Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the KION Group Q3 2023 trading update call. Today's presenter will be Rob Smith, CEO of KION Group, and Christian Harm, CFO of KION Group. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star, followed by one on your touchtone telephone. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rob Smith, CEO of KION Group. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Sandra. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our third quarter update call. For today's call, please use the presentation on our IR website. I plan to start you with a quick summary on our third quarter. I'll talk about our leadership succession and the executive board and the announcement on that this morning, and then give you a brief update on some exciting progress in our ESG journey. Then Christian's gonna take you through the detailed Q3 financials and outlook, and I'll finish up by sharing our key takeaways, and we'll move right into the questions and answers. Let's go to page three, please, and we'll start with our key financial figures for the third quarter, which a lot of which you saw in our pre-announcement on October 13th, as we raised our guidance.
Q3 was another strong quarter for the KION Group, particularly in our ITS segment. Material availability has improved considerably compared to last year, and that's not just because supply chains are normalizing, but it's also a direct result of the measures that we've taken to improve our operational agility, giving us flexibility to react to fluctuations in the availability of materials, switching to different product lines, and making use of every available production slot. In addition, measures to improve our commercial agility, including our multiple list price increases in 2022, are also bearing fruit, especially in our ITS segment. Our Supply Chain Solutions segment came in in line with our expectations for a stronger second half versus the first half of this year.
Overall, Group revenue of EUR 2.7 billion improved slightly year-on-year, and Group-adjusted EBIT at EUR 224 million showed the fourth consecutive quarterly improvement and led to a Group-adjusted EBIT margin of 8.2%. Free cash flow was again clearly positive at EUR 101 million and allowed us to further reduce our net financial debt by EUR 34 million in the third quarter. Group order intake at EUR 2.6 billion was up 4% year-on-year, thanks to solid order intake at supply chain solutions. Sequentially, order intake was down by 8%, due to the usual seasonality at industrial trucks and services.
Based on very good performance of our ITS segment during the first nine months of 2023, we raised our for our full-year outlook for ITS again. The outlook for Supply Chain Solutions was revised downward slightly. It's due to the fact that Supply Chain Solutions saw a high share of larger and longer-lasting projects in the order intake this year, which will only turn into revenue over time. Overall, this resulted in another increase in the full-year 2023 outlook for the overall KION Group in adjusted EBIT and free cash flow and in ROCE. Please move now to slide four. I'm excited to share with you our executive board leadership successions that will come into effect on the first of January of next year.
Our Supervisory Board has appointed Michael Larsson as Executive Board member, responsible for Supply Chain Solutions, succeeding Hasan Dandashly, who will retire from the Executive Board at the end of this year. Mike will also assume responsibility for ITS Americas in our Executive Board. Michael Larsson has served as Executive Vice President of Supply Chain Solutions in the Americas region for the past three years, and he brings to the table more than 30 years of experience in technology-driven automation companies, including ABB. His global background, operating on four continents over his career, equips him to drive and grow the business in our diverse markets. With his responsibility for Supply Chain Solutions globally and for our ITS in the Americas, Mike will further drive our strong commitment to profitable growth and expand our integrated solution strategy on lighthouse projects with top customers in the Americas.
My esteemed colleague, C.P. Quek, has been appointed Chief Technology Officer of the KION Group by the Supervisory Board and will be succeeding Henry Puhl, who is leaving at the end of this year at his own request to pursue new challenges outside of the KION Group. C.P. has been with KION since 2006, and he's been on our executive board since 2013. Prior to joining KION, he worked in global industrial companies, including ABB and General Electric. C.P. brings a vast multicultural background and a diverse regional experience, and he's successfully built strong technology competencies for KION in the dynamic APAC market, actively contributing to the KION global platform and module strategy, as well as the mobile automation and software offerings very present in the APAC market.
His agile, team-oriented leadership, his extensive experience in the material handling markets, and strong customer orientation makes CP the perfect choice for CTO of the KION Group. And in his new role, he'll expand and accelerate our robust innovation pipeline, particularly in the growth areas in our industry. CP will continue to be responsible for ITS in the APAC region on our executive board, and will transfer responsibility for the ITS Americas segment to Michael Larsson. With these important leadership successions, KION is well-positioned to drive our profitable growth strategy going forward. And now, the update on some exciting news on the ESG front, on page five. We're making good progress on this front, and last month, we were upgraded to AAA rating in the important MSCI ESG rating, and are now considered among the top 10% of the companies in our industry.
It's a significant recognition, and I'm very proud of the work my colleagues have put into this. At the end of September, KION Group started recycling lithium-ion batteries that have reached the end of their useful life, together with our strategic partner, Li-Cycle Holdings Corp. Together with Li-Cycle, we're now closing the loop and ensuring that nearly all of the valuable materials, including lithium, cobalt, copper, and nickel, are recovered from the lithium-ion batteries in our trucks. These valuable resources can be used for making new batteries in a second or a next life. Our objective is to have a total of up to 5,000 tons of end-of-life battery material, professionally and sustainably processed at the Li-Cycle recycling plant in Magdeburg, Germany, by 2030. This tonnage is equivalent to about 15,000 large lithium-ion batteries in forklift trucks.
We firmly believe that lithium-ion is the drive technology of the future, and that's why it's so important to us to make the technology part of a closed loop, from manufacturing and usage through the resource recovery to re-usage. And finally, the market for secondhand equipment is growing very strongly in ITS segment. In addition to economic considerations, the aspects of availability and, above all, sustainability and responsibility for the resources and the reduction of one's own CO2 footprint, are very important to KION. The remanufacturing of vehicles and the reuse of components and raw materials is a further important pillar of sustainable and future-proof concepts for KION. In line with this strategy, our Hamburg-based brand, STILL, opened its fourth European refurbishment center in Turkey a couple days ago, following sites in Germany, Poland, and Italy.
A total of up to 8,000 trucks are refurbished each year and are then returned to the STILL sales and service organization for those trucks' second and third life in the field. Now I'll hand over to Christian, who will take you through our financials and our guidance. Christian?
Yeah, thank you, Rob. Let's go to slide seven for the key financials of the ITS segment. The order intake of around 53,000 units was on the level of the prior year and showed the typical summer month seasonality. The slightly different development in order intake in Euro terms mainly resulted from differences in the product and regional mix. Once again, the resilient services business had a stabilizing effect on the order intake in Euro terms. Overall, the order book remains at a robust level and supports almost nine months of new business revenue, despite the high production run rates, particularly in the last two quarters. Margin resilience of the order book remains solid.
Revenue remained at high levels, above the EUR 2 billion mark, supported by last year's price increases, as well as by the favorable material availability, allowing a high production run rate. This goes to 50% of revenue. Services also contributed to the strong revenue level. The Adjusted EBIT showed the fourth consecutive quarterly improvement, supported by positive effects from the volume and price-driven revenue growth, as well as the production efficiency gains resulting from ongoing measures to increase our operational agility. The Adjusted EBIT margin exceeded 11%, a level last seen in the fourth quarter of 2019. With that, I continue on page 8, which summarizes the key financials for SCS.
Overall, the macroeconomic uncertainty, as well as higher financing costs, continue to impact order intake as decision to start new projects continue to be postponed, and therefore, you should expect order intake to remain lumpy over the next quarters. Having said that, order intake in the third quarter remained at the level of the prior quarter, thanks to a very large order from the APAC region. The trend towards larger projects continues with execution periods of up to three years. The order book continues to provide visibility for the next quarters. Approximately 80% of the order book now has a price adjustment clause included. Overall, revenue declined compared to the prior year quarter, as the stable services business did not compensate for the 26% decline in the project business, and this was mainly due to the lower orders from pure-play e-commerce customers in prior quarters.
Currency developments also had some adverse effects on revenue. The adjusted EBIT and the adjusted EBIT margin is in line with expectations for a stronger second half of the year compared to the first half of the year. Now let's quickly run you through the key financials for the group on page nine then. The order intake reflects the normalization of the demand levels in both segments, following the strong performance in prior year quarters. The order book continues to be at high levels... providing good workload for the next quarters. Revenue benefited from strong ITS performance and was partially offset by softer SCS revenue. The service business continued to demonstrate resilience in both segments and reached a level of 45%. KION Group improved the adjusted EBIT and the adjusted EBIT margin for the fourth consecutive quarter.
Page 10 shows the reconciliation from the Adjusted EBITDA to group net income. Depreciation and amortization, as well as the non-recurring items and PPA items, followed the usual quarterly pattern. We saw a strong increase in the net financial expenses, just like in the past two quarters, mainly driven by the higher interest rates. As a result, pre-tax earnings reached EUR 142 million. The tax rate remained at the high level that we have seen in quarter two and is impacted by temporary effects. Net income of EUR 82 million led to earnings per share of 0.61 EUR in the quarter. In the appendix of this presentation, we have provided an update on our housekeeping items. Let's now move to the free cash flow on page 11. Free cash flow in the quarter again reached a triple-digit million EUR level.
At EUR 101 million, free cash flow showed a swing of EUR 481 million compared to last year. The substantially improved operating profit was the major contributing factor for this development. Net working capital buildup in the quarter resulted from higher inventories relating to work in progress and lower trade payables. A favorable development in the contract assets and liabilities limited the increase in the net working capital. Page 12 then shows the development of the net financial debt and our leverage ratios. Some of the positive free cash flow in quarter three was used to reduce the net financial debt by EUR 34 million compared to the end of quarter two.
As flagged in our last call, leverage ratios improved significantly compared to the last quarters, driven by the last 12 months EBITDA calculation, which no longer includes the very big third quarter 2022 EBITDA. As a result, the leverage ratio on industrial net operating debt was reduced from 2.2 times at the end of June to 1.7 times, and the leverage ratio on industrial net debt improved even more from 2.7 times at the end of June to 2.1 times. Our focus remains to improve leverage metrics further to defend our two investment grade ratings, as we believe they are supportive to our business models. With that, I move on to slide 14, which lays out the updated guidance for 2023, as published already on October 13.
We now expect KION Group revenue to reach at least EUR 11.2 billion, with the Adjusted EBIT reaching at least EUR 780 million, resulting in a ROCE of at least 7%. Free cash flow should reach at least EUR 660 million. Again, the raised group guidance for Adjusted EBIT was driven by our ITS segment, while the SCS guidance was reduced to reflect the high share of large and longer-lasting projects in this year's order intake, as Rob already mentioned at the beginning of this presentation. With that, I would like to hand back to Rob for our key takeaways.
Thank you, Christian. The takeaways are on slide fifteen, please. As Christian outlined, we've raised our full year 2023 guidance for adjusted EBIT, ROCE, and free cash flow for the third time this year, driven by the strong performance of our ITS segment. With our executive board leadership successions that will become effective from the first of January next year, we are well positioned to drive our profitable growth strategy going forward. We've been able to improve the profitability for the fourth consecutive quarter in both of our operating segments and for the KION Group overall. Our diligent implementation and execution of the measures to improve our operational and commercial agility drove ITS's return to double-digit adjusted EBIT margins in the quarter.
In supply chain solutions, the measures to improve agility, resilience, and profitability are well underway, and I'm confident they will show effect and support our Adjusted EBIT margin ambitions of more than 10%, as laid out in our KION 2027 strategy over our strategic planning period. We continue to focus on our strategic roadmap with particular attention on sustainability, and we're very pleased that it's being recognized by important ESG rating agencies, just such as MSCI. This concludes our presentation. Thank you for your interest, and let's now move to the questions and answers, Sandra.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions only. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Sven Weier from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the truck order intake. In the third quarter, you mentioned there was also impact of seasonality, negative impact seasonality. My question is more, usually in Q4, you have positive seasonality, and in the old days, typically the order intake was about EUR 200-EUR 300 million higher. I was just wondering if you could confirm that what you've seen in October underlines this positive seasonality that you usually have. Thank you.
Hey, Sven, good to hear from you. Appreciate the question. The development in the ITS market this year has been in line with what we shared as our expectations, that it'd be down high single digits over the course of this year. And we shared, and it is our experience, that KION is performing more or less in line with the market this year. There are some indications of some slowing in the market for both ITS market and the SCS market over time, but it's too early to make any real projections on that, and our teams are certainly working hard on the order intake in both segments. We do view and see some early signs in the market of some slowdowns.
Okay, so does that mean you wouldn't commit to that typical seasonality at this time? At this stage, at least.
No, and as a matter of fact, it's not that we're changing our commitments. Our expectations is that the market does finish down the way we described, and us to finish in line with the market. The third quarter is a bit slower in the summertime, and fourth quarter is usually a stronger quarter. So we anticipate perhaps that could be the seasonality as we've experienced in previous times, it could be the seasonality this year, but with a couple of weeks of October behind us, it's still too early to call the ball for the full fourth quarter.
Yep. Thank you for that. And the second question is just in the last quarter, you've basically said on the truck side, that you didn't see any reason why the Q3 margin would be lower than Q2, and indeed it wasn't. I just wonder, when we look at the different moving parts with a higher revenue in Q4, with a full pricing effect only in Q4, and of course, on the other hand, a bit higher cost on the inflation payments. Was just wondering if you were willing to repeat that statement, maybe also for Q4, that the Q4 margin should be lower than Q3?
No, I think when you described the development from the, in the last quarter very well now, in terms of the contributing factors. I think we have seen a good, sort of, you know, implementation of the list price increases from last year in our revenue, also already in the third quarter, right? As we have progressed through our order book and worked that down, given the material situation that we have. Just maybe as one reminder, as a reminder, you know, Q4 typically also has a bit of lower workdays, right?
I think that's also a piece that one needs to be put into consideration when we look at the performance that we had so far in the year and the expectation that we have. And never forget, right, that's the constant reminder throughout the year, we are providing a minimum guidance, right? So, we are there at the lower end of what we would say at the expectation that we have, right? And that's the nature of a minimum guidance that we provide.
Okay, fair enough. Thank you, both.
The next question comes from George Featherstone from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. First one would just be on the working capital development. Yeah, take it that your free cash flow this year has all been sort of driven by improvement in the profitability of the business, but you've yet to see any real reduction in that working capital. Can you just give us a feel for when you expect certain inventory levels to start to normalize back to the levels you saw pre-2022?
So, in, indeed, you, you, we are seeing a very good development of the free cash flow across the three quarters so far, throughout the year. And evidently, that's, that's, driven by the earnings, that, that, that we are having. With the good, production flow and the increase of the production volume that we had, right? We've also sort of, you know, we still carry an inventory level in the network and in the networking capital that is actually, beyond the, the, historicals. We have also, substantial part in the net working capital still in the, in the finished goods and also in the receivables, which comes, together with the good revenue development that we have.
This will transform, you know, following our payment terms, will translate then also in the reduction in the net working capital as we go. And that will carry, you know, also into 2024 then.
Okay, thank you. And then just on the SCS, demand picture, I see from your slide you're talking about, e-commerce still remains pretty slow, and, you know, from a share of order intake, it was, it was in the single digits. But could you just talk about where else the orders are coming from? What kind of segments you're seeing good activity levels in? And then if you could, possibly give us an idea as to the size of that one large order that you talked about in Asia.
Sure, George, good question as well. So the large order that we're talking about was around EUR 300 million. It was in the grocery vertical... Which is, I think, an exciting development, because it's demonstrating that although the e-commerce is still taking a breather, we're converting very good projects and very good orders in other segments. Other segments include general merchandise, food and beverage, the grocery segment itself, the apparel segment as well. So we've got a offering and solutions for each of those different verticals, and those are coming along well. In terms of the overall market, however, as orders are becoming larger and larger, and as there's still quite a bit of uncertainty, actually even increasing uncertainty geopolitically and macroeconomically, and with the high interest rates, customers are slowing down on starting new projects.
We've got a great pipeline. We've got good visibility to the projects in the pipeline. We work those for, you know, a year, year and a half, two years, two and a half, in advance of getting the customer to, to, to the starting point. And so we've got good visibility to those. They're not going away, but they're delaying the starting points. And so that's gonna make the overall order intake continue to be lumpy over time. I think the fact that they're getting bigger and the fact that some are becoming more complex, the conversion time of the projects is probably a trend on that, is extending the conversion time of those projects, too, over time.
Okay, thank you very much.
The next question comes from Gaël de Bray from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks, thanks very much. I have two questions, please. The first one is on the pricing dynamics for ITS. In the past, we've been used to price rises of between 1% and 2% at the beginning of the year. Obviously, that was different, these past two years. But I wonder if the dynamics could be back to what we've been used to in the past for 2024. In, you know, are you actually considering new price rises to offset wage inflation next year? So that's question number one. Question number two is on the financial expenses and the big increase we've seen throughout the year. How much of that increase is sort of a one-off, maybe due to derivatives?
Specifically, what's been the increase associated to the rental business? Thanks very much.
Hey, Gaël, let me pick up the first one, and Christian will handle the second one for you. I think it's important, and I'm glad you asked the question, because there is no reversion to old times. Old times were consistent with stable markets and, and low inflation and low volatility in the, in the overall landscape in which we're operating. And we have committed ourselves to operating in a very agile fashion, both operationally and commercially, which means that our, our teams are scrutinizing costings every single month, a couple of times, and on a monthly basis, are comparing costings and pricing and, and, and market dynamics, and making an explicit choice whether to adjust pricing or not. And so, the fact is, we did make those choices last year, 12 times, and pragmatically moved the increased pricing, four times.
We thought that got to an appropriate level, and we've continued to make that decision every month going forward, and that's how we'll operate the company. So on that agile basis, we're able to check our costs, we're able to check the market, and we're able to make pricing adjustments decisions on a very agile fashion, and that's important to our overall profitable growth strategy and the execution of that in a successful fashion.
And then I, Gaël, I take the second one on the financial expenses. So if you look at the quarter three number and compare that to prior year quarter, right, year-on-year comparison, so about EUR 20 million of that is from the fair value development of the derivatives, yeah. And about EUR 10 million of that is due to the sort of the leasing and the short-term rental, you know, interest exposure that we had in that quarter, compared to prior year quarter. Yeah. What you also should bear in mind, though, is not just interest rate, also the volume, right?
The revenue which you then see reflected in the revenue, right, has been increased as well on the rental side. So there is also a volume piece to that expense.
Oh, thanks very much for this. Just following up on the pricing question. I think you said for SCS, you now have 80% of the backlog covered by escalation clauses. How much is that for ITS?
ITS is basically covered. That's 100%.
Okay. Thanks very much.
The next question comes from Lucas Ferhani from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thank you. The first one was just on the lead times. Obviously, you have better supply chains. You still have quite an elevated backlog. How much visibility do you have, just even if, you know, you're saying demand is slowing, in terms of the coming quarters, until when, kind of, can you have the support from the backlog? That's the first one in ITS. And the second one is on the service business in both segments. Can you explain a little bit, kind of the slowdown you've seen in Q3? Is it related to kind of equipment, and so service demand is related to the equipment side? And how should we think, a little bit about kind of service...
growth over the coming years, if you know, equipment is coming down, for example, next year, should that kind of follow, or should you still see growth even if you have kind of a decline in the equipment side on revenues? Thank you.
Let me work on helping you with those thoughts here, Lucas. Thanks for the question. In terms of lead times, yes, we've been able to reduce our lead times, and that's important to us, and we'll continue to focus on that to get them back to a certain normality. Right now, the order book in our ITS business gives us about nine months, about three quarters of visibility. Moving to the idea of the service revenues. Service is a very important part of our overall business model, and that's what I think is a very exciting capability of the and element of KION's overall business model of being an original equipment supplier, a full solution supplier of original equipment and services associated with that.
What I would encourage you to consider is, in any one given year, maybe your original equipment is higher or lower, but we are servicing the cumulative field that we've the cumulative park that's out in the field of large scale automation solutions in the SCS segment and the overall vehicle park in the ITS segment. Both of those, as you're adding each year, are growing. So the trucks are staying about 10 years in the installed base, and over 10 years, some years on the original equipment side is a little higher and some years a little lower, but the cumulative is growing. And actually, in our reports, we talk about the park that's out, or the vehicle park out in the field that we're servicing.
Also, so the big, good growth on the ITS service base that's accessible to us. Also, good growth on the SCS service, installed base that's available for our services business. The very, very significant years of new equipment installation in 2021 and 2022 has given a good base and a growing base, and you see that our service business is increasing, and we've been increasing our service, the strengths and sizes of our services team, to capture these growing opportunities.
We take the next question from Martin Wilkie from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon, it's Martin from Citi. The first question was just around the e-commerce end market. You mentioned that there's been a pause in that market, obviously we've seen that in your order intake and elsewhere. Is there a sense, and you mentioned you sometimes get almost two years of advanced notice in terms of thinking about these contracts. Is there a sense that pause is coming to an end or any sort of green shoots? And we are hearing that some larger customers are now thinking about spending again, but it's very difficult to see when it happens because of interest rates, as you say. But just understand whether that e-commerce pause has any signs of thawing out. Thanks.
Yeah, Martin, I liken the e-commerce pause to parents that are buying winter coats for young children. And oftentimes you invest in one that gives you a couple seasons of growth before you reinvest in a new winter coat for a young child. We built that capacity and that capability and really drove the availability of materials through e-commerce tremendously through the COVID period, and that was a very significant growth in the installed base, into which e-commerce customers are continuing to grow into. We would expect and do expect, overall, our market will be growing easy 9% CAGR over our strategic planning period. And the e-commerce customers returning to increasing capacity over time is a part of that overall market growth. We didn't see it this year.
It may take some time into next year, et cetera, but they will be coming back, and they will be continuing to participate in the growth as they grow into that capacity that we helped them install.
Thanks. That's, that's helpful. If I could just ask another question. You mentioned there about the 9% growth rate in supply chain solutions, but obviously you've also got a midterm growth rate target in ITS of around 5%. It's very difficult from the outside to think about 2024, because obviously the industry and yourselves have this abnormal sort of backlog and so forth to unwind, and of course, there's many macro headwinds and so forth. I mean, obviously, you had previously talked about, you know, a growth market in trucks for 2024. I mean, in terms of, yes, order intake could be slowing because of the backlog unwind, but in terms of building blocks for next year, is the market progressing as you thought a quarter or so ago?
Or is 2024 beginning to look a little bit tougher now than perhaps we thought three months ago?
Well, it's an appropriate question, Martin, and the 9% that we're calling out and the 5% for the respectively SCS and ITS segments, is our expectation for those market growths over our strategic planning period. It's too early to be talking about 2024 fully. We shall do that actually on the twenty-ninth of February next year. On Leap Year Day next year, we'll be bringing out our fourth quarter results, and we'll be talking about next year. What I did say earlier in the call, though, is that there are some signs in the market that, the market is slowing down in both the ITS and the SCS segments.
Going into next year, and as we get through the rest of this fourth quarter and have even better visibility into next year, that's what we'll be talking about when we come back in February. But, 9% and 5% is over the overall strategic planning period, as opposed to tying that to any specific year and certainly not tying it to next year yet. We'll talk about that in February.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Jorge González Sadornil from Hauck & Aufhäuser Investment Banking. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. I'm interested to get your thoughts on how this large backlog, this three quarters of visibility is in relation to the market share in ITS. I'm wondering if, for the market that is left at this point now for the last part of next year and even 2025, if you are still maintaining the same levels or if you are trying to not reduce your prices. I will be interested to know how you are dealing with the market at this point.
I'm also interested to know how this backlog compares to the current picture, if we should take into account, I don't know, more a share of APAC, and that could imply lower or slightly lower margins. Can you give us a gross picture on how is the profitability for the current backlog of ITS, please?
[Foreign language], Jorge. You have asked some wide-ranging questions there. Let me see what I can do to help. You know, first of all, we are working to reduce our lead time overall. We want to get it down plus or minus six months or so on the ITS side. We have been successful in bringing it from over 12 months to 12, and from 12 down to nine. You're asking how does that reflect the market? I was describing the market in the last question. What that backlog actually describes was a very significant set of order intake in the first half of last year, and then the production volumes and the material availability as we've been able to work that down over time.
So I wouldn't suggest to you that it has a one-to-one reflection on the market. It does give us nine months of visibility, and from a perspective of going into next year, that's helpful. It's also helpful on the pricing side. We don't have to chase orders because we would, you know, be in a situation with a short backlog. We're not in that situation. With nine months, we're in a good situation to make appropriate and deliberate pricing decisions, as I was describing a couple of questions ago. Is there a shift between markets? Actually, you know, if you look at the GDP next year, the APAC market, you know, all the GDP is expected to be positive next year.
However, not as high as this year. If you look in the Americas, it's down. It's also supposed to be positive, but quite a bit less than this year. China's down next year from this year. EMEA is gonna be up a bit next year, but you also have to look at where we've been investing. We've been investing in Europe, we've been investing in APAC, we've been investing in the Americas. We've added a value line of products and been launching those. And so it's a, it's a... Is the Asia market bringing more and more into the mix? To an extent, but part of that is us investing in that value segment and the new launches we've been doing there.
So I'd tell you, in total, I think the bottom line is, we've got a nine, and we're working on reducing to six plus or minus lead time over time. It'll be a function of material availability and any supply chain interruptions that hopefully don't come through. It'll be a function of the production volumes, and it does give us some reasonable visibility as we look into next year, and it gives us some reasonable sovereignty on pricing decisions.
Thank you, Rob. So I understand then that you plan to keep your factories at a very high utilization levels in the first part of the year or even the first nine months, to work your backlog and reduce lead times. It makes sense, this reasoning?
Well, our objective is to keep our factories humming all the time, as a matter of fact, Jorge. As the material availability should that, and we hope it certainly does, remain good, we'll have them humming going into the beginning of next year, and we'll, we'll keep going.
Thank you very much, Rob. I go back to the line.
The next question comes from Markus Schmitt from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking the question. I have just a quick one on the recent promissory note issues. The final amount issued was actually much, much higher than what was targeted for. Is there any special use for this extra funding or will it stay simply on the balance sheet for the time being?
...[audio distortion]
So, Markus, I take your question then, right? So we had, like you said, promissory note, EUR 375 million, right? Now with maturities,
... up to seven years with, you know, the bulk of it in the five-year period, right? And that's actually heading to the use of that, because we're gonna use that to optimize our maturity profile. We have now the ability through that issue, right, to actually do that and improve the profile there.
Fully used for refinancing other debts then, obviously?
Yes.
Okay, good. Thank you very much.
The last question for today's call comes from Chand Debashis from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. I just have one clarification on the ITS order intake. I just want to check if, we are still on track for a high single digit decline in, in unit order intake for the full year. If yes, then, it would imply actually quite a significant pickup in, unit orders in Q4, both on a sequential basis and on annual basis. So yeah, your thoughts there, please. Thank you.
Sure, Debhamji. Let me pick back up on a couple points made earlier. Our observation year to date is that the market is performing in line with our expectations of being down high single digits. We expect our performance in the market to be plus or minus in line with that market performance. I talked about some earlier signs or some signs of slowness in both the ITS and SCS overall global markets, but it's too early to tell. I also mentioned seasonality and fourth quarters usually have a pretty good, strong run in them. And so with a couple months or a couple weeks of October in the books, but still a good two months plus to go, it's too early to call.
But I would expect that our expectations of the overall market and our own performance remain in line with the guidance that we've been sharing.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from George Featherstone from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, hi again. Just wanted to clarify this comment you're making, Rob, on the SCS market. Because it does seem at odds with what a lot of your peers are saying. So just trying to understand where specifically you're seeing this slowdown, and, you know, does that effectively mean that you're expecting for next year, maybe more of a sideways market, as well? Thank you.
You're double dipping today, George. So let me work on answering that question with you, too. I think all of us are very attuned to the geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties out there, and I think that over the last couple weeks, those ticked back up a little bit further than what we had seen prior to earlier in October, or prior to, you know, before October. So there is some global economic and macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty out there, and the interest rates are certainly higher, and people are taking longer time to make decisions and to start new projects going. And that's the dynamic that we're seeing. We're seeing that in basically the global markets for SCS.
What I did describe is because we've got very good offerings for all the industrial verticals out there, we're able to compensate, to an extent, the breather that the e-commerce market is taking, and over time, we do expect these things all to come back. However, as things come in, and they come in on a lumpy basis, and people will take a little longer to make investment decisions or to make starting points, that does have some cumulative knock-on effect. And so let's see how it develops, and we'll be giving you some good views on next year on the end of February. I'm just sharing the current trading at this point in time.
Thanks for that additional color. The only reason I sort of wanted to bring it back up is all of kind of what you're saying in terms of the drivers from a macro level haven't really changed much from throughout the entire year. And you've been talking to hesitance between customers making investment decisions for some time now. So I just wanted to make sure this is an incremental weakness you're seeing, rather than just the general trend continuing, because clearly your orders have improved from the trough that you saw, either in the start of this year or going back into last year as well.
Yeah, I did describe a general trend. I also described that as, during the size and the complexity of certain orders, rather than executing over 12, 18 months, they execute over 18, 24 or even 36 months. And so we've got a mix of those different kind of orders in our backlog, and I think that's an element, of course, on how much revenue comes out of that backlog on any given year. And I think it'd be an appropriate element to consider together as well.
Okay, thank you.
We have no further questions. I hand back to Rob Smith for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Sandra, and thank you all of you that have participated in our call. We certainly appreciate the good questions, and we certainly appreciate the opportunity for dialogue. Christian and our IR team and I, we look forward to catching up with you in the weeks to come. You know, the conferences and road shows coming up, and we look forward to the twenty-ninth of February next year as we come back with our fourth quarter results and our, our guidance for next year. So thanks very much. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.