Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, welcome and thank you for joining JOST Werke full year 2022 results conference. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may click the Q&A button on the left side of your screen and then raise your hand. If you are connected via phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our speakers today are Joachim Dürr, CEO of JOST Werke AG, and Christian Terlinde, CFO. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joachim Dürr. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much and a warm welcome from Neu-Isenburg, and welcome to our JOST Financial Year 2022 Investors and Analysts Conference. You will see on the slide JOST Werke SE. We now are a Société Européenne, but of course, the numbers that you will be seeing are from the JOST Werke AG, under which we operated last year. You will see that the numbers are in line with the prelims that we have announced mid-February. I'm very happy to report that we have met all our financial targets for 2022. We've achieved a double-digit growth year-over-year in sales with 21% sales increase towards total sales of EUR 1.265 million. We've also exceeded our adjusted EBIT targets. We had targeted for a high single-digit growth.
We achieved a growth of 18% to EUR 124 million in adjusted EBIT for the year 2022. That compares to EUR 105 million adjusted EBIT for the year 2021. We're not completely happy with our working capital development. However, we did achieve our target to stay below 20% of sales and ended up with 19.2%. Our CapEx ratio has been 2.6%, in line with the guidance of approximately 2.5%. Main investments were in our production facility that we will inaugurate this year in India for our agricultural business. Our target to reduce the leverage below 1.45 was also achieved with a total of 1.28 multiplier for the leverage. Let's go to the next slide, please.
The highlights for last year was that we've increased sales both in the Transport business line with 19% and in the Agriculture business line with a very nice growth of 25%. The adjusted EBIT margin only slightly decreased, declined, to 9.8% despite the very strong inflationary effects that we are having, the sharply rising cost and the supply chain inefficiencies that we had to deal with throughout the years. Our global footprint and our wide application mix were the key success factors to offset that volatility and to offset the shifts that we have seen in regional demands in the respective markets. I will come to that a bit later.
We had significant improvements to our energy efficiency and carbon footprint that we achieved during the course of 2022, and we're very happy with that because it helped us overachieve our ESG targets that we have set, but it also helped us to reduce costs in the rising energy costs that we have seen last year. Our earnings per share increased by 37% to EUR 4.02 per share, reaching a new record level, and we're very glad to announce a dividend proposal of EUR 1.40 per share for the financial year 2022. We will make that proposal to the annual general meetings that we celebrate on the 11th of May.
Looking a bit deeper into the markets of last year, it's a bit looking into history, but you can see that the truck markets in Europe had a slight growth. Trailer markets and tractor markets, a slight decline. We ended up with 13% increase in sales, mainly driven by price adjustments that we've introduced to offset the rising cost, and that was the main driver for the growth in sales of 13%. North America, you can see that the truck markets had increased equally. The trailer markets, only the tractor markets had a slight decrease. We ended up with 53% increase in sales. That's in euros, so there's an effect, FX effect included, and Christian will explain that with a little more detail.
The growth in U.S. dollars has been lower than that. This is also due to the strong demand growth that we've seen with our customers, price increases, but also some market share gains that we have achieved in North America. If you look at the numbers, the official numbers for Asia-Pacific and Africa, the -37%, China plays a bigger role in those numbers than it actually plays for our business. That's why the -37 in trucks and the -15 in the trailer market did not have the full effect on our numbers. Our numbers are +1%. We had a decline in China, but we could compensate that with other strong markets, namely India, Far East and Australia and New Zealand.
Quite good developments beyond the markets, driven by market share gains by, but also obviously by high inflationary effects and price adjustments due to those inflationary effects that we have introduced into the markets. With that, let's come to more details presented by Christian. Christian?
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, also a very warm welcome from my side to the full year 2022 investors and analysts conference. As always, let's start with the different regions. We typically start with Europe, here in Europe you can see that our sales in the full year 2022 grew by about 14.4% organically, they amounted to a total of close to EUR 700 million, exactly EUR 696 million. That is an improvement, as I mentioned, of about 14.4% organically and 12.5% reported. Other than that, I would like to mention that in Q4, we saw a much smaller improvement compared to the prior year.
Here you can actually see a 3.3% growth year-on-year. That is mainly coming from the transport side. The agricultural sales were somewhat declining compared to the year before. We are seeing, and that is something we already mentioned in previous meetings, especially also during conference calls. Currently the situation on the ag side is... Well, the farmers are somewhat concerned, especially about rising energy costs, and therefore, we are seeing a slightly lower order intake on the ag side, especially in Europe. FX headwinds amounted to 1.9 percentage points. They are mainly coming from the Swedish krona.
I will come to that Swedish krona devaluation effect a little bit later when we speak about the group results. Here we're also seeing an impact of the weaker Swedish krona. If we look at the profitability, you will see year-over-year a decline from 7.3% to 6% EBIT margin. Overall, we achieved EUR 41.8 million. Here you also see that we suffered tremendous FX devaluation effects of the Swedish krona. All in all, they amounted to roughly EUR 8.1 million in the full year. If you simply add the EUR 8.1 million, you would see that we had achieved probably not only a higher margin, but basically a 10% EBIT growth.
Unfortunately, due to this devaluation effect of the Swedish krona, we didn't achieve that, and therefore, our adjusted EBIT slightly declined by 7.9% for the full year. If we just simply look at Q4, you see a strong improvement over last year, EUR 4.1 million versus EUR 4.9 million. Here also the positive side is the devaluation foreign exchange rate effects have very much lessened, and therefore, they are now only EUR 0.1 million in Q4, and therefore, you do see a growth there also higher than the sales growth.
That also means that we have been, especially in the last quarter, we have been able to pass on some of those inflationary effects that we'd seen on the material prices, energy prices, and logistics costs, and they had been passed on. Maybe a few words also on the market development here. We are seeing a slightly higher growth in the aftermarket, that increased from 28% last year to 29% in 2022. Therefore the OE business was at 71% for the region Europe. With that, I would like to come to North America. North America, the story continued that we had seen already in the first three quarters.
We have achieved an overall organic growth of 36.5%, and that is, of course, much, much higher than the 53 reported. There we had a very positive effect of the U.S. dollar appreciation compared to the euro. The 36.5% is basically in line with what we've seen also year to date, Q3 already. Basically the story continues and that is also visible on the Q4 numbers. Very strong development of the market. I would say that we have gained further market share not only on the truck side, but interestingly on the already very, very strong trailer side, where we typically had around 80%. That number has probably increased by quite a bit. Overall, very positive development.
Again, in euro, very much influenced by foreign exchange rate effects. If you look at the profitability, you see a 50.8% growth year-on-year, from EUR 23.7 million to EUR 35.7 million. That, while the profitability basically remained the same, a very significant growth in overall profits, we are quite happy with what has been achieved. Very positive here. Also here, the similar trend, slightly higher aftermarket portion, growing from 26%-27%, a slightly lower OE portion. That is also one of the contributors to the overall growth in profit. Let's go to Asia-Pacific and Africa. This has been an interesting region last year to, so to speak.
You probably remember that beginning of the year, we were quite optimistic that the Chinese market would recover from its weakness in the second half of 2021. Unfortunately, that never really materialized. But I can say that going out of Q4, going into Q1, we are seeing more and more positive signs. Also, if you compare that to the Q3 numbers, currently you see a reported growth of 0.8%. Organically, that's actually declined by 4%. That is much, much better than what we had seen in Q3, where we had still reported a -10% organic growth. We are seeing improvements. That is good. Obviously the main growth driver is not China.
It's currently still the other countries in that region, predominantly India, the Southeast Asian region, the Pacific region with Australia and New Zealand, and last but not least, also South Africa. We're not unhappy with that development, but overall, we need China to come back. That is a clear message. As I mentioned, we are seeing first positive signs in the market for heavy commercial vehicles in China. We're not there yet, and obviously we're still into Q1, and we will report more once we have the Q1 numbers finalized, and then we will also show it to you. In terms of profitability, Asia-Pacific Africa is a very, very successful region.
You've seen it in the first three quarters of 2022. We are now finally reporting a year-end profitability of 21.7%, you know where that is coming from. It's mainly due to the different product mix in that region, with much more heavy duty and off-road couplings being sold to our customers. Overall, a growth in profitability by 24.7% from EUR 30 million to EUR 37.4 million, that is also very much visible in the Q4 numbers, where we grew from EUR 6.8 million in 2021 to EUR 10.6 million in 2022. Overall, a very positive development that we're happy to have. Once again, it underscores the importance of our global footprint, our global markets.
Without North America and Asia-Pacific Africa, JOST wouldn't be where it is. We're quite happy to have our colleagues around the world. Once again, in this regard, it really proves that not only is JOST a global company, but we're also benefiting and we're supporting each other. While we had challenges in Europe this year, without any doubt, the other two regions with North America and Asia-Pacific Africa were supporting the overall company, and that's a positive sign. If we look at it globally from the final numbers, and Joachim already mentioned that, the positive news, first of all, is there are no changes compared to our preliminary numbers that we announced three weeks ago. Nothing has changed.
We are reporting the exact same numbers. That also means we finalized our year-end audit. That's an absolutely clean audit opinion. Overall a positive year, actually the best year in the history. We have now achieved sales, a sales level of close to EUR 1.3 billion, EUR 1.265 billion overall, to be precise. That is 20.6% higher than it was in the year before, where we first time achieved the EUR 1 billion mark. Now you are seeing a growth in the Ag business of 25%, a growth in the Transport business of 19% for the full year. We are satisfied with that overall top-line development. What needs to be mentioned, of course, is that this is predominantly price-driven.
Due to the high inflationary tendencies that we've seen on the material side, energy side, but also the logistics cost, we've passed on those those price increases to our customers, and therefore, we were able to more or less keep the margin, and that is what you see below, flat on a level of 9.8%. Now, last year, we achieved 10%. Yes, there is a slight decline, but what I've already mentioned, when we spoke about Europe, in this year, we suffered from tremendous negative foreign exchange rate effects, and that are visible in the adjusted EBIT number.
If, once again, if we were to add the roughly EUR 8 million negative effects coming out of the devaluation of the Swedish krona to this number of 124, we would not only have been back on the 10% level, but we would have actually surpassed that level. Therefore, I think that yes, foreign exchange rates is something that we worry about and that we try to hedge as much as possible, but overall, I think we and so should you as our owners and investors should be satisfied with the overall result that we have achieved in 2022.
EUR 124 million in profit, highest number ever in the history of the group, and we're very happy that we will also share that with our owners, our investors, with a much, much higher dividend. I would also like to mention one aspect, and that is something you see here on the very bottom. A very significant contribution to our profit was coming from Brazil, where our joint venture performed extraordinarily. You only see that in the bottom line. You don't see it in the top line because it's a minority joint venture from the standpoint of JOST, and therefore, you only see 49% of the profits here.
It was a very, very successful year also in South America. Now let's come to our well-known net income adjusted EPS walk. You see here we have achieved the highest ever net income in the history of the group with EUR 60 million. That is comparing to EUR 44 million a year before. You see the typical walk. We add taxes, finance result, come to an reported EBIT of EUR 89 million. Then you have the typical purchase price allocation adjustments of EUR 27 million and a few exceptionals. Much, much less than we had last year. Last year, we had EUR 13 million, this year it's EUR 8 million.
Most of the exceptionals are related to restructuring or optimization projects, especially here in Germany, where we relocated our global logistics center from one city to another city. Last year we had extraordinary write-offs due to the sale of JOST U.K., and therefore the exceptional items were much, much higher. Overall, the already well-known number of adjusted EBIT of EUR 124 million. We subtract the finance result, and here I would also like to mention that the higher finance result of EUR -9 million versus EUR -6 million that we had the year before are predominantly driven by the foreign exchange losses that we suffered. There is a small portion of higher interest, obviously, especially in Q4, the interest rates increased.
The variable portion of our loans were more expensive than they were a year ago. The full effect has not been seen yet, and you know that we've refinanced the group with a new promissory loan with an ESG link at the end of last year. Unfortunately, they are also priced higher, so we will see higher interest payments and interest rates going forward. We subtract the pro forma tax rate, now EUR 34 million, and end up with an adjusted net income of EUR 81 million, and that compares to the EUR 69 million a year before. Overall, our adjusted reported earnings per share rose from EUR 2.94 per share to EUR 4.02.
The adjusted earnings per share were even better from EUR 4.63 to EUR 5.41. Now let's go to the ROCE equity ratio and leverage development. Also here, ROCE now at 18.3%, a constant growth throughout the year and obviously also year-on-year with 18.3% return on capital employed. I think that's a good result. That's a very positive achievement. In line with that, the equity ratio is now close to 36%. I think that gives us a lot of confidence also in discussions with financial institutions. Last but not least, our leverage is down from 1.45 to 1.28x EBITDA.
Also there we are, we're now approaching the regions in terms of leverage where we were before the Ålö acquisition, also here a good development. Let's move over to one of the weaker spots in the development of last year if we talk about cash flow and working capital development. Cash conversion rate is at 0.3, that is not in line with our expectations. This is one of the weaker spots, we have to be critical enough that this needs to be improved and will be improved throughout this year. The 0.3 or an overall free cash flow of EUR 23.7 million is not what we expect from this company and what you probably as our shareholders expect from this company.
That is certainly one of the weakest aspects in the overall quite good result. The majority of the rather weak cash conversion is coming from working capital. I know you've heard me say that over and over, and it hasn't changed, but we are seeing first positive signs. Before I talk about CapEx, let me quickly talk about net working capital, which you see at the bottom of the screen. We are now seeing overall trade receivables of EUR 167 million. They are down from the high point in Q2, EUR 204 million, and EUR 199 million in Q3. You do see that we collected a lot of our receivables. The receivables are all very current. There is no major risk of an aging receivable. That is in line with our expectations.
If you see the increase from last year, EUR 153 million to EUR 167 million, that is less than what we saw as a sales growth. I would say receivables are okay. The weakest spot is certainly inventory, where we have now EUR 214 million in inventory, and that is coming from EUR 224 million at the end of Q3. You know why that is. Well, first of all, I would like to point out that we've taken on tremendous efforts to bring down our inventory, and we are seeing first positive signs. That is EUR 10 million now lower than what we reported in Q3. I can assure you this story will continue. We had to have an elevated inventory level.
If we didn't have that, if we didn't have that elevated inventory level in 2022, we would not have been able to deliver to our customers. Our customers were running at full strength, and we had to deliver, and we wanted to deliver, and that came at the expense of working capital. Therefore, we needed to have elevated inventory levels because the supply chains were not yet under control. The supply chains were not where they were before the war in Ukraine, before COVID. This has been the cause for an elevated inventory level. I'm quite optimistic that the supply chains are easing now.
People are finding ways to work around the war, finding ways to work with COVID infections, and we are going to lower the inventory level significantly throughout this year. Last but not least, the payables, they have declined as well. Also here we are seeing basically the counter effect to the inventory levels. We had the highest inventory level in Q3, and since then, we have really stayed away from increasing inventory further. You see the EUR 10 million reduction here from EUR 224 million to EUR 214 million, quarter three to quarter four. The payables declined as well.
The main reason for the decline in payables is simply because we didn't order much more inventory at the end of the year, but we had to pay what was ordered, let's say, in Q3. Therefore, you also see a decline there because we were trying to honor our payment commitments. Overall, those are the financials for the year 2022. I hope you agree with our assessment that overall, the best year in the history with still some work to be done, and that is mainly on the cash side. Measures are in place, and you will see positive results going forward. I would also like to speak a little bit about our ESG efforts, and especially on the energy and CO2 reduction side.
You see here a 6%, on the top graph, you see a 6% reduction in energy consumption. That is, in my opinion, very positive because we had a 7% increase in production hours. We produced more and more parts, and despite that, we were able to reduce our overall consumption. Not only what you see below, the CO2 emissions, but we reduced our overall consumptions from 115 million kWh to 108 million kWh , all Scope 1 and Scope 2. When it comes to CO2 emissions, the development is even more positive. We reduced our CO2 emissions by, per production hour, by 15% from 4.8 kg CO2 per production hour to 4.1 kg CO2 per production hour.
Aside from the fact that we were able to lower our overall consumption, we also saw a shift in the energy mix, and that added additional positive effects to our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. I believe that what we have done and already introduced the year before in 2021 when we decided to, for instance, take on our own production of energy with solar panels in our plants and also to reduce energy consumptions by additional insulation. This has been a positive effect not only on our financials, but it's also seen a positive effect on our sustainability figures that you're seeing here.
Last but not least, I would like to take the opportunity to also speak very briefly about the fact that I'll be leaving the company. You saw the announcement. The reason why I'm leaving is purely personal and professional, but it is. It's not that I don't have any trust in the company. The company is doing well, and I'm very much looking forward to speaking to you again at the end of Q1 when we have another investors call. Those of you who will be attending the annual general meeting, I'm looking forward to meet in person there. With that, I would like to hand it back over to Joachim for the final words on 2023.
Okay. Thank you very much, Christian. Yeah, let's come to 2023. before we go there, Let's.
Confirmed. Please wait while you are joined to the conference.
APA also a considerable increase driven by the Chinese market. Tractors also more or less stable. That's the expectation that we have for the full year 2023. I'm happy to inform you, and Christian already mentioned it a little bit, that the year has started quite well for us. The first quarter, especially in the European truck industry, has been a very strong volume. Our customers in truck worldwide, but especially in Europe, have been able to fulfill their production demands, you could say for the first time in almost three years. Because in the year 2000, they were hit by COVID. In the year 2021, there was the big issue with the chips that they didn't get from Taiwan and other countries.
Semiconductors were the main topic there. Last year, especially in Europe, due to the Ukraine crisis, they were missing wiring harnesses. This has been the first quarter where they were really able to fulfill what they had promised to their customers in truck production. The year has started quite well. Nevertheless, this is the outlook for the full year that we work with. Next slide, please. The strategic focus for 2023 for JOST will be to seize our growth opportunities in India, in our agricultural business, and also to start to establish a footprint in South America organically or through M&A, namely in Brazil, which is a very strong agricultural market that we want to get our foot in the door.
In transport, we would like to further increase our penetration of our new products, the products that we have introduced at the IAA Fair, that we call hashtag Future Now products, with sensors, with cameras, integrated into our products. That's the strategic focus for 2023 for transport. With that, we would like to further strengthen our market position, especially when it comes to those new generation products. We already mentioned both the reduction in working capital and the improvement in cash flow generation is on the agenda. I think we have the opportunity to do that because the supply chain issues that we've had and that drove us to increase our inventories to secure our supply and our deliveries.
With the easing of those supply chains, we see an opportunity to reduce our working capital and generate thereby more cash this year than we have been able to do last year. We want to identify and implement further measures to reduce our CO2 footprint. Christian already mentioned, have a very good history there. We're very happy with the development, we certainly want to continue with the efforts and continue finding new ideas and implement new ideas to further optimize our CO2 emissions. Total, we want to further improve the profitability. We have to sharpen the cost focus, we will analyze and adapt our product portfolio to reflect the changes in input costs.
Where we have big changes due to change structures in our supply chain, for example, we will make those adapt-adoptions to our product portfolio. Next slide, please. The outlook for 2023. On sales, we expect that on the back of the market that I've introduced, with a little ease in the material prices, we will achieve a low single-digit growth year-over-year, so that we will be slightly higher than 2022. Also, our adjusted EBIT will grow compared to the EUR 124 million that we've just introduced to you. With that, our margin should increase slightly beyond the 9.8% that we've seen this year.
CapEx will remain about 2.5% of sales, our working capital we will further reduce, and our new target is not to be below 20%, but to be below 19% of sales. As we both mentioned, that has a very big focus in our organization. Let me come to the total summary. We have had the strongest year in the 70 years of JOST history in 2022. We've had record sales and record profits, that we have achieved, growing 21% in sales to EUR 1.27 billion, and growing 17% in adjusted earnings per share to EUR 5.41 per share. With that, we're also happy to have a big increase in the dividends that we propose to the annual general meeting.
Both business lines, transport and agriculture, they were strong growth drivers in 2022. They document again the robust fundamentals of that industry that we work with. We are able to provide those good results despite the fact that we had a very challenging market environment. A strong order book and the good market expectations for 2023. Our order books and our customers' order books, they highlight the sustainable demand that we see across all regions, despite the ongoing macro economic concerns that we have due to conflicts in the world and high and increasing interest rates.
The ease in the supply chain constraints and the decline in raw material costs will give us some relief, but it will be partially offset by higher inflation, higher energy cost, and the tighter labor markets in most countries that we operate in. It's also the opportunity to reduce our working capital. We see ourselves well-positioned to deal with the challenges ahead of us and to reach the guidance and growth targets that we have to increase our sales and our profitability in 2023. With that, I would like to thank Christian again in the name of the management team and also in the name of the supervisory board for the great work that he's done.
I'm also happy to announce that the supervisory board has appointed Oliver Gantzert as the new CFO starting September 1, 2023. With that, I'm very sure that we will be able to have a very smooth handover. We will be with you to explain the Q1 numbers, as Christian already announced, and then we can say the final goodbye. Thank you very much for your attention, and we're looking forward to your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may click the Q&A button on the left side of your screen and then raise your hand. If you are connected via phones, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two or please lower your hand. For written questions, please click the Q&A button and then the write a question button. One moment for the first question, please
The first question comes from Jorge González Sadornil from Hauck Aufhäuser. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes, perfectly.
Thank you. Thank you for taking my call. My question, sir, Joachim and Christian. First of all, so sorry to hear that Christian is leaving. Very good luck in your new challenge.
Thank you.
Well, we see yourselves anyway in the physical first quarter result presentation. My first question is around Agriculture business. It will be interesting if you can comment on the organic growth of agriculture in 2022 as it looks like you really perform above the markets, taking into account the figure that you provided, the 7% decrease. Maybe we can start with that one, please?
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jorge, for the question. Yeah, we're very happy with the, with the growth that we see in Agriculture, mainly driven by a stronger penetration in existing customers, but also some new customers. Especially in our North America business, we have been able to add a few new customers, and we've had very good demand from our existing customers. As Christian already mentioned, there is a big, inflationary and FX effect, also included in that. So far the growth has been mainly in Europe and in North America, in our existing markets. That we're very happy with.
It underlines that our initial strategy to simulate and to implement the same structure and regional structure that we have in the Transport business for our agricultural business and to support the business with the existing organizations that we have in the regions is paying off. With the better customer attention that we have in North America and in Europe, we were able to increase those sales. Now, as I mentioned already, we want to do the first steps this year so that we can have the same concept in the Asian markets and in the South American markets in the future.
Your In general, your products are gaining market share, if I understand, well, no? Because, in general, the data that I'm seeing for the sector is quite.
Yeah. It's.
Flat, no? In general.
It's both. It is us gaining market share, but it's also our customers gaining market share. We are a little bit dependent on the performance of our customers since we usually have a one-on-one connection between the agricultural customer and their market performance. If we are with AGCO, for example, and AGCO wins market shares, then we benefit with that. If they lose market share against others and we're not on the others, then, of course, that could have a negative effect on our markets and our sales also. We depend a little bit on the performance of our customers.
Of course, our performance, to be with more customers and to convince them that we have the right product and to be with a high penetration in the aftermarket, that's what we have in our own hands. It's a combination of both, our own market share in the market, but also piggybacking a little bit on the good developments that our customers had in those markets.
Regarding your target to initiate business in South America for the agriculture business, here, in the past, you commented that you have already some clients, some OEs that are asking you now to provide service in the market that is very interesting, taking into account that is the biggest market for agriculture in the world. I was wondering if you have any idea of how big could be this market for you, if maybe in the future it can be as big as North America, for instance, or it's too early to speak about this?
No, it's too early to speak about it. It also is a development that will have to happen in the market. The usage of the loaders on the tractors is depending on the utilization and the farm that we actually talk about. In North America, you have a lot of cattle farming, a lot of milk farming, and that's where loaders are very much used. In the in just the harvesting, you don't have as many loaders. It also depends on what type of farming is being generated. As you know, in Brazil, there is a lot of cattle farming, but it's done today a little different than in North America. It's too early to really set the target for that.
For us, it's important to make the first steps to fulfill the request of our customers to be with them in the Brazilian, the South American market. Once we see what the penetration is and how the market really works, then we will set more concrete targets for that.
Okay. Thank you about that. Maybe to finish, it will be just for, Can you give us some your view on the interest expenses for 2023 and taxes levels? Also, it would be interesting to know if you are going to hedge the Swedish krona this year or regarding the effects during the year?
Oh, yes.
Confirmed. Please wait while you are joined to the conference
Interest expenses. With regards to taxation, I think you should be safe, at least for the coming year, with an average tax rate of around 20%. Somewhere around that. Between 20% and 22%, I would guess is a good estimate. It's of course, very difficult to say. I can assure you in Germany with, we will continue to be paying only an 18% minimum taxation rate. On the other hand, countries like North America and China, we are seeing significantly higher tax rates. Especially North America, USA is currently thriving. The more profit we generate there, you'll also see an increase in overall tax expenses.
Last but not least, it needs to be mentioned that one of the reasons why we also had a higher interest tax expense this year compared to prior years, is also due to the fact that we are no longer in a tax-free zone in our plant in Poland. Overall, if I were you, I would probably work with roughly 20%-22% tax rate. That should be in line with what you can expect, given that we are not having a much, much a tremendous shift in profitability from one region or from one country to the other, and I don't expect that.
So, so-
Last question.
No, no.
Last question on the Swedish krona. I mean, the big effects were not only coming from actual tax actual payments in Swedish krona. First of all, we have significant negative effects because all the ag business in Europe with maybe with the exception of the ROCKINGER part, but all the ag business that is sold under the Quicke brand is denominated basically in Swedish krona. All that flows through the Swedish entity of Ålö AB, and therefore, we have a translation effect. That translation effect has been very negative. On top of that, we did hedge certain intercompany loans that we needed to acquire the company that are denominated in Swedish krona.
Here we had very negative effects as well because of the deterioration of the Swedish krona. This is really what was happening. Overall, we are having a hedging strategy in place that is basically following the market development. We're not trying to, in general, not trying to beat the market, and we're not gambling. We're basically hedging certain transactions that are taking place in different in foreign currencies. We are following that so that once the maturity of that transaction is very close, then we will have hedged probably about 80%. In the beginning of the year, we will only hedge 20% of that. There it's a rolling model, and it's growing.
More than happy to explain in more detail if you're interested in that. Don't expect any significant gains from hedges that we are putting in place. That's not our strategy. Our business objective is to sell parts and not to make financial gains from hedges. That's something we've been following for the past years, and I think that's also a smart advice for a components manufacturer like us.
I totally understand. Coming back to the interest rate. It will make sense, an average interest rate of something like 2.5%-3% for the year?
Yeah, 2.5 is probably not too bad. Let's talk about this in more detail, if you like. Give me a call and I can get you some more, some better numbers. Because of course, a lot of that depends on also our appetite for mergers and acquisitions. You know that we have a revolving credit facility in place, which is priced very competitively right now with the high interest rates that was put in place in 2018 at a very low level where the markets were extremely low. We still have that revolving credit facility until the end of 2026 and, sorry, end of 2025, and that is more or less undrawn as of current.
If we acquire another company and it's not huge, we can simply use the revolving credit facility to finance that. That of course lowers the overall interest expenses in percent, not in total.
Thank you very much, all. I go back to the line.
Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes from Nicolai Kempf from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, sir. Nicolai Kempf here from Deutsche Bank. Thank you for taking my question. My first one would be on the bridge, on the margin for this year. Can you just walk us through your different items and how the margin should be increased? I guess a bit lower input prices. This could be partly offset by higher labor costs. What are the moving parts here?
Yeah. Okay. Nicolai, you were quite difficult to understand, at least for us here. I understand you wanted to understand what is really driving the margin improvement in 2023. Is that correct?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let me simply preface that by saying lots of moving parts and lots of balls in the air. On the one hand, we are seeing for steel products, we're seeing an overall market price decline in the majority of the markets. Yes, there are some ups and downs, overall, we are all expecting that the steel prices will go down. If the steel prices go down, that of course is a beneficial factor in terms of purchasing. This is one of the positive impacts that we're seeing.
On the flip side of that, you know that, especially with truck OEMs, we have contractual obligations to lower their prices, their, so their prices meaning our selling prices, depending on the level of the steel price indices. That is the negative side. Once again, positive aspect is that when material prices go down, we are benefiting because the price adjustments are typically done retroactively, and therefore, you see a positive, and you will see a positive purchasing effect here for 2023. What is also very positive, and I'm also certain that this is already visible in Q1, is the fact that the transport costs, logistics costs are going down, especially for sea freight.
Sea freight does play an important part of our transport costs. Here we've seen quite significant reductions in freight rates on the transport side, and therefore we are also seeing here a positive effect. Negatively coming into place will be especially in Europe, we will see probably higher costs for labor. Last year in Germany, we had very little labor cost increases, and we are starting the discussions with our works council and the unions for Germany in this coming quarter. There will be, we will see some inflationary effects there. We have seen significant labor cost increases already at the beginning of the year in some of our Eastern European plants, meaning Poland and Hungary.
We will need to watch very carefully what is happening in North America, where last year we already saw very significant price increases for our workers. We're not sure if that has already come to an end because the labor market is basically empty in North America, as it is, by the way, here in Europe. It's quite challenging to find skilled labor and therefore we probably need to pay an additional or higher prices for labor in the different countries. Interesting will be the development on the energy markets.
You know that, also JOST as a rather very low energy intensive company, we are still paying energy prices, and fortunately, the development that we saw in Q3 last year hasn't been as severe as we thought it would be, going into Q4 and especially going into Q1. Also there, the volatility is very high and we hope that we can keep it on the current level and that there will be no further increases in energy costs going forward. That's why I'm saying it's challenging to say where the main drivers are coming from. If you ask me, what you will see positively in 2023 is definitely material costs coming down and also logistics costs.
They will come down. Material is a double-edged sword. As I said, material always leads to an adjustment of selling prices as well. We will need to watch carefully what's happening on the sales side. Overall, I think those are the biggest improvements. Negatively, again, labor costs and very difficult to estimate our energy costs.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. May I just take a second and question? Free cash flow, I expect it should increase just given a bit higher earnings this year and also lower working capital.
Well, I mean, the overall target remains in place. We want to achieve a cash conversion of somewhere between 1 to 1.3x , and that needs to now really take place. The last two years were not very satisfactory in terms of cash generation. I mean, we were cash positive. Last year was negatively impacted by significantly higher capital expenditures as well. We spent a lot more money because of the new plant in India that will go live in probably in August 2023, and also the new logistics center in Germany that we where we had the go live in Q2 2022.
We did spend an unusual high amount in CapEx, not significantly more than the 2.5% that is always our long-term range. But obviously, given the increase in sales, it was a big amount. But the big relief must come from working capital reductions, and I'm 100% certain that you will see a very positive cash flow, free cash flow this year, and back in line with the 1 to 1.3x That is our long-term target for cash conversion.
Perfect. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
The next question comes from Lukas Spang from Tigris Capital GmbH. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. You can hear me?
Maybe a little bit louder. It's...
Yes, I can try to speak a little bit louder. First question is related to working capital. You mentioned now several times that you expect lower working capital and especially, lower inventory levels. Can you quantify maybe this a little bit more specific? What do you have in mind for lower inventory level? Is this just a topic for this year or will this also continue in 2024?
Well, it's never over. I expect significant improvements compared to the last two years. What we have done and what we looked into is especially going back in history, I believe that our working capital levels and also our inventory levels were very good at the end of 2019, where we had a normal year and no war, no corona, no inflation, no nothing. We looked at the development since then, we derived basically, yes, there are certain inflation effects included. I would say roughly about 20%, is just simply higher valuation because of inflation. We said, this is okay. That is something we have to accept.
Overall, we would like to go back to the turn rates in the different warehouses that we had achieved in 2019. I would say, looking at the different numbers, we should at least come down to a level, as I said, of 2019, and that would convert to probably somewhere between EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million, if not more, during the year 2023.
To your market slide. If I compare this slide to the February slide you showed, for example, in Hamburg on the Montega conference, for North America in truck and trailers, the market expectations have been reduced. What do you think about this? Is this just the beginning of a reduced market expectation or a slowdown in the North American market, or what do you think about this?
Yeah. Thank you for the question, Lukas. Well, North America has been running on an extremely strong level for the last two, three years. I think it's just a more realistic approach and it's reflecting also the higher price levels that all our customers, the OEMs for truck and for trailers, have introduced into the market. It's still, if you compare it to the years before that, it's still on a very high level.
If you look in Europe, for example, if you compare our existing level in units and markets to the levels of 2018 and 2019, you will find that we are a bit shy actually of the 2018 numbers and around the 2019 numbers. In North America, however, we are higher than those historic numbers. I think it only reflects that the market will not grow infinitely, but that it will, you know, be at, still at a high, very high level. I don't see it necessarily as an indication for the market going down, especially not in trailers.
In trailers, we have in North America another effect, that is that the import of Chinese trailers has been stopped with the new tariffs that were introduced in 2000 and 2001. There has been a number of trailers that now have to be produced in North America rather than being imported from China. That will be an impact that will continue because that is not changing. I see this as a still very strong market and I think it's a healthy projection that we now see from the prognosis institutes here with the 0% to 5% growth in truck and trailer for North America.
To your Brazilian expansion plans. I'm not following your company very long, but as I'm informed, right, you had some M&A plans for Brazil, I think, in the past already. If you talk about or if you think about Brazilian M&A targets, are these or is there still the same M&A target on your list or Were there any changes?
To Brazil, one is we have a joint venture that is not consolidated in our turnover in the transport side. That's what we call JOST Brazil. What we have been talking about in terms of M&A is for our agricultural business, that would be 100% JOST. At least that's our target to be completely independent. The targets that we have been working with for the last two years, that did not materialize, we are now working with new targets and that is one option. The other one is that we will introduce our own factory.
However, we would prefer to start not with a greenfield, but to start with an existing company and to find an M&A opportunity. The M&A opportunities that we're working with are new opportunities and not the ones that we have been working with for the last years.
What would be your timeline in terms of to say we go either the left or the right way?
As we said, we want to make the decision this year, and we want to get the foot in the door this year. Our timeline is that we come to a conclusion, to a decision, hopefully, together with a partner, throughout the year 2023.
This concludes today's Q&A session, and I hand back to you, Joachim Dürr, for closing comments.
Well, thank you very much for your attention, for your interest in JOST, and also for listening to us. It has been an exceptional year, the best year in the JOST history. We're very happy with the development. We also see some improvement potentials that we are working on. Please stay tuned. We have had a fairly good start into 2023, and we'll be happy to report to you once we have our Q1 numbers. Thanks again for your interest. All the best and see you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.