Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Jenoptik conference call regarding the financial results in 2022. 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, Dr. Stefan Traeger.
Thank you very much, and a very warm welcome here from lovely Jena. With me today as always in the last almost six years is our CFO, Hans-Dieter Schumacher. I'm looking forward to. Actually, it's the last earnings call that we have together, my friend.
Yeah, sure. Indeed. Yeah.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Time flies. A very warm welcome to all of you out there on the telephones. As always, I'm gonna kick it off with a bit of an overview. After that, Hans-Dieter will go into the numbers in more, in more detail. If you'll follow me on page number four of our presentation, please, where we have sort of put together a couple of highlights of the fiscal year 2022. I think it's fair to say that we are really proud of what our teams have achieved in the year 2022. 2022 has been actually a great year for our company, despite what I think one can characterize as a very challenging environment. Our markets, by and large, have been stable and actually positive.
Let's not forget again that the economic environment overall had been quite challenging, don't even have to talk about the geopolitical situation that we live in since more than a year now. In any event, we have moved forward our company, I think, quite a bit. Very important for us, as just one example into the investments we made into the future of Jenoptik, very important for us has been a groundbreaking ceremony for a new high-tech fab in Dresden, an investment of more than EUR 70 million. Which is going to help us to support our customers, in particular in the semiconductor manufacturing industry going forward. Most of us have almost forgotten that in middle of 2022, we actually successfully closed the sale of VINCORION.
Yes, we have signed the deal earlier in the end of 2021, but we've managed to close the deal successfully at the end of Q2 last year. By the way, makes us a much better investment for in particular ESG- related investor communities. We've seen an ongoing strong momentum in particular in the semiconductor equipment industry. I think we all talked about it quite a lot in the last few earnings calls and in roadshows and God knows wherever we met each other. As a consequence, not just of the strong momentum, but in particular the strong momentum in the semiconductor equipment industry, we managed to post organic revenue growth of more than 10%, a double- digit organic growth, which I think is a strong message of the strengths of the company.
I think even more important at least from my perspective, actually, rather than the sheer sales growth, is the fact that we could expand our margins one more time and significantly increase profitability. The EBITDA margin of almost 19%, 18.8%, is a sign of sort of operating strengths, I think, of our business. It is an effect of the product mix that we can show and of course, economy of scale, you all know that mix effects are very important for Jenoptik. I think it's also important to note that we managed to post an additional or a very good free cash flow. Actually, our free cash flow grew to almost EUR 83 million. That despite the fact that we have had quite a high capital expenditure in 2022.
As a result of that, we have reduced our net debt significantly. I mean, we've talked a lot throughout the year 2022 about deleveraging, about our desire to actually deleverage the company following the fairly large acquisitions in 2020 and 2021. I think the fact that we managed to deleverage the company as promised quite significantly in the last year is another testimony of the operating strength of Jenoptik. As a result, we propose together with supervisory board a higher dividend of EUR 0.03 per share. Based on an ongoing good momentum but in particular based on a very strong order book, we have issued a guidance that calls for further revenue increase and margin expansion in this year, 2023.
With that said, I'll hand over to Hans-Dieter, who is going to go into the details of our numbers. Hans-Dieter.
Yeah. Thank you, Stefan. Good morning to all of you. The very last time, as Stefan already mentioned, for me in person. Yeah. Let's go in more details to the figures of the fiscal year 2022, and please take with you that we are talking from the continuing operations and the group only including VINCORION when explicitly specified, just to remind you. Yes. Let's go then please to page number 6. Here you see the both key performance indicators which are very important for the next weeks and months and the start in the year with order intake and order backlog.
The order intake has already passed, clearly passed the billion, and ended up at EUR 1.185 billion compared to EUR 936.7 million prior year, which shows an increase of 26.6%. Book-to-bill, in comparison to a high growth in sales, still clear above 1.21 compared to 1.25. It's a strong book-to-bill ratio. All divisions contributed to this growth, in particular the APS, the Advanced Photonic Solutions. Obviously also very big time supported by the acquisitions of Berliner Glas Medical, former Berliner Glas Medical, and SwissOptic . In the order backlog, I've personally never seen in the last eight years such a high number at the year-end with EUR 733.7 million.
It's an increase of 35%. Our intention is to convert throughout the year 2023, 83.4%, which is a similar ratio compared to prior year, where it has been a little bit more, 85.9% to revenue. Also here in the order backlog, all divisions had a substantial higher order backlogs than at the year-end 2021. Having said this, please follow me to the revenue development, including the quarterly development. You'll see that we have significantly grown our revenue by 30.6% to close to EUR 1 billion. I would be happy if it would have shown EUR 1 billion I must confess. But EUR 980.7 million is clear. A very strong development. Stefan mentioned it already.
Taking into account the first-time consolidation impact of the just mentioned recent acquisitions around Berliner Glas and SwissOptic Group, we still show a double-digit growth, a strong organic growth of 10.9%. Obviously this is something where we are all proud of, and say thank you so much to our teams who made this happen. Some of you have already mentioned it. It was again a year-end rally with strong efforts from all our employees. Revenue of Smart Mobility Solutions divisions exceeded a little bit the prior year figure of Leara. The non-photonic portfolio companies ended up a little bit lower than prior year, but with a huge increase in order intake. Meaning that they should come back a little bit stronger in this year.
Let us go to page eight, please. Here you see the regional split of our revenue. The double-digit revenue increase is throughout the regions there. You see big step forward in every region. The main step forward in Germany, organically and throughout the acquisitions, driven by this. You see it in all regions. The foreign revenue part is now around 77% compared to 81% prior year. Still very much outside of Germany, so to speak. Top three customers accounted for 25.8%. Always a very interesting information for all of you, compared to 21.4%. Meaning, yes, all our top three customers have had also a good and a strong year, and we participated. This is the key message here from this slide.
If you can come to page number nine, please. Here you see our earnings figures, our EBITDA, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. On the right side, the EBIT. It's very important to take you with me on a little journey to explain a little bit more in deepness the figures there. You see the prior year, the reported figure has been, and the EBITDA figure, has been EUR 155.7 million, which equals to a 20.7% EBITDA percentage point, EBITDA margin. Please remember together with me, there has been a huge one-off impact coming from the acquisitions of TRIOPTICS and INTEROB. The earn out impact we have shown you prior year. This has been EUR 30.5 million.
If you see the figures there of the quarter development in 2021, we have shown you for your information the quarterly development of this earn out. If you add these figures, you end up at EUR 30.5 million. If you take this out, a like-for-like operational underlying base for the EBITDA of 2021, you end up at EUR 125.2 million, which equals to 16.7% EBITDA margin. Now, the trend year 2022, it ended up at EUR 184.1 million, which is then an increase, so to speak, like for like of 47% instead of 18.2%. A much bigger step forward than the revenue increase. This is a margin, and Stefan mentioned it already at the beginning of 18.8%. We made a huge step forward.
Yes, the product mix helped and the economics of scale helped. The new acquired companies performed very well as well. A strong EBITDA development. You see the EBIT figure, which seems to look a little bit disappointing at the first few because it's a decrease of 5.8% or from EUR 108.1 million as reported in 2021 to EUR 101.9 million in the year 2022. Remember the one-time effect of EUR 30.5 million, taking them into account, it's an increase from 31.3% from EUR 77.6 million to 101.91 percentage. It's an improvement of the EBITDA margin from 10.3% to now 10.4%.
If you take these into account that we had a special one-off in the year 2022, we took out of the balance sheet in preparation for a strong and a good year, 2023. We took out every risk related to our business in non-photonic portfolio companies in Spain, in the company INTEROB. It had an impact between EBITDA and EBIT of EUR 13.9 million. If you take this impairment out of the calculation because it will not happen again in 2023, it's a like for like comparison, then the EBIT margin would have been at 11.8%. A strong increase then from 10.3% to 11.8%. It's a little bit longer explanation, but I think it's necessary at this point in time when we discuss it with you.
It's very important to realize it's a non-cash effect impairment of EUR 13.9 million, which we realized in connection with the reassessment of the business perspectives of INTEROB in Spain. This is the key message concerning the EBIT development of the prior year. You then follow me to the statement of income, the P&L, in a little bit more detailed information on page 10. You see the P&L, the gross margin, which we all in the board and in our team are quite happy that 35.3% gross margin is even better than a little bit above prior year of 34.2%. You remember in Q1 and even in Q2, we have been below because of the price pressure, the price increase of suppliers.
We have been happy product mix-wise, obviously, of course, but also with increase of prices here and there to have realized counter measurements and to have a stable and even a little bit better gross margin development, which we are quite happy about. Yeah. The functional costs increased to EUR 227.7 million. Obviously, there's also a one-timer in the sense of a first consolidation impact of the new acquisitions included. The administrative expense ratio in the functional costs is set, has been coming down from 7.1% to 6.7%. It's a very important information for us. Selling expenses, 11%, and R&D expenses, 5.6%.
If you take the R&D output ratio into account, which shows you also the customer-related R&D expenses, then it is 8.9%. Yeah. This is an increase compared to the 8.5% of prior year. A very important information also related to the tax rate for you because it's direct paying into the earnings per share ratio. The tax rate increased to 33.5%. Prior year has been relatively low with 9.4%. In the meantime, we have activated all carried forward losses in the group, especially in Germany. We now have no positive impact on the deferred tax side. It's now the opposite of the case. We are showing deferred tax expenses by utilization of this tax loss carried forward.
We have an increase in earnings and non-tax effective losses abroad. Please remember in the prior year, the EUR 30.5 million extraordinary income has not been tax relevant, so had a very dilutive impact on the tax rate. The cash effective tax rate in comparison to prior year is now 20.8% compared to 13.6%. All in all, you can take with you for the future, we are thinking that we are back to normal as a German headquartered company. As our CEO always stated, he is right in this direction. We will be around 28%, 29% in the future. This is a normal tax rate for in Germany headquartered company, because we are now at this stage.
Having said this, it's clear that the earnings after taxes is influenced by this development in the EBIT I explained and in the tax rate. All in all, it leads to an earnings per share of EUR 0.96. If you compare it to the prior year and take into account the one-off impact, it would not be EUR 1.43, it would be EUR 0.90. It's also an increase in a like-for-like comparison there. By the way, we intend to give back to the shareholder EUR 0.30 is around 30% of these earnings per share. It's not so bad. It's an increase of 20%. We feel strong enough to share the good year 2022 also with our shareholders.
On the next page, on page 11, you see the cash flow statement. You see that we have a strong increase in the cash flow from operating activities before income tax. It increased by 45.4%. As Stefan already mentioned, as we have spent a lot in investments, our cash flow from operating investment activities also increased very much. This is, in our case, the free cash flow is a combination of both of these cash flows. The free cash flow before interest and taxes still shows a positive development of 26.8% increase to EUR 79.6 million. If you take the continuing operations into account, Stefan mentioned already the EUR 82.7 million, it's already nearly a doubling. It's 91%, 91.4% better.
Yes, the year 2021 should not be a real reference in this, but it's an increase of more than 90%. The cash conversion rate is at 44.9% for the last year. Still something where we all intend to improve ourselves. It's clearly better than the year 2021, 27.7% is not the benchmark we are aiming for. All in all, we are quite happy because yes, we invested also in inventory to make the ramp up happening and the good start in Q1 2023. Very important, Stefan mentioned it, the net debt came down to EUR 479 million at the year-end. Prior year-end, it has been EUR 541.4 million. We delivered, we promised it to you.
Very important is also the improvement in the equity ratio from 44.4% to 50.4%. The key takeaway is the leverage, which is now at 2.6. We promised to you throughout the year, net debt to EBITDA, we did it. We are clearly in the investment grade range, back to the investment grade range, clearly below three. This is also a strong improvement taking all this information into account. Having said this, I'm happy to hand back to Stefan, who will explain to you the fifth year, 2020 year, from a divisional point of view.
Yeah.
Please, Stefan.
Thank you, Hans-Dieter. Thank you for those clear explanations. Let me just underscore one more time the net debt ratio, because I mean, that's something that we indeed did promise the shareholders and investors we will be below three. We're clearly between two and three now, and I think that's an area where we're comfortable with, let's say.
Good.
Okay, let's go into the individual businesses, to some extent at least. As always, let's start with the APS divisional core optics business. Obviously, as always said throughout the year, very strong business environment. Very strong development. Order intake grew one more time to a really very high and record high, EUR 892 million. Included of course, our consolidation effect. That's, you know, it has to be said. Nevertheless, it's a good development because let's not forget the order intake at APS in 2021 has already been very strong, which helped us to convert some of the orders into sales in 2022. Good development in, on the order side. I dare I say even better development on the sales side.
Growth in sales organic without the consolidation effect is at EUR 17.4 million to now, around EUR 30 million in sales. That's very strong. That's very, very good. Nevertheless, if you have a look at the book-to-bill ratio, it becomes very clear that at APS we have very high order backlog, which we carry into 2023. As a result of, again, both the mix as well as the scale effects, but predominantly a mix effect. Margin has been developed very good. The profitability or EBITDA of APS is now at EUR 170 million. You do see these asterisks here when it comes to 2021.
Just to remind all of you that we had these extraordinary effects in 2021 in relation to the variable purchase price components in actually two M&A deals, but predominantly the TRIOPTICS M&A deal. Keep that in mind. If you would deduct that from the 2021, then the margin improvement would be even more remarkable at APS. Overall, APS very strong development again in 2022. We have seen very good order intake in 2021 and in 2022. In 2022, we could add significant sales growth into the picture here. If you follow me on page number 14, Smart Mobility Solutions. Here we are actually particularly proud of the fact that SMS could catch up in the second half. You remember, we always said order intake is very strong.
Indeed, for this type of, for sort of relatively steady business, 8% order intake growth is a good number. We had significant challenges in Q1 and to some extent Q2, with certain supply chain problems that we had in SMS. At half year, you remember that we promised we will catch up in the second half, and not only did we catch up, we managed to grow also the sales year-over-year, by almost 4%. It did come, to some extent at least, at the expense of a bit of margin. The EBITDA figure is almost the same. In other words, the EUR 4 million additional sales didn't contribute as much to the bottom line.
There is some erosion due to inflation, and, quite frankly, also to the efforts that we put into pushing the sales and helping our customers, which were waiting way too long for their products. As I said, we're actually very proud of our SMS business or our Smart Mobility business for its ability to catch up the challenges from H1 in H2. In particular, Q4 has been really strong. Let's go to the NPC companies. I think that, you know, we all look very closely into that division at the moment, or into this business group, I should say, or group of companies, I'd rather say. What you do see is that order intake picked up quite a bit.
Order intake, and that's obviously all organic, picked up by 15.4%, which makes us actually fairly comfortable when it comes to 2023. It picked up both in Prodomax and in HOMMEL ETAMIC. Both companies actually had a good development. INTEROB, obviously not as good, but I think we've talked about INTEROB quite a bit in the past. INTEROB is not necessarily a, you know, a shining star in the portfolio here. Again, HOMMEL and Prodomax, from an order intake perspective, actually a good 2022.
Revenues, on the other hand, came down, and that's obviously to do with the challenges that we all see and or have seen throughout the year, particularly in the first half, in terms of supply chains, in terms of not being able to install machines at pro-customer sites and all these challenges that everyone in the industry talks about. Nevertheless, it does mean that the book-to-bill ratio is at 1.24, which again, is actually a good development and gives us some confidence going into 2023. Profitability is or has declined in 2022. That is, of course, an effect of the missing volume. There's nothing else to say other than the volume effect.
EBIT itself, which is obviously not on, in bar charts here, but the EBIT is negatively impacted by the impairment of INTEROB. Let me just again, one more time, point out that with this together with the already communicated settlement that we've made in relationship to the project near Berlin, INTEROB is basically flashed through both the P&L here entirely. Don't expect any further sort of hits from INTEROB actually. Okay, with that said, let's go to page number 16. Page number 16 is a new one in this deck of cards here. In this deck we put for the first time actually a sort of an overview of what we do in terms of sustainability.
I don't wanna read all the KPIs to you. Just wanted to point out that we try to sort of have a, have a spectrum of actions. We are very particular when it comes to gender equality. That's something we really push quite a lot, gender equality and more folks with non-German passports. Diversity is the name of the game here, and that's a very important factor for us. We push for more diversity in our businesses. In the recent year, in 2022 in particular, we also pushed for engagement score quite a lot. In other words, how many of our employees would recommend us to be a good employer? You might think, well, but why is that so important?
Well, you all know that we have a very high-skilled labor force, and our biggest sort of obstacle for more growth is actually to find the right people. Therefore, it's important that our people, you know, they look into our business and how we behave and how we act, and that, and our folks are saying, "Yeah, we like working for Jenoptik." That's very important for us because, you know, if we can retain talent, we don't have to find it on a very tense labor market. Engagement score for us are important. Given all the, yeah, kerfuffles we have all have seen in 2022 and experienced, an engagement score of 76%. In other words, 76% of all our global workforce would recommend to others to come to Jenoptik.
I think that's a very good, very good result. Again, I'm not, don't intend to go through all of the KPIs here. We measure new product introductions and more in particular, the revenue share of products introduced to the market in the last three years. We measure green electricity, we measure CO2 reduction, all of these good and very important things. As a result of all of that, you can see our sustainability ratings. You can see that MSCI, for example, rates us double A, which is, I think, very good.
Mm-hmm.
Of course, we'd love to be triple A, at the very moment the double A is not so bad. We all need sort of targets, obviously. EcoVadis, you know, granted us with a silver status. Sustainalytics calls us a low-risk company. I think from an ESG perspective, you know, we came miles, actually. I mean, we made really mileage in that in that respect. Okay. With that said, let's stop looking into the rear-view mirror and let's have a look sort of into what's coming. On page number 18, you do see our outlook for 2023, we've communicated that already in earlier communications, nothing new here. Let's reiterate what we set a couple of weeks back.
We expect sales to be between EUR 1.05 billion and EUR 1.1 billion. That should be billion, not million here, depending on what language we use. Between... Oh, this is... Oh, no. Yeah, okay. Sorry, sorry. Pardon. I got mixed up there. Between EUR 1.05 billion and EUR 1.1 billion euros in the current fiscal year, 2023. We expect further margin expansion. We expect EBITDA margin to be between 19.0% and 19.5% of sales. We again, do want to point out that we are investing into our future.
Although we're not guiding capital expenditures as such, we wanted to sort of in the spirit of full transparency and full disclosure, do mention to you that we will have to spend more in this year than in prior year when it comes to capital in order to fuel the growth that we want to achieve here for our company. Obviously, I mean, you all know the disclaimer. This is out of this space in particular. Good auto intake that we have, a higher auto backlog, good business environment. We do put the sort of the disclaimer around it that certain geopolitical risks shall not worsen any further and the conflict and the war in Ukraine and other geopolitical environmental factors will not worsen any further. Okay.
With that said, thank you very much for your attention. We'll be with you and, happy to receive all of your questions. Before we go there, though, let me one more time thank Hans-Dieter. It's, Hans, your last, earnings call together with me here.
Yes, sir.
Jenoptik, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. It's been an honor. We're not done yet. We have to go through Q&A session.
Yes, sure.
We have Well, actually, a couple of hours, shall we say, together here at the company. Thank you very much for the last six years. It's been, as I say, an honor and a pleasure. I'm looking forward also to, yeah, working with Prisca on these numbers going forward and to have Prisca on my side here presenting figures to the capital markets. Obviously as well, there's Ralf Kuschnereit too, is with the company since a long time. Lars is not a new person here in, in the game, but Prisca is new, so I'm looking forward to working with her. Thanks, Hans-Dieter.
Thank you, sir.
With that said, let's go to Q&A.
Yes. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine star on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press nine star again.
We're receiving quite a lot of questions, and the first questioner is Craig Abbott of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Also from my side, Mr. Schumacher, thank you very much for all your support over the years, and good luck. The three questions from my side, please. First of all, I'm just trying to clarify a little bit exactly what you mean with the CapEx definition. If I look at the 106 you show on the slide versus the numbers for the investments in tangible and intangible assets we see in the cash flow statement, there seems to be a difference there. If you could be a little bit more concrete with what, how that breaks out and what kind of magnitude you're looking for for this year. That's the first question. The second question is on TRIOPTICS.
I just wondered if you could give us some color there on how the recent book of business been developing and what you expect going forward. My third and final question is just a general update on M&A pipeline. Thank you.
Hey, Craig. Good morning. Thanks for your questions. I'll take the last two, and then I'll hand over to Hans-Dieter to explain the CapEx, the definition and the numbers there. On TRIOPTICS, I mean, we're discussing that throughout the whole last six months, I'd say, that we're monitoring TRIOPTICS pretty carefully in terms of order intake. I guess you referenced to the mobile phone-
Yes. Yes.
and those kinds of things. Yeah. I think the best explanation or the best way of answering the question is nothing particularly new from the last couple of conversations we had. Monitoring it very closely. TRIOPTICS had a good sales result in 2022, completely as expected, so fully in budget and plan. Happy on the sales side. Still okay on the order intake side but monitoring it very closely. I think that's the best way of saying it. Yeah. That is essentially what we said in the last few earnings calls and conversations we had. Nobody's falling off a cliff here. We're still good. We are in very close contact and working very sort of closely with our customers, in particular for the new applications.
We all talked about AR/VR in the past a lot and certain other applications for TRIOPTICS. Not exactly at the inflection point yet, but we're fairly certain it will come. In the meantime, as I say, working hard and pulling in the orders we need to make sure that the business stays in plan, which it does at the moment. I hope that's.
Okay.
That's what I hope that's enough color on that. In terms of M&A, we have communicated in sort of the middle of last year that we're somewhat changing or switching gears. We have communicated the beginning of last year that we expect further large M&A deals and those of you who are with us for a bit longer, you know that if we say that we probably did have something particular in mind already at the time, where we frankly pulled up. Well, actually really because we wanted to be more careful. It's not as if we slammed the brakes last year, but we certainly took the foot off the gas pedal. We wanted to be more careful.
We wanted to deleverage the company, and we've stressed that the number of times throughout the year and in this call already today.
Mm-hmm.
Our focus has been in the last six, eight, nine months, actually, on deleveraging the company. As a result of that, we did follow up on some M&A projects, and we sort of looked into a couple of things. We want to be, and we will continue to be, very prudent, in particular at the moment. There are certain M&A deals, in particular in our area, where we believe that. Well, I shouldn't even comment on that. I think that we will be very prudent and disciplined. That's the approach that we choose at the moment. Very prudent, very disciplined, and we have been very careful lately, and we will continue to be very careful.
We do not have any M&A deal in the pipeline that's currently in any stage that we could mention it. I think that for those of you who are sort of, following the market very closely, I think you can translate that.
Mm-hmm.
With terms of CapEx, I hand over to Hans-Dieter.
Yes, sir. Craig, thank you for the question. The main difference between the cash flow impact and the overall investment sum is the IFRS 16 topic. We have globally a lot of sites where we are in a rental position, we have renewed throughout the year the new contract. If it's running for five or 10 years, you have to capitalize the whole period in one, activate it and show it in the balance sheet. In the P&L and cash out and cash flow relevant is only the rental of the year, the rental fee of the year. This is roughly around about an amount of EUR 20 million in the last year.
Then you are already at close to EUR 100 million. The rest is a timing issue between activating and paying the supplier for certain investments. We have always a gap between the cash flow relevant figure of the investment cash flow, so to speak, and the total sum of our investment. I hope this helps.
Oh, it does. Very much. Thank you. If I may follow up, just to give us all a little bit of an indication of how much you mean by markedly higher for the underlying for our modeling. Thank you.
Okay.
Yeah. We will. Markedly higher means it will show in the numbers. How did I answer that question?
It's driven Craig, it's driven by the bigger portion of Dresden now. The high-tech fab in Dresden is doing big gross, progress, and the main investment parts are in this and the next year. Yeah. In total, we are talking about in the region clearly above EUR 70 million, yeah, so to speak, because-
For Dresden.
For Dresden. I'm talking about the single investment in Dresden. It has been split over some years. The total sum has been split over the year 2022 until end of 2024 because, hopefully for Ralf and his team, we will have a go live situation, so to speak, at the beginning of 2025. So, the next years are heavily influenced by this big investment, single investment. And, no, it's. Yeah. And, we have, for example, our investments in machinery and equipment to increase our capacity. You have seen that we have, and you have heard it, and if you have listened to us, we have here and there already worked at or near the capacity border, so to speak. Therefore, we are investing a lot in increasing our capacity as well.
You should not think in a dimension of EUR 200 million or something like this. It's not doubling. Yeah.
It's, maybe it's in between.
Yeah. Yeah. I think. I understand, Craig, where you're coming from. It's a bit.
Yeah.
The phrase might be a bit misleading.
Yeah.
Markedly higher means a double-digit number more than what we spent in 2022.
Yeah.
It's not as if we're aiming for EUR 200 million here now all of a sudden.
Of course.
Sort of somewhere between the EUR 100 million and the EUR 200 million. I'd say that's fair.
It's a good guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you both.
Thank you so much for the questions.
Yeah. It actually was an important question because it was-.
Yeah.
Maybe that was a bit misleading actually.
Yeah. Next question.
The next questioner is Mr. Adrian Pehl of Stifel. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Actually, first of all, starting with the 2025 target picture that you had. There's actually no mentioning of that in your presentation, as far as I saw this correctly. There was already a question on M&A obviously, which is linked to that. I recall you giving a quite optimistic interview last month, and it sounded to me like that even without M&A, you're gonna go for the financial targets that were outlined in the original plan. Any, any comments on that? Do we see a reworking of that 2025 target picture anytime soon?
Yeah.
No, go ahead.
Maybe take it one by one.
Yeah. Okay. The answer is yes. We believe that the 2025 targets in terms of top line, we, you know, give or take, can actually also achieve organically. We don't need the further acquisitions for what we set on the top line. Just to remind everybody, we aim for around EUR 1.2 billion in sales by 2025. We should get there to that around EUR 1.2 billion number by organic growth only. You do also or you did reference the interview I gave, and the fact that I mentioned our margin guidance.
I mean, many people are saying, "Come on, if you're if you guide for between 19% and 19.5% on, you know, EUR 1.05 billion- EUR 1.1 billion this year, how can you guide for around 20% in 2025?" I think that's a good point, in particular, if we aim to achieve that organically. Keep in mind that in our original 2025, we started in certain costs and synergies that we have to create from anticipated M&A deals. If we do it mainly organically, it's a fair assumption that, you know, the around 20% was maybe a bit on the low side.
I did point out that we, in summer and throughout the fiscal year, we'll dust off our models from the time, and we anticipate to share with you the outcome of that exercise in sort of a capital market stay, which we probably gonna have in Q3, I would say. Q4, Q3, Q4. Let's say H2, that's for sure. We'll set up a capital market stay, and then we share with you our latest assumptions and models. We'll see where we end up with at that point in time.
All right. Very good then. One question on M&A, nevertheless again, you're very, you know, been very, looking at, let's say, very prudent, at the market. Are the prices for targets still too high at the moment? In spite of rising interest rates, they have not come off? Is it that you just want to keep a certain level of net asset regards as CapEx is going up?
I would say it varies really. I mean, in some deals that we see or some processes we see apparently prices or the anticipated prices are still very high. Given the high interest rates, that, you know, well, it's in the marketplace, one has to wonder. We at least will continue to have a disciplined approach here. Other markets it might be a bit different by now, but particularly the optics business. I mean, we've made two very important acquisitions. We have to digest them. We have to make sure that we integrate them in a good and successful manner. We are going to focus on that. If there are strategically important targets we can execute, but we'll always be diligent and disciplined in that approach.
You know, well, I think that's, that's a very clear statement, I guess. We also said that we want to add to our other business in particular to the SMS business. We'll have to see what's possible there. Also here, I think at this moment, the appetite for very large M&A transactions, acquisitions is fairly low on our end, period.
Got it. Two final ones. Very quick. Actually on the order backlog that you have now, how much for that of that is actually for 2023 for the group and for the APS segment, please? Lastly, on the business, I mean, obviously we're all seeing that ASML is very strong and has put out strong guidance early this year. I was just wondering in the semi arena, is actually your non-ASML client base, is that enjoying more or less the same kind of strong trends or is that different to your peer count here? Thank you.
The book-to-sales ratio, so the amount of backlog to be converted into sales this year for the group is, I think it's 83% somewhere in the presentation. Am I having a presentation? I think it's 83%.
Yeah.
83%. Okay.
Yeah. No
83% of the backlog is to be converted or is for shipment is booked to ship backlog for this year. We do not specify whether it's for or for which division or businesses. This is something we don't specify and don't guide on. In terms of the semi business, I'd say it is really across the board. I mean, the question is what drives the semi, the semi manufacturing market? I think it's very important. We're not selling to semi companies. I mean, we're obviously not producing chips, but we're also not selling to chip manufacturers. We sell to machine builders. They have this special situation that despite the fact that the semi market is, yeah, maybe in, in...
You all know it better than I do, but the semi market is not necessarily in its best shape at the moment, but the machine builders market is very strong. Why is that? Driven by all those home showing effects that we have seen and discussed in the last couple of quarters. The effect of the U.S. Chip and Science Act, the effect of the European Chips Act, and the fact that we're all building chip factories around the globe here in Europe and in America. That brings a special effect. This is not just for ASML, but also for our other customers.
All right. Thank you. Mr. Schumacher, all the best.
Thank you. Thank you.
Next we have Mr. Malte Schaumann of Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yep. Good morning. Peter, many thanks for all the efforts that you're not taking all the best for your future.
Thank you.
Let's start with the non-photonic business. I think it was pretty positive to see especially the order intake in the fourth quarter. How are the current trends developing into early 2023? Were those kind of temporary lift or do you see kind of sustained higher demand levels in these areas?
Hey, good morning, Malte. I'd say, obviously we cannot guide on Q1 yet, so we'll be a bit careful here because, you know, we have a few days to go to get some orders in. What we do see in the NPC business more and more is dependency on large projects. Something we have not seen that much in the past, but with Prodomax becoming actually about bigger, the share of Prodomax and NPC is enlarged. Prodomax is a project business, so therefore, projects can fall into one side or the other of a period change or so let's give us the time to see how Q1 develops.
I wouldn't say that we expect, you know, huge order intake increase in NPC Q1 this year versus Q1 2021. I'll be so careful because I really don't know because Prodomax, it can come this month, or it can come next. I'm sort of hesitating to give you a clear answer. At this moment, if you put a gun to my head, I would not dial into a model in order intake was for NPC in Q1 2023.
Okay. Generally, do you see an elevated level of projects in the pipeline?
Yeah.
do you see them...
Yeah.
being more successful in winning these projects?
Yeah, that's an easier question to answer, because it's specific about the quarter-over-quarter effects that we see. Overall, I would say Prodomax continues to be very strong. I think that's a very positive news here. Prodomax is strong. We do see also good pipeline for HOMMEL actually, which is good. No, I say generally from, you know, if I look into the pipeline and, it looks stronger than in the past.
Good. On profitability in that area, NPC, that had been quite okay, at least at EBITDA level in the fourth quarter of the year. I mean, we had all these cost burdens from INTEROB, et cetera, and prior quarters. Would you say at the one way we saw in the fourth quarter, this is kind of the profitability one should expect going forward, or was that kind of elevated due to product mix or whatsoever?
Nothing specific. No, I'd say yes.
Probably, yes.
Yeah. Probably, yes.
Yeah.
There was nothing specific in the fourth quarter, I would say.
Besides the INTEROB issue, we took all the risk out.
for HOMMEL and Prodomax was not anything.
Prodomax is doing well in profitability as well.
Yeah.
It's improving, yeah. Yeah.
Yes, the answer is yes.
Yeah. Okay, good. Let me follow on with the Berliner Glas, SwissOptic part of the business. I mean, during last year, I mean, it developed pretty strongly with higher than initially expected sales and also orders. Seeing supply chains becoming more normal or reverting back to a normalization on normal levels, is there any impact, negative impact, any headwinds from that development? Or you see their business, their pipeline still being pretty strong also for the coming quarters?
No, no. I don't have any sign of slowing down.
We're still strong.
Still strong. Yeah.
The supply chain topic is not done yet.
No, it's not as bad anymore. No, I would say-
Yeah.
I would say, for Berliner Glas, now Jenoptik Medical, and for SwissOptic.
Also.
We don't see any headwinds at the moment. No, still going strong.
Okay, good. you already touched upon TRIOPTICS. I mean, any other areas within the advanced photonics business that are worth mentioning positively or negatively? Current order trends, demand trends.
I mean, we haven't talked in detail about the medical business or Einstein, the medical business, or we call it the biophotonics business. Berliner Glas Medical obviously, or Jenoptik Medical, the dental business is part of it, which is strong. I think overall, you know, it's We're good. I think that's probably the best way of saying it. We're okay. We're good.
Okay. Good to hear. Also on CapEx, I mean, it was, I think, mid of last year when you guys guided for increased CapEx due to the last project this year, next year. Does the elevated CapEx guidance for this year also stretch into next year? Is it kind of impacted by pull-in effects that you, yeah, pull forward certain investment projects and then it comes down next year again? How should we think about that?
It should come down next year.
Yeah, I think.
I would think that 2023 is probably the peak. I don't think that it comes down very quickly, but I think 2023 will probably the peak.
Yeah.
Of what we need to invest. Yeah, I think that's, yeah. We have to bring it down, I think.
Yeah.
I have to agree with him.
It's true. It's a bit. Don't please, don't dial it into or don't take it as a guidance for 2024 at this moment.
Yeah, sure.
But, uh-
Sure.
I think, I mean, the overall, I think it's fair to say that we have to bring it down somewhat. 2023, I'd say will be the peak.
Yeah. Okay, good. Understood. A quick one on PPA. I think it was around EUR 27 million in 2022. Any guidance you can give for 2023?
I can give a guidance. It should be around EUR 21 million and no extra impact from INTEROB. The EUR 13.9 million are done and regularly PPA taking into account no further acquisition should come down in the region of EUR 21 million in this year, current year.
Yeah. Okay. Many thanks.
Thank you.
Next question comes from Mr. Martin Jungfleisch of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Just one quick question on the CapEx guide to clarify. If you take the EUR 106 million from last year, just strip out the EUR 20 million from IFRS 16, you get to EUR 86 million. On the base of that, do you expect a significant increase for this year, which will also show in cash flow? Is that the right way to think about it, or would you actually see more than EUR 100 million in CapEx also in cash this year? Maybe if we could ask the question the other way around, would this increase in CapEx this year still imply an increase in free cash flow this year or is that not the case? Thank you.
We don't give particular guidance on cash flows, but again, we will see more investments in 2023. We, I think we gave you an indication. I'd say we leave it there.
cash flow not improving or?
We'll always work hard to improve and present more cash flow.
The cash flow will improve operational-wise.
Yeah.
EBITDA will increase significantly. Product mix is good. The customers in Semi are paying us. By the way, we have not a problem to lose trade receivables. We did not book our trade receivables in the group. The operational cash flow will improve. Then, yes, a little bit more cash out from investments. In this year, that's for sure, it's going parallel up. If the investment, total investment sum will increase, above prior year, also the cash flow impact will increase maybe in the same relationship, yeah, percentage-wise. All in all, the free cash flow should be very good. Yeah. It should be okay. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe a follow-up on the capacities in Semi. I mean, before you ramp the new fab in Dresden in the next two years, do you see any capacity constraints to deliver high single or low double-digit growth in the future? Is there anything you can do to free up capacity?
I mean, capacity is something we've talked about since quite a while. The factory in Dresden will not help us much in 2023 and 2024. We obviously, you know, become more effective and more productive in the buildings we have, utilizing the machines we have better. By the way, the biggest capacity sort of bottleneck at the moment is more in our sort of classical optics, not necessarily in the micro optics that we produce in Dresden. We will, you know, utilize the capacities we have much better. We currently try to bring low-end non-Semi production to other parts of the world, to factories that we have, for example, in China. We have a factory in Wuhan, which by the way, I just visited last week.
We have more capacity there. Now that it's possible to go there, we can bring business, more business there. Obviously not Semi business, but by bringing other non-Semi business into, for example, the capacity in Wuhan, we can free up capacity here for those high-end Semi business.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.
We have one more questioner. It's Mr. Peter Rothenaicher of Baader Bank. Go ahead .
Yes. Hello, gentlemen. Firstly, I would come to the non-portfolio, non-photonic portfolio companies. You mentioned that HOMMEL had solid development. Perhaps can you comment a little bit, what is the future focus for HOMMEL? It was in the past, a strong dependency from combustion engine machine. Where is the future of this company? Is there potential that we will not see losses at HOMMEL anymore?
That's a good question. At HOMMEL, we push maybe even harder than in the past for new applications. In a way, sometimes shocks are helpful to a business. I don't wanna say that we were like sleeping at the steering wheel here, but I think we all have been too comfortable in selling to the, you know, German or existing car industry, our products. Now there's a bit more need for finding new applications. Funny enough, turns out there are new applications. In some product lines, we can already see that more than 50% of the business is non-combustion engine anymore. In some regions we see that there's a product, for example, called, you know, optics line or optic related business and others. We have sometimes even 70% non-combustion related business already.
We are actually more and more successful in finding other applications for the product from HOMMEL, which is a good sign. That is indeed what fuels their auto intake worth at the moment. Now the challenge is to convert it all into sales. That's what we need to do, and need to work on. I would say, yeah, maybe there is a future for HOMMEL, outside of the combustion engine and more, more optical measurement of other things.
In terms of profitability on a EBIT level, is there a chance to be at least, break even or positive in 2023?
Yes. Positive. EBITDA.
EBITDA. Okay. EBIT.
We don't guide on EBIT, you know.
Also regarding your guidance for non-photonic portfolio companies. You're in mid-single- digit percentage on sales growth, stronger margin improvement. If I look at the order intake development with single digit % sales growth looks a little bit weak. What is the reason for this?
Maybe because you're so conservative all the time. No, I think to be serious here, again, we see it currently. We see that we had last year, we continue to have actually some challenges to convert orders into sales. The HOMMEL business in particular requires electronic components, certain PCB boards and other things which are still difficult to get. To some extent, we also... I know that sounds a bit funny now, but we have been a bit surprised actually by the success in auto intake in 2022. It's great to see that, we didn't anticipate it. Therefore, we didn't have a lot of buffer stocks in the system in particular for those critical components.
Therefore, we're a bit careful in pushing up expectations too much, in particular for the HOMMEL business. Prodomax is different. Prodomax, we anticipated good growth, and we do see good growth, and that will happen. On HOMMEL, the auto intake was maybe even stronger than we anticipated. Let's see how much we can convert into sales in the coming quarters.
You mentioned your intention to dispose the non-photonics company's business, at least in the mid to longer term. Would you go so far to say, if we decide this, we want to dispose everything? Or could it be possible only to dispose, let's say, Prodomax and keep HOMMEL or vice versa or something like that?
I think, yes, that would be possible. I think to, quite frankly, sell both companies in one go would be, or to aim for that would be unrealistic anyways. They are very different companies in very different business models, in actually very different parts of the automotive marketplace. Prodomax is 100% auto. HOMMEL is not anymore. HOMMEL more and more transforms into more non-automotive, non-combustion engine parts. Prodomax is not combustion engine anyways. I don't see it linked to each other. We intentionally called it a group of companies. They are both operating independently from the group and independently from each other. If somebody intends to give us a good sum of money for one of the two we sell, could sell them. We are not under pressure.
If we have in our group one or both companies going forward in the future, so be it. Again, Prodomax is a bit further away from our core business, and Prodomax is not optical full stop. There is no optics there. HOMMEL, different. There is, as I say, evermore actually applications in the optics that we see some links here, some, maybe some synergies. We'll have to see. To answer the question in a very clear manner, no, they're not related to each other. They operate completely independently from each other and from the group. They can be sold separately if we desire to do so.
Okay. Last question on pricing for your core business at Advanced Photonics, in particular, the semiconductor business. Are you still able here to pass on higher costs and perhaps to at least support your or even increase your margins due to good pricing?
We do see inflation coming down a bit. The pressure is not as high as it had been in the beginning of the year, 2022, when I was saying, you know, pushing it onto customers is not a problem. That's not what we discussed with the customers. Still the case, you know, there is still we don't have that much debate with our customers. Let me also say that it gets a bit more normal, I would say. It's not the craziness of in particular Q4, 2021 and Q1, 2022, when it came to demand in the semi industry, when it was like, "Whatever, just give me product. Give me, give me, give me, give me." That's not as much anymore.
It comes back to a more normal perspective. To come back to your, to your question on price, we still have some leverage, but we don't have that much sort of need for it at the moment. I would say the margins in APS are good, and we work hard to keep them where they are.
Okay. Thank you very much. At the end, Mr. Schumacher, once again, all the best for your future. It was a great pleasure working with you over the recent eight years. All the best.
Thank you, Peter. Thank you so much. Hope to see you. Take care.
At the moment, there are no further questions therefore, I will repeat, ladies and gentlemen. If you have any remaining questions, please press nine star. There seems to be no further questions in the queue.
Okay. Well, thank you very much to everyone. Thanks for being with us today. Again, we're all proud of what we've achieved in 2022. Let's see what the new year has in stock for us. Final thank you to Hans-Dieter here. You know, we have another couple of hours.