are now looking forward to your questions.
I hand back to the moderator to explain the procedure.
Yes, thank you very much. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question now, please press nine, followed by the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel that question, please press nine, followed by the star key again. And the first question comes from Stefan Augustin, Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Actually, I have three questions, and I will do them one by one, probably. So the first one is coming back to the value creation program. And I'd say we probably also, in the light of the change in the management, need to wait for the first quarter until we learn more about the structural elements to be implied.
Could we have a bit more of a wrap-up of what we have put in place so far, and how would you consider the possible financial scope that you can do in that program, given the increased free cash flow of this year? Maybe attached to that, you don't give out a free cash flow guidance, but if we look at the development throughout next year with the low start and the probably stronger end when it comes to turnover, I think it would be fair to assume a certain amount of working capital build-up. So would you be, let's say, so bold to also say that you will have a positive free cash flow in the next year as well?
Yeah, Stefan, let me start, and Tania can fill in on the cash flow because that will be past my time.
So what I can say for sure is that the current focus of the value creation program has been on operational improvement and performance improvement. As you could hear and see in the numbers, we've been quite successful. Our plan clearly is to continue that operational improvement. So that will go on for sure. Of course, structural improvements are also an option. However, given the management change, and you already gave that answer to yourself, given the management change, you need to wait until the new board has set priorities and made decisions about that. So I believe that's simply too early now. Yeah, Tania, maybe you can comment on the free cash flow.
I'm happy to do so.
Stefan, as you just mentioned, we do not precisely give a guidance on free cash flow, but what I can confirm is that Heidelberg expects to report a positive free cash flow on an operating basis also in this fiscal year, confirming the positive trends we have already initiated. Yeah, we will continue to report a stable and positive trend in earnings also this fiscal year, and this will then finally also lead to a positive free cash flow, as just mentioned.
All right, thank you. And the next one would be actually on the Jetfire. And could you please a little bit elaborate where I mean, we have tried that first with the Primefire. We had the Versafire cooperation with Ricoh. Now there is the cooperation with Canon, and that seems to be somewhere in between the two, obviously.
I read in your statement on the drupa trade fair that you have, let's say, nearly achieved a double-digit sale of that equipment during the trade fair, which seems to be quite a significant number to me. Could you give us an indication about how that cooperation is set up, how much of the service business will be on your side, and roughly how to understand where the new machine is placed versus a Versafire? Yeah, I'm happy to do so, Stefan. Let me first start with the strategic aspect. Primefire was, well, I'm inclined to say, a technology study. It was more than that. Basically, it was a product meant for the packaging market, so digital printing in packaging. And in fact, at drupa, you could see two more companies also introducing digital printing machines for the packaging market.
However, my personal belief is that this market is relatively limited, as in packaging, the thing that matters most is cost per printed sheet and also printing speed, which the two are related, as you know. So digital printing, from my point of view, will continue to have a hard time in packaging for the time being. This is why the Primefire commercially failed. I believe it was technologically a masterpiece, but commercially it failed because the market simply the parameters did not meet the requirements of the packaging market. Now, Versafire is a toner machine addressing the very low end of the commercial printing market. So that is the segment which we will continue to serve, but it's the low end of the commercial printing segment. We will continue to serve with the Versafire. No change there.
And we have many customers really appreciating this product because it's so nicely integrated in the Heidelberg Prinect workflow. Now, Canon with Jetfire, we now address the higher end of the digital printing market in commercial print. So it's really a separate segment. And the important thing, and that's the main distinction to Primefire, we are now addressing the commercial printing market. We do not address the packaging market because we believe that the parameters of the Jetfire are really made for commercial printing. So this is the perfect product for that segment. It's not competition to Versafire. It's a different segment. It's the high-end, high-volume, larger-format segment compared to Versafire. So that's the positioning of these three: Primefire, Versafire, Jetfire in relation to each other. Now, one word before I comment on the order intake on drupa, one word on digital versus offset because that's also important strategically.
In the past, Heidelberg simply did not have a digital printing machine for commercial print, except for the Versafire and the low-end segment. And we had no choice but serving the market with offset printing only. Now, we saw a decline, mainly driven by the transition of many customers from offsets to digital printing. And now that we have the Jetfire, we can actually benefit from that transition of the market. We are now addressing a market which we could not address before. So I believe that's strategically very important. And the USP, I should also say that the USP of Jetfire is its full integration in the Heidelberg ecosystem. And Heidelberg ecosystem is, first of all, the Prinect software, but it is more than that. It's also consumables and service. Now, you were asking about service, so let me point out that specifically.
A customer who buys Jetfire will get all the service, including technical service, but all consumables from Heidelberg exclusively. That's very important to understand. There's a logic behind it because Heidelberg owns the customer relationship. Yeah? By the way, you mentioned a number of order intakes. Why do customers buy these products right away? Well, because they value this customer relationship. They have been working with Heidelberg for so long, and now we have that printing machine, and they trust us, right? So they really want the service from Heidelberg, which is a big, big advantage for us. I believe we will really benefit from that. The money is in the service. One last word on the business model. We sell the hardware, we service the products, and service revenue will come in, and we sell the consumables, the ink.
Profitability of these three elements, these three commercial elements are different. We do not disclose profitabilities, obviously, but it's clear that the profitability of consumables is higher than the profitability of the machine. And that has implications because I know what you are going to do. You will model this. That has implications on your model because the profitability will actually grow over time as the installed base will grow. Yeah? Because then the consumed ink will grow. Yeah? And that's also very positive. So you see, I'm excited about this deal because that's a big, big step for Heidelberg, and I'm absolutely sure that this will allow Heidelberg now to strengthen its position in commercial print.
Great. Thank you very much for this elaboration. Could you give us, as you mentioned, the modeling, something like a price range for the product?
Actually, no.
I don't feel comfortable giving that because maybe we can take that offline. I simply don't have the number at hand, and I don't want to give you a wrong number.
Yeah. Understand. Just coming from the other part, the Versafire is usually, well, just moving into six digits. And I don't think, let's say, a price of an XL 106 is a fair amount. So we should probably not be somewhere beyond EUR 1.5 million or so per piece, but the middle is still, let's say, significantly broad. Anything, let's say, between EUR 500,000-EUR 1 million, is that something that would be feasible?
Look, I believe it's better we don't discuss now. It's below seven digits. That I can say. But again, I don't want to give you a wrong number, so let's better have that discussion afterwards.
Okay. Sure.
And finally, the last one is, let's see, if I see the EUR 300 million soft orders from drupa, I would be inclined to assume that also if we look beyond Q1, we should assume an order intake level that should be above EUR 600 million. Is that also something that you would assume right now from how you see the generation mode of the soft orders?
Yeah, Stefan, you know me well enough that I'm not giving you a number on that, right? No, because I can't, right? This would not be professional. It's very difficult to predict the quarterly numbers. But what you need to understand is, first of all, it's very positive to have that EUR 300 million potential going forward. However, this will not come on top. It's just ongoing discussions with customers. And these customers were at drupa, and we started discussing deals.
So I mean, what it shows is there will be no drop of incoming orders, so it will go on, right? So we will continue to have a steady flow of business, and the seasonality will remain. What's always important to understand, I can only stress that point. The number of printing machines that customers buy only depend on one thing, and really only one thing, and that is the demand. How many machines do they need to fulfill their printing demands? That's the only thing that matters. And a trade show like drupa does not change the number of printing machines that is needed. The only thing it changes is the dynamic. So the point in time when customers buy, right?
We could see that in Q3, suddenly customers stopped buying for some reason, Q3 of our last fiscal year, because they were waiting for drupa, then we saw good order intake in drupa, so they ordered more. It's not that the demand has gone up. No, it's just that they waited for drupa, right? So there is this dynamic. Now we will return to a normal situation, right, that this disruption of drupa is over. So as you can hear, I'm trying to say drupa operationally is a challenge, right? It's a challenge for you because you don't know how to forecast the order intake. It's a challenge for us because we have to manage that disruption in operations. As you know, we had short-time work, which we now have discontinued. So these are all effects that result from drupa. All right.
Thank you, Tania and Ludwin, for explaining all this. Thank you very much, Ludwin, for all the time, and I wish you all the best going forward.
Thank you, Stefan. We'll certainly meet again. As you know, in Germany, we have the saying, "Man trifft sich immer zweimal."
I hope so.
The next question then comes from Sven Sauer, Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my questions. Just two questions. Regarding the Q1 expected order intake, I know you cannot provide any figures, but were there any surprises on your side regarding the split of the order intake by the two main segments? The second question would be regarding CapEx in the last year. It was a bit below the prior year, but then again, you mentioned that you did have higher R&D expenses.
So was this just a shift from CapEx to R&D? And is the last year number a good run rate going forward? Thanks.
Yeah. So I start with Q1 order intake, and then Tania continues with CapEx. Well, there were no real surprises. So we saw high interest, as expected, for the new XL 106. That was the biggest news, and that's the single most important product in our portfolio. So having a brand new version of that certainly is a magnet. So we saw that, but it was not a surprise. So we also expected it. And as the XL 106 is a major revenue contributor anyway, that was not a surprise, but it was strong. What was also strong was business from Asia. And Tania was talking about the regional split last year, and that already gave you an indication that Asia, that's the future, right?
So the dynamics is in Asia. While Europe is stable, and the U.S., at least in the last fiscal year, was rather in decline. And we saw exactly that picture also at drupa. That was also, I believe, interesting. But again, no major surprises. We were certainly surprised by the big interest for the Jetfire, the digital printing machine. But in terms of revenue in this fiscal year, it will not have a great impact because shipping will only start in the new calendar year, which will give us only one quarter of revenue in this year. So there will not be a big revenue impact, but that was certainly a positive surprise.
Yeah, CapEx.
I will take over. Actually, Sven, regarding CapEx, we expect similar levels we had this year. Yeah? So in the range of EUR 60 million-EUR 70 million, EUR 60 million, EUR 65 million euros.
The portion of capitalized R&D is also pretty stable comparing year-over-year, slightly even declining last year compared to prior year. Compared to prior year in the cash flow, this year, we had a slightly higher portion of demo machines sold. There's sometimes a shift. Yeah? One year, you sell a demo machine less. The next year, you sell two more demo machines. So this is, but round about, we expect stable CapEx around EUR 65 million.
Great. Thank you.
You're welcome.
So at the moment, there are no further questions. Oh, at this moment, there's one question coming in from Stefan Maichl LBBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello. Hello, Stefan Maichl from LBBW. Can you hear me? Yep. Okay. Actually, I have three questions, if I may, and I ask them one after the other. The first is a question about Jetfire again.
Since more hardware is sold probably at the beginning, this means that Jetfire is more of a burden on the margin, and when will this turn around?
It's not going to be a burden, not even in the beginning. So no dilution of the margin. You should not expect that.
Okay. Thanks.
So we really make sure that this is a good business, and it's going to be a good business for both Heidelberg and Canon.
Okay. The second one is on the Technology Solutions segment. How do you assess the future of this segment? And is the stabilization of the business visible at the moment? And when do you see the break even in the EBITDA line?
Well, that's certainly a decision the new board needs to make. So I can only share my personal view on that.
And that view is we have discontinued activities with, at least from our point of view, no chance of success, right? As you heard, we discontinued to run software initiative and run hardware-related things. So that's all clean. What we continued and still continue to invest in is the charging business.
Yeah?
And in charging, however, we've also changed strategy over the last two years significantly. While in the beginning, the strategy was to serve the AC market, AC charging boxes have become commodities in the meantime. That's the one challenge. There are numerous vendors of AC charging boxes. And the second challenge is that this market more or less has collapsed after the subsidies were suspended. So that original business model simply does not work anymore, and you can see that from our numbers. However, we changed strategy now and started developing DC charging equipment, high-power charging equipment.
This is the charging stations that you see at the autobahn or at parking lots in supermarkets and so on. And here, at least my personal view is that the competitive intensity is much lower. So it's much, much less competitors. And the market is larger. The business model is different because it's not about selling a EUR 500 box. It's about selling a, let's say, EUR 100,000 piece of hardware, including service, including the operation of that unit. So it's a very different business model. And I would say, well, that has good chances. Nevertheless, Heidelberg has to make a decision whether it continues to invest because one thing is clear. It's still somewhere in the future, right? And it just needs time. So I could understand if one would decide maybe not to do it. But there's no discussion about that, and it's not my business anymore.
So that's just something that is certainly on the agenda, but for the time being, we are set up well.
And divestment of this business, would that be an option for Heidelberg?
Again, that's not a discussion right now. And yeah, maybe you come back with that question at a later point in time.
Okay. Thanks. And the last one for you, Ludwin. When you look back on your time at Heidelberg, what inspired you and what disappointed you?
Well, what inspired me was clearly the technology and the people. Yeah? It's just unbelievable, the technology base that Heidelberg has. And when you meet the people, you feel the passion. You feel the passion for not only the brand, but also the technology, the market. This is just wonderful. Yeah?
What came a little bit as a surprise was how much history actually is in this company in a positive sense, but also in a, I wouldn't say negative sense, but at least in the sense of a challenge, right? Because there's hardly any other market which has gone through so much change like the printing industry. It's just unbelievable. When Heidelberg was 2 or 3 times as big as today, it had developed structures, procedures, processes, systems, and so on. That still, even today, makes up the company. That was just fascinating to see. I didn't expect it to that extent. I would say it's a strength on the one hand because, I mean, this company has really learned how to serve this market. You could feel this, for example, at drupa.
Customers are really passionate about Heidelberg because they believe in the strength of the company. They've learned this over decades, right? So it's also a big strength. But at the same time, of course, it's also a challenge because there's so much change. And the company has to adapt to this change. So I learned that, right? And I believe that it will not go away. It's probably typical, and I probably should have expected that because of the history. But anyhow, that was my impression.
Okay. Thanks for your openness. Then all that remains for me is to wish you, Ludwin, all the best for the future. Maybe we'll see or meet again in another setup.
Certainly. That would be nice, Stefan. Thank you. Okay. Bye-bye.
Bye.
So again, at this point, no further questions. I would just wait a couple of more seconds. Yes.
There are no further questions. So I'd like to hand it back to you, Mr. Monz, for some closing remarks.
Thank you. So, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you for covering Heidelberg. We really appreciate that, and we're always glad to discuss the Heidelberg business with you. Yeah. I already said goodbye and would like to repeat that. I would like to thank you for the great cooperation. It was a big pleasure meeting you. And as we said multiple times in this call, I'm sure we'll meet again. So thank you. Wish you personally all the best for the future and wish Heidelberg the best for the future. Next time at this place will be Jürgen Otto, and so you will meet him, and he will certainly cover everything well. So thanks and bye-bye.