Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Knorr-Bremse full year and Q4 2021 telephone conference with CEO, Dr. Jan Mrosik, and CFO, Frank Weber. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulties during the conference, just press star key followed by the 0 on your telephone for an operator assistant. May I now hand you over to Andreas Spitzauer, Head of Investor Relations, who will introduce the conference. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, as well as good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Andreas Spitzauer, Head of Investor Relations with Knorr-Bremse AG. I want to welcome you to Knorr-Bremse conference call, preliminary results of full year 2021. Today, Dr. Jan Mrosik, our CEO, and Frank Markus Weber, our CFO, will present the results of Knorr-Bremse, followed by a Q&A session. The conference call will be recorded and is available on our homepage, www.knorr-bremse.com in the Investor Relations section. Here you can find today's presentation and later a transcript of the call. It is now my pleasure to hand over to Dr. Jan Mrosik. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, Andreas, and welcome everybody, and thanks for joining us today. As usual, I will start with an overview of the highlights before Frank dives into the details in our outlook for 2022, followed by a Q&A session. 2021 was a turbulent year, full of challenges due to the pandemic, but thanks to the outstanding execution of the entire Knorr-Bremse team, we mastered it very well. We delivered good profitability and improved all financial KPIs significantly, not only in the last quarter. In full year 2021, we generated revenue of EUR 6.7 billion, up 9%, and an operating EBIT margin of 13.6%, 50 basis points higher year-over-year. With these results, we fully achieved our fiscal year 2021 guidance.
Most importantly, our order book is at record level and underlines the strong market fundamentals in the rail and truck industry. CVS was the key driver of 2021, with a revenue increase of 20% and EBIT margin improvement of 250 basis points, despite the challenging supply situation in the truck industry. RVS generated flat revenues and an EBIT margin of 18.1%, slightly above expectations after another challenging year for the rail industry with project postponements. In Q4, business activity clearly improved as promised, with a very strong order intake following a book-to-bill ratio of 1.49. This results in a book-to-bill ratio of 1.05 for the full year.
In 2021, on the basis of unaudited and preliminary numbers, we have reached an important goal of achieving carbon neutrality at Knorr-Bremse sites, thanks to our own climate action measures and supported by high quality green energy certificates. We are also fully on track to reach another important environmental goal of halving our CO2 emissions by 2030. We at Knorr-Bremse aim to use all possible levers to contribute to decarbonization, above all with our ambitious environmental efforts and our product portfolio by tying our goals and efforts to financial commitments. We adopted ESG targets in the short term incentive of the management remuneration from 2022 onwards, and just recently issued an ESG syndicated loan tied to our sustainability rating. Let's move now to chart 3. As mentioned, we have fully achieved our fiscal year 2021 guidance.
Revenues of EUR 6.7 billion are within the range and profitability with 13.6% is even slightly above our targets. Over and above that, 2 important pillars of our equity story could be proven again in fiscal year 2021. We grew faster than the market and profitability with a high level of resilience. The high focus on cash and cash conversion rate, as mentioned, has paid off as well. We achieved a strong free cash flow of EUR 600 million and a very solid cash conversion rate of 92%. In terms of corporate governance, we further shortened reporting timelines and managed to publish the preliminary figures 8 days earlier this year. Increased EPS and stable ROCE at solid level underline Knorr-Bremse's superior business performance as well. We continue with chart 4 and the highlights of our rail division in 2021.
As rolled out at the Capital Market Day a few months ago, Knorr-Bremse's strategic path consists of our traditional business and the expansion in new growth markets. Our operational highlights are a clear proof of this strategy. In 2021, RVS won major international contracts with all large OEMs around the world. Besides many others, I would like to highlight the large metro contract with Stadler in Berlin and a major Citadis equipment contract with Alstom. Both are long-standing customers of our Rail Division, and their awards are a clear sign of continuation of our strong relationship. With the acquisition of Evac in June 2021, we expanded into the attractive market segment sanitary systems of trains and enhanced our position as a global system provider in rolling stock. Also, in the area of new growth markets can we post progress.
We won our first contract in the area of digitalization, such as a cooperation agreement with Deutsche Bahn for sharing data from train operators and a data analytics contract with Siemens for remote condition monitoring of the air conditioning system of regional trains in the U.K. Our partnerships with the major global OEMs are better than ever, not least due to the high innovation standards that Knorr-Bremse provides. We at Knorr-Bremse aim for new sustainable solutions, and digitalization is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, we are expanding our R&D activities, including our involvement in startups like Railnova. This company is the leading supplier of railway telematics solutions and maintenance workflow software to the railway industry. Digitalization in the rail freight business also offers great potential for us. I will come to this at a later point again.
Let me proceed to chart 5, the highlights of CVS, which follows the same approach of traditional business and the expansion in new growth markets. Our efforts in 2021 overall focused on enlarging our positions in e-mobility and automated driving. In order to meet the strong demand in China, our truck division expanded manufacturing capacities there. As market leader, we continue the strategic operation on automated manual transmission, advanced driver assistance, and highly automated driving with Dongfen g. In the Global Scalable Brake Control system, we have created a next-generation technology and a strong, flexible platform for our customers, also laying the groundwork for automated driving. In April 2021, we signed a new major supply contract worth approximately EUR 1 billion with one of the largest European OEMs.
Among the extension to cover serial deliveries of current braking and air treatment systems, also a new supply contract providing GSBC as well as the Global Scalable Air Treatment systems. In terms of new business, we won the first contract for our Electric Power Steering solution for Knorr-Bremse. I will elaborate on this topic later. To drive e-mobility, we founded the eCUBATOR to bundle know-how of 60 specialists last year. In this context, I would like to mention the successful launch of our eCompressor Rotary Vane, which is scalable to variable e-truck air requirements and has taken a market leader position within a short period of time with several business awards won so far. This technology will continue to strongly support our content per vehicle growth.
In both divisions, we are pioneers in the respective mega trends and also like to engage with young companies and startups to enter new business fields. In 2021, we invested in the startup AutoBrains, which supplies video perception technology for realizing system solutions for advanced driver assistance and automated driving. Let me continue with an overview of the markets on chart 6. The global rail market was clearly affected by COVID, which was mirrored by less rail traffic in 2021. Nevertheless, general market characteristics are fully intact and market drivers long term are unchanged. The biggest rail market for RVS, Europe, remains to be a strong growth driver now and in the future based on our strong market share, especially in brake systems.
The ongoing low ridership levels around the world burden the overall dynamics in the OE and aftermarket business, which is the reason for ongoing postponements of projects. Throughout the current year, we expect a sequential recovery demand after 2 quite difficult years, which would lead to a book-to-bill ratio of above 1 for RVS in fiscal year 2022. The rail market is increasingly affected by supply issues, cost headwinds from components and raw material price increases this year compared to last year. On the truck side, underlying demand in Europe and North America currently is strong, and utilization rates of trucks remain on high levels due to high global freight and transportation needs. So far, the CVS team has well managed the crisis. Nevertheless, the situation remains tense for semiconductors, components, raw materials, and in the area of logistics. In addition, we are feeling the challenges of general inflation.
Several production costs, cuts, and plant shutdowns from OEMs caused by supply issues negatively affected truck production rates in quarter four. The Chinese truck market, as expected, remains on low volumes since the introduction of China VI in July. This is also not expected to recover anytime soon. In the coming quarters ahead, we expect that the global demand for trucks will continue to be higher than supply for the industry. Therefore, the development of the global truck production rate until year-end 2022 will depend heavily on the development on the supply side. In general, however, we expect a positive trend in Europe and North America. In China, however, the truck production is expected to be lower in 2022 versus 2021. Knorr-Bremse should be able to outperform this development again.
On chart seven, I would like to share our confidence for a solid development in the rail industry in 2022. As mentioned, rail was hit hard by the pandemic so far, which is also visible in the order books of the major European OEMs. Please keep in mind that RVS generated roughly 50% of its revenues in Europe. Shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic, the order backlog of our biggest customers in Europe amounted to around EUR 100 billion. In the first year of the pandemic, this backlog has increased only slightly through cancellations and a clear positive sign from the rail operators for the long-term demand for train capacity. There was a significant recovery over the last year, when customers' order backlogs rose to new highs.
Please note that there are usually a 9-18 months lead time between our customers and us. Accordingly, we expect our order intake to develop well in the further course of 2022. With this, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Frank Weber.
Thank you, Jan, and welcome everybody from my side as well. Let us get into the numbers for the full year 2021 before we look into quarter four in more detail later on. Now, the performance and resilience of Knorr-Bremse in 2021 in such a difficult economic environment confirmed the special robustness of both of our businesses once again. Nevertheless, Knorr-Bremse was not fully immune to some negative impacts caused by the pandemic, even though to a significantly lesser extent than others, and ended the year with overall good figures. Order intake was up by 13% to EUR 7.2 billion. The order book also grew once again by 12% to new record levels of almost EUR 5.6 billion and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.09.
A more than solid basis for the expected development this year and our future growth path. Operating EBIT margin could be improved by 40 basis points to 13.6%. This strong development of profitability was driven by efficient cost measures and the strong business performance in CVS and RVS. High focus on cash preservation measures led to a strong free cash flow of EUR 600 million and a cash conversion rate of 92%. Let me give you a short overview about the development of Knorr-Bremse's balance sheet, which we view as the backbone of our superior financial profile on Chart 9. Considering the uncertain economic development last year, it was important for us to maintain a high level of stability and flexibility in financial terms. While at the same time, we deleveraged the company from higher levels driven by COVID.
End of 2021, our gross debt to EBITDA reached a ratio of 1.15 and our net debt to EBITDA of -0.09. In all our efforts, we tried to maintain a healthy level of equity, which finished the year at EUR 2.43 billion and represents a strongly increased equity ratio of roughly 34%. At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, we drew credit lines of EUR 750 million, which we fully repaid by the end of the first half of 2021 already. Additionally, we paid back a bond of EUR 500 million in 2021. Therefore, we were able to reduce our gross debt by 38% to below EUR 1.4 billion.
Liquidity reached a level of almost EUR 1.5 billion after more than EUR 2.3 billion a year earlier, due to the before mentioned deleveraging measures. The strong resilience of our balance sheet and the good development of business activities are also confirmed by rating agencies. Moody's rates us A2 and Standard & Poor's with A. Let's continue on chart 10. Knorr-Bremse's high profitability on invested capital, strong working capital management, and prudent investments resulted again in an outstanding return on capital employed of 25%. It was almost stable versus prior year, supported by an increased EBIT, which mitigated a slight increase in working capital, which was basically driven by revenue increase and FX effects.
Earnings per share could be strongly improved by 26% year-over-year, underlining the high quality of our business and the success of our measures to fight the headwinds also below the line, like financial results and tax results improvements. Therefore, in combination with our dividend policy of 40%-50% of net income, creation of shareholder value through high return on invested capital and earnings per share is key to us. Further details on our dividend proposal for 2021 will be announced with the release of our annual report at the end of March. Let's move to chart 11. On operating level, EBIT could be improved by 40 basis points to 13.6%.
Operating EBITDA remained almost stable at 17.9%. We consider this as a good development despite the headwinds from the pandemic through net extra cost of roughly EUR 65 million in CVS alone in 2021 and a slightly decreased aftermarket share. On a reported basis, group amounted even higher to EUR 950 million at a margin of 13.7%. Please keep in mind that this includes negative one-time expenses from severance payments at Kiepe and relocations in North America to Mexico in the amount of EUR 11 billion. Both topics concern our RVS division. On the other hand, the sale of real estate in Berlin generated a positive book gain of EUR 19 million. Let's move to Chart 12. Our stringent efforts and strong focus on free cash flow payoff.
Free cash flow in full year 2021 amounted to EUR 600 million at a cash conversion rate of 92%, which is on par level in the industry. Free cash flow in 2019 and 2020 were extremely strong due to very focused CapEx spending in the crisis, and among other things, strong COVID-related cash preservation measures. Levels close or above EUR 200 million are not sustainable due to the investment phase we are currently in. Going forward, we will continue our efforts to, for future growth and respectively with increased CapEx and R&D. We will continue to keep a close eye on cash flow and steer for a cash conversion rate of 80%-90%. You can see my promise to focus more on free cash flow paid off for the second year in a row. Let me continue on chart 13.
Technological leadership is the key to our business success, which is why we continue to invest into future technologies in the past quarter. CapEx in 2021 amounted to EUR 376 million, which is 5.6% of revenues, and therefore stable versus prior year. Q4 figures of EUR 163 million were higher, mainly driven by investments in IT and capacity. Going forward, we are fully committed to investing 5%-6% of our revenues on an annual basis. R&D spending in relative terms remained stable at 6.4% year-over-year, and in absolute figures slightly increased to EUR 421 million in line with our slightly increased target ratio of 6%-7% of revenues.
Net working capital at the end of December stood at EUR 876 million versus EUR 746 million at the end of 2020, also in line with our targets driven by revenue growth, M&A, and FX effects. Let's move to chart 14. We want to shape the future for sustainable transportation and are 100% committed to reduce our CO2 emissions aspirationally as we can. Our ambitious climate targets have reached one extremely important milestone, the carbon neutrality at Knorr-Bremse sites globally as of the year end, 2021, on the basis of our preliminary unaudited figures. We are happy to have achieved this important step and are not planning to lean back.
We are fully on track with our goal to halve our CO2 emissions by 2030, and we are able to reduce already more than 65% in 2021 versus 2018. Some products and the share of remanufactured products should also support the spread of the circular economy. Environmental leadership and further decarbonization is crucial to Knorr-Bremse's long-term strategy. We want to further improve our reporting in this aspect as well. In our sustainability report, which will be published in May, we will report Scope 3 figures for the first time, as well as TCFD qualitatively. Knorr-Bremse recruits and develops a diverse workforce and supports their careers with resources such as the Knorr-Bremse Women's Association, Women at KB, and trainings designed to develop leadership opportunities.
We are committed to hire, develop, and promote and ensure that our employees worldwide represent diversity in the global community. In 2021, Knorr-Bremse increased the share of women in leading positions from 13%- 14%, and the overall share of women at KB from below to even above 20%. In order to let our employees participate in Knorr-Bremse's future success, we rolled out the Heinz Hermann Thiele employee share program last year, which currently stands with a very high participation rate of 25% globally. In addition, we want to strengthen sustainability aspects in our financing as well. Just recently, we placed a EUR 750 million ESG-linked syndicated loan, which is closely tied to our performance in three major ESG ratings, ISS, RobecoSAM and Sustainalytics. Let's continue with the quarterly figures on page 15.
The performance in the last quarter of 2021 was remarkable. Compared to last year, order intake increased solidly by 8% to EUR 2.2 billion. Revenues were 8% higher, reaching EUR 1.7 billion, while operating margin, as expected, decreased to 11.6%, driven by an unfavorable product and regional mix, as well as higher R&D expenses. In addition, we had to face higher inflation. Free cash flow was strong and reached EUR 303 million in the last quarter alone. Let's continue on page 16. Compared to last year, order intake on group level increased by 8% to EUR 2.2 billion in quarter four. This strong performance was driven by RVS. The book-to-bill ratio reached 1.32 in the end.
The development of the order book was again pleasing and reached a new record level of EUR 5.6 billion, which represents a 12% increase compared to the previous year's quarter. This level is a strong foundation for our outlook into 2022 and our future growth. Let's continue with the quarterly top-line figures on page 17. Revenues on group level increased by 8% to EUR 1.7 billion. As in the previous quarters, Europe remains to be the strongest driver, with an increase of roughly 12% and generated the largest contribution of all regions, with a share of 47% of all our revenues. North America also developed favorably with an increase of nearly 10%. As anticipated, the APAC region saw only a slight increase of 2.0%, driven by China with -9%.
Let me continue with the profitability development on chart 18. As already anticipated, operating EBIT increased year-over-year by 10% to EUR 201 million. The operating margin or return on sales decreased by 240 basis points, predominantly driven by ongoing headwinds from COVID-related costs to CVS and an unfavorable product and regional mix, especially for RVS. COVID-related cost pressure will continue to be a burden in 2022. Our clear goal is to mitigate it by our pricing power, aftermarket resilience, and other cost measures as much as possible. I will continue on chart 19 with a deeper look into RVS. After several customer-related postponements and pushouts in previous quarters, we expected and promised a strong order intake in quarter four, and we delivered.
RVS won contracts worth EUR 1.28 billion, up 17% year-over-year and reaching a record. The book-to-bill ratio was 1.49 versus 1.41 for previous quarter of 2020. Order book also rose by 4% to a record level of EUR 2.88 billion by the end of December. Once again, our empirical evidence is given. Rather, a long-term view is important when talking about the order intake and revenue situation of our Rail Division. Europe and North America were the key drivers for this development, and also APAC without China contributed. China is still characterized by project delays and a slower recovery of the market, which is also expected to continue in the current quarter.
We also expect an increase in order intake of RVS and target book-to-bill ratio of above 1 in the current fiscal year. Like last year, the development in the second half of the year should be stronger than in the first half. Let's move to chart 20. In quarter four 2021, RVS recorded revenues of EUR 857 million, which is an increase of 11%. All core regions of the rail division contributed to the strong development, with Europe being the strongest driver. In terms of profitability, as anticipated, operating EBIT declined by 6% to EUR 156 million at a margin of 18.2%, after 21.3% in the fourth quarter of 2021. Absolute operating EBITDA was flat year-over-year and reached EUR 195 million, which resulted in a margin of 22.7%.
Profitability of RVS was impacted by four factors: change of accounting principles regarding provisions of onerous contracts, which is a one-timer and amounted to a burden of EUR 8 million. The product mix, namely a higher share of non-brakes business and a lower aftermarket share in Europe. Regional mix with a lower share of the greater Chinese business. Higher costs from inflation. Please keep in mind that we have accrued severance payments for Kiepe and our U.S. freight business due to our relocation from U.S. to Mexico. Both topics amounted to EUR 11 million, which are included on operating level. In 2022, we expect that RVS should be able to generate more revenues in the second half of the year compared to the first half.
Based on this revenue development, RVS should then also be able to show higher margins in the second half of 2022 compared to the first half. Continue with the Truck Division on slide 21. At EUR 968 million, order intake was almost stable versus the very strong fourth quarter of 2020 and 39% higher quarter-over-quarter. This development was very pleasing and mirrors the still strong underlying demand in the market. Europe and North America continued to see high market demand due to increased freight rates and shortages in transport capacity, resulting in truck operators both replacing old trucks and expanding their fleets. The demand should stay strong for some time. In APAC, the development of order intake remains on low levels driven by China after implementation of the new emissions standard, China VI, in July 2021.
In terms of order intake in 2022, we expect half year two as well to be stronger than half year one. The order book of our Truck Division amounted to EUR 1.7 billion at the end of 2021, which is remarkably 34% higher year-over-year. The order book level of CVS reached new record levels. Still, it was 1.15 in the fourth quarter. Let's move on to slide 22. CVS posted EUR 841 million in revenues in quarter. Compared with last year's figure, this is an increase of 6%. In Europe and North America, revenues developed positively despite COVID-related supply issues, which impacted the whole truck industry in both regions. Revenues in the APAC region declined year-over-year. The share of aftermarket revenues increased in all major regions on a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis.
In quarter four, CVS achieved operating EBIT of EUR 63 million, which is 19% lower than the same quarter in the previous year. EBIT margin amounted to 7.4% compared to 9.7% a year ago. Operating EBITDA developed similarly to operating EBIT, reaching EUR 101 million in the margin, 12%. We consider this as solid development, keeping in mind ongoing net extra cost of around EUR 50 million in the fourth quarter, again, in tough comparisons from quarter four, 2020, which strongly benefited from one-off cost savings and extraordinary China demand. Additionally, we have ramped up R&D investments towards e-mobility and highly automated driving. On the positive side, operating leverage and cost measures mitigated the negative impact on these cost topics for our truck division.
The current year, we expect CVS to post higher revenues in half year two compared to half year one of 2022. Net extra costs in 2022 are expected to decrease compared to 2021. Best guess would be a level of around EUR 14 billion, which should be rather front-end loaded. Let's move to the potentially most interesting point for many listeners, our guidance for the year 2022. The outlook for 2022 is under the disclaimer of a somehow stable geopolitical and macroeconomic environment, no further setbacks from COVID or other exogenous shocks, and stable FX rates year-over-year. At the same time, we expect ongoing shortages of semiconductors and bottlenecks in the supply chain for both divisions, which should be more front-end loaded in 2022 and then rather normalize. We can confirm the first indications given in November last year.
For 2022, we expect revenues between EUR 6.8 billion-EUR 7.2 billion, which suggests a growth of around 4%-5% at the midpoint. The second half of the year should develop more strongly than the first half. The operating EBIT margin is expected in the range of 12.5%-14%. In such scenarios, we expect that CVS should be able to improve its margin. The RVS development will depend on how much the second half of the year will make up for the low rail traffic at the beginning of the year and how the rail markets develop in general. Our main margin drivers for 2022 will be, on the truck side, lower COVID-related net extra costs in 2021 compared to 2022, and burden should be more front-end loaded. Higher R&D costs throughout the year.
Operating leverage driven by revenue growth. Cost measures against inflation and price increases on the OE and aftermarket business side, given our strong pricing power. On the rail side, we expect cautious market outlook in China, which should have a particular impact in the first quarter, driven by Chinese New Year, the Olympics, and strict COVID rules with plant closures by some of our customers. In the rest of the year, the development in China might then be better, especially in the OE segment. Very positive expected growth in Europe will offset much of this margin development. Please keep in mind that the expected regional mix in 2022 should be overall dilutive for RVS. Inflation of the input costs will definitely be higher in 2022 compared to 2021, but we have initiated cost measures to mitigate the burden.
In addition, we will work hard to increase prices for our OE and aftermarket customers also, given our pricing power that we are having. We expect a range of EUR 550 million of free cash flow, and we should be in a range of our strong 80%-90% target range over the years to come. Overall, we are fully on track for our long-term financial guidance targets. The megatrends in both the rail and the truck segments remain strong and are the tailwind for our operational development this year and in the coming years. Thank you very much for your attention. I will hand over to Jan again.
Thanks, Frank. Let's move to slide number 24. Here, digitalization in the rail industry is a big opportunity for the whole rail industry in the years to come. In Europe, for example, we see considerable additional revenue potential through the digitalization of the rail freight traffic by the introduction of the so-called Digital Automatic Coupler, called the DAC, if approved by governments. 450,000-500,000 freight rail cars in Europe, many of them are very old, need to be equipped with a DAC. The total market volume amounts to EUR 7 billion-EUR 9 billion stretched over many years. This digitalization step is also a very efficient type of decarbonization of the transportation industry in Europe, as it enables the share of rail freight to increase from 15%-20%.
RVS is well-positioned with its DAC solution to benefit from this trend, and we are confident to capture a fair share of the additional revenue potential. We continue with the growth opportunity of CVS on page 25. E-mobility and automated driving are the big topics which will change the truck markets most in the next 5 years- 10 years. We at Knorr-Bremse will be one of the most important enablers in this development. One big step on the way there is the electric power steering, which CVS is currently developing. This fully electric solution is a future-oriented key technology in the field of steering. It not only forms the basis for advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving, but also enables a reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, thanks to its power-on-demand principle.
We just recently announced that from 2025, CVS will supply EPS systems for the entire commercial vehicle fleet of a leading global truck manufacturer with an order value of over EUR 300 million. This is only the beginning. We are among the top three steering manufacturers for trucks globally, and we are on the way to set standards. Let me conclude with the top priority of 2022 we set for us in the management team. Quality and innovation have been the foundation of our success in the past, and we will drive this USP further in order to increase market share and drive market outperformance across all regions. 2022 will remain challenging in terms of COVID, but we monitor all developments intensely and will react quickly if necessary.
We continue to strengthen the cornerstones of our equity story, growing stronger than both markets, profitable revenue growth and strong free cash flow. Efficient capital allocation is important to us, and we stick to our clear M&A strategy, focusing on value creation for our shareholders. We continuously watch out for opportunities and review our own businesses to create maximum value. We want to further strengthen company governance at Knorr-Bremse, challenge ourselves in our environment, and make our contribution to a sustainable and clean economic development. On behalf of the whole management team, I would like to thank all employees, business partners, and customers for the great work in a challenging year, always having customer focus in mind. With this, I would like to thank you very much for your attention, and we will start the Q&A session now.
We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero and one on the telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question has entered the queue, it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. We have a first question from Sven Weier, UBS. The line is now open for you.
Yeah. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the margin outlook for 2022. I mean, you said already what you said on revenues is quite consistent with what you said back in November, but the margin guidance isn't at least at the low end. I was just wondering over the last weeks, what has led you to have a lower expectation here because the raw material pricing situation was already quite intense back in November. Supply chain was intense. You were probably not expecting much of an improvement in the first half. I would have also expected that, you know, in the old days of Knorr-Bremse, that if something like that happens, you would massively intensify the cost-cutting measures and be tougher on pricing to compensate that.
I'm still a bit confused what happened here. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Sven, for your question. Maybe I start thinking over this. Nothing fundamentally has changed. I mean, you do actually properly reconcile. We were also quite outspoken in regards to inflationary pressure already at our Capital Markets Day. This comes not as a surprise at all for us to say. Let me narrow it down to some points that somehow have changed or developed. One thing is that our fourth quarter came in better. I think back then guidance 13%-13.5%, mid-teens, midpoint of 13.25% somehow went up to roughly 13.6%, which is one element that I don't wanna discuss too much about technicalities. Point comprised, let me say
We just have lowered or widened the range that we initially had on our table for the year 2022, given all the uncertainties out there. That's the basic entry point. Instead of maybe going for 13%-14% or something like that, we decided to go a little bit lower given all the uncertainties out there. Those are one thing, the question, of course, in February, still lies in to what extent you can get the price increase you intend for OE business, especially not so much aftermarket business, but for OE business in both divisions throughout the year, how much can you really pass on all the cost effects to the customer? That's one thing.
The second thing is that in regard to the supply chain situation, the freight especially is a little bit so to say increased in the CVS division and also in the RVS division most recently. We first have anticipated to get a significant tailwind out of reduced freight costs in the year 2022 compared to last year's level. This gap has lowered a little bit, so we still do see at least in the very first half year some maybe up to EUR 40 million of freight costs. We had to remember we had EUR 65 million in the last year.
On the rail side, we also last month saw increased tensions on the supply chain and the respective countermeasures that are there with air freight and freight, additional costs as well, maybe not to that extent, but maybe also some EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million would add up there. These two things are hopefully in the long run only temporary things as we expect them not to last on for maybe beyond 2022 in that extreme. Those are the things. Also we have to say that there are signals out there looking at the Chinese market for rail in the very first quarter, the metro situation and the high speed train situation is not overly encouraging.
Let me anticipate that this will come and also on the TPR side when it comes to heavy-duty trucks in China. I think, Volvo stated that we see it similar. Maybe only a volume of 1 million heavy-duty trucks will be seen in the year 2022. Those three aspects, I would say in a nutshell, somehow led us to the situation that we've widened the range and widened on the lower side of the range.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. Maybe just as a follow-up to what you just said on China. Your rail RVS guidance that you mentioned earlier does not assume any major improvements in China as far as the COVID restrictions are concerned, and also not really penciling in any additional rail stimulus that is being likely put on in the next couple of months.
Yeah, that's indeed the case. We're currently seeing that the investment pattern in China in general, as far as the market is concerned, is gonna stay probably on the same level for high-speed as last year. So some 50 high-speed trains probably gonna be put into operation there. We see a reduction on the metro side, however, compared to last year. That doesn't contain any extra stimulus programs that the government in China might decide on, but which is currently not indicated.
Okay, thank you for that. Maybe the final question is just obviously there was a major article in the German press today about Knorr-Bremse. I'm not going to pick on too many things out of this article here, but I was just curious, because it was mentioned that there is quite a heavy delay on the transfer of the shares to the foundation on the one hand, and also that there would be a more central approach to running the divisions, maybe in the future. It would be interesting if there's anything you can share on this.
There is no aim to change. Let me start with the foundation first. It's true that the shareholders and the executor of Mr Thiele's last will initially intended to set up the foundation by the end of 2021. Due to a variety of difficult tax and legal issues, the establishment of that foundation has been delayed, and in the ongoing reviews, we are currently unable to estimate exactly when the necessary approvals for the establishment of the foundation will be granted. As far as the steering of the structure and Knorr-Bremse as such is concerned, there's no intention to change the decentralized profit and loss responsibility within the company that we have today and also the regional set up.
This is something where Knorr-Bremse has been successful with this kind of approach in the past for the last decades, and there's no intention to change that. Of course, we are looking at improvements in three areas that we've been laying out and talking about in the past quite extensively as well. On the governance side, where we want to introduce common processes and professional ways of doing things. Also, in areas like IT, HR, there's a common kind of way of doing things being looked at, and that's what we want to implement as a group. Then we're also looking for synergies in order to do things more efficiently within the group.
As I said before, there's no intent to change the profit and loss responsibility at the division and to own regional kind of P&L that we introduced and that we have been successfully running for a long time.
Thank you for the color, Jan, and thank you also, Frank.
You're welcome, Sven.
The next question is by Vivek Midha of Citi. The line is now open for you.
Thank you very much, everyone. Good afternoon. I have a couple of questions on pricing, just following up on some of the comments there. You highlighted pricing negotiations with customers. Obviously, your backlog coverage is strong given the strength of orders. Could you maybe just elaborate a bit on those negotiations with customers? Maybe could you also quantify the pricing assumptions within the revenue guidance? What pricing contribution is embedded within that? Thank you.
First of all, let me comment qualitatively before Frank then will shed some light on more details. We are obviously in existing contracts with our customers where for material for commodities we have surcharge mechanisms in the contracts that for other areas we need to change contracts. We have to address our customers, for example, semiconductors or a major portion that we're seeing right now in our numbers and in terms of cost inflation is logistics. There's no regulation in the contract, and therefore we need to approach and we are approaching our customers with the very clear message that we need to increase our prices in order to cover these topics.
That's done very systematically right now. You might imagine that there are ongoing and very intense discussions that we need to undertake here. This is on the way, and this is being done. That's why Frank also said that we see that over time the effect of these negotiations will come in. There's kind of a delay in there.
Yeah. Thanks, Jan. Vivek, I would say you should roughly assume some percent of our revenues that would be stemming from pricing increases all over the globe. Please keep in mind as we have two very heterogeneous businesses, so to say, when it comes to the way of doing business. Project business on the rail side and a completely different business on the truck side, we would approach those customers completely in a different way. We have those individual contracts. For some, you can do something in individual negotiations. For some, we would have price rising clauses in place.
It's globally, regionally different, and it's from customer to customer, often completely different and don't assume, so to say, like you would see in some D2C businesses. I don't know, a price increase starting on the first of February, 2% on each and everything. But to shed some light on your question, roughly that range of 2% that you would expect. Needless to say, we have, of course, also done something already in 2021, especially looking at aftermarket, but the bigger chunk will now come also with the OE customers.
That's very helpful. Thank you. Could I just have a quick follow-up? You mentioned regional differences. I mean, can you give us any color on what those sort of regional differences are? Thank you.
Well, it depends, of course, on the respective customers that you would have in different countries. The standards of contracts with some customers or some regions are different. In some contracts, you do have, for example, the price rising clauses, where you would have certain months of delay until you are able to charge several costs to the customer. For some customers, you don't have those. You initially have to go into the dialogue. I mean, these kinds of differences, as each and every project is especially on the rail side, a completely different one. Yeah.
For example, in the United States, looking at NIAP, there, you would basically have a large extent automatically those price rising clauses in place, whereas in other regions, you don't. Yeah. Just as an example.
In countries where a lot of the goods are imported, obviously suffer more from logistics, additional costs than other countries where we have direct production. That's kind of business structure related differences.
Yes. Not all the costs that the suppliers now would come knocking on the doors are the ones that are immediately covered in the respective contracts, neither of our contracts with them nor in our contracts with the customers. It would be an individual approach then customer by customer.
Understood. Thank you very much for your time.
You're welcome, Viv.
The next question is by Akash Gupta, J.P. Morgan. The line is now open for you.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, everybody, and thanks for your time. My first one is on component shortages topic. If you can provide an update on what you are seeing, particularly on the rail side. I think truck side is very well understood, and we have seen comments from some of your suppliers. I'm more keen to know any update you can provide on rail side, where some of your customers said they are watching tight supply end and whether that could be a headwind in the course of 2022.
Yeah, on the rail side, Akash, thank you for that question. We had only limited impact of supply shortages in 2021, and almost no impact on revenue development. In the last months, we see that the impact by supply shortages is strongly increasing. So far, we haven't seen negative consequences for our customers. These supply issues exist in the specific fields that we've seen in the CVS arena as well as electronics, plastics. It's even sometimes small C-parts that play all of a sudden a prominent role. Of course, it's an increasing commodities in pricing. General inflation is also something that kicks into this business as well as opposed to last year and provides there a situation to be managed.
Thank you. My second question is on CVS margin development in Q4. If I look at your revenues, you've grown from EUR 785 million in Q3 to EUR 814 million in Q4, but the margins there were down by almost 300 basis points. I mean, you flagged EUR 15 million of additional costs, but I suppose those costs would have been in third quarter as well. Maybe if you can explain what was the factors behind weak margin in Q4 versus Q3. If we look at sequentially in Q1 2022, what shall we expect there?
Akash, thank you. I mean, yes, we have seen either if you look to Q4 2020, a reduction on the margin side, but also if you look to the previous quarters, a reduction on the margin side. That is basically driven by that weaker second half of the year by a very strong reduction in the market development in China as one thing. We have increased costs for R&D on the CV, on the CVS side. Yes, we have also outlined within the context at the CMD in detail what we intend to do, and these are things that will come later on. We will harvest in revenues to come.
We have an increase also on the depreciation side, also based on capital expenditures in the past, which is increasing quarter-over-quarter, so to say. We have slightly negative impact also from the product mix side. This can also happen from quarte- to- quarter at this point in time, I would say. Those are the major aspects. Then you also have certain in this kind of normal cost seasonality, that then hits the bottom line in the end. That is always kind of higher overall cost in a fourth quarter of the year somehow.
Any expectation going into Q1, like what?
I would say going into the first quarter, we should be with those impacts that we just in general discussed in regards to our 2022 guidance overall. The aspects that are simply a burden for us going forward should not to a large extent change the numbers. We do think it should be in that range of what you have seen in the fourth quarter, being rather stable going into the new year. It will be challenging to keep that profitability level due to the cost increases coming in and partially a time lag exists towards the price pass-over to the respective customers. Stable to slightly negative, I would say, in terms of profitability going into the first quarter.
Thank you.
The next question is by Ben Uglow, Morgan Stanley. The line is now open for you.
Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you're all well. I had a couple. First of all, I just wanted to think about the cadence of the orders coming in in RVS. I liked the chart that had the sort of order backlog position over the last couple of years since COVID. Obviously, you're gonna have a pretty decent sales pattern over the course of the year. But my question is really to do with the order intake. You've said that your book-to-bill is gonna be above 1x in RVS for the course of the year, but obviously you're gonna have a fairly slow start in China. Do you expect basically to maintain 1x plus over the course of the year?
Is this a case of your orders are gonna be slow for the first half and then really good in the second half? That was my first question. Secondly, on the RVS margin, if we look at the margin in the fourth quarter, it's keeping it simple, it's come down from 21% to 1 8%. You've given us a breakdown between part of it was China, part of it was aftermarket share, part of it was, you know, lower-margin business or lower-margin product areas. How much of that 3% is simply down to the China mix effect? Or is the majority of it due to China mix or are they kind of evenly split between those three buckets? Those are my two questions. Thank you.
Yeah, Ben, let me start with the first one. It's, you know, if you look at the rail business, it is generally very difficult to predict when certain and individual orders come in. There's a general rule of thumb to say when the order intake comes in at the OEs and it takes 9-18 months until it finds its way into the books of suppliers like Knorr-Bremse. That can be shorter or longer, and therefore it is kind of a smearing effect, I would say, across quarters as far as order intake is concerned. Therefore it makes, you know, only a limited sense in the rail business to look at the order intake on a quarterly basis.
Rather makes sense to look at it, let's say, on a rolling kind of average kind of mechanism. Now looking at this order intakes that I was referring to and the increases here on the OE side happens sometime in the second half of 2021. Just adding you know another 9-18 months to it, that would then at the end of the day point at a time frame somewhere between middle of next year, end of next year and into 2023 when this would somehow materialize. You know hard to predict when this exactly will be.
Understood. Just on that point, though, when you look at the tender funnel today, is that tender funnel, that order pipeline, is that still as big as it was? Is it bigger? Is it smaller? Just, I'm just trying to what I'm not worried about, but we want to make sure that we don't have an air pocket on your orders for six to nine months. I want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding.
No, I think, you know, the pipeline also as far as big projects in Europe and North America is concerned is healthy and quite in order. You know, it might be that the one or the other quarter is gonna be slow, but then, you know, there will be other quarters like now or quarter four that still will fill the orders at hand again. Therefore, you know, there's no worries on our side that the market in general would not be intact to the contrary. We're seeing encouraging signs through stimulus programs in the U.S., in North America, in Europe. The clear intention to increase the rail contribution to freight from 18%-60% in Europe.
All of this requires investment and activities, and that yields to, as we also pointed out at the Capital Market Day, a 3%-4% growth continuously in the next years to come. We don't see any different view on the markets compared to what we've been communicating by then.
Understood. Thank you.
Yeah, Frank will comment on this.
The second part of your question, I would say, like this. First of all, the fourth quarter of 2020, if you look into the most recent years, it's been really the high point of profitability in rail. We had some close to 25% EBITDA margin and some 21%. Nevertheless, you are right. I just wanted to keep this in mind, so to say for us all. To your concrete question, I would somehow say from 100%, I would say 40% is the regional mix effect driven by China, the mix effect.
Some 25%, 50% is the brakes/ non-brakes effect, the product mix effect and the rest is a sum of several cost headwinds like we had this provisioning, the EUR 8 million of the provisions. We have additional costs in the system currently because we are moving the business from North America to Mexico. We are ramping down on one side, but still have the people on board. At the same time, we are ramping the people up in Mexico, in Acuña. Yeah, in all in good faith with a clear net present value of this move.
Temporarily, we have double costs to say, and we have towards the end also as Jan just outlined also the increased freight situation and supply chain constraints and costs in that regard. This is the third pillar with also some 30%. So 40, 30, 30. That's how I would somehow split up.
That's very useful. Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.
Of course. Thank you.
The next question is by Gael de-Bray at Deutsche Bank. The line is now open for you.
Oh, thanks very much. Good afternoon rather, everyone. First, could you give us an indication on your overall cost exposure to gas and electricity costs? Secondly, on pricing, could you also give us some color on the price realization you had in Q4? Given that everybody's looking kind of sold out due to limited supply, do you actually see less people now bidding on various projects than, you know, perhaps compared to pre-pandemic level? Does it fundamentally change the pricing dynamics in the marketplace, you think? Something that would make it easier, you know, really for you to push up prices even more.
Thirdly, given the structural trend towards digitalization, electrification, and so on and so forth, do you see today more or less synergies between RVS and CVS than before?
Okay, let me take your first question. Overall, if I would use the headline of energy cost, I would say Knorr-Bremse is below EUR 100 million in the range of EUR 80 million-EUR 90 million all in. To say this includes electricity, gas, oil, and that stuff. To say, if we look at the electricity and gas, I would say it's maybe half of that. Yeah, EUR 50 million maybe would be that range that we are having globally. The exposure, so to speak, isn't huge, yeah. I mean, every penny hurts, needless to say, but it's for EUR 50 million.
A year.
Annual, of course, yeah.
Price realization, that's a topic that obviously we are pushing through right now very, very systematically. The obvious situation of shortages on supply and also let's say the general supply situation and inflation situation helps to put arguments together for price increases. However, as you can imagine, this is always a very intense discussion that needs to be executed in order to get to the increases in the case of existing contracts. In other cases where there's new awards or new contracts, a situation is different and there we can or of course right in the beginning make sure that the right cost structure is in there.
Third question was, considering the fact that, you know, there's a supply issue, are less people bidding? We're not seeing a lessened or a lowered intensity in the markets and in the competition. There's no competitor who's currently not bidding. That I wouldn't see as a situation. I think the supply situation, at the end of the day, is being considered by the market and also ourselves as something that will balance out after a certain period of time. It will be longer with us than we probably all expected. There will be a kind of a balance reached, at least in the medium to long term, hard to predict when this will happen.
We don't see at this point in time that any competitors have been moving out of their activities or have lowered their bidding activities. Pricing realization and pricing dynamics, I think I alluded to that already. Digitalization and electrification, certainly there is common platforms, common knowledge and a common kind of know-how and people profile that's being needed in Knorr-Bremse to build up digital platforms, to make usage of data and you know do data analytics based on artificial intelligence. That's something where we see synergies within Knorr-Bremse as a company. On the other side, obviously there is, by the way, also, as far as data lakes is concerned, as we use a common IoT platform within Knorr-Bremse.
We just structured a data lake offering that internally Knorr-Bremse is using across the board. You see, we can leverage our scale here to develop the tools for our divisions once and then use them across the board. I would assume my judgment on this would be that we're rather seeing more synergies here across the company than less, and that's what you have been asking for.
Thank you very much. That's very helpful.
The next question is by Marc Zeck of Stifel. The line is now open for you.
Hey, thank you for having me. Just another question on logistics costs. If I'm right, you said that you expect logistics cost leverage to come down in 2022 versus 2021. Now, if I listen to what the major logistics companies like Maersk and others have said, they expected freight costs will actually be up this year with last year on average, even if, let's say, spot rates come down a little this year. What makes you sure that you can counter that development by having lower logistics costs this year than last year? That's my question. Thank you.
Yeah, Marc. I mean, good question, and also very happy to clarify here if there's misunderstanding in the room. I didn't talk about spot rates to come down. I said, in our planning, which is of course, based on the respective logistics streams that we would have and we would use and how we see a stable production on our side or at the supplier side, that our planning shows the overall freight costs come down for Bremse. This is a result of multiplying the respective freight volume with the respective spot rates that we would anticipate. That's important to understand.
We expect somehow that overall need to come down from 65 million freight, and I include now for the sake of explanation here, also some brake parts in that figure. 65 million, we expect that to come down maybe to levels of 40 million on the truck side. Whereas the freight cost should on the rail side maybe go up from this year, but rather minor. This year, I mean, 2021 was rather minor, EUR 15 million around, it should go up to maybe EUR 30 million. Let's say last year we had EUR 80 million, then together, both divisions and next year it would be, or this year it would be rather both together, EUR 70 million. Yeah.
Overall we would reduce, yeah, that overall exposure for us, but that doesn't mean that the spot rates would necessarily come down. We keep them rather stable to slightly increasing spot rates throughout the year.
Thank you. Quickly answer the question. Then another one maybe more speaking, but on the Digital Automatic Coupler, if I look this up, there's like one major project from Germany or the EU, the DAC4 EU project, and there are a couple of DAC users listed, some Siemens for example, and some others, but not you guys. Could you just give me a bit of color how far you are on this project and how will you compensate for later start than for example Voith and the others? Thank you.
Thank you very much for this question. The DAC, so the digital coupler, is something that has not been approved as yet for Europe as a rollout. It's still something where politics are deliberating as to whether this is going to happen or not. We strongly believe that this is a strength that is a real necessity in terms of making freight transport on the rail side more efficient and get this European target of moving from 18%-30% really implemented. Therefore, this topic is completely new for each and every market participant. There's one or the other who moved in earlier.
We are on the way of developing a digital coupler for the freight industry, and we'll have the first couplers available during the course of this year. At the point in time when this test started, we did not have a coupler available from Knorr-Bremse. I hope that will happen sooner, it will happen early enough to have a product portfolio that is highly competitive in place once the rollout would start. Therefore, we are very confident that in case a positive decision will be taken, it will be one of the important market players, since we are very established in that industry, we have a long-term experience in the rail industry, and we have all the basics in there to be successful in the market as well.
Thank you.
The next question is by Sven Weier, UBS. The line is now open for you.
Yeah. I had one follow-up question, please, and that was on the order intake question from Ben earlier. Because when we look at last year, obviously, you had an extreme skew to Q4, right? More than ever, basically. You also referred to the OEM orders, which I think have already been quite good before the second half of last year. I was just wondering if I could get a guidance for Q1 order intake for rail out of you, basically, because last year it was a very low number. With all the things you mentioned, should we still expect that number to be down, or what should we think about Q1 orders, given that the quarter is halfway through?
Yeah, Frank will go to the numbers quickly, but what I would like to again emphasize is, for the rail business, look into a quarterly order intake makes limited sense. We need to look into a row of quarters and then accumulate. I think the important message here is that we have an all-time high in orders on hand. The projects will come over time. There will be a quarter where we'll have little, then there will be a quarter where we'll have a stronger order intake. It really comes in a lumpy way and is not as kind of distributed across the world into little projects as we're seeing that in other businesses. I think that's just important to note.
This view on quarterly order intake is something that doesn't really, you know, reflect the business and the way how it's being conducted in a proper way. Look at the orders on hand. That's, I think, the more appropriate picture, even if I understand this question completely that you're raising. Now Frank.
Yeah. Everything that Jan said, I fully sign off as well. Clear. You raised this question, and I mean, I can shed some light on how January went on. January went 10% above last year. I think that's books are closed for January, so I'm pretty sure on that. So it looks better as far as we are in February right now than previous year's first quarter. But keep in mind, like Jan said, I mean, you could have pushouts again now in March and all the figures collapse again, and then you have a great April or something like that. January is 20% better than last year.
Well, thanks for that. I mean, the lumpiness is deeply understood. It's just the point that last year we had, like, three quarters in a row where rail orders were quite weak, and then it's really the fourth quarter, and I was really looking more for steadiness maybe this year. Even if one or the other quarter is still a bit lumpy.
Yeah. Sven fully understands the background of your question and appreciate it.
A priori, it looks rather more stable this year than it did last year. But yeah.
Very good. Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question is by William Mackie Kepler Cheuvreux. The line is now also open for you.
Yes, good afternoon. Thanks. Thank you for the time. My question really relates to during the call, you've discussed on a number of occasions that looking to 2022, there will be, you know, notable differences between performance of each of the divisions in H1 compared to H2. As you work through the challenges of executing the order backlog, improving prices, managing the supply chain, and the other associated factors relating to mix both regional and product versus aftermarket. To what extent can you give us a bit more shape on how you expect, within your guidance, the first half to play out in each of the divisions, with respect to growth and profit development in comparison to the second?
It seems like we should expect a continued downward trend in margin development in RVS and perhaps even in CVS before a second half recovery. Could you put some shape on that a little more, please?
Yeah. What we're seeing right now is that we on the CVS side have the effect of still a relatively low demand in China due to the fact that the pre-buy effects last year took place because of the Euro or China VI's introduction. There's still some 150,000 trucks out there in the field that need to be sold, and they would obviously be deducted from you know new trucks being built. Therefore, TPR in China right now in the first 2 quarters is gonna be affected by that. Then probably these trucks will be sold and out in the field. We expect then that this doesn't affect the market anymore.
In North America and in Europe, we still see a very high demand in terms of trucks. So that this is just being curbed by the supply situation right now. There's more demand than what can be delivered, and it depends pretty much on the situation on the supply side, when and to what extent truck production rate will then grow in both North America and Europe, in fact, due to this constraint that we have there. If you just sum up things, that would then suggest that second half would probably be stronger from a TPR perspective than the first half of 2022.
On the rail side, pretty much a lot of things depend on COVID and the rollout of the activities. There we see and expect a continued kind of improvement, you know, quarter by quarter, at least from today's perspective. We're seeing that in an unconstrained environment. You know, as we said before, provided that the political circumstances are not overriding too much here.
Maybe William, from my side, some additional comments. If we look at revenues and if we look at the same time profitability, yeah, and if we look at RVS and CVS in a nutshell, it sounds very unsophisticated what I'm saying now, but we should have the quarter one to be the worst, quarter two to be better, quarter three to be better, and quarter four to be the best. That's as I said, it sounds like unsophisticated, but that's just the simple result. That is true for both divisions. For each and every division. That's just the situation currently.
Thank you. I appreciate it's a complex business and geographically and at end market perspective, but thank you for the shape. One follow-up would relate to a question on net pricing around the OEM business. Again, it probably requires a gross simplification. But when you think about your ability to adjust pricing within the framework of your contracts in CVS and RVS with OEM customers, and then you look at the RMI or the cost changes you're planning, do you think you'll achieve a positive net pricing in 2022? Or do you think that there's going to be a lot more work required on the productivity side to maintain your goals for profit improvement?
I think that perfect question or very good question, let me say. I think we touched upon that already at the CMD on my side, at least in the presentation. Will not be as positive net effect purely out of pricing will not be enough. We have to do cost efficiency measures, negotiations with our suppliers in addition and seek every ways and means in all areas of the company in order to keep the gross margins low in the way we want them to go and not be dilutive, yeah. This is not our intention, and this is not on small premises then.
One of your colleagues previously mentioned the goal of KB. We would turn over each and every stone, be assured. We are also doing so and not just looking now, so to say. This is what I indicated at the CMD as well. The company is looking for roughly EUR 100 million cost efficiency measures each and every year. But we need additional pricing euros, so to say, to compensate all those cost increases that we are facing. That's a long answer to your question, but the short answer is no. It will be negative, and the negative effect will be offset by our cost efficiency measures that we are doing.
I think it's also important to state with negative price effects we've been living for a long time. Usually in the automotive industry, also in the commercial vehicle industry, there's a clear expectation that efficiencies kick in and that products are getting built and manufactured in a more efficient way, resulting in rather cost or price pricing reductions on an annual basis. That's not new to us. Obviously, very different to what we had in the past is these very strong inflationary effects that contract our activities and the price increases that we're seeing across the board in all different areas.
That's where we need to really address the customer and say, you know, that's something we cannot and we will not carry on our books. It's something that needs to be handed over to our customers in order to create a sustainable situation. You know, that accounts for what Frank just said.
That's super. Thank you very much.
There are no further questions for the moment. With that, I would hand back to Andreas Spitzauer.
Yeah. Thank you very much for all your questions. We hope you stay healthy and safe and enjoy the afternoon looking forward connecting with you next time. Thank you and bye.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.