Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Jenoptik conference call regarding the financial results 2021. 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, Leslie Iltgen.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our conference call on the full year 2021 results. My name is Leslie Iltgen, Head of Investor Relations. With us today are CEO, Dr. Stefan Traeger, and our CFO, Hans-Dieter Schumacher. Dr. Traeger will point you to the key highlights of our full year results and guidance for 2022. Mr. Schumacher will then cover the financials in more depth. As always, both will be happy to answer any questions you may have in our Q&A session at the end of this call. Also, let me remind you that this call will be recorded and a replay will be available on our investor relations website after this call. Before I hand over, please also pay attention to our usual disclaimer that you will find in the presentation. It is now my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Stefan Traeger.
Please go ahead, Stefan.
Thank you, Leslie. Thank you very much, and a very warm welcome from our end here in Jena on what proves to be a fairly sunny morning. We are very glad to be able to present our financials and a bit more throughout the next hour or so. I believe it's fair to say that 2021 has been a remarkable year in many ways, and a year of really strong development for Jenoptik. There are lots of milestones that we can point to in the last 12 or 18 months. Let me just point out a few highlights of the last fiscal year. We managed to find a new owner for VINCORION.
A deal that we're really glad we could sign at the end of the year, and we expect closing of the VINCORION sale really in the next few months. We also added to the portfolio quite significantly. We almost doubled our footprint in life science and med tech with the acquisition of BG Medical. We managed to expand our business presence in Asia with the acquisition of TRIOPTICS, and in particular its facility in Wuhan, China. Later in the presentation, Hans-Dieter will point out that our Asian business is now almost as big as the business that we do in Europe, except Germany. We significantly invested or started investments in new capacities. Capacity is a topic that will be with us for months to come and will be like a red thread basically, like a red line through the presentation today.
We are working hard to increase and enlarge our capacity in order to fulfill the rapidly growing demand of our customers. That's why we invest significantly in further growth. We managed to enable that by strengthening our financial power. Remind you of the sustainability linked debenture bond that we've placed within the year 2021. Later in the year, we actually discussed with many of you and presented in capital market days the next stage of our strategic agenda. The first stage of transforming Jenoptik into a focused photonics player, focused technology player. We're concentrating on focusing the company around our core competencies, technologies around optics and photonics. In this next stage, we aim to focus even further on certain market segments, providing from our perspective at least, sustainable growth and margin expansion.
In the future, Jenoptik will stand even more for pushing what we all know as the digitization of our world. If anything, then COVID has acted as a catalyst for that trend to ever more digitization. We will stand for the future of our healthcare systems and the future of how we organize mobility in our society going forward, even more than we do today. We aim as this new strategy to have sales of about EUR 1.2 billion in the middle of the decade, and about 20% of that we aim to put to the bottom line as per an EBITDA margin. I believe overall, as I say, very busy year 2021. Lots happened in 2021. We really managed to push this company to the next level, if you want or, you know, lots of milestones.
At the end of the day, as the saying goes, it's all about the financial success. It's all about cash, if you want, or financial success. In that respect, I think 2021 has been remarkable and really outstanding. In 2021, we break through the EUR 1 billion mark in terms of order intake. We took more than EUR 1 billion of fresh orders for the company, including VINCORION, that is. And probably even more importantly, we managed to generate almost EUR 180 million of earnings before tax and depreciation, which really is the highest in the company's history. Really a record year in many ways. Yes, we do live in challenging times, and that's on our minds every day. We know that there is a conflict, a war not too far away from here, and it has an impact.
It has an impact on our business to a certain extent, not that much actually as you might see it in the very first slide, but we'll detail that a bit more going forward. Yes, we do live in uncertain times, but we also know that we have record-breaking order intake. We have order book that goes through the roof. Our challenge is to convert orders into sales at the moment, and we work hard and we invest to make that happen and to enable further growth. We will detail that with our guidance at the end of the presentation. In summary, fantastic year 2021, and we're now going to lead you through the individual numbers in a bit more detail, and Hans-Dieter is going to take that part. Over to you.
Yeah. Thank you so much, Stefan, and good morning to all of you from my end as well. Please follow me on the next slide, number six. Here you see our key performance indicators looking more in the future, the order intake, and especially the order backlog. Here you see the figures for the continued operations. The increase on order intake of roughly around about 68%, 57.6% to EUR 936.7 million is not above a billion because the billion, EUR 1,073.6 million, as mentioned below the line, has been including VINCORION. This is the Photonics division, and it is also a very successful development above EUR 900 million, equaling a book-to-bill ratio of 1.25, including the sales growth.
It's not a bad situation. It's a very strong development, and especially order backlog on the right side of the slide with even more than 80% growth, 81.3% up to EUR 543.5 million, is substantially higher than a year before. We intend to convert 85.9% of this into revenue in the year 2022, meaning this is a strong base, a strong ground for a good start in the year 2022. Having said this, you can follow me on the next slide. Here you see our sales increase quarter by quarter. In total, we have reached EUR 750.7 million revenue for the continued businesses without VINCORION. It's a sales increase or revenue increase of 22%.
Yes, it is. It's including a one-off of first consolidation of TRIOPTICS, which has brought around EUR 100 million in sales with us in the last year, 2021. Don't forget, we had also reported already in the Q4 or in the last months of the year 2020, around EUR 28 million. The extra impact net comparable is roughly about EUR 60 million, a little bit more than EUR 60 million. A strong organic growth as well, driven by the division Light & Optics, and mainly there the optics, micro optics and the biophotonic business. Stefan will show you and go with us and you through the figures of the divisions later. A final remark, you see here the group revenue. It's nearly EUR 900 million, EUR 895.7 million. It's including VINCORION.
This is also a strong growth compared to EUR 767.2 million we have reached a year before. Having said this, I'd like to share with you the revenue share by region. Here you see that Asia-Pacific, Stefan mentioned it already, has done a huge step forward, ending at EUR 172.9 million, coming from EUR 104.9 million. So it's more or less a little bit below, but more or less on the level of Americas and Europe without Germany. It's much bigger in the meantime than Germany alone. This is our strategic intention, has been always our strategic intention, and it has obviously also to do with TRIOPTICS acquisition and first consolidation, because TRIOPTICS is doing more than 50% of the businesses in Asia-Pacific.
So, all in all, a very strong, good and healthy development in the regions. Let me name the last remark here that our top three customers accounted for 21.4% of revenue compared to 22.6% prior year. It was always and has been always our intention to widen our customers portfolio a little bit and not be too much depending on just one big customer sitting in Europe, not so far from Germany. You all may know who I have in mind. So we did a progress on this journey, and we think this is now a much more balanced portfolio giving us opportunities around the globe, around the world. On the next slide you will see our profitability key performance indicators, naming EBITDA and EBIT.
Here you see also a strong improvement compared to prior year, 67.9% increase in EBITDA for the continuing businesses from EUR 92.8 million to EUR 155.7 million. Yes, it's including one-off coming from the conditional purchase price components from the two acquisitions we have done in 2020 and early 2021. It has been TRIOPTICS and Interob. In total, it's EUR 30.5 million. Including this one-off with the EUR 155.7 million, our EBITDA margin has reached 20.7%. Taking them out as one-offs, it's still 16.7%, which is clearly above prior year of 15.1%.
We have, by the way, so to speak, in our earnings, booked especially transaction costs and other costs in the amount of EUR 7.5 million. It's also booked. The purchase price allocation for inventory step up in the EBITDA has reached EUR 2.1 million. Prior year it has been EUR -4.6 million. In the EBIT on the right side, the PPA effect has been raised a little bit. It's now at the level of EUR 16.4 million compared to EUR 14.9 million prior year. The EBIT nevertheless has even more improved than the EBITDA with 128.2% increase to EUR 108.1 million.
This is also all-time high figure in the history of Jenoptik Group. Yes, it's also including the one-offs, but the margin with 14.4% compared to 7.7% is really strong and shows how successful we also have been financially in the prior year. Having said this, I'd like to share on the next slide a little bit deeper insight into our P&L structure. You see here the gross margin, which is below prior year, driven by higher material and personnel costs and expenses.
On the other side, the functional costs, including the first consolidation impact, of the people which have joined us throughout the year, coming from TRIOPTICS, Interob and especially Berliner Glas Medical and SwissOptic, which we had included in our figures in the month of December already last year. You see in the operational results, by the way, the EUR 13.5 million extraordinary one-off positive effects coming from the conditional purchase price component, as already mentioned. Ending up in earnings before tax of EUR 102.5 million and earnings after taxes of EUR 84.3 million, equaling to an EPS, earnings per share, of 1.43.
We should not forget to mention that this relatively low tax rate is coming from a regional profit distribution, much lower tax rates outside of Germany, and the huge tax-neutral income of EUR 30.5 million, which is not tax relevant. The cash effective tax rate is 13.3% compared to 19.6%. Let me make a statement at this point already. Now we have activated nearly all carry forward losses. This means in the future the tax rate of the group of the company will increase. All in all, also here in the detailed P&L, a strong and positive development. On the cash flow statement on the next slide, you see that we did invest in working capital, yes.
We did invest more in capital expenditure, so to speak. All in all, we managed to increase sales by 22% and having a free cash flow at the same level and including an increasing investment. Because of supply chain and inventory issues, we took some good stocks. All in all, we are very happy that we managed to end the year with a free cash flow before interest and taxes as a group, including VINCORION at a level of EUR 62.8 million, which is nearly the same as a year ago. Let me make a statement that Berliner Glas and SwissOptic. We did include only pro rata in revenue because we did consolidate it throughout the month of December.
One month sales and profit, but a full year on the balance sheet side. A full year on the balance sheet side. This is also a special impact in the consolidation process last year. Having said this, I'd like to hand over again to our CEO, to Stefan Traeger, who will take us through the journey throughout the divisions. Stefan?
Yeah. Thank you, Hans-Dieter. As always, let's start with Light & Optics on page 13. Light & Optics is, I mean, it's almost outstanding. It's in a remarkable position. All markets, really all markets are pulling hard. All our customers are pulling hard. Customers want and need more product. We do all we can, and we invest a lot into further capacity. There is a very strong growth in the semiconductor equipment industry. It goes without saying that all the investment in this industry basically ends in new demand for our products. It's not just the semiconductor industry. We see very good contribution from TRIOPTICS, from the electronics parts, biophotonics, medical and life sciences, industrial, all market segments, as I say, are pulling really hard.
All our customers are pulling really hard for more product from Light & Optics. That's what we saw last year, and that's what we continue to see the beginning of this year, by the way. It reflects in an order intake of EUR 631.1 million in 2021, which is a huge increase versus prior year of almost 84%. Revenue has been at EUR 460.7 million. Still a very strong growth rate on the sales side versus 2020. Of course, as a result of that, the profitability in this division is increasing sharply. EBITDA margin is at almost 30% of sales. Now, there is a one-time effect in it. We've talked about it throughout the entire year.
Even if you dial out that one-timer, we still see a very significant margin step up in margin expansion in our Light & Optics business. If we would exclude the one-time effects from the TRIOPTICS acquisition, margins would still be around 24%. Very, very strong margin development. With that comes also very strong free cash flow. I guess the one thing to point out is the order backlog with a book-to-bill of 1.37. The order backlog grew to almost the same level as sales in the year 2021, which does point out that our challenge in this business is certainly not demand from the marketplace. The challenge is the limitations that we see in converting orders into sales. Limitations in capacity, limitations in people, and that's why we invest.
That's why we invest into further growth, so that we can expand our abilities to convert that huge demand from our customers into more sales on our end. For example, we just now decided to double the incentives that we give to our associates for referrals. If our associates bring us additional people, we'll give them a little incentive, and we increase those type of activities to get on board new experts, new people, new capacities, so we can hopefully fulfill the demand of our customers quicker in future. Light & Optics in a very remarkable position, outstanding market development across the board really with record-breaking order intake, fantastic sales growth, and a very strong margin development. Let's go to Light & Production on page number 14. Light & Production has experienced a very rough year, 2020.
To some extent, the business came back stronger than in 2020. In 2021, the order intake grew by 20% or more than 20% actually to EUR 185.3 million. It goes without saying that the automotive industry is not the easiest industry at the moment. There are challenges, challenging environments, choppy waters in this industry. Nevertheless, we're glad to see that at least the order intake has been expanded significantly. The revenue is just a tad above prior year. And with that comes an increase in EBITDA margin. Yes, there are one-time effects in it. If we would dial that back out, essentially revenue is flat and margin is flat versus prior year.
You do see that there is negative cash flow in this business, which is to do with investments that we do in order to fulfill the amount of our customers, and hopefully we can turn that into positive cash flow and positive sales in 2022. Let's go to Light & Safety. Light & Safety is in a fairly stable environment. Order intake is up, though, big time, by 26.2% versus prior year, which is great. Revenue is lagging behind. You will remember this if you who follow us a bit longer, you will remember that we had an effect in the first and to some extent also in the second quarter last year. H1 2021 has been characterized by delivery problems from a very particular, very important supplier of this division.
As we fixed these problems in the second quarter of 2021, Light & Safety managed to catch up quite a bit revenue that they were lagging behind in the first half, not quite to last year's level, but almost to last year's level. In principle, not a problem from a demand perspective. Demand is strong, but it took a while to catch up the effect from the first half in Q3 and Q4. As a result, the margins is somewhat down and somewhat under pressure due to, let's say, the missing volume and of course, to some extent, the higher costs that we all have. Overall, though, Light & Safety in a fairly good condition.
Last year, we talked about that earlier, we communicated a new strategy to the capital markets, a strategy in which we want to continue our journey to transforming Jenoptik into a global photonics player with increased focus on future growth markets. Namely, we want to play a significant role in pushing forward the digitization of our world. We want to play a significant role in the future of the Internet. We want to shape the future of our lifetimes and healthcare systems, and want to contribute to smarter mobility around the globe. With that new strategy, we also communicated that we are going to merge Light & Optics and Light & Production into one strong photonics entity called Advanced Photonics Solutions. By the same token, transform Light & Safety into a Smart Mobility division.
We are going to carve out certain businesses of Light & Production, namely Silphate, [Silix], and Prodomax, Interob, and parts of our industrial metrology business, namely Hommel Etamic. We will run these companies a bit more independent under their own brand name. The new structure will be reflected in the reporting going forward from the end of Q1 onwards. Today is all about the old structure still, but we're in the midst of converting it and when we communicate our Q1 numbers, we are going to convert those, and we are going to communicate our Q1 numbers in the new structure. We are going to provide you ample opportunities to transform numbers and to make sure that you have enough backdrop and background to understand how these numbers come together.
We'll help you with translating your models into the new structure. With that said, let's just say, 2021's history has been a very successful year for the company in many ways. I think we managed to reach a lot of milestones also in the transformation of Jenoptik. You know, as I say, the sale of VINCORION, the acquisition of Berliner Glas, a new strategy that should pave the way for further growth and margin expansion until the middle of the decade, and further strengthening our financial resources. Lots of things happened, and at the end of the day, I think financially it's been a very successful and really record-breaking year for the company. Time now to look ahead and to try to understand what the future might bring.
I will admit that with all the uncertainties that we see in this world, giving an outlook is a bit of a risky endeavor at the moment. We were kind of like thinking hard what could an outlook be that on the one hand, reflects the risks that we all see in the world and the uncertainties that we all see in the world. On the other hand, also reflects our huge order backlog and the huge demand that we see in our business. As I said earlier, our problem is not getting orders from customers. Our problem is converting orders into sales. Before I go into the specifics of our guidance, I'd like to say a few words about the effect of the conflict and the war between Russia and the Ukraine.
From our today's perspective, Jenoptik is almost not affected. We have very little, really negligible business in the area. Really negligible, just small contributions. From a top-line perspective, we should be almost not affected by sanctions being in place. The first analysis of our supply chain has shown us and demonstrated us that we are fairly resilient there as well. Direct materials or stuff that we get from Russia or Belarus or Ukraine, again, is fairly little. There is some parts that we have to find new sources for and new suppliers for, but really it's not a huge issue for us. What is challenging for us and not easy to forecast is to what extent rising costs for energy might actually affect our suppliers. We need a lot of glass, and in order to build glass, you need energy.
To what extent that affects the ability of our suppliers, that's the big unknown on our end. The other unknown that we see, or the other uncertainty that we see is, of course, rising inflation, rising costs, labor costs and those type of stuff, and logistical challenges, for not being able to travel to Asia, for example. We all heard the news today that Shanghai is going under lockdown again. You know, with all those in mind, a fantastic order backlog, a fantastic demand, actually a demand of our customers that we struggle to cope with. On the other hand, a lot of uncertainties that we have in our world, from a political perspective and from a geopolitical perspective and the ongoing uncertainties about the pandemic.
We came to the conclusion that the best forecast we could give at this moment is to say that we expect our business to grow by at least 20%. Could it be more? Yes, of course. If the uncertainties settle and if the dust settles and if we see that things pan out a bit more positive, then yeah, it might seem to be the case at the moment, then we were certainly prepared to grow more. But at this very moment, we think that a growth forecast of at least 20% is the best forecast that we can give given the significant uncertainties and circumstances. By the way, that would translate into at least mid-single-digit sales growth if we would exclude the acquisitions of Berliner Glas and SwissOptic.
We also said that on the margin side, we expect a significant margin step up for the year, driven by further growth on top line and more of a richer margin-wise mix in the business. Further growth in our semiconductor and electronics business should push up margins. On the other hand, of course, we all know that there is cost pressure and there will be cost pressure in our supply chain and also in our labor costs. From that perspective, we also said, given all the uncertainties, the best outlook we can give at this moment is that we expect margins to expand to approximately 18% of sales, from a 16.7% in 2021.
Again, let me point out that this outlook is based in particular, and I read this because it's very, very important. On good order situation, well-filled pipeline, as well as, ongoing promising developments in the core photonics businesses, in particular in the semiconductor segment. It also presupposes that the Ukraine conflict, with all the sanctions that have been implemented and potential impact on price developments in our supply chain, does not escalate further. Uncertainties also exist with regard to the development of the COVID-19 pandemic at this point of the development in China just recently, just as of today, and of course, continuing supply bottlenecks. Although we are at this moment confident to be able to manage it. I'll say it one more time. The outlook that we give with all the uncertainties in the world is based on what we know today.
Could it be more? Yes, it could, if things turn out to be more positive from a geopolitical perspective. We expect our business to grow at least 20%, including the acquisitions in 2022, and we expect margins to expand from 16.7% to approximately 18% in the year. In the long term, our goal remains. We stand firm behind our strategic targets that we just communicated last fall. We want Jenoptik to focus on our core markets, semiconductor and electronics, medical, and mobility, and we want to drive further growth and margin expansion. We believe that by 2025, by the middle of the decade, we can achieve about EUR 1.2 billion in sales, and we can put about 20% of that to the operating profit EBITDA margins.
With that said, thank you very much for being with us today. We're more than happy to answer any questions that you I bet will have.
We do have the first question from Richard Schramm.
Yes, good morning. Two small ones from my side. First, the decision to keep your payout, your dividend stable, is this an indication that reducing debt is high priority on your list here, going forward to get again a bit more room to maneuver for possible further M&A? That would be my first question.
Simple answer, yes.
Okay. Then I was surprised just to see discontinued operation a negative contribution. What's behind this? As we have still couple of months, obviously including in the current year as well for VINCORION, what should we expect here for this year before this is excluded then from the accounts?
I think VINCORION this year is already reported as an IFRS 5 under the IFRS 5 rule. I think you can maybe shine a bit more light on that.
Yes, of course, I can. Yes. This means follows to the conclusion that we had to book all the impacts, which are going, with IFRS 5 already in the fiscal year-end 2021. Meaning, you can see VINCORION in the P&L only in the bottom line in the earnings after taxes. Yeah. In this case, this is what you mentioned too, Richard, with the negative result. This is related to the fact that we sold VINCORION a little bit below our book values. Yeah. I think the total sum, the amount, the net amount is around EUR 8.5 million. This is the result.
We are looking in the year 2022 with the assumption, and it's depending how fast the closing will be realized. What we can say until today is that everything is going well in the right direction. The authorities in Germany and outside of Germany are looking at this construction and the contract with the potential buyer, and we can't see any hiccups at the moment. It looks like going in the right direction, and we assume that in the middle of the year we should be able to close the transaction. There we would then have the earnings after taxes, the hopefully positive results of VINCORION positively into our books. To book it into our books. Yeah.
This was the matter of fact that we had to book IFRS 5 at the fiscal year end. We had to evaluate the selling contract. What does it mean for our book values and also for the results of the year of VINCORION. The outcome is the EUR 8.5 million negative results of VINCORION in the last year. Yeah. This is what I can say, Mr. Schramm.
Okay. Thanks a lot. Just a clarification, I mean, as VINCORION is obviously also due to the allowance of the German government due to its defense activities, is that clearance already given or could that be a problem, especially in the current environment?
We cannot comment on the specifics of these processes. We can say that we have not received any negative feedback at all from any of the authorities thus far. It's the German, but also overseas authorities that are required to give their green light. Needless to say, we have not received any negative feedback thus far. I mean, let's remind that the acquirer is from the U.K., and therefore not. It's part of the NATO alliance, so we don't see any major risk here. Also from the customers that are required to give their go-ahead.
Okay. Thank you very much. That's it for the moment.
Thank you.
We do have another question from Malte Schaumann.
Good morning. First one is on the growth guidance. The guidance for mid-single-digit organic growth at the low end appears to be very conservative. Two questions around that. I mean, first is, without the current conflict, Ukraine, Russia, would you have provided different guidance? Secondly, if everything goes well, what capacity-wise, what growth your capacities could facilitate? Are we then talking about 20%, 10%, 15%, something in that range group-wise, or is it lower than that?
Yeah. Thanks for the questions. I mean, again, our guidance is at least 20% of the total business. That's the official guidance. I just wanted to give you an indication of what that translates into from an organic perspective. Nevertheless, it is, you know, 20% would correspond to around sort of mid-single digit growth rates. Would we have given another guidance without the Ukraine-Russia war? No. At least not at the top line. I mean, there might be impacts from the Ukraine-Russia war on cost, but as to say on from a top-line perspective, that's. We basically established that before the war, so. At least the foundations have been laid before the war. No, the limitations are really capacity, as you mentioned.
It's, you know, it's almost speculative to say how much more capacity we can build this year. What we can say is what we do to build as much capacity as possible. When we invest in new facilities in Dresden, but we all know that it's not gonna come online this year. We invest in machines, which, by the way, are hard to get at the moment because, you know, because everybody invests at the moment into machines. The biggest inhibitor for the growth is actually people. As I say, we doubled the amount of incentives that we give for associates that can refer other people to us. We do what we can.
We hire basically a lot of people at the moment, but everybody is hiring a lot of people at the moment. What could help us and what will help us, I'm very convinced, during summer periods, is to have lower sickness rates. I mean, at the very moment, we have still a pandemic going on limiting our workforce. We still have a lot of workers in quarantine and not being able to come to work. Although many people can work from home offices, you can't produce from a home office. In order to produce an optic, you need to come into the factory, and therefore, the pandemic still plays a role.
If the rates or the incidence rates go down a bit quicker, then we have a bit more capacity. Of course, we all hope that we don't see the next whatever wave of rising incidence rates in the autumn timeframe. All of those uncertainties we have dialed into the forecast. Or we have to dial into forecast. Biggest limitation is people, and that's unfortunately the one that's the most difficult to predict and forecast.
Right. What do you then expect, okay, over the course of the year when you're adding more people, then the situation should ease, thinking about 2023? I mean, orders are not the problem. You have a backup or a backlog. It's all about execution then?
Absolutely. I mean, I say we have in the optics arena, in our laser and optics business, a backlog that almost equals the whole sales of last year. I mean, basically, that means that our factories are filled up to the roof. What we need is more people. We can build buildings, but it doesn't help us to have buildings. We need machines and it doesn't help us to have machines if we don't have somebody to operate it. We do what we can to get more associates. We try to bring in associates also from other parts, not just from this region here, but try to incentivize relocation, for example, to come to Jena or Dresden or Berlin, other factories.
Yes, of course, if we can maintain the pace of hiring and if we can maintain the pace of building up capacity, then 2023, we should see even further growth. I don't see any decline in demand at this very moment. Of course, nobody knows what the second half of the year brings. At the very moment, in terms of in particular electronics and semicon, the demand is continuously very, very strong. That's a polite way of saying our customers are calling us almost every day, "Can you please produce faster and more?
No. Let me last follow up on that one. I mean, you're guiding for declining order intake. I mean, if I include Berliner Glas' optics contributions, and then you're still only guiding for slight decline in group order intake, excluding VINCORION, that implies kind of 100, more than EUR 100 million decline in order intake. So the pull forward effect you're seeing then would then amount to more than EUR 100 million. So maybe you can shed some more light on that issue.
Yeah. No, that's a very fair statement. On the order intake side, it's even harder to forecast at the moment. I would say that at least in the next six months, we do not see a slowdown. We do think that there is over-ordering going on, in particular in semicon. I think what the industry believes is that the over-ordering at the moment could be around a third or so, but nobody really knows. We're careful on that. We in particular base that, let's not forget, on an order intake pattern that was really record-breaking in 2021 already.
To some extent, we believe it will level off. Maybe in a few weeks when we see what Q1 brings, maybe that actually is old news already. Because at the very moment, we actually see the opposite. We actually see that the customers are asking even more for supply.
Okay. It's no slowdown with first comparison then to the second half of last year or rather year-over-year comparison to the first half of last year?
Second half. I hesitate to give you any further sort of quote-unquote "guidance or outlook on that," because it's really uncertain at the moment.
For sure.
All I can say is that, you know, well, let me put it that way. Our sales reps are afraid that the telephone rings because they know that they will be yelled at by customers why we can't supply faster.
Yeah. Fair enough. Okay, thanks.
The next question comes from Peter Rothenaicher.
Yes. Hello, gentlemen. Firstly, on the not so nice thing on Light & Production. Profitability, particularly in operating terms in last year was definitely, I would say, disappointing again. What is the trend you are seeing there on the one hand regarding demand and then also execution and profitability?
No, I agree. I mean, obviously a car manufacturer that doesn't produce because not having chips or cables or whatever is also very slow in ordering capacity expansion and new machines from us. On the other hand, the other thing is, even if you have the order, our customers are fairly slow in product acceptance tests and those type of stuff, trying to keep their cash flow together. At the very moment, in terms of automotive industry, we do see choppy waters. We also have cost pressure there. In terms of an outlook, it's even harder to give because it depends on the development in the automotive industry in the next few weeks, really.
I mean, we do have larger projects we're working on, particularly in terms of electromobility and those type of activities or alternative engine vehicles. That's the one sector that still goes to some extent, although also that is challenging because they need even more chips for their production, and that slows it down. Hard to give an outlook. Your observation is correct. It's in choppy waters. It's really challenging. Importantly, we have built this into our guidance already.
With that, your new company structure indicates that you will sell these or think about selling these activities, at least in the medium term. Is it then fair to assume that at the current stage, it does not make sense to sell them, so you can only get a fair or acceptable price if the operating situation, profitability of these companies then improves again?
I would love to say no comment. Look, I mean, we have said that if we get inbound requests for those businesses, we would be open to talk. We do not have a structure for active sales process at this very moment. We do get questions every now and again and have to see to what extent they are real. Yes, at the very moment to discuss selling such business, which is so much under pressure, is maybe not a good point in time. On the other hand, the question we also have is this automotive industry structurally getting better in the near future? Because quite frankly, I think really structurally, the change in the automotive and the transformation in the automotive industry is pretty severe.
We can spend the euro only once, so we need to see where we invest. We rather invest into capacity expansion, you know, optics and semiconductor and electronics businesses and our healthcare businesses and then our mobility business than at these other companies. I know it was a very long answer to a clear question, but I did my best to put a little bit more color on what you already said, basically.
Okay. On BG Medical, SwissOptic, when you announced the acquisition, you gave us an outlook around EUR 130 million sales for 2022. Is this still valid in your point of view or might it be even higher now?
Yes and yes. It's still valid, but it might be even higher. That's part of the discussion that we have. You know, I mean, we all know that SwissOptic has an important factory in Wuhan. We don't know to what extent the pandemic situation, the COVID situation in China eases a bit. At the moment, it looks more like, again, You know, look, we talk about lockdown in Shanghai and all those things, which is again, why we are so, let's say, careful in our guidance here. Of course, if things develop in the positive direction, then it could be more, in particular out of the Chinese factory there, and out of. Yeah, full stop. I think that's what we should say. Yes, it's still valid.
Yes, it could be more if, and hopefully, particularly the pandemic situation eases and we don't see any further deterioration in the geopolitical situation between China and the rest of the world.
TRIOPTICS, in terms of sales, you had a very good performance in 2021. Profitability, when you acquired the company, you mentioned at least a 27% EBITDA margin. On the other hand, you did purchase price adjustment. So perhaps you can a little bit comment on profitability of TRIOPTICS?
First of all, yeah, you're right. The colleagues at TRIOPTICS did a fantastic job operationally in producing and selling their product and providing and helping the customers there. The biggest challenge they have at the moment is that a lot of their customers are actually located in. Well, they're not necessarily located in Asia, but they're produced in Asia. These machines need to get to Asia, and even more challenging, service engineers need to get to Asia. You remember that we had this discussion last year already a number of times. We can't get our service people to the factories in Asia, in particular in China. At the moment, there is no direct flight anymore between Germany and China. I mean, who would believe that?
You can't even book a freaking flight to China. I don't know. We were thinking about, I don't know, what we can do to get people there. That's an issue. With that comes higher costs, which puts margins in TRIOPTICS under pressure. It's the cost that we have the operational business really, which is the main manufacturer. We believe that we need to help our customers. We do what we can to get the product to the customers in Asia. If it costs money, it costs money.
Some of that we can push on some, to some extent, or at least larger corporate customers are actually helping us on that front, partially taking over the costs, the additional costs that we have with, for example, a service engineer flying to Beijing needs to be three or four weeks in quarantine. We need to pay them double the income, and we have to pay for all the hotel expenses and all of that type of stuff. Yeah, I think that's what we can say.
Stefan, we showed in your report of the divisions, EUR 25.6 million EBITDA of TRIOPTICS in relation to EUR 99.5 million sales is still 26% EBITDA margin.
Yeah, yeah. Sure.
To give the colleagues an impression that it is still highly profitable.
Yeah, it's a very profitable business. Absolutely.
Even in spite of these extraordinary costs and burden. Yeah. I just wanted to-
Yeah.
to highlight the high profitability of TRIOPTICS.
Yeah.
Okay. In terms of the purchase price adjustment, is this now done, or can we expect something else on the one or other direction also in 2022?
You mean purchase price allocation or this variable?
Both. Yeah.
Components.
The various components are done.
Is done.
The earn-out and bonus and malus is done.
Is done.
All the earn-out is done.
The purchase price allocation also in EBITDA. It still will be an impact on the EBIT.
Mm-hmm.
not in the EBITDA.
Yeah.
The only impact we see in the year 2022 is coming from BG Medical and SwissOptic, where we are still undergoing the purchase price allocation together with the auditors. Yeah.
Okay. Free cash flow 2022, can you give us here some flavor?
I don't think we're broad enough. Because with all the uncertainties at the moment, you really do understand that we don't want to give any sort of guidance on that at the very moment.
Perhaps some indication about the Q1 you mentioned in terms of demand. It still looks quite good. In terms of profitability, how would you split the full year into quarters? Is it more similar trend or yeah?
Like always.
As always. The colleagues are saying, "Yeah, as always." Yes. However, I mean, I think we will have a fairly strong Q1, to be honest, because our factories are producing whatever they can. So I think from a,
It would be a good start.
Yeah, it will. We would expect a fairly good start into the year. Actually, a very good start into the year.
Also in terms of profitability?
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
We do have another question from Richard Schramm.
Yes, a few follow-ups from my side, please. One, you mentioned the supply of glass as one thing which is here under stress a bit due to the higher energy prices. Can you give us an indication what is the most important material for you anyhow? Is it glass? And what portion of your material cost is this accounting for? Or what other material components are under serious pressure at the moment from the supply side as well as from the price side? Can you give us an idea of what concerns you hear at the moment most? Thanks.
I mean, in the first instance, I think glass is always an issue. We are not producing glass, so you know, it's our suppliers that experience the higher costs. We're just saying that you know, we would anticipate that at some point they're trying to push these costs onto us as much as we try to push that onto our customers, who will fight back, and then we'll find a compromise or something. Glass is one thing. Of course, all the electronic components. I mean, we also need cable.
Of course.
It's not just in the electronic boards and stuff. Now we use other suppliers and one interesting thing, observation is that apparently the car manufacturers are now so desperate to get cables, which they can't get from Ukraine, that they look for other sources. Of course, if you're a smaller supplier that up until today has supplied Jenoptik, and then all of a sudden BMW calls or whomever, and you might be susceptible. We fight back, and we have to see. I guess it's across the board. It's important to say that we do not have any significant supply from Ukraine or Russia or those areas, but we see a potential second level knock-on effect.
Yeah, thanks. That was not really the answer to my question. I mean, what is it, EUR 300-something million of material supplies is for example for glass or for electronic components? To give us an idea, what volumes are at risk?
Okay. We're not providing those details in our statements, and therefore, I can't really answer the question here. What I can say is the biggest risk, again, we have at the moment, the biggest limitation to further growth is in people, and that means that inflation in wages could be a significant impact. What we could do is, you know, in a follow-up call, have a further detailed discussion about particular costs for certain parts in our BOM. Again, we're not providing any details of our bill of materials.
Okay. Thanks. Another point you mentioned, did I get this correctly that you said in the semiconductor industry, there are estimates in the market that 1/3 of bookings could be, we'll call it overbookings, as it's just a method to trying to get at the end of the day, at least a portion really needed by customers. Is it that high?
Well, nobody knows. You have a fairly bad line. It's hard to understand you, Richard.
Sorry.
Nobody really knows. Maybe it's on our end. Nobody really knows. I'm just saying that, you know, essentially the message I'm trying to get across is even if as high as a third of the demand is overbooking, you would still be growing through the roof, basically. I think that's what I was trying to refer to. There are lots of speculations at the moment to what extent there is overbooking, to what extent there is, you know, additional inventory levels that we all have and everybody has. I think different players have their different, say, models.
Many of that is speculation, but even if it's, if it turns out to be 1/3 in overbooking, the underlying growth is still so huge that it's not our issue to get more orders. Our problem is to convert it into sales.
You would not see the risk that you are pushed by your sales people and by your customers so hard that you also might run the risk to overshoot here a bit in your capacity build-up because this demand can abruptly plummet, right?
We're sitting here scratching our head thinking, that's exactly the question we all have in the industry. That's exactly the question. At this very moment, everybody would say, "You're crazy. You need to build more factories." Then we're saying, "Yeah, but if I build a factory, it takes years until it comes online, and then we might not need it anymore." Look, I mean, Gosh, if only I would have a crystal ball. Nobody knows. I don't know, nobody knows. I think the message we can send is that we try to balance to, on the one hand, help our customers, because they are also very desperate. To on one hand, help our customers invest into growth on our end, invest into capacity expansion.
On the other hand, to not fall into the trap this industry has been falling into every now and again in the past. We do a lot of measures, we take a lot of measures to improve capacity. We also try to make sure that we are not ending up in 2024, 2025 with excess capacity that we then have to build back.
Okay. That is good to hear. Final one, quick one on the tax rate. You mentioned that this will be normal from this year onwards more or less, after no longer the losses carry forward are available. What would be a normal tax rate? Is it the 30-something mentioned in your report as a kind of normal tax rate? Is it that high or is it a-
At the moment.
Lower figure?
At the moment, Richard, we are looking at 28% round about, yeah.
28%.
Yeah.
Okay. Thanks a lot then.
Thank you.
Next up is Lasse Stuben.
Hi. Good morning. Hope you can hear me okay. Just one final one for me. Just on Light & Safety, it looks like Q4 was much better actually, also in terms of the profitability in particular. Can you give some insight on what kind of drove that? I know we've spoken about the supply chain issues in the first half of the year. Is it more of a release of those problems in Q4? Maybe if you can also, you know, give us an idea of what to expect going forward from margin perspective, given it's such a big focus under the new strategy, that would be useful?
Yeah. In Q3, Q4, I would say, not just Q3 already was much stronger, and it is really the relief from, of this, problem with which we had with one particular customer. There are still issues with, you know, cables and electronic boards and components, but overall, basically the second half of the year, I would say Light & Safety was more or less back to normal, catching up from the first half. We expect that to carry over into the new year. I mean, we have no indications of any particular problems in Light & Safety in Q1. They should have a very good Q1. Yes, there's price pressure in the supply chain at the moment.
Overall, I think the margins should be around where the historic levels, I would say. I mean, we all know that 2020 has been particularly strong in terms of margins for Light & Safety, but so normalization of the H1 effect, maybe that's the best way of putting it.
Okay. Understood. Thanks very much.
We have another question from Craig Abbott.
Yes. Hi. Excuse me. Hi. Thank you. I was struggling to get into the queue. I just have two remaining questions on my side, please. One is, I appreciate that you're going to be reporting in your new structure starting with the Q1 results, as you clearly mentioned. I wondered if, at least retrospectively for the full year 2021 figures, if you could give us a feel for how much these combined non-photonics activities contributed in revenues in 2021. That'd be very helpful. That'd be my first question? I have one more. Thank you.
Yeah. We'll certainly give you that bridge when we report our numbers. Yeah. We'll certainly point that out in detail.
Just following up on the previous caller's questions on Light & Safety, I agree as well. It looked like the performance is starting to pick up. You've talked us through that. I just wonder structurally since this is as well to be a pretty, you know, pretty significant growth contributor in the coming years. I know something that is expected to be M&A, which obviously, you know, you've talked about a little bit earlier. Just structurally, how are you seeing the pipeline develop globally? Yeah, you know, in terms of this is, you know, typically an alternative revenue source from municipalities and so forth. If you could maybe talk us through that? Thank you.
No, I think you hit the nail on the head already. We see this as an important part of the portfolio in order to balance out potential risks on the attractive electronics and semiconductor lights and so on. Therefore, strategically important part of the portfolio. We see that governments, municipals, administrations do invest into safety on the road. I think that with particularly the energy crisis that a lot of people are forecasting for Europe, that Smart Mobility, smarter ways of managing mobility in our cities, is, if anything, you know, the demand for that will rise in the next few quarters, in the next years. You're mentioning the M&A activities or the M&A front here.
Mm-hmm.
On that front, we see potential for basically a lot of different things. We see potential for additional technology that we could build onto the business. Software, we did say that we want to push the recurring revenue of Smart Mobility to 50% or more by 2025, and additional software, additional technology there. But there's also a lot of room for market consolidation, which is going on. We see room for a regional expansion in other regions where we're not directly present. Basically three vectors for potential build-ons and larger acquisitions: technology, regional expansion, and last but not least, larger market consolidations.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
We don't have any further questions.
Okay. Well, then, thank you very much for your participation. Thanks for being with us today. Looking forward to our next touch point when we communicate, hopefully, as well as we can see, strong Q1 results in a few weeks. Thank you very much.
Thank you.