Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Aurubis AG conference call regarding the annual report of the fiscal year 2021, 2022. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Angela Seidler. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and welcome, ladies and gentlemen. My name is, as he already said, Angela Seidler, and I would like to welcome you. I'm sitting here together with our CEO, Roland Harings, our CFO, Rainer Verhoeven, and the COO, Heiko Arnold. They will lead you through the presentation this afternoon. We are very sorry that we were not able to publish the figures at the beginning of December, but the cyberattack on our IT systems, unfortunately, required a postponement. Happy to have you all in here so close to Christmas. We know that this is not the easiest time of the year. Yesterday evening, we published, after the supervisory board meeting, an ad hoc announcement concerning our growth projects, our dividend policy change, and the forecast for the current fiscal year.
With this said, I would like to hand over to Roland Harings, who will start the presentation.
Thanks, Angela. Also from my side, a warm welcome to our annual results call this year. Again, also apologies for being late this year due to the cyberattacks, but we will come to this topic, cyberattack, and how we went through this in a minute. What a year. My colleagues on the executive board and I are very proud to have led Aurubis so successfully through this crisis-filled year together with our strong management team. We even managed to generate the highest earnings in the company's history and can therefore propose the highest dividends since the IPO. Despite multiple crisis management, most recently during the cyberattack just mentioned, we stuck to our strategic course and yesterday presented important growth projects to the supervisory board, which were approved. We are informed of this yesterday in an ad hoc announcement.
We are now taking Aurubis into sustainable growth path that we intend to finance from our own resources. We managed the company through strained supply chains caused by Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, rising energy prices, and most recently, this cyberattack. Despite all this, supported by good metal, product, and sulfuric acid markets and the good smelter performance, we were able to increase our operating EBT by as much as 40% in the end, and the ROCE went up to 19%. The cash flow of EUR 288 million is lower than last year, can easily be explained by the buildup of inventories, in particular of input materials during the shutdown in Hamburg, will turn around quickly in the course of the current fiscal year.
Our strong performance, combined with our impressive growth path, has prompted us to reconsider our dividend policy. At the same time, we will continue to allow shareholders to participate in the success of the company. Our proposed dividends is 1.08 per share, the highest dividend since our IPO. Coming to the next slide and have a brief look at the production numbers in more detail. Despite the major standstill in Hamburg, we were able to increase our throughput of concentrates at our primary smelters with a good overall performance of the smelter network. The extraordinary successful performance in Pirdop is particularly worth to mention here, with more than 400 days of production without any interruption, without any standstill. Regarding recycling, including our smelters in Beerse and Berango, we were again able to process over 1 million tons of recycling input materials with attractive refining charges.
Cathode output was mainly in line with the previous year, running at full capacity. Based on very good demand for our copper products, we see high production figures with wire rod, shapes, and flat rolled products. Specifically, flat rolled products has to be taken into account the sale of the plant in Zutphen and the service center, and also the renovation of our plant in Stolberg after the flooding event in July 2011. sulfuric acid production was again in line with the concentrate throughput at a high level and also, therefore, above last year's figure. Going now to the market conditions, 2021-2022. The copper price showed volatile developments during the reporting period.
Until Q3, it ranged between the level of $9,000 and $10,000 U.S dollars per ton, hitting at about $11,200 US dollars per ton, before then declining and closing at a level close to $7,700 U.S dollars at the end of the fiscal year. Looking at the different markets now, we saw a sufficient supply in quantity and quality of concentrates, with rising TCRCs towards the end of the fiscal year. Underpinned by significant greenfield and brownfield projects, the concentrate offer is anticipated to grow by 3.7% in 2022, with further significant increase in the next calendar year, according to Wood Mackenzie and our own research.
The anticipation of a better-supplied concentrate market in the next calendar year is also reflected in the newly set benchmark TC/RCs of $88 per ton and 0.088 per pound for framework contracts in the next calendar year. This represents a 35% increase compared to the benchmark of the current calendar year. As you know, our policy is long-term supply, long-term contracts. We are already well supplied with concentrates into Q2 2022/2023, and we maintain our long-term supply strategy with long-term annual or even longer-term contracts. A short look at the recycling markets. Over the course of the fiscal year 2021/2022, we have seen sufficient availability of scrap material on the global sourcing markets, with satisfying RCs during the reporting period. On a lower level compared to the year before, where we had some extraordinary price effects and RCs, specifically on Scrap No. two.
CRU estimates an average RC of about EUR 300 per ton during the fiscal year 2021/2022 for Scrap No. two without logistic costs. This compares to EUR 522 in the year before. This underpins how significant the numbers were in the year before. The RCs for complex recycling material were yet again more stable and less volatile during the fiscal year. Looking forward, our production sites are already supplied with material beyond the first quarter of the current fiscal year. Some statements regarding sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid markets were tight, with very high price levels well into Q3 of the last fiscal year.
Driven by subdued demand, both from the European chemical and also fertilizer industry, caused to the high energy prices and specifically natural gas prices, we saw a reduction in demand and also a drop in asset prices towards the end of the fiscal year. This resulted in a different significant earnings contribution by a reduced contribution towards the end of the quarter of the last fiscal year. The current market situation is that we expect lower earnings contribution from asset sales in the current fiscal year. You have to keep in mind that we have long-term contracts in place, and some of the markets are very short term from the pricing, and we see some more stabilization, but also Rainer will talk about the market outlook in more detail later.
Regarding ACP, our Aurubis copper premium for calendar year 2022, this number was set at $123 per ton. Reflecting the strong demand in Europe and also some cost increases, we have announced our ACP for the coming calendar year 2023 to a level of $228 per ton. We see that this is reflected and accepted in the market by our client base, reflecting the strong demand that we see. U.S dollar, we have a long position of about $500 million in the fiscal year 2022/2023. In line with our hedging strategy, we have hedged 70% at a rate of 1.133 for the current fiscal year and around 35% at a rate of 1.082 for the fiscal year 2023/2024 already.
With this, I would like to hand over to Rainer, who will go more into the financial details.
Thanks, Roland, good afternoon, everybody. Let's have a look at our key financial figures for the year 2021/2022. Our revenues increased significantly by 14%, driven by the higher metal prices, of course, that we saw throughout the year, as well as the higher sales of our copper products to EUR 18.5 billion. The gross profit increased accordingly to 13% in line with these higher revenues and the very strong market conditions, but as well also a good operational performance. We'll get to the details when we talk about our segments here. Despite significantly higher costs, we managed a 40% increase in our operating EBT overall compared to last year, resulting in the best annual result in the company history so far. Last not least, with an ROCE of 19%, we strongly exceeded our ROCE target of 15%.
At this point, I'd like to mention the adjustment of our operating EBT definition in comparison to last fiscal year. In order to better reflect the operating earnings situation of the Aurubis Group, independent of valuation effects that derive from the IFRS accounting standards, we adjusted the operating EBT definition by also eliminating the unrealized reporting date-related effects of market valuation of the energy derivatives. We took out mark-to-market valuations of the energy derivatives, and in the last years, we only took out the metal derivatives so far. That is new. The energy derivatives are included now because we had high volatility, and you saw that in the annex to our annual report that we had otherwise quite extreme positive results from those derivatives.
Going to the next page, and having a look at our gross margin split, you will see that the gross margin split in 2021/2022 shows the well-balanced different earnings pillars of the Aurubis business model. They are pretty much comparable to the last year. Driven by higher metal gains arising from increased prices for metals, metal gains made up the most significant component of the gross margin, with 38%. Premiums and products also contributed very significantly, driven by higher sulfuric acid prices, as well as increased sales of copper products. Year-over-year, the contribution from treatment and refining charges, both from concentrates and Scrap No. two, were subdued, especially due to the reduced scrap RCs compared to last year.
If we now go to the cost situation of the Aurubis Group, in our first month figures, we see the general cost increase for all five expense groups here shown with 1.9 billion. Energy costs are the biggest contributor to the Aurubis Group-wide cost increase year-over-year. The overall picture of our 12 months figures show that the cost split remains rather stable versus last year. However, energy shows the biggest increase in cost, with an increase of 65% from 207 million- 342 million in this fiscal year. Personnel costs were rather stable at just an increase of 3%. Here, the, let's say, result of our performance improvement program helped to stabilize this cost.
Consumables, like chemicals and packaging materials, have also shown an increase, mainly due to the higher production volumes, more transportation, more packaging, but also a steep increase in prices for certain input materials, such as chemicals. If we now look to the energy price developments, we have, let's say, broadly discussed those already in the course of the last fiscal year, we saw a significant energy increase of 65% or EUR 135 million year-over-year for the Aurubis Group. This was mainly driven by the restricted natural gas deliveries caused by the Ukrainian War. Just as a reminder, the figures displayed here show the energy costs less any deductions from indirect CO2 electricity compensations, as well as state refunds provided to our sites, for example, in Bulgaria.
We show the net costs of energy for the Aurubis Group here. Looking forward, we'll continue to work on the further electrification of our production processes and invest in decarbonizing our production. We'll get to more on this when we come to the projects later on. One thing is for sure, secure supply of energy at reasonable prices remain the most, if not, Well, I would say the most relevant topics for the Aurubis Group in general. Looking now to the key performance indicators, we see a continuing solid and robust picture. An equity ratio of 54%, a negative debt coverage ratio, and a net cash flow of EUR 288 million mirror the excellent results from the last fiscal year. The very good earning situation also allowed us to further reduce our financial debt.
Compared to last year, we have to say, the net cash flow is clearly reduced due to the buildup of inventories of the raw materials and intermediates, as already explained by Roland earlier, due to the extended maintenance shutdown in our Hamburg plant. Again, these fluctuations will balance out throughout this current fiscal year. This good financial position provides the basis for continuing on our strategic growth path. Let's have a look at our balance sheet. On the asset side, inventories increased in connection with the buildup of inventories, due to the standstill in Hamburg, already explained, at continued high average metal prices, which have been already mentioned earlier. The trade receivables increased due to stronger sale of copper products.
The reduced cash position, minus 259 million, is mainly due to the early repayment of our financial debt, of our promissory notes, in the amount of EUR 256 million. Even though the balance sheet has grown by some 4 50 million year-over-year, the equity ratio increased to an incredible 54%. The main reasons for the strong reduction in provisions is the increase in interest rates, especially for discounting our pension liabilities. The other liabilities increased mainly due to further trade payables in connection with the inventory buildup already explained from our Hamburg plant. Let's have a look at the segments. As most of the earnings drivers have already been explained, I will be brief on highlighting some key figures here at the Multimetal Recycling segment.
All in all, the throughput levels and cathode production have been on comparable levels to last year. At 205 million, the operating EBT was lower. However, 51 million, if I'm not mistaken, below the previous year's figures. On the positive side, MMR benefited from high metal gains based on high metal prices and higher refining charges for other recycling materials, for instance, shredder material. However, significantly lower scrap RCs for Scrap No. two, combined with a steeply increased energy costs for both electricity and natural gas, had a negative effect year-over-year on the segment results. Due to the outlook on Scrap No. two and the constantly high energy prices, we booked an impairment of EUR 26 million in the MMR segment on goodwill and intangible assets by the end of Q4 last year.
As a result, we show a reduced EBT, but continue with an ROCE of 25.7%, which is still considerably above our target of 15%. In the CSP segment, the operating EBT more than doubles to EUR 390 million compared to last year. The segment benefited significantly from higher sulfuric acid prices or revenues, due to, let's say, prices but also sales volume, increased metal gains, and a very strong demand for copper products throughout the year 2021, 2022. These beneficial market conditions, combined with a good operating performance, especially in our primary smelter in Pirdop, with concentrate throughput considerably above the prior year. The segment also faced significant headwinds from higher energy costs and increased prices for consumables. We managed, however, to pass on those costs to a good extent to our customers.
On the product side, raw demand was extremely stable, already mentioned by Roland, at high level over the entire year. Shapes production rose significantly by almost 20% compared to the previous year. The volume on the flat rolled side was negatively influenced as a consequence still of the flood event that we had in Stolberg last year. The volumes for Zutphen, for the Zutphen plant were only included until the end of July this year. Return on capital employed, ROCE, reached 18.7% compared to 11.2% in the last year. The very good result made up for the increased capital employed. Coming to the dividend. Already announced yesterday and in line with the investment package for the growth project, Aurubis will suspend its current dividend policy until further notice.
Nevertheless, we will propose the highest dividend in the company's history at the annual general meeting and will continue to allow our shareholders to participate appropriately in the company's success in the future. Therefore, the Executive and Supervising Board are recommending a dividend of 1.80 per share. This would correspond to a dividend yield of 3.3% based on the share price of almost EUR 54 as of September 30th, 2021. This corresponds to a dividend payout ratio of around 18% of the Group's operating results. In the coming years, we will consider the results achieved, the investments needed, and the legitimate interests of our shareholders when determining the dividend payout. Coming to the outlook for the markets for the current fiscal year.
The concentrate market remains on a growth track from both the supply and demand side, with the additional supply outpacing smelter demand in calendar year 2022 and 2023, according to CRU and WoodMac's latest projections. With a new benchmark set at 88 per ton and 0.088 per pound, an increase of 35%, we see increasing earnings for the upcoming or current fiscal year. Based on our expected stock levels, Aurubis is already well supplied into Q2 of the fiscal year 2022, 2023. For the market of copper scrap, we anticipate stable supply with RCs on a good level well into the first quarter. For the scrap market, the short-term market defines spot prices, which are dependent on the collection rates on the one side and on metal prices on the other. Therefore, the predictability is rather difficult.
The availability of complex recycling materials, however, like shredder, for instance, or PCBs and residuals as the patches, is expected to stay at a stable level. We foresee RCs for those materials as correspondingly stable. The market is less volatile due to its longer-term nature. Our production plants are supplied with recycling materials of those types beyond Q1 of 2022 and 2023. On the sulfuric acid, the ICIS and CRU both expect reduced demand from the European fertilizer and chemical industry due to the high energy costs. We see that already currently happening. Given the latest expectations of prices, we foresee a clearly reduced earnings contribution from assets for the current fiscal year.
The Aurubis copper premium for the calendar year 2023 has been set at $228, well above the previous year level, from which we expect positive earnings contributions, or we can clearly calculate them. Coming to our copper products, rod, shapes, and the flat roll business. We foresee a stable demand trend and expect this to continue during the coming fiscal year 2022, 2023. Product demand for rod, shapes, and flat roll products is still expected at high levels for the foreseeable future, even though we currently see a small dent due to the, let's say, approaching Christmas period. Coming to the cyberattack, a rather special event, I would say, something not really needed. After the closing of our fiscal year 2021, 2022, Aurubis was the victim of a cyberattack on October the 28th.
We informed the capital markets, and you already, of this via an ad hoc message. For security reasons, all relevant systems had to be disconnected from the Internet for an in-depth analysis of the implications of that attack. The following days showed that, first of all, Aurubis has a very resilient IT infrastructure and landscape. The important message, we were able to maintain production at all smelter sites during the whole effect. With the reliable crisis management of the Aurubis Group, within a couple of days, communication systems were back up and running, and communication with clients, customers, external and internal stakeholders was functioning again. Extraordinary effects from all our employees, and we thank everybody for that, and of course, the external service providers.
Aurubis was able to restore all IT systems inside a very short time frame, again, proved its resilience to the various crisis that came up in fiscal year 2021, 2022. Again, the financial loss is rather a low one for Aurubis on that end. Coming to the financial guidance, based on our latest assumptions for both the earnings drivers and the cost components, Aurubis provides the forecast for the group result and continues to expect a very good operating EBT between 400 million-EUR 500 million for the current fiscal year and an operating ROCE between 11%-15%. Yeah, 15%. For Multimetal Recycling segment, we expect an operating EBIT between EUR 100 million-EUR 160 million and an ROCE between 11%-15%.
For the Custom Smelting & Products segment, we expect an operating EBIT in the range of350 million-EUR 410 million, and an ROCE of 15%-19%. That's all for the figures. Now I hand back to Roland.
Thanks, Rainer. Let's talk about our strategy. Exactly one year ago, we had our capital market day, and I can really say today, we are in full swing of execution. Our strategy is a precise and defined plan for sustainable growth based on three pillars: secure and strengthen the core business, pursue growth opportunities, and industry leadership in sustainability. First, let's be clear on our core business. It includes primary smelting, our multi-metal processing, and specifically, our precious metal re-recovery and, of course, recycling. It also covers our cathodes and wire rod business and the co-products such as sulfuric acid and iron silicate. In the middle, you can see that we will be strengthening our business. Here, we have defined and are currently executing specific projects. These projects will make us stronger. The next pillar is about growth.
I think we can be very happy about one key finding in our strategic process. Our markets, our suppliers, and our customers need Aurubis to grow. We can even go one step further. For a sustainable future, the economy and society need us to grow, including recycling quotas. The push for closing recycling loops, the target to reduce CO2 emissions, therefore transport and export distance and volumes. All this means that more capacities are needed to treat more and more complex recycling materials. We can use these growth opportunities. We can invest in these capacities. We have the financial means, and the experience, and the technology, and this is our core business. Our third big strategic pillar is sustainability. It's core of our reason for existence. It's our purpose. We work sustainably, and our products and services support sustainability.
We have defined clear and ambitious targets to measure our sustainability progress. Our most important growth project in the fast-growing market for recycled materials is our new recycling site in Georgia in the US. Yesterday, we have seen the announcement, our supervisory board approved the investment for the 2nd module. Due to the very good market outlook, we decided to accelerate this investment. You will remember that we broke ground for the 1st module in June of this calendar year. Our project continues to progress. Over the course of the year, additional contracts for the construction of the plant were completed. Pending regulatory approvals have been granted. We have started with recruitment.
Due to the high proportion of copy-paste from RM1, just reflecting on our modular concept of extending our recycling capacity, the engineering effort for RM2 is significantly lower. Many plant areas are sufficiently dimensioned even after the expansion. Example, slag treatment casting plant to cope with the expansion from the second module. The additional space required for the expansion is small and covered by existing property. The media supply for the expansion is also sufficient and is already planned within our bound direction. The expansion is integrated in the optimized material flow on the entire site, and the extension was already considered in the original environmental permit. We decided that the time for the second module is now. U.S. recycling market is continuing to grow, and this offers a sound investment case.
The recycling boom in the US is leading to good availability of relevant recycling materials, and we've seen increase in the importance of sustainability in the USA as well. There is an increase of local recycling markets due to a decline of copper scrap exports to Asia. Supply of relevant recycling materials, PCB, ICW and metal shredder, growing at 5%-6% per annum through 2030 in North America. Rising collection rates, falling exports, and industry growth are key growth drivers and supply the underlying basis for our investment case. Combined with low, attractive energy prices and good, stable availability, this results in a highly attractive and profitable investment. With the second module, we will double our smelting capacity with recycling input materials and our end product, blister copper.
We will build 2 more TBRCs and 1 additional lead tin alloy furnace in the plant in Richmond. 4 top-blown rotary converters and 2 lead tin alloy furnace will be there in operation in total. The current property and infrastructure are already being prepared, and we should not forget that there is still plenty of room on the site for even further expansion. On the next slide, you see the ambitious project timeline with module number 1 starting in 2024 and now planned module number two starting in 2026. This well underlines our ambition on this greenfield expansion plant to pursue the growth opportunities in this very attractive recycling market in U.S. Summary slide. Total investment in U.S. sums now up 640 million.
On top of the Module two expansion, we're also taking into account a capital expenditure adjustment for additional infrastructure on the site requirement, also preparing the site for the future and also taking the inflation and cost increases that we see in the U.S. now into account of EUR 90 million for Module one. In total, this . 640 million investment will generate an EBITDA of EUR 170 million and will generate around 200 new jobs in the region. Cost items like construction has become the main cost item of Aurubis Richmond. Full order books of construction companies led also to this rising prices and the expected cost increases, especially with respect to electrical equipment, steel, structure and concrete, will be closely monitored and are now included in our business case.
With this significant project that we are doing in U.S., I would like to hand over to Heiko Arnold, who will talk about the other very important investment projects that we have decided now for Europe.
Thanks, Roland, and warm welcome also from my side to this call. I'm happy to present another very profitable project under the pillar Secure and Strengthen the Core Business. The CRH project, which stands for Complex Recycling Hamburg, is a further investment in our site here in Hamburg. CRH is a process developed in-house to increase metallurgical capabilities within the Aurubis metal network. The new facility at our site will treat both internal and external intermediate and recycled materials with additional treatment and refining charges and metal recoveries. It will further optimize the utilization rates of existing facilities and enhance the flexibility of input materials for our smelters. CRH will further enhance independence from third parties and allows increased output of precious metals with a shortened process run time. Let's have a closer look at some project details.
The CRH project is another important project for the further internalization of values from metal flows. Aurubis will invest EUR 150 million for the new state-of-the-art facility at our Hamburg site. This facility includes the construction of a new top-blown rotary converter, or TBRC for short, as well as a process gas cleaning system to ensure that we adhere to the most stringent emission standards. CRH will process roughly 32,000 tons of TCRC-bearing material, external input material, whilst also processing internal complex intermediates and recycled materials to process and extract more valuable metals. With this process, Aurubis is further closing the loop of value chains and extracting metals in the most sustainable way. Following the construction and the ramp-up phase of the facility in Q4, 2025, we expect very positive earnings contribution of approximately 40 million EBITDA per annum, once in full production.
Let's move sides to our other primary smelter site in Pirdop where we continue our path towards decarbonization of Aurubis. On top of our strategic investment for growth in recycling and securing and strengthening the core business, we also have new projects under the pillar industry leadership and sustainability. With the construction of two additional solar parks, Aurubis is taking the next step towards sustainable multi-metal production. Aurubis Bulgaria will consequently work towards a greener electricity mix and meeting the site's energy goal to cover 20% of the energy needs of own renewable energy production by 2030. Let's here again have a closer look on the details. Aurubis will invest an additional EUR 12 million into the further expansion of the solar park on our site in Bulgaria.
With what we have learned from the first PV plant in Bulgaria, we will be able to generate very good recovery rates for the solar panels. After one year of green electricity production, we can announce that the PV one plant has exceeded our anticipation of 11,000 megawatt-hours production, and was able to generate 13,500 megawatt-hours per annum of green electricity for our site in Pirdop. With the additional solar projects now planned, Aurubis will be able to reduce the smelter's external electricity consumption by around about 30,000 megawatt-hours annually. We will not stop there. We aim to invest an additional 8 million for additional expansions that are already in planning. With the additional 8 million of CapEx, the modules, so the solar panels, are already being purchased.
These projects will result in CO2 savings of 34,000 tons per annum compared to a coal-fired power generation, and directly contributes to our CO2 reduction targets. I now hand over back to Roland Harings.
Okay. Thanks, Heiko. Aurubis has a strong track record in sustainability, and we are proud of extending our leadership in the sustainable production of copper. Our leading position in environmental protection today arises from early investments into our production plants, with projects investing in, first, measures for energy efficiency, and second, increasing the recycling input and industrial heat recovery. These investments form the foundation for Aurubis' very low carbon footprint. We produce copper with less than half the global average, and we will continuously work on initiatives for a significant further reduction.
From the last update, which we shared with you, 2019, we were able to yet again reduce the carbon footprint of our life cycle assessment down to just 1,460 kilograms of CO2 per ton of copper produced, compared to the global average of 3,833 kilograms of CO2 per ton of copper. We are proud of this achievement, and we will strive for further reduction in the future. Last but not least, we need enablers to successfully implement strategies in the company. In the Fusion project, which involves the migration of all major Aurubis sites to a uniform SAP S/4HANA system and the standardization of business processes, our goal and aspiration is to create synergies across locations and departments. The investment volume of about 60 million is noteworthy.
We will initiate numerous changes in the company that will affect almost every department. The goal is to design seamless interlocking processes across all departments and locations to reduce repetitive tasks and manual data entry. This will make our processes, such as material and financial flows, faster, more transparent, and less prone to errors. When implementing strategic projects, these enablers should not be forgotten because they create room for the actual strategic tasks. Now, coming to the last slide, putting it all together, we have updated our financial guidance with all the projects now approved by the executive and supervisory board. Correspondingly, we have updated the financial guidance into three pillars. The first short-term pillar includes all approved investment and projects. The second pillar includes all the projects included in our midterm planning, but which have not yet been approved as projects or investments.
The third pillar includes all projects derived from the long-term perspective until the end of this decade. In total, we decided on a growth CapEx budget of roughly EUR 1.0 million, with an EBITDA contribution of 230 million. Not included in our medium-term planning are additional modular recycling projects enrichment and also projects in the battery recycling that we are working on, but which are not decided and not yet in the plan.
Our strategic growth area does not stop here. The project pipeline continues until the end of this decade. With these CapEx decisions are for our further growth, we have decided to adopt a more flexible dividend policy. In line with our strategy, we will develop Aurubis into a clear growth stock. With that said, we thank you very much for your attention, and I would like to hand back to Angela.
Yeah. Thank you very much, gentlemen, Roland, Rainer, and Heiko. We are now ready for answering your questions and happy to receive them.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, press nine and the star key again. The first question comes from Horst Braunheiser. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, and thanks for taking the question. I have a few questions on CapEx and cash generation. Can you give us a guidance on what you expect in terms of CapEx this year, and can you break that up between your normal CapEx envelope and what you specifically aim for growth investments? In this context, can you also give us kind of a rough idea based on the project you outlined today when you see the peak in the gross CapEx occurring as of now?
Hello. Thanks for the question, Mr. Horst Braunheiser. Rainer Verhoeven here. We expect some 600 million- 700 million of CapEx in the year 2022, 2023. For when will it be peaking? I would say pretty much in the year thereafter. That is currently the goal. We will be to the highest, I think, to 800 million, something like that in the year thereafter, which is 2023, 2024. That should be the peak year as of today. Please bear in mind, as Roland Harings mentioned earlier in his presentation, we are talking on the current midterm planning. We are talking about the projects that are included on the last page in the left column and in the middle column.
We are not including further strategic growth projects, which might come and might be decided at a later point in time, which also will then change, of course, the guidance on our CapEx. Exactly. That was the slide with the growth strategy where we showed the CapEx, no? That's what I was referring to.
Okay. Can you share some light on your expectations regarding free cash flow, based on the EBITDA, the guidance you have given for EBT of 400 million- 500 million? Are you expecting to be free cash flow positive under that circumstances? Regarding the dividend payment, would you be willing to pay a dividend if needed from the substance rather than from free cash flow?
Free cash flow for sure negative. With this, with this CapEx figures, I mean, it's clear, even with the, with the EBT guidance of 400-500, you know that our, yes, our depreciation is increasing, which also means that our EBITDA is increasing. Still, I mean, by this investment over the next two-three years, we will look at negative free cash flows overall. That's clear. Nonetheless, on the dividend, as mentioned earlier, we will consider and reconsider every year, how the situation is, and our shareholders will participate in the profitability of our company, also in the running business. Because why do we have a negative free cash flow? Not because of bad running business, but because of the high investments.
We will look at our EBT figures year after year and decide based on that, what will be the dividend payout to our shareholders. We will of course also, even with negative free cash flows, tend to pay a dividend to our shareholders.
Okay. Understood. Probably in that context, probably just, can you maybe say or share what you think about your share buyback policy and what you're doing with the existing treasury shares you have in your books?
Yeah. I think just repeat the position that we have also stated in the past. We have acquired these shares, and we take them either for finance purpose or M&A activities, and that's how we are standing today. There is no change of this policy.
Okay. Good. The last point is on the battery recycling project. Can you give us an update where you stand here? Is the starting point for that project changing with the acceleration in the U.S., and have you already thought about where to build such a battery plant? Is this more a story for the U.S. or you still think it's more on the home turf?
Specifically, so you're asking regarding battery recycling, right? Not the recycling.
Yeah. The EV batteries. Yeah.
Battery. Yeah. We have started our recycling pilot plant for battery for the so-called black mass in March this year. We have achieved very, very encouraging positive results of recovery of all the precious materials in this black mass. Now we are in intensive discussion with all market participants, and you know, we all know that this is a very, let's say, a market which is still going to be established. Clear is also battery volumes for recycling. Significant recycling volumes will only be available in the market towards the end of this decade. We are not in a rush to build up significant capacities, and we have also therefore not decided where we are going to put the investment in the first place. Clearly, we are open. Europe is a very attractive region.
S-U-S is a very attractive region, we are not ruling out or not focusing on any region at this point in time.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Sylvain Brunet. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, gentlemen, and thank you for the presentation. The first question, maybe just to put things into a context, wanted to get a bit more color behind what was the trigger in your, in your understanding and the reason behind the decision to accelerate so much investments in a relatively short period of time. At the time, the macro outlook is not exactly the most reassuring compared to the last few years where we were used to a version of Aurubis that was living within its means and making sure shareholders would benefit from a return on their investments through the cycle. Is my first question. Why this acceleration at this point in time? My second question on the build-up of inventory at Hamburg.
If you could help us quantify that number. If you look at the year-on-year difference in balance sheet, that looks like a EUR four hundred million impact, but not all of that would have been Hamburg alone. If you could help us strip out that effect, please. Thank you.
No, happy to answer your, specifically your first question. Clearly, we are in a growth mode. We have announced with our capital market day last year that we see significant opportunities in these three pillars. As I mentioned, strengthening and securing the core, building up growth opportunities in the recycling markets, then on the area of sustainability to further decarbonize our production. Having said this, we see even more attractive market conditions in regions like U.S. than we have seen them in the year before. With our announcement and the execution of the project, the feedback from the market, from our business partners and suppliers has been extremely positive, and it really led to our decision to accelerate the next module of our recycling expansion in U.S.
That's also the strength and beauty of our strategy, that we have modules that we are able to accelerate and add capacity without doing all the engineering and all the work again, but that we can really take additional capacity into the market faster than if you would do this on a traditional greenfield, complete new investment. If, find, and perhaps also your question regarding shareholders. Just to remind, we are proposing to the general assembly the highest dividend ever with EUR 1.8 per share. I think this is more than a strong participation of our shareholders to the successful growth of the company. We will also continue to do so and give them a fair, good participation in our success.
We are not, let's say, see ourselves kind of locked in this 25% rule, because investing in Aurubis, investing in our growth agenda is, from our perspective, an extremely good value proposition for our shareholders.
Got you.
Lutz, I would give you for a second.
Thanks. Thanks. There was a question on the inventory build-up. Let me try to answer it in a bit different way. We had a net cash flow of 228 million this year, if I'm not mistaken, and we have 800 million, something like that, in the last year. There is a huge swing, and I need to start with the last year because there's quite a tsunami swapping into this year. In the last year, end of last year, we had the standstill in our Pirdop smelter, where we emptied pretty much the tank house. Our electrolysis plant was running pretty empty. With that, the net working capital was, let's say artificially reduced. It built up. In addition to that, we had prolonged standstill in our Hamburg smelter. We had sufficient everything as we normally would.
led to the fact that we had a strong build-up towards the end of the year of our net working capital . Please bear in mind that also with that the precious metal cannot be digested in our system and so forth. That is a consequence. If you ask me about real figures, how much is it? You can easily count some 400 million inventory build-up. As you can see, year over year, we had an increase in inventories of 432 million. That is in principle the effect. Breaking it down to what is now intermediate products, what is the different types of metals. I think that doesn't, that doesn't make sense at this point.
Just one follow-up maybe on cost. If you could help us understand, what carryover cost inflation should we expect, more so in, say, the first half of the year, given you guys have already covered the first quarter of your current fiscal year? What sort of remaining inflation trends across your, let's say, controllable costs, including or excluding energy, are we looking at the moment, please? Thanks.
Yeah. Let's say, first of all, as said earlier, I mean, energy remains an important topic. On the other side, you can see that, even though energy is an important factor for our costs, all in all, the increase on the energy side is rather, I would say harmless because we are pretty much hedged. What does pretty much hedged mean? We in the group are consuming some two terawatt hours of electric energy per year. one terawatt hour we consume in our German plants. This 1 terawatt hour is based on a pricing formula which includes a fixed component, it includes a CO2 component, and it includes a coal component.
It does not include any gas nor EEX prices, which means year-over-year we have seen an increase, but it's a complete different level than the EEX prices that we are currently seeing. For the German one terawatt hour, we are pretty fixed. Let's take the foreign terawatt hour on electricity. On the foreign terawatt hour, rather half of it is consumed in Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, we have seen a cap at BGN 250 until the end of December 2022. The full calendar year 2022, more or less. Just recently, it has been announced that the Bulgarian government has decided to lower that cap even to BGN 200.
All in all, including distribution fees, I'm not 100% sure now, we are looking at energy prices of EUR 114 per MWh. Yes, expensive compared to before the prices, but nothing in comparison to the EEX prices that we've seen. The other half is pretty much Belgium. There we have two plants. One is fully hedged at absolutely reasonable prices. The other one is not hedged at all. Overall, we can say on the electricity, we have no issue. On the natural gas side, we have some hedges available still, at a low level, we have to admit. We are switching pretty much in the beginning of next calendar year, 40% of our total natural gas consumption to alternative energy sources. We have talked about that.
It's LPG, it's fuel oils. We will change the smelters here in Germany. That also, besides the fact that we get security for those plants, we also get better prices on those alternative fuels. The energy topic is a topic for Aurubis and will remain so. Nonetheless, we are pretty safe on that end. On the others, I would say on the consumables, we have seen steep increases. If we look to caustic soda to whatever chemical you want to take, we have seen increases two digit, even up to three digit, or even doubling the prices. I would say that especially those chemicals are driven by the energy prices as well.
As we see the energy markets coming further down now, or let's say calming down, I would say we have seen the worst in the chemicals market as well. We don't expect further big increases on the consumables side, which is then the next major impact factor on the costs. Of course, you have personnel expenses. They are a big cost factor for Aurubis. Here for sure, we will see inflationary tendencies also coming up. We are looking to the normal inflationary tendencies that we have, let's say, all over the place, highest in Bulgaria. That is, I would say, that is a summary, hopefully, to your question.
That's Rainer, this is also known and taken into account with our prognosis of the range of EUR 400-500 because there are no unknowns in these cost positions going forward.
Mm-hmm.
Again, to underpin what Rainer said, on the energy side, compared to other energy-intensive industries and industry players, we have a very stable and predictable situation there. It's higher, but still, let's say, prices which will allow us to continue our production without any restriction.
Great. Thank you. Thanks so much. That's helpful.
The next question comes from Ioannis Masvoulas. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, we do.
Perfect. Perfect. Thanks very much for the presentation. A few questions from my side. The first, again, going back to CapEx, you have several growth projects in the pipeline. You did mention EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million for fiscal year 2023. I just wanted to figure out what's the sustaining component of CapEx that you're looking to incur in fiscal year 2023, and by how much the sustaining CapEx rise once you have all those projects, fully up and running. I'm talking about the ones you have announced as part of the, EUR 1 billion total CapEx.
The numbers we shared with you today in the call, these are all growth projects. We have not talked about our sustaining CapEx. The magnitude of sustaining CapEx just being looked up. To give you an idea, for example, in Pirdop, a major standstill is about EUR 40 million of CapEx. I think the exact number will be around 200 million on top of our growth CapEx that we have announced there. If you look at the total numbers, if you just the growth strategy chart where we have these three pillars on the short-term, medium term, and long term.
If you add the short term and the medium term, again, in the first column with $1 billion is decided and in execution will deliver 230 million EBITDA bottom line. In the medium term, we have around 400 million plans with a result of about 100 million. These are in our midterm planning included, but yet not decided. We are working on this. If you add in the midterm plan, these two buckets together, we are talking about EUR 1.4 billion of investment delivering 330 million bottom line. That's our growth agenda in the framework of the MTP.
In addition, there was the question from Johannes also, how does the level of the sustaining CapEx move after all the strategic projects have been implemented? I can only answer with a typical bathtub curve. Once you have invested, you will have a couple of years where the reinvestment in those new, completely new plants will be rather low, and then the investment starts kicking in. We did not calculate these figures yet for sustaining CapEx in, let's say, it will be 2030 and further years.
Okay. Thank you. Second question again on CapEx. In the past few quarters, you talked about your extensive de-risking steps at the Richmond project that would allow you to keep costs in check. In this context, can you talk about this 90 million CapEx increase? What aspects of the project were exposed to inflation? Because my impression was that you had locked in all the major inputs. How much of this 90 million is attributed to some additional infrastructure requirements that you alluded to earlier in the call?
Yeah, sure. That's to distinguish here what we have stated. We have locked in and have signed contracts with SMS regarding the supply of the equipment. This is the fact, and that's also a contract with a fixed price. The execution, the construction side in U.S. has turned to be a much more dynamic market than we anticipated at the time. There are a couple of factors. First of all, it's a different market environment, so certain cost position have increased other to our assumptions at the time. We have also decided to enlarge the scope of the project because we are preparing the infrastructure.
I think I mentioned this shortly in my short presentation here that we are building now this pipe and the infrastructure for the growth in RM2, but also some investments anticipating further potential steps in U.S. For give you one idea, the craning of the site. What is the total plot of land? We have decided that we do this once without knowing when and if we are going to do further expansion programs. However, we said this is money well invested because we do it once in one big go. We have this inflation side, which we have also taken into account.
In a project of 300 million investment in this inflationary and very dynamic environment in U.S., I state we have done well by containing and keeping this project still within this reasonable cost increase that we have seen and announced yesterday.
That's clear. Thanks very much. Switching to the fiscal 2023 outlook. The EBITDA guidance of 400 million-EUR 500 million appears fairly robust in a historical context for the group. Yet if we look at the return on capital employed pre-tax that you're guiding for, this 11%-15%, If I take the midpoint, that would be actually below your stated target to be above 15%, right? I guess part of it would be explained by the higher working capital that you already talked about. But how much do you think you can actually release as you are now building new processing capacities that would probably also look in some materials throughout the production chain?
Ultimately, is there any part of the group from today's point of view which may be under earning in fiscal year 23 relative to history?
Looking to the questions, first of all, robust earnings. Yes, true. As announced by us in our speech, there is quite some earnings component if we look at the top line, which has been fixed already. The ACP is fixed for TC/RCs for concentrate are fixed. We have already locked in quite a lot of contracts for our wire rod and shapes business for the current running fiscal year. The unknowns are, as always, the sulfuric acid and the scrap RCs for Scrap No. two, mainly. The rest is pretty much foreseeable right now. Cost components, I have explained already on the energy side. Couple of other cost components, also they're not yet fully fixed, but I would say pretty much clear.
Therefore, yes, the EBT guidance, 400 million- 500 million, robust figure, and we are pretty convinced that we can deliver on that figure. Why is the ROCE now a bit subdued, if you wanna say so? For sure. I mean, we are investing something like 600 million plus into our plants on an annual basis, which clearly exceeds the depreciation, which is a bit above 200 million currently in our company. Therefore, we have an increase in capital employed, and we would especially see that of course in the MMR segment, due to the fact that Richmond will count into the MMR segment. For a couple of years, we will not achieve our 15% on the MMR segment, crystal clear, due to the investments.
Okay. Just to clarify on the methodology, what sort of capital employed data are you using for this target? Is it end of the fiscal year 23 or end of year, fiscal year 22?
No, we always use the capital employed of the end of the fiscal year. Which means if we calculate for the 30th of September 2022, we look at the balance sheet and capital employed in the balance sheet of 2022, and we take on the EBIT side, the last four quarters, which then is the total fiscal year 2021, 2022, from 1st October 2021 until 30th of September 2022.
Very clear. Very clear. Thanks for that. Just a last question from me on going back to the energy costs. There are several moving parts, and you already talked about the electricity and gas components of your energy cost base. If we were to look at your exit rate in the last quarter you just reported, right? If I look at the energy cost, you had around 110 million for the quarter. I annualize it to around 440 million-EUR 450 million. Is that a reasonable base for fiscal year 2023? Shall we expect to see a further increase in energy costs year-over-year? Based on your, I guess, guidance that you have guided for based on the guidance range.
We would say roughly some 400, 420 million is something that you could calculate with on a full year basis.
Sorry, you broke up a bit. You said 400-450,
400 million- 420 million.
I see. Great. That's very clear. Thanks so much.
The next question comes from Maxime Cogge. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon. Yeah. Considering the fact that you will be spending a lot of CapEx over the next few years, that you will be free cash flow negative, yes. Would you rule out any M&A in that context? Because I understand you're very much focused on organic growth. And related to that, are you envisaging to set up a net leverage target, something like that to so that, I mean, the financial community has a better grasp of your financial policy? Thanks.
Regarding the first part of the question, which I will take, Rainer will answer the second. M&A is not excluded, definitely not. It's part of our continued search to find some M&A targets. As we have stated in calls, this excellent target that we have acquired with Metallo, there are unfortunately no more Metallos, at least to our knowledge in the world. If so, we would go after. We are permanently looking into additional adjacent business opportunity in our multi-metal arena. Clear answer, M&A is not excluded with our growth agenda and the organic growth that we are pursuing.
The second part, Rainer will take.
Yeah. Hello, Maxime. You were asking on a net leverage target. The target that we have, of course, is to keep an equity ratio above 40%. That is due to the fact that we need to have a solid balance sheet because we need to be the bankable
For the concentrate suppliers, which use typically our long term contracts, to get the loans at their banks. That is typical, that they quite well received with the banks, so therefore the 40% equity ratio stays in place.
Okay. That's 40% out of the total balance sheet of equity ratio?
Absolutely. Yeah. 40% equity versus the total balance sheet. Yes.
Okay. Okay. Regarding the newly announced CRH project, I thought it looked a lot like, I mean, the former FCM project, I mean, that was shelved in 2019. Can you perhaps guide us through how it differs from the former project, and what lessons maybe you have learned from the failure of the FCM project, I mean, in considering, I mean, this new large-scale one?
This is Heiko Arnold speaking. Regarding your question and whether the CRH project looks like the FCM, clearly it is not. The CRH project is the value tapping into a portfolio of TCRC-bearing materials in the copper lead area, which we want to expand. The FCM project was much bigger and included a lot more projects.
Okay. Okay. Just finally, regarding the battery project, when do you expect to make a decision? I mean, is it this year, I mean, 2023 or will it be further ahead? I understand that the main hurdles probably lie in the difficulty to set up a full valuation and offer one-stop solution to automaker rather than the technical difficulties which seems to have been overcome more or less. I mean, it would be helpful to give us more color in that respect.
Yeah. We are not in a position to announce any decision date yet. One thing is clear, we have a very good technology in recycling black mass with very, very good recovery rates for all the important metals and also within, which is very important going forward with a very attractive OpEx position. What are the production costs to recycle these materials? With this, we are in the different investigation, what is the next right step? We have no fixed timeline on when this decision will be taken. Therefore, if it's 2023, 2024, no statement here. Important is the real recycling market. End-of-life recycling market will only be there of significant volumes in Europe or North America towards the end of the decade.
Therefore, there's also no rush in order to go in with significant investments too early, because these investments, if we enter, will be industrial scale and they need volume. That's where Aurubis is strong, recycling complex materials at industrial scale. Therefore, we will not make any hard timing on the decision going forward. To your second part of the question, the total supply chain, we are the expert in metallurgy, so recycling black mass is our core competence. What is then needed on the, let's call it the upstream and the downstream side around recycling or recycling these batteries, this is something which we certainly will do with partners. We are not excluding even JVs at this point in time, but we don't see ourself being the disassemblers and the collectors of batteries.
This is not our core competence. There are other companies who are better positioned and have already networks in place. Here we are dis cussing. Clearly, our positioning is black mass recycling and the upstream, downstream is in discussion how it's going to be set up.
Okay. Thank you. That's all for me.
The next question comes from Christian Obst . Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. Good afternoon. Just one remark. Sometimes the line was a little bit dead, but nevertheless, I hope it works now. Sorry. Coming back to the 90 million, I take it a little as a cost overrun over the 300 million investment in Richmond. Just a year ago, you stated that this was conservative and there is enough headroom and so on and so forth. You say, the plant price was fixed and also I am investing a little bit into the site going forward. There is a 20%-25% cost overrun, something like that. How will you clarify or can see that this will not happen again with one of your other projects going forward? What have you changed?
Yep. No, you're right. As a, as a bit of a defensive statement, the world has really changed massively in the last 12 or in the last 18 months. We have not, that's the fact, we have not foreseen this extreme inflationary environment in which we are working today. There's still very tense situation on supply chains, on getting certain components and on some of the equipment which we have not contracted, had not contracted at the time. That also these equipment with this huge industrial activity now, investment activity in the U.S. has also put this into a bidder market and not into a buyer's market. There are certain effects which you're absolutely right, we have not foreseen to the extent as we have seen them today.
Having said this, today, we have a very high confidence level, as we are well advanced in the engineering, in the detailed engineering of the project, in Richmond that we have here now. We have seen it. We have seen the cost increases. We have seen what is really inflation, what is also, as I mentioned before, a decided scope increase, which is also part of the 90 million.
Mm-hmm.
Regarding other projects, I think lesson learned is here, we decided in the project in U.S. to go fast. We focused all our activities on the equipment, signed the contract, and had design and build approach on the construction on civil engineering. This is something we are reconsidering for other projects in order to have stability and better predictability of the investment sum to take this project in all categories to a different maturity level, to a different design level, in order to be able not just to sign contracts like we did for Richmond for the equipment, but also for other major parts like civil engineering or other engineering components. That's something but all clearly, we are going to balance out between speed and precision.
There's always a trade-off to go fast and take some more, let's say, accepted risks or to be safe and be slower. That's really the balance. We tend, or I personally tend also to go at the new Deutschland speed, which is not a statement, so that we go fast and really within a certain, let's say, framework to take controlled risk in the execution.
Okay. Thank you for that. Coming back also again to the, to the American market, can you give us some details or examples what really has changed that you decided now to accelerate the investments in the U.S.?
Note, when we announced the first step, we were already sure that there is a highly effective market as we're also sourcing materials for Europe already in the U.S. market. We are connected to the market already today. What was really encouraging us was the feedback from the supplier base. It's a huge market for recycling material. Around 6 million tons of recycled materials are available in the U.S., therefore, the pre-processors were very, very, say, positive about this investment. We saw that we have a very strong supply base for the project. This on top with the very good permit, say, permit process in the U.S., where we have now all the permitting done, also for the second phase. We did both Module 1 and 2 in one permitting process, which is there.
Plus also that we have the site, the execution, the investment in the site in full swing. All these aspects of strong market, confirmed strong market, push for more local production. We believe there's also...
Energy, energy costs.
Yeah, Rainer just popped in. Let's say energy cost stability in comparison to Europe, we have to say U.S. is paradise for energy, for supply, stability, security, price level, hedging possibilities. It's exactly what an energy intensive industry like ours is looking for. This was another important step to build and strengthen this important pillar for Aurubis in the U.S. market.
Okay. Have you already secured some volumes or prices for Module 1, maybe?
For energy, you mean?
No, no, no. For the input material.
Input material. You know, the market is not that you buy. This is a market where we are in close contact. There are some, say, agreements but not must take, must pay agreements. This is not in place at this point in time. It's also not needed because material is available. To repeat, this is the first plant of its kind in the U.S., in this large U.S. market, which will go on stream in mid-2024. There is absolutely no concern about availability of material. It's rather the opposite, that we can cherry-pick, that we really can pick the best input material for our plant at the time.
Okay. Thank you very much. Last but not least, question concerning the. It's all about execution going forward, I would say. You have, when I'm right, there's two modules after industrial heat project, bleed treatment, CRH, and then on top battery recycling and disclose additionals. You have up to 8 projects for the next, let's say, Eight-10 years. On top of that, you would like to transform everything into a major or with a major IT project going towards S/4HANA. How you make sure that the entire management structure is able to deal with all that and that you can oversee that, and you're not running into some kind of execution problems or maybe that you not see any problems which might arise at one of these major projects.
How do you secure that? Have you changed the structure of management and controlling?
No, I think that's an absolutely spot on question. The biggest challenge for us, which we also announced on the capital market day with the development of our strategy. We have therefore decided to significantly increase our management capabilities. For example, with the centralized engineering, group engineering organization, which we are setting up to manage the technical side of the project and also the project management side. The same is true for the procurement side. The same is true for the IT side. The good news is, even in a challenging labor market, with this, Aurubis as a company, with this purpose, being part of the circular economy, a very sustainable and proactive company in this market field, we attract the talents. We can really get the right people on board.
For the execution of project, we have ourselves put the discipline in place that we only start projects when we have the resources available. That's our clearly the must condition for the execution of projects, because I fully agree with you, if we would overload the system with these many activities and would not have the necessary resources, we are at a very high execution risk. This is exactly what we have addressed from day one when we launched our strategy process. We are building up the organization in all the necessary aspects, and we are very prudent to start projects and only start them with the necessary capacities and capabilities.
last not least, if I may.
Yes.
If I may chip in, Roland, here. We have extended our executive board by one member from January first onwards. I mean, this also reflects that we as, let's say, we call them sponsors. We as the executive board, we are sponsors of the one or the other project, and make sure that, let's say, the workload is still doable also on the executive board level.
Okay. Thank you very much. We are looking very much forward going into 23 and about the execution of everything. All the best and Merry Christmas to all. Thank you.
We didn't receive any further questions, so let me hand back to your host for some closing remarks.
Yeah. First of all, thank you very much for the questions, for the detailed questions and your interest in Aurubis. Looking at our financial calendar as we are already facing, yeah, closing of our first quarter, we are going to publish our Q1 results February 6. We'll host our shareholder meetings at February 16, 2023. Now I would like to, yeah, last words, Roland, to you.
Last words. Yeah, no, I think Christian also mentioned. I think after, again, a very intense 2022 with many crisis management, everything, it's time now to, let's say, take a couple of weeks off during the holidays here and re-energize. I would like to extend here the big thanks to the Aurubis team because what we have achieved this year, and I think the summary from Christian about our projects and what we have all on agenda, is only possible because we have an absolutely dedicated, strong management team here on board. It's a, I have to say, it's a real pleasure to be at the helm of this company and to drive this very ambitious agenda for growth for the company.
With this, I'm also very happy now that's the 21st of December, and I happily take off a couple of days after an intense couple of months here. I think on behalf of my colleagues of the whole management team, I would also like to thank you for your continuous interest and challenging of the Aurubis team here. I also wish you a very nice Christmas day, nice holidays, good times with your family and friends. We'll see and talk again beginning of next year. You know our contacts are available, Ferdinand and Angela are here. Any further question, any more points which come up, don't hesitate to talk to them. They are not between the holidays, but after the holidays, they will happily answer all your questions again.
Yeah.
With this, big thank you. Merry Christmas. All the best.
Thank you. Bye.