Thank you, operator. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our Full -Year 2020 Earnings Call. I'm pleased to say that in the room we have, Dominik von Achten, our CEO, René Aldach, our CFO, Ozan and the IR team, myself. Welcome to the call. You've all seen the presentation that we uploaded on our IR website at 7:00 A.M. CET this morning. If you haven't done so, you can access it. With that, I hand over to you, Dominik, for some prepared remarks.
Chris, thanks a lot. Hello, everybody. Great that you join us for our call. René and myself will take you through the key points of the presentation, but we're trying to keep that short so we have enough time for your questions. Let's start with the first key messages of Q4. I think it was a roller coaster of a year for us. You followed it in detail, but we finished on a very high note, which is important for us because that gives us some tailwind also for 2023. We ended the year with the highest quarter ever in Heidelberg Materials. Revenues up 11%, and the EBITDA even up 3%, respectively 4%. EBITDA surpassed EUR 1 billion in just one quarter, and the RCO came in close to EUR 700 million.
That is a very, very strong performance, driven by a very positive price over cost development. I will come to that detail in a minute. We have continued our sustainability journey with another 2% reduction of CO2 emissions, so fully on track with what we have communicated. We have started to scale substantially our circularity efforts with three consecutive acquisitions that I will go through in a little bit more detail. Obviously for you also important our outlook. We are confident that we will grow our revenue driven by strong pricing. We have our RCO guidance sitting between EUR 2.35 billion and EUR 2.65 billion.
If we go to the next page, we have the full year overview. Revenue's up, surpassing for the first time ever in our company's history to the EUR 21 billion mark. EBITDA only slightly down, absolutely in line with what we have indicated earlier, and that's important, with a 3% growth in Q4. I'll come to the details in the regions because also structurally there is an important shift in that result, which I think is important for you to understand. René will go through the Clean EPS development. Only the highlights, EUR 9.5 plus 20%. ROIC, you know that's a big focus for us, to earn more than our cost of capital. We are now at 9.1%, only slightly down from prior year.
I think given all the circumstances, that's a very strong performance. Free cash flow at EUR 1.3 billion. René will take you through the details. Second year in a row, shareholder return at around EUR 1 billion. And last but not least, as I said, CO2 reduction by another 2%. If we go through the operational details, I think it's noteworthy that most of the things have gone well. You see the EUR 1 billion surpassing in EBITDA, the close to 700 RCO. EBITDA margin development is not yet where we want to see it. The good news is the decline is slowing down. We see in some regions already a stabilization or a clawback, so I'll come to that in a minute.
I think we've seen the worst here, but obviously we have still some room for maneuver, coming back to the almost 22% in 2020. Rest assured, this remains our target. Full year, next page, you see the surpassing of the EUR 21 billion. You see the EBITDA being below the record year 2021, but still above the strong year of 2020. The same is true for RCO on the right side. The margin, as I said earlier, still has some room for improvement to come back. Important charts are now the next ones, because you see in Q4 that for the first time, this year or last year, I have to say now, the green bar is bigger the red bar, which means price over cost is positive to volume.
I think in that respect, it's going in the right direction, and we have a significant positive price over cost effect of almost EUR 130 million. We'll come to the calibration for the full year 2022 in just a second. That is actually driven on the next page, eight, by a very solid pricing performance. Cement price increased year-over-year in December, 22% almost, and on aggregates also with a steep increase throughout the year at a strong 16.5%. That also leads then to the situation that you find in the bar on the bottom, that the original target, okay, maybe that was modest, but we are more modest sometimes.
With EUR 350 million, what we announced on the Commercial Excellence Program, we discussed this I think in October 2021, we've now achieved EUR 2.4 billion on that line. I think that is not such a bad performance. The important page is the next one, page nine, where you see the rollercoaster, huh? Not a great quarter for us, given the short forward coverage and the energy cost explosion in Q1 2022, two more stable quarters in Q2 and Q3, I would say a very noteworthy performance in Q4, with not only price over cost turning positive for the quarter, but you see it on the remark on the right.
Also, excluding JVs, invested a little bit the competitive comparison, we are clearly positive for the full year with almost EUR 50 million. You know, guys, We sat around the table a couple of quarters ago and the question was always, "Are you gonna turn price over cost positive by year-end?" We always said we can't promise anything, but we're gonna fight hard, and here we are. I think the last quarter brought it well into the finish line for the year. Which has led then to the full year performance of EBITDA. I think I can skip that. That's something we already discussed in earlier slides. Let me go through the regions, because I think that's important now.
The good performance on group level in Q4 was very much driven also by North America. A strong EBITDA, against a good comparison in Q4 2021, which was a good quarter for North America. On top of that, they put another 6% increase, and that is really noteworthy. I know the North American performance maybe in the first two quarters was not where I wanted it to be, where René and I wanted it to be, but I think they've done a fabulous job in H2, and then especially in Q4, I think they really, got traction now with all the measures that we have taken throughout the year. I'm really happy for our North American team.
I think what's important to point out, not only that they surpassed the EBITDA of EUR 300 million for the first time in a Q4, that's very strong, but also the margin is above the 2022, the 2020 margin and on the level of last year's performance. I have to say, guys, this is for me, this is nice territory to maneuver, and we'll build on that. I think that I think is for me probably the most noteworthy point in the Q4 performance. Western Southern Europe, stable on a good level. You see strong EBITDA development, price over cost, fully intact, great contribution from WSE.
Margin we can still continue to improve. Okay, they have a very superior revenue development, and that obviously then also drives down the margin if the EBITDA on absolute level doesn't move much more. In that respect, there is still room for maneuver in WSE on the margin side. I think overall a strong performance of the team in that area. NE-CA, a very good performance. Again, I have to say margin, okay, again, on last year's levels, slightly below 2020. Overall, I think we should be satisfied with the development in NE-CA. Almost EUR 200 million results coming out of NE-CA on an EBITDA level in Q4, which is always a quarter which is not so easy for NE-CA given the Northern Hemisphere.
I think in that respect, strong performance, good price over cost development, that is, I think, again, a strong performance. Reason for hope is also, hope is not a strategy, reason for hope is also APAC. They had a tough two years, I would say, now look at the result rebound. They are coming back. Q4 is moving in the right direction, some of the problem countries are stabilizing on a lower level. Talking about China, talking about India, talking about Australia. Indonesia continues to run well, I think there is good traction in APAC, which is an important region for us. That gives us real good a tailwind for next year. Africa, I am coming from a very high level. I think they took a hit in especially two countries.
We make that always very transparent. You know, Egypt and Ghana, the currencies collapsed. You may wanna look at that. That's mainly the reason why they lost some of their results. This is not operationally driven. This is basically, I would hope, a one-off where the currencies collapsed. You know that both Egypt and Ghana have since then gotten some agreement with the IMF. We see the currency stabilizing, we would hope that their, the result will rebound. First signs of that indication are going in the right direction. With that, I will hand over to René for the financial side. René?
Thanks, Dominik. Hello, everyone from my side. Let me just take you through the financials. Here, the key messages, our clean earnings per share are 20% up versus the year before. Clean means we take out our additional ordinary result and in 2021, the tax payment we needed to do for the U.S. West disposal. It's like- for- like, it's, I think, a remarkable increase. It's 20% up. From a cash flow perspective, we did EUR 1.3 billion, which is 36% cash conversion rate. Now this is heavily influenced from the working capital build up or outflow of EUR 800 million, which I'll go into in more detail in a second.
Which leads us to a leverage which is below our, or slightly below our corridor of 1.5-2, which I said in the Q3 analyst call, we will be around that number, and we exactly hit that, so that's good. ROIC, even with a decrease in our operational result, we kept the ROIC nearly flat on prior year's record level, which is a good thing. Our invested capital went up and the tax rate was very favorable, so that's why we were able to do this. As Dominik already alluded to, we did another EUR 1 billion with the shareholder return, with share buybacks and dividend payments. As you have seen, we are, let's say, transforming our financing into sustainability-linked bonds.
That's where the commercial paper we made green and our syndicated loan anyhow is already green. I go into a few more details. Let's take a look on the next slide 18 on our P&L. Until RCO, Dominik has explained everything, let's go through. Below RCO, we have the AOR, where you see in 2021, you see $481, where of $466 is a gain from the sale of the U.S. West Coast, that's [audio distortion] 2021 explained. 2022, you see EUR -193. That's de facto two major items. One, EUR -102, due to the impairment in Russia because the weighted average cost of capital went down loss 20%, we had to do an impairment for our Russian business.
The second item is EUR 80 million is restructuring in our U.S. cement business because our Mitchell plant is coming online and we are closing a facility in the U.S. so that led to an impairment of some assets in the U.S. That's EUR -193. If you go to financial result, that looks very, very strong. You see EUR -65 million. I guess it's the lowest number we have ever seen. This is driven by two effects. Number one, our interest expense went down by EUR 72 million. We bought back a bond in Q4 2021 and a bond in 2022. That reduces obviously our interest rate payments.
We had an accounting change, let's say, which is changing a discount rate for our provisions, mainly recultivation in the U.S. That's EUR 127 million positive. Yeah, that's just an accounting effect, but leads to a nice financial result of only EUR 65 million. We come to income taxes. You see an improvement of EUR 462. As I said already earlier, there's $283 million tax payment or taxes in the U.S. for our West Coast disposal, which we need to, let's say, take out. In 2021 we had EUR 50 million impact due to a change in the U.K. tax rate. Even if you take these two items out, yeah, we are still EUR 130 million better than in prior year, which is, I guess, a pretty good result.
We have a little bit lower RCO. That is not explaining purely EUR 130 million better. We, as you know, probably we are doing a lot of things on the tax side to improve our tax efficiency. You go net results from discontinued operations. That's again, EUR 36 million better than last year. That's purely driven by change in discount rates in the U.S. That's again, accounting effect. You come to a group share profit reported of EUR 1.6 billion. If you take the AOR and the tax payment, taxes out from the U.S. West Coast sale, we are at EUR 1.8 billion versus EUR 1.56 billion, which is I guess a very, very solid result in this difficult environment.
If we go to the next page, yeah, this is, you know, free cash flow, slide 19, free cash flow and net debt. Let's go to the free cash flow. You see, we have positive result from interest, yeah, because we've done some things here on group level to cover the interest rates going forward. That lead to a cash inflow and now net we are cash positive for 2022, which is obviously a good thing for me. Tax payments is EUR 360 million. The big one is in the middle, you see the minus item EUR 805. That is change in working capital. EUR 600 out of this is inventory. Out of the EUR 600, there's probably EUR 500 is price related regarding our inventory.
You have all seen coal, petcoke, everything went up. That's obviously then hitting our inventory and leading to a cash outflow for inventory. There's another EUR 200 million for receivables going out or working capital negative because, as you know, with the price increase of about 20%, our bills to the customer are much higher and obviously the absolute amount of receivables goes up. This explains the EUR 805. CapEx net EUR 1,080. I guess that's pretty solid. We guided below 1.2, I said we will be close to 1.1 or even below. I think that's again, we have delivered what we promised. EUR 1,080 is a pretty good number.
Leading to a cash conversion of 36% with a cash flow of EUR 1.34. If you now say, okay, the working capital is minus item at five and 2023, yeah, the year 2023 should be better. Obviously, I don't wanna see a lot of cash outflow from working capital in 2023, then you can, or we think we can be close to our target what we announced with the cash conversion rate of 45% or even above. If you go to the right chart, the net debt development, yeah, where how did we spend our free cash flow? Obviously, in M&A, yeah, we did EUR 478 million M&A. What is behind this? That's Command Alkon. That is the CBI project in Ghana. That's in A1 Recycling in the U.K.
Some smaller items that's in the U.S. Dividends to our mother company, HeidelbergCement AG, and the minorities like Ciments du Maroc , that's EUR 628. Share buybacks, EUR 350. Currency other is as well leaving and currency movements on our cash positions in some countries. That leads to an increase in debt of EUR 500 million . We go to the leverage. I said it already, 1.48 below our corridor, that's a good result. That shows we still have a good strong balance sheet. Let's go to return on invested capital, slide 21. You see our invested capital went up by EUR 1.5 billion.
Why is this? Two effects, very simple. Our net debt went up by EUR 500 million, you know, we did a group share profit of EUR 1.6 billion. You pay dividend EUR 600, the EC goes up by EUR 1 billion. These are the two effects leading to an increase. Now there's the capital, our RCO went a little bit down, our tax rate was very good. That's why this 18.8% for this calculation, that's why the ROIC is stable around 9%. Return to the shareholders, it's a similar number than we have done in 2021. We have done the second tranche of the share buyback, EUR 250 million, the dividends.
Again, a second year in a row with around EUR 1 billion return. Next slide. You've seen in January we put out a sustainability-linked bond, which was I think a good success. We picked a good day where we launched the bond of EUR 750 million. Now our green financing is 44% of our total, which is a good thing. We linked our EUR 2 billion commercial paper as well to a green mechanism, let's say, which I think is as well not many do this. I think we are the only one right now having done this for the commercial paper program. That's as well a right step towards our targets.
I think that's it, Dominik, I'll hand over to you for the sustainability part.
Thanks, René. You know that we, for the first time this year also will combine fully our annual report, the two topics, financials and sustainability. I've kept one surprise for you, to just make sure that everybody follows the full presentation, because we've got the SBTI approval now on the 1.5 degree path. We have been in intense discussion with SBTI over the years, not because of our Scope 1 or 2 targets, we had some very constructive and detailed discussion how to decarbonize the value chain. That's why, you know, it took a couple of days to get that done. We are happy that that has now finally been concluded, and we'll make a separate announcement there during the day. Just for your upfront information on that.
On the back of the financing side, to make it more sustainable, we've also done a lot of core sustainability pushes. We've further accelerated our CO2 reduction by another 2%. We are fully on track with what we communicated in the Capital Market Day. On the back of very good increase in alternative fuels, almost to 30%, 28.7%. I think that is really going in the right direction. Also clinker factor came down. Overall, clearly the right path in that respect. Very importantly, I'll come to that in a minute, is our CCUS journey. I will take you through the details of that.
Secondly, you remember from the Capital Markets Day, we said, we have two core sustainability targets when it comes to our scope one and two. That's basically CO2 reduction and circularity. We have since then, in a very, I think, good speed, accelerated our journey to build circularity platforms in our core markets, Germany, U.K., U.S., next to the one we have already in Australia. That's why we had now month after month, three acquisitions done in Germany and in the U.K. Last but not least, this morning in our press conference, we also, together with Nicola Kimm, upgraded our overall sustainability commitment. I'll take you through some of the details in just a second.
Next page, you see the typical graph that we have shown you, and we kept it exactly the same way. Specific CO2 emissions come down by another 2%. The target remains the most ambitious in the industry, the 400 towards 2030. Clinker factor came down nicely by 130 basis points to 71.6. The alternative fuel rate went up to a strong 28.7%. Now, this only makes sense if in the end, we also are able to sell the sustainable products to our customers. We have taken a very local approach. Up until now, on this one, you see here that all of our key countries are driving down their CO2 footprints significantly.
That's the light green piece with the products that we have on offer. The dark green piece is the circularity approach. Again, here we focus on CO2 reduction and also on circularity in the product offering to our customers, and the acceptance is very good. Significant progress we have made on carbon reduction projects, CCU.S., because we all know we said this, I think two years back, that we strongly believe that to fully decarbonize our products is technically possible, but nobody's doing it. We basically endeavored, I think boldly at the time, to push heavily on our carbon capture projects.
We have come to CCS in Brevik. That will be the first one coming next year with 400,000 tons of CO2 captured at large scale. That's really strong and that's in action. I've been up there many times now. That will come on stream already next year with a full supply chain of carbon capture, transportation and storage. That's, that's a significant also partnership effort. We have further projects in the pipeline that we have communicated here and there and everywhere. The ones to note, I think, is the one in Bulgaria, Devnya, where we got ANRAV project, where we got the significant funding also out of the EU Green Deal funds.
Then, the one in Mitchell, Indiana, it's gonna be the largest one in the group with 2 million tons capture unit. That's a very, very interesting one because we also have a grip on the transportation and storage there. I think in that respect, that's exactly what we want to see. It's not just, you know, one project after the other. It's development and learning curve from one project to the next when it comes to speed, costs, technology, partnership set up. That's exactly why we are pushing this pipeline. It's not about the number of projects. It's in the end, the number of things that happen on the ground and capture being done.
That's also why we said we want to capture 10 million tons by 2030. Brevik is the one that's under construction. You see here a picture of the construction site. This is not early stages. This is actually farther on the road on the construction site. There is a lot of pre-assembly done because we have the advantage to be on the water side. You see it there on the water where the pre-assembled stuff comes in. Erection is fairly quick. Risk that something goes sour is limited despite the fact that it's winter. Okay. Start -up will then be interesting next year, but we are very confident that we will get this one on stream as we promised in 2024.
Last but not least, the circularity platforms, U.S., U.K., and Germany, I think with good traction now. U.S. focused around Seattle, Germany focused around Berlin and the Southwest, and the U.K. focused around London and Manchester. I think that is really moving in the right direction, and we are very happy with what we have been able to pull off there. That should really help our circular approach down the road. Last but not least, our new butterfly, as we call it internally. The left side, you already know, the carbon-zero products, and the circular approach. That's basically the ones that we have communicated already, but will continue to upgrade the ambitions there.
On the right side, you know that we are very focused on health and safety, but we have stiffened the target on reduction on LTI frequency rate and also on diversity and inclusion because that's an important topic for us. Last but not least, to the bottom right, we have done in the past, many of you have followed a lot of things on biodiversity. There, I think we have a good track record, but we've also stiffened the target there. We've stepped up our efforts on water management because we deem this to be a very important contribution also to the nature positive targets. In essence, this is the framework that we will report against.
Going forward, we'll also be transparent about the performance in that respect. I'm happy that we have now not only covered our most prominent and things to be mainly in focus with CO2 and circularity, but also a comprehensive sustainability commitment to our stakeholders and society. Last but not least, when we come to our outlook, from our perspective, yes, there is volume decline in residential. Steep in some markets, you know, Germany, Europe, also the U.S., 20%, 30%, 40% down in, you know, when it comes to permits, housing starts, and all of that. Steep decline, no question, and I don't think this is gonna rebound super quickly during 2023.
The good news is it's compensated to a large extent by non-residential projects, chip factories, battery factories, data centers, the infrastructure projects. We clearly see the first traction of the IRA funds in the U.S., with also being the first infrastructure project being released. That's, that's good. On the back of that, stable EBITDA, I think we will see continuous focus on very strong pricing. We will stay focused on that topic. In that respect, that's our clear target, we need to help our CFO on strong cash generation that starts with the top line. In that respect, you know, to bring both things home, it's clear that that is our balanced target. That turns into a formal guidance for 2023.
We believe that we are able to continue our revenue growth also organically. That's why it's like for like. RCO will sit between EUR 2.35 billion and EUR 2.65 billion. That's the RCO guidance. Just one remark on that one. You notice that we've switched from EBITDA to RCO. We've discussed this internally quite a lot. We steer the company very much on RCO level. We think it's also easier for you to compare the within the industry on RCO level. We will keep the EBITDA, so there's no secret on EBITDA. Just in terms of guidance, we're gonna switch to RCO. CapEx really makes a point. We're gonna be stingy on CapEx, EUR 1.1 billion.
Within that EUR 1.1 billion, we also shift to a larger extent on green CapEx, as we would call it, you know, renewables, alternative fuels, and other secondary cementitious materials. Capital discipline will stay around 9%, leverage between 1.5x and 2 x. I would say I don't need to repeat the key messages. You've heard those loud and clear. I think we'll rather go back to your questions. Thanks a lot.
Thanks. Operator, would you like to start the Q&A process, please?
Yes, of course. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please.
First question comes from Matthias Pfeifenberger from Deutsche Bank.
Yes, good afternoon, lady and gents. A couple of questions from my side. Firstly, I guess the usual suspects, what do you see on incremental pricing? I think some of your competitors have been quite vocal. You have been the price leader last year. Do you see a lot of necessity to raise prices further on that front? How much is the spillover from 2022? And also what is the cost inflation you expect in 2023? A second one on the non-residential part. We have heard that from several players in the building materials industry, reshoring new manufacturing plants being built, especially also in the U.S. Is that something you're seeing on the front in terms of incremental activity, recent pickup there?
Is there a risk that, let's say, this longer and higher rate cycle will also affect the non-residential, the commercial part, let's say towards the second half? Thanks a lot.
Okay, Matthias, thanks a lot for your question. Let me take the second one and maybe make a broader remark on the pricing and then René maybe can chip in on spillover effect and cost inflation. I think let's tic-tac at that a little bit. On incremental pricing, there will be incremental price increases year-over-year. We have increased in most jurisdictions our prices by January 1. A couple of them will come later, but it's clearly moving already as of January 1. Yes, there will be incremental pricing out there, partially also substantially. It's not like we are done. Why also, you know, take the absolute amount of energy costs.
You know, while energy costs have declined from a super high level, they are still compared to 2019, on a very high absolute level. We want to come back to our original margins. I think there is still room for improvement when it comes to that. Yes, clear answer, there will be incremental pricing. When it comes to the non-residential piece, absolutely. There are a couple of effects that we see when it comes to your question about the U.S. I would say similar things, maybe on a smaller scale for Europe. There are a couple of effects. There are European companies shifting investments from Asia to Europe or even into the U.S. There are U.S. companies shifting their investments from Asia to Europe and/or back home to the U.S. Both of these effects drive non-residential demand.
We absolutely see the first projects happening. It's not like theory. We have a couple of projects, especially in the U.S., where plants are being built as we speak. Yes, there is significant demand out there. Does the interest rate hike stop that demand? I'm pretty convinced it will not stop it. Fully may slow down here and there a little bit. I don't know. It's not the will also, the political will and the company wills that we hear to reshore and shore back to the home countries is so big. The costs, I'm not saying are not important, they are not the first item.
Thanks, yeah.
Hi, Matthias. From the spillover of pricing, obviously you've seen here in the document cement price year to date, December, I think it's 21.8% up. You can imagine that in January, if you compare January with January, there's a material price delta in 2023 versus January 2022, which is double digits. That's I guess what we see. The cost inflation, you know this, you see general inflation is pretty high. Now we have stock cost inflation as well. The big question is energy costs. Obviously there will be inflation for all these three items.
What I can tell you is that we are assuming that there is as well energy cost inflation but obviously, not in the magnitude we have seen in 2022. The message here is as well that we want to continue our price over cost positive, let's say trends, what you have seen from Q2, Q3, Q4, that was pretty solid performance, and we see this continuing in January.
Thanks a lot. Can I just chip in one more?
No, no, Matthias.
Okay.
Let's go back in line because, what I forgot to say-
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
What I forgot to say.
Fair enough. Thanks a lot.
Good. That's good. Thanks for your question, Matthias. What I forgot to say is we have so many questioners on the line. Let's really restrict the questions to 2 at a time. If you may, next one is Elodie Rall from JPMorgan.
Hey, Elodie.
Hi, Elodie.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is very straightforward. You have switched to EBIT indeed from EBITDA, but could you give us the corresponding EBITDA guidance for that RCO guidance? The second one is on pricing. I understand that you are still looking for incremental price increases, but I was wondering if there are markets where you see risk of price decreases following the unprecedented price increase from 2022 and some indeed easing on energy costs. If you can just throw in the last question would be whether you're expecting flat volume overall, given you said infra and non-resi should offset.
Does that mean you expect slight volume for 2023? Thank you.
Okay, Elodie, I think, you've been smart enough to combine. I'm not sure whether I counted right, but we'll take your last two point as one question, pricing and volume. I'll start with that, and then, René, maybe the question, the noise was not great, Elodie, but I understood you were asking for the EBITDA guidance with the RCO guidance. René will take that one. On pricing, we do not see any substantial decline in certain markets where our prices dropped significantly from prior year. That's not what we see at this point. Volume development, we have assumed a slight decline in volumes overall.
Volumes, we have not assumed that volumes will increase globally. Markets are different. One market is different from the other, but on a global level, we have not assumed a volume increase, rather a slight decrease in volumes across the business lines.
Elodie, in front of the rough guidance, I don't say guidance, yeah, because we are not guiding on RCO with detail. We should just add a little bit depreciation. It's around EUR 360 and EUR 395. If you then take the middle, that's the bit where you wanna be. Huh?
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Okay, the next question comes from Luis Prieto from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Hey, Luis.
Hi, Luis.
Hello, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is, I know it's difficult, but coming back to 2022, would it be possible to get an idea of the split between how much the cement volume declined was a result of sacrificing volumes for pricing and how much would be attributable to a generally weak market in Europe and the U.S., but basically Europe. The second question is, given what you said about the expectation for volumes this year, is it fair to assume that you expect, I mean, the higher end of your guidance range would be basically achieved through exclusively price over cost? Thank you.
Thanks, Luis. I think on the cement decline, the large, vast majority of this is market driven, only in very single cases in specific markets where we took and taken deliberate decision. There may be a market share topic, but the vast majority of this is clearly market driven. On volumes, I you know, I think that in the end, we are gonna be... What's your view, René? I would say it's... We're gonna be fine on that one.
We should be okay on volumes, Luis, as you outlined, yeah, price over cost, that's the key.
Exactly.
That's the key factor. Yeah, pricing should remain very solid, yeah? Then let's see what the cost or the energy cost base does, but it doesn't look too bad currently, no?
Yeah, volumes, you know, to your question specifically, Luis, we are, you know. Is there an upside? I think that was behind your question. Is there an upside on volume development? I would be cautious at this point. As I said, I don't expect a quick rebound on the residential side. I do not see that there's a massive upside on volume right now. I agree with you. The bigger upside is probably on the pricing side. I would concur with your assumption.
Thank you, Luis.
Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Next question comes from Yassine Touahri from On Field Investment Research.
Hey, Yassine.
Hi, Yassine.
Hello. Couple of questions. My first question is, at the beginning of 2023, you said you had a good beginning of the year. What does it mean? Are the volume declining less than what you've seen in Q4? Do you see a better price cost dynamic that you've seen in Q4? If you can, as I understand, the prices are up double digit, but if you can, help us understand a little bit what you mean by a good start of the year, that would be very helpful. The second question. You spent approximately EUR 500 million on acquisition, including a lot of small investments in recycling businesses. What kind of return do you expect on those acquisition?
What kind of contribution could we expect in 2023 in terms of operating income and medium term?
Thanks, Yassine. Let me take the first one, and then René will take the second one on the acquisitions. When we mean good beginning, it's a combination of price, volume, cost, and also bottom line. You know, at that for us, the equation when we talk about a good beginning. Overall, I think last year we had significant headwind on all most of these dimensions. This year we have tailwind at least for on most of those dimensions.
Yassine, regarding
Does it mean-
Sorry?
Sorry.
On the volume side, does it mean that the volume decline in at the beginning of the year is not as bad as the volume decline that we've seen in the last quarter of 2022?
That is very different market by market. This is not one. The picture is, you know, in pricing probably more homogeneous than in volume development. You have segments, you have winter. Let's not overestimate. To be very specific, Yassine, we are not getting nervous to the one or happy to the other side, because January is, guys, it's early days, huh? We did not have winter in some jurisdictions. Other, we did have, otherwise we had weather events on low volume months. Careful. I, we don't look at volumes that much in January, to be very open.
Yassine, regarding your M&A question, the EUR 500 m illion, you know, the majority of that EUR 500 m illion we spent for Command Alkon. We did CBI in Ghana, we did A1 in Manchester, we did something in Indonesia, yeah? There's good profit contribution in Indonesia from the acquisition. Command Alkon, as you know, is in an equity, let's say, shareholding, where you have a little bit diluted result because we have only 45% and it's on net income basis. That's the message for Command Alkon. There will be proper result contribution from Indonesia, U.K.
The 2023 acquisitions, what we have announced, all the recycling ones, they are not yet covered by this EUR 500 million we have in 2022, because they will be all closed or are in the process of closing for 2023. If they close and we get all the approvals we need from the authorities, there will be as well the proper EBITDA contribution.
could you-
And-
Do you have an order of magnitude? Oh, sorry. Thanks.
Do you have a follow-up question or on that one?
I just wanted to get a sense of the order of magnitude of the EBITDA contribution or the, or the sales contribution that we could expect from all those acquisitions.
Yeah.
If you already have an order of magnitude. Is it 1%, 2%?
Yassine, it's difficult, it's difficult for the 23 ones when they are closed. We don't know that yet, so I can't give you a number because if it's closed in Q1 or Q4, there's obviously then a difference to the contribution. As I said, for the 2022 ones, we don't go into such detail, what we provide there for each acquisition, huh?
Yassine, but the one thing you should be assured, you know, we are doing a very detailed review, also what's the impact on our on our P&L and balance sheet before we do these acquisitions. We do all of these obviously with a clear view on contribution to the bottom line. Some are more strategic than others, where we make a little bit more sacrifices. You know, take Command Alkon one, that's a very specific one that we've always communicated. But the others, more in the core business, they obviously need to contribute to the bottom line significantly, also including the synergies that we obviously get from those. We still keep the financial discipline also on that one.
Thanks, Yassine. The next question comes from Brijesh Siya from HSBC.
Hi. good afternoon.
Hi.
I have two as well. The first one is on the net debt to EBITDA guidance of 1.5x-2x. If you look at the EBITDA guidance you're giving and the cash conversion now certainly expected to be moving up towards the 40% at least. If you could just give me the
Yeah.
Give us the, what's the assumptions behind in that 1.5x-2x? Does that include more buybacks coming in this year, or any other things you are kind of planning in that 1.5? Because the range seems to be pretty big, 1.5 when we see the free cash flow which is coming for this year. That's the first one. The second one is, you talked about in slide 27 about all those lower CO2 products which you have introduced across the globe and the circularity products. If you could just give us what proportion of your sales at this point is coming from those type of products and what kind of margin you are generating? That would be great. Yeah.
Okay. Let's take the first one, yeah? We just talked about our M&A activities. You know, we have still to close Mick George, yeah? That was a decent acquisition. We have the two German acquisitions we have to close and pay as well, yeah? If you put those together, there is already a usage of our free cash flow for M&A activities, yeah? That's in a similar magnitude what we spent in 2022. You say, okay, we have our dividends to our mother company, we have dividends to the minorities, then what we have said there's still the third tranche of the share buyback, what we said we have time until September.
If you add all this up, all this together, yeah, there's no de-leveraging, no big de-leveraging happening, because the EUR 500 m illion at least for M&A and the dividends and the share buyback, I guess it's the same message as for 2022.
Okay. On the products on page 27, you know, we've communicated on the capital market that we will tie this together as what we call sustainable revenues. We'll make that transparent throughout the year. I think we've taken a local approach in that respect. But you should assume that this is a significant double-digit percentage point of our volume already. Margins we do not disclose. That's a competitive setup. In that respect, we do not disclose margins on these projects. General remark, we don't give them away, but we clearly target, not try to, but we realize in most cases also, margin superior recovery versus the traditional commodity products.
Thanks, Brijesh. The next question comes from Arnaud Lehmann, Bank of America.
Hello, Arnaud.
Hello. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. My first question is just coming back on your 2023 guidance. I'm trying to understand why you would take the risk of giving a guidance in euros considering, you know, we live in a volatile world, currencies are moving around, energy has been very volatile. What's your currency assumption included in the guidance? That's my first question. My second question is just coming back on Q4, if I may. Eastern Europe or North and Eastern Europe, a lot better in the fourth quarter. However, we are hearing, you know, not so great feedback on levels of activities in places like Sweden or Poland, for example, at least on the volume side.
Do you think the rebound in the fourth quarter in North and Eastern Europe is sustainable into 2023? Thank you.
Let me take, Arnaud, the second one, and then René will take the first one on the 2023 guidance. Honestly, that's careful with there is not one general Sweden, there is not one general Poland. As I said, yes, there is the decline in residential in Sweden. That's clear. There's also maybe some slowdown in residential in Poland. Overall, I think, from our perspective, volume may be a little bit under pressure, but we are very satisfied with our overall performance. That is a very strong team we have in NE-CA. We do not see a significant decline versus our planning or our current performance. In that respect, for us, NE-CA is fine.
Arnaud, regarding your question, regarding the guidance, our assumption is roughly that guidance includes negative impact of 2%-3% from currency, which means like for like it looks even better. Why did we choose to, let's say, do a range? We clearly said we wanna be on 2022 level reported or even above. If you look the range, it goes from -5% to +7%. That should cover your, let's say, argument, okay, the world is very volatile, as we all know. We wanted to go away from this or wanted to be able to, as well, during the year, get that range a little bit more precise like we have done last year.
That's why we have chosen to take a range which I think worked well.
Thank you very much.
Thanks. Thanks, Arnaud. Next question from Redburn , Yuri Serov.
Hey, Yuri.
Hi, Yuri.
Hi. I want to talk again, obviously, about volume and about prices. On volumes, can I just clarify, you say that you think for the full year in 2023, for the full company, you're expecting a slight volume decline, right? When I look at the numbers for 2022, you had volume declines between 6% and 7% across all regions. Is that slight in your definition, or do you expect a lower decline in 2023?
I'm not sure about your 2022 assumption. You talk about... Let's just clarify your question. You're saying the 2022 volume decline, huh?
Yeah, sorry. I looked at the quarter. Yeah, the total volume decline in cement for 2022, like for like, was -0.4%, right? Do you call that slight, or do you think that the decline in 2023 will be lower than that?
I think it's early days on the volumes. I would assume it's somewhat a single digit % decline. There is no falling off the cliff, high double digits. That's not what we see. But it's somewhat single digit %.
It can be more than 4% decline or?
Come on. Sorry, Yuri, but what do you want me to say now? 3.5 or 4.5? This doesn't make... It's somewhat single-digit. It's early in the year, so, single-digit decline.
Okay, I understand. On prices, it's a trickier question, but let me probe on that. We are hearing from other producers and other products that they are starting to expect prices to fall. We're not hearing that from cement producers, and that's really unusual. If you look back on history, you know, cement has always been a very competitive product. And over the last year, the industry seems to have forgotten about the competition. What gives you confidence that this can continue, that prices can continue rising rather than start falling from here?
I hear what you say, that, I have not experienced that the competition is off in cement. That's sorry, we are very competitive, some of the, some of the input, factors for decision making, at least in our company, have changed. Energy costs are on a completely different level. René had talked about the cost inflation on many, many other things. We talked about the CO2. I just keep, you know, point your view to the latest EU ETS price. You know, it hit first time ever 100 this week. This doesn't become any cheaper. On the, on the, and certificates, free certificates are being melted down, huh? I think that's another effect.
Last but not least, this is also much different from the last decade. This is, as I said numerous times before, the end of commodity. The decarbonization will give you the ability to differentiate your product offering and service offering at the customer front, and that does not happen with equal pricing. The very, at least we would be stupid if we do that, and certainly we are not doing that. Well, you just said that. Okay.
Thank you, Yuri. The next question from Tobias Woerner, Stifel.
H i, Tobias.
Yes. Thanks for taking the questions. Two questions if I may. Number one, just to get a little bit more clarity or granularity on the price cost spread. I see that in Germany, in January, month-on-month price is up 10%, in the U.S., 8%. Is that sort of the magnitude we're shooting for this year, in terms of incremental? At the same time, just to get a reminder from you where we are in terms of hedging, how much is open around the electricity cost and the sensitivity around that, as a reminder again, as well. That is part of the price cost question. Second, if I may, Brevik comes on stream next year, a world first, so to speak. Congrats on that to start off with.
Can you just update us on the capital cost and how much the Norwegian state contributes here for you?
Tobias, let me take. First of all, I ask for understanding that price cost, you know, January prices in specific countries, we cannot comment. That's a highly competitive setup. As I said earlier, this is competitive sensitive information. We will not comment on any price development in specific countries. I ask for your understanding. In that respect, René may take the second question on the energy hedging. On Brevik, capital costs on the project, the project is not yet finalized. We will see where it comes out, you know, there is Ukraine and everything was in between. There may be a slight increase on the original budget, let's not forget the budget was calculated with EUR 30 on CO2.
Now we are at EUR 19.95 per CO2 certificate. That's just one dynamic. The percentage coverage of the government has not changed, 85%. That is the agreement with the Norwegian government.
Tobias, on electricity, overall, across the whole group, we are roughly 50% covered for the full year. Obviously more for Q1 to Q3, and then a little bit more open in Q4. We will not now start to lock in major volume stuff for Q4 because the risk premiums are still too high, the forwards are still high. We enjoy now, right now, let's hope it continues like this, the reduction of the electricity cost across Europe or the world. With the 50% open, I guess we have a reasonable approach here. As you may recall, I said, we now we've changed our hedging strategy, but I said as well, crazy prices we are not locking in.
What we are doing, if you look at 2024, 2025, 2026, electricity prices are coming off materially. Here we are, have taken the decision already to lock in some minor volumes for the outer years because the prices are, in our view, okay-ish. That's probably my remark for electricity.
Thanks, Tobias.
Thank you.
Thanks, Tobias. Next question comes from Goodbody, David O'Brien.
Hey, David.
Hi, David.
Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Pardon me. Thanks for taking my questions. First one on North America. You described the order book as healthy. I wonder, could you quantify what that looks like year-over-year and maybe how your expectation for infrastructure growth in 2023 is shaping up? Secondly, just to build on Tobias's question, I think back in May, you gave us the operating cost for carbon capture and storage, I think was about EUR 60 a ton. Has that changed materially over the last seven, eight months?
Thanks, David. Answer is no, it has not changed. The, that's, so on your second point, that's fine. In North America, there is, as I indicated earlier, a shift in between the segments. The turnover and also in the end, the profit will come, more from non, resi, and infrastructure projects, less so in residential. When I talk about the healthiness of the order book, I predominantly talk about non-residential and infrastructure, not so much, residential. As I said, their order book, does decline. Our, segment focus historically in the U.S. is, if I compare to the global group, is anyway more tweaked to non-resi and infrastructure work, also because of the aggregates, footprint.
In that respect, we feel very well positioned for a rebound in North America. Also because we go against a, I would say, not superb, first half of the year in 2022. All effects combined give us some good optimism on our North American performance for 2023.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, David. We have three more people on the Q&A queue. Let's carry on with Harry Goad, Berenberg.
Hey, Harry.
Hi, Harry.
Hi. Hi. Good afternoon. I've got two, please. Can I just follow up a little bit on the previous question with regard to U.S. infrastructure and specifically sort of, you know, federal road building? You know, we've heard a lot about it in the last year in terms of the increase in the federal funding package. Is there any evidence?
You're seeing that that funding is now beginning to flow. That's question number one, please. Question number two, can you just give us an update on the buyback? Is it sensible to assume run rate to that EUR 350 million again this year, or could that number be bigger? Thank you.
Thank you, Harry. I'll leave the second one to our CFO, René Aldach, and I'll give you the answer on the first one with U.S. infrastructure. I've been around the block, as you have been, for a while, and I was there in North America over operations in 2007 - 2009. At the time, you know, there was a big infrastructure program, but it was basically coming down on state budgets and DOT budgets that were basically empty. What happened, and that's why it took so long to get on the ground, is that the states basically filled up their pockets first before it then hit the, hit the ground. This time around, this is significantly different.
There is fundamental money coming from the federal side, but it's hitting big pockets on the DOTs. Keep in mind, the spike in oil prices and gas prices has really spilled a lot of money into the pockets of the DOT. Both pockets are full, and that's also why we see already early traction now. That's why I'm also quite optimistic that this will not be a firework for the next three months, but rather last a little bit longer. If you add all numbers up, this is not a small amount.
Okay, thank you.
Okay. For the buyback, Harry, as we said, let's finish our first share buyback program first. We said we do EUR 1 billion, we have done now EUR 700 million. We have time, we said, communicated until September, we have in the plan to do the third tranche. Let us finish this first, and then we see how we go.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
There's some background noise. I hope that's in your line, Harry.
Yeah, I could hear everything.
Sorry. Next one is from Ross Harvey from Berenberg.
Hey, Ross. Hi, Ross.
Hi, all. Thanks for taking my question. Two very simple ones. The first is, the price over cost trajectory that you've alluded to already and the pricing that you're pushing through. Can you just make any comment on the product lines? Is there any product line, be it aggregates or ready mix or cement, that's completely out of whack at the moment and that you're looking to correct? Secondly, can you just clarify why you're dropping the EBITDA guidance and reverting just to EBIT? Just any thoughts on that? Thanks.
Yeah. Let me make a couple of general comments and then René, you chip in. On the price over cost, it's not like we have a preference for the one, the other or the other. We keep focused on all four product lines. All of our product lines need to move, cement, aggregates, concrete, and also asphalt. There is no exception to anybody. Then it's a market by market, customer by way, by customer decision, in what magnitude we can move. You saw on the earlier slide that from a sheer percentage perspective, the cement is probably leading the pack a little bit, but we clearly are very focused to also move the other business lines.
Because in the end, it's a vertical integration. So, if you try to push your cement pricing and your aggregates pricing and you don't move your concrete pricing, then you get into a margin squeeze. That's clear. So from our perspective, no exception to the rule. Everybody has to move.
Ross, regarding your second question. We have chosen to only steer our guide for RCO. Why? Because that's our, let's say, internal how we steer the company KPI. Yeah, that's what we use here. And you know, it shouldn't be a big problem because between EBITDA and RCO, you know there's just one number, which is depreciation, which doesn't fluctuate a few hundred million every year. You can do the math by yourself, I think. RCO is the most important KPI, where we steer the company here internally.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ross. Gregor, you're finishing off the Q&A session today.
Gregor.
Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS.
Well, thank you. That's an honor. I'll ask, in that case, I'll be a bit naughty and ask sort of two to three, if that's okay.
You're allowed to do that.
All right. Well, thank you. The first one is on energy. Can you just actually tell us what the bill was in 2022? Kind of, I was a little bit confused from the last call, kind of what your sort of realized power cost was in Europe. Is it a rough number? I don't know if it was EUR 200 or more or less than that. That's the first question. The second question is, I think you mentioned it 3 x or something like that you wanna go back to the margin target of 20%. Obviously, very arithmetically, that implies EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million, you know, extra EBITDA or EBIT, I guess, on the well, 2022, 2023 revenue. The question is, you know, do you really think that's doable with the current nominal cement pricing?
If so, why? Sorry, one follow-up on the M&A. Did you say you had basically spent EUR 500 million on these recycling businesses? If you could just share with us roughly what kind of multiple you pay for recycling businesses, please.
Yep. Let me chip in with your the first one I will leave to René on the energy bill, 'cause he's over the energy side. The margin target, I will make a comment on M&A. I'll start and then René chips in. On the margin target, Gregor, when I talk about recovery of the margin, I think you're right. It would be possible to recover the full margin in 2023 from our perspective. That's not what we are trying to say. Remember, going back to the capital market day on the Beyond 2020 strategy, we gave margin targets for 2025. We were very close by already in 2020 and also in 2021.
We will continue our efforts to regain margin, see where we come out. The margin targets that we communicated for 2025 for the time being, we do not give up. Keep in mind that a large contribution from that margin decline came from North America, because Mitchell is coming online now during this year, and we will close down a significant number of very inefficient, very costly operations. There will be a significant margin improvement coming out of North America alone. That is probably also a large chunk of that contribution. Clear message, Gregor, we have not given up on the 2025 targets. On M&A, I think René alluded to it. We spent this EUR 0.5 billion includes Command Alkon.
I think, René, that's a large chunk. We've communicated that number, I think. That's more than EUR 300 million. In that respect, that's a large chunk of it. On recycling, I ask for your understanding that we do not disclose specific multiples we have paid. Again, that's very competitive. On the other hand, rest assured, we are financially clear or very disciplined on this. We are not doing crazy acquisitions with crazy multiples, that's the reason for not disclosing them. In this case, it is clearly the reason that also from the seller side, we have agreed not to disclose the sales price in most cases. We have to respect that. I ask for your understanding there.
Okay. Thank you.
Gregor, for the energy bill, our energy bill went up from EUR 2.1 billion- EUR 3.2 billion. That's EUR 1.1 billion up, which is 54%. Out of the EUR 1.1 billion, there's EUR 700 million in fuels, which covers coal, petcoke, you name it. There's EUR 400 million from electricity. You said something about what is the average price for Europe? You know, that's for the year 2022, it's between EUR 220 and EUR 250 per megawatt hour was the average price which we had in Europe.
Okay, thank you. René , on the recycling, you mentioned you also thought you spent EUR 500 m illion again already in 2023. Did I understand correctly?
Yeah, yeah, I, no. Gregor, if you put all the deals together there, we have announced Mick George, we've announced.
Yeah.
The two German ones, it's below. Below EUR 500 m illion. I would just say rough. It's a few hundred million euros we spent for these three, but we don't give any details.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That concludes our analyst earnings call today. Thanks for listening. Just wanna allude you to our upcoming road shows. We're on the road in Europe and in the U.S. at the end of the month. We are attending on the 21st of March, the BNP Basic Materials Conference in London. We have our announcement on our Q1 earnings on the 10th of March, which is then followed the next day by our AGM. Just to allude you to the upcoming events. With that, have a nice day. Bye-bye.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks everybody.
Thanks a lot.