My dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our earnings call on the RATIONAL's fiscal year 2023 figures that we published this morning on our press conference. My name is Stefan Arnold. With me are my colleagues, Nicole Engelhardt, Tobias Stadler, and of course, our CEO, Dr. Peter Stadelmann, and our CFO, Jörg Walter. Peter will start the presentation in a few seconds, and as every time, just a few hints from my side. So all participants are muted, and if you want to ask questions, you can send us the questions on the email address, ir@rational-online.com, and we will give the answers then later on after the presentation. We already got around 40 questions or so, and I say thank you to all of you that sent them in advance to make it a little bit easier for us to prepare.
If we already gave the answer during the presentation to your question or we already got another question, so then we might not repeat the question later on, and I think you understand this to make it easier for all of us. At the end, of course, we will make sure that we gave answers to all your questions before we close the call. It will take maybe a little bit more than one hour today from the experience of the morning, but let's see how we can make it. With this, I want to hand over to Peter. So the stage is yours.
Thank you, Stefan. Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this call on the full year 2023 figures. We are happy to present you the most important events of the past year. This includes financial, but as always, also some non-financial benefits and achievements. You can see it on this slide. RATIONAL celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023. We celebrated the anniversary with numerous events and measures. RATIONAL wouldn't be where it is today if we could not rely on our strong partners. Part of this network of partners are our sales partners, the dealers. Each of our RATIONAL cooking system is sold through one of more than 4,000 dealers, installed by them, or one of 1,200 RATIONAL service partners, and serviced or repaired as needed. They are very important multipliers for us.
So we invited our most important partners in October 2023 to Landsberg. At 8 events, we hosted more than 800 partners from a total of 39 countries in Landsberg. To our guests, we demonstrated great innovations like the iCareSystem AutoDose, where solid cleaner can be stored in cartridges in the unit. We announced the iHexagon, a new category of product I will return to later. In addition to the events at the Landsberg site, there were also many international events with employees, customers, and partners. You can see here some impressions from USA, India, Poland, Brazil, Singapore, Shanghai, or Colombia. From those happy faces of employees, I would like to mention one figure. In total, we hired 2,554 employees at the end of 2023.
As you know, we want them to be your entrepreneurs within the enterprise. They achieved our results in 2023, and I would like to thank them also here for their contributions. 87.5% of them are proud to work for RATIONAL. This shows how much they love their work at RATIONAL. We have, in 2023, an all-time low in employee turnover, with 6% on group level. Our employees were pleased with a salary increase of, for instance, 5% in Germany to help them covering inflation and an anniversary bonus of EUR 1,973 worldwide per capita. From satisfied employees to satisfied customers. Let me once more have one of our customers talk to you instead of myself.
Let me share some insights to you into a Singapore-based company, serving traditional Hainan food in different kind of outlets, from restaurants to kiosks, coffee shops, and bakeries.
Hi, my name is Lem. I'm the founder of Baoshi F&B, and then we own The Hainan Story. The Hainan Story serves local Hainanese Singapore food. We have Hainan Story Coffee House, which is a QSR model. We have Coffee & Toast, which is a kiosk base, and then we have the Hainan Story Bakery, and then the fourth one is the Chapter Series.
Hi, I'm Chef Steve. I'm from Hainan Story. I'm the production head chef. We serve our local delicacy. Yeah, now we are at Hainan Story. It's located at Jewel Singapore Airport.
In Singapore, things are very different. The manpower shortage is very. It's quite severe. I think to find skilled staff is not easy in Singapore. With iCombi Pro, we actually save a lot of problem. We only need, like, one skilled worker. The rest is being trained by the skilled worker to use the iCombi Pro.
Yeah, as a chef, we're facing a lot of challenge in Singapore. Usually, the kitchen is very small, it's very hot, and it's very hectic. We have overcome the challenge by tuning in to the technology, as now we are using iCombi Pro. It's helped a lot to us as a chef because we can make things easy, we can produce a lot of food at the same times, and it's also can help me to train my staff easily. There's a lot of program inside the iCombi, and we can plan our menu and set our SOP easily. I would prefer to use iProductionManager to cook our Hainanese curry chicken, Hainanese corn roll, and our Hainanese mixed vegetable stew. We use our iCookingSuite for our Hainanese pot pie. Yeah, the iCombi is really easy to use. Just a few click will make all the cooking fast and easy.
iCombi also help us to make our food quality consistent. We can cut away a lot of wastages. We easily manage our cleaning by iCare. Click on iCare, it's really easy and make the oven very clean.
For me, I have the idea on how to expand the company, and then I ask RATIONAL for help, and RATIONAL give me full of support, knowledge. So that's why we are here now.
Yeah. So from happy employees to happy customers, to our results, our financial results of the full year 2023. In addition to our 50th anniversary, we had another reason to celebrate last year, and that was the fact that we exceeded the EUR 1 billion mark in sales in 2022. And of course, it was also for us a target to keep, to maintain this EUR 1 billion sales level in our anniversary year, and even more, no, more keep our long-term growth trend going. And that we were successful and exceeded our guidance for sales and profits, we already published on January 11 with our ad hoc announcement. So, we have now take together a closer look at the final figures. We start with sales.
In 2023, we set a new sales record of EUR 1.126 billion and were able to exceed the previous year's sales by +10% or by more than EUR 100 million. You see, after two years of exceptionally high growth rate, 20% in 2021, 31% in 2022, we are now returning to our normal growth rate that we had in the years before 2020. So the last three years were very dynamic, dynamic for us due to the supply chain crisis and, as a result, long delivery times for our own products, and that was a very, very challenging time for us. I would like to explain the dynamics of these three years again in our next slide. You see here the quarterly development of the order intake.
This is the light gray left column. You see the quarterly revenue, the dark gray, the right, dark gray column, and consequently, the development of our order backlog is the red line. So in the years 2019 and 2020, the order intake and the sales levels, or the two columns, they were balanced with an order backlog of around EUR 70 million, and the delivery time at that time were around one to two weeks. Now, due to the difficult supply chain situation for raw materials, and especially electronic components, our delivery time in the second quarter of 2021 onwards went up significantly, and as a result, the incoming orders skyrocketed. By the second quarter of 2022, our order backlog had risen to a record level of EUR 430 million.
In the end, it took us until the third quarter last year to get this high order backlog down to a normal level. Now, looking at the last quarter, last year, we're finally seeing a full normalization. That means the order intake, the light gray column, is on the same level than the sales, the right dark gray column, and the order backlog you see is stabilizing at around EUR 120 million. This normalization is really crucial for us and for our customers. Now, we can guarantee our usually low delivery times, and with the help of our very flexible production system, we can produce and deliver in urgent cases and on short-term notice, if necessary, within two days, our products to our customers.
Having that in mind, we look at the business development throughout the quarters, and you see that basically, the reduction of the high order backlog was the reason that all four quarters' sales were roughly at the same sales level. Now, we saw the full year growth rate was 10% compared to prior year. This 10% growth rate was more or less generated in the first half. There, we were able to increase our sales by 20%, but that was more due to the limited availability of our product in the previous year. Now, for quarter three and four, we were able to maintain the high sales levels, and in the last quarter. Due to this special order from one Chinese chain customer, we were able to establish a new quarterly sales record of 293 million EUR.
Looking at the development of our product groups, the just mentioned development of the order restriction were quite different for iCombi and iVario. This has also a development of the growth situation of the iVario. Now, looking at the iVario, that was particularly affected in the supply chain restriction with processors in 2021, and because we chose a special processor, we had no restriction in 2022. Therefore, we were able to convert the high order backlog for the iVario that we had end of 2021, fully into sales in 2022. And therefore, we reported last year an outstanding sales growth of 57%. Without these sales restriction, the sales would have been, let's say, spread over the two years, 2021 and 2022.
In light of this extraordinary high sales level in 2022, the sales decline of 8% that we report now for 2023 has to put into perspective. We would like to emphasize that we do not see any change in the long-term prospects for the iVario in the market. So the market potential is unchanged, still very high, and the iVario is a very attractive product for our target customers. Now, then, the full group's revenue growth, thus, was mainly generated by the good performance of the iCombi product group. You see, the iCombi grew by 13% and also exceeded an important mark, the EUR 1 billion sales level for the first time. Let's have a look at the regional business development. Europe, including Germany, remains our largest region, accounting for more than 50% of sales.
Due to the higher market penetration of our products, the sales growth rates here are lower than in the overseas market. Europe, excluding Germany, recorded a sales growth of 5%, mainly driven by important markets like Great Britain, France, and Spain. Germany, as a single market, the sales fell by 3% below the high level of the previous year. Also here, we have to put that into perspective. Compared to the sales level of 2021, we are still able to increase our sales by 19%. The 2022 sales figure was just already a very high one, and therefore, I would say we were able to keep that more or less on the same level, same level. Also here, there is an iVario effect coming into play because the iVario is an important product for Germany.
Now, double-digit growth rates, once again, came from the overseas regions. The most important growth region for us continues to be North America, where we were able to grow by 18%. On one hand, we still have a low market penetration here of around 10%-15%, and on the other hand, we saw a quite dynamic economic situation with a very good street business in that market. Our highest growth rate we achieved last year in Asia with 24%. One outstanding result were the sales in China. That was particularly pleasing and grew by 38% with the prior year, and that was partly due to that special order from Yum China that we already talked about. The other Asian markets also recorded double-digit growth rate. The only exception was Korea. It's, for us, a smaller market.
That was the only market that was not able to match the previous year's sales figure. Now, let's move on to the development of earnings in line with our new sales record. Also, EBIT reached a new all-time high of EUR 277 million in the last year. Compared to previous year, we were able to increase the EBIT over proportionally against sales by +17%, and we're able to increase the EBIT margin to 24.6%. Now, looking at the full P&L in more detail, the main driver of the good earnings development was, of course, first of all, the good sales development of 10%. But then, very important, we were able to increase the gross profit margin by 1.5 percentage points to 56.7%.
This reflects two effects: On one hand, we were able to implement our price increases for our own products on the market, following the reduction of the high order backlog. And at the same time, we benefited, for example, from declining prices for the alloy surcharge and for chemical products in our costs. Looking at the operating costs, they rose slightly on a slightly lower rate than sales, plus 9.3% to EUR 359 million. We recorded the highest increase in R&D expenses, where we saw an increase by 17.5%. So also here, we continue to invest into the future of RATIONAL and to generate new products for our customers.
So overall, to summarize, in light of the difficult circumstances regarding delivery times and ups and downs, we are quite satisfied with the new EBIT record and the further normalization of the EBIT margin almost back to pre-crisis levels. Yeah, you all know our solid balance sheet structure. There was really no change last year, with an equity ratio of 76% and a liquidity ratio that is bank deposits and short-term investments combined of 42%, we remain very, very robust. The assets, total assets, grew by 8% or EUR 76 million to EUR 966 million, and that was due to the increase of equity, of EUR 63 million, due to the last year's good earnings situation, compared to a lower dividend payout level.
And then this higher equity, more or less, you see on the asset sides, reflected in this high level of liquid funds of over EUR 400 million. Looking at CapEx, as in previous year, we made the necessary investments in the future of RATIONAL. In total, the investment volume was EUR 35 million, which was slightly below our expectation due to the delay in some of our projects. So the last part of the investments, namely EUR 28 million, were pure investment in property, plant, and equipment, and a further EUR 7 million was allocated to the capitalization of R&D costs. And Peter will later report on our new products a little bit more.
So important projects in the past year were the expansion of the Wittenheim site, or the continuation of the expansion of the Wittenheim site, the investment in our production site in China, the completion of our office expansion in Landsberg, and as well, two photovoltaic systems, one in Landsberg and one in Wittenheim, as part of our sustainability program. Coming to the dividend, dividend proposal for last year. You all know our long-term dividend policy is to distribute approximately 70% of the earnings to our shareholders. Last year, we paid out 13.50 EUR per share, and this included a special dividend of 2.50 EUR, which was used to offset the coronavirus-related dividend cut that we did in 2019. Including this special dividend, we had a payout ratio of 83%.
Now, for 2023, we are returning to our long-term dividend policy and proposing a regular dividend of EUR 13.50 per share to our annual shareholder meeting. This represents a payout ratio of 71%. With this amount, we are keeping the absolute dividend constant compared to previous year, and we can now reflect the, reflect the special dividend of the previous year as part of the regular dividend this year. So what is our sales and earning guidance for 2024? We are optimistic. After a quite volatile last three, three financial years, we expect 2024 to be a completely normal year for us. So we are optimistic, and we expect sales growth in the mid- to high single-digit % range without any planned price increases for our own products.
For the gross profit margin, we expect the trend of 2023 to continue and expect our input prices to further ease. But on the other hand, we are planning a slightly overproportional increase in our operating costs, on one hand, for the expansion of our sales exhibition activities and the strengthening of our R&D capacities, and on the other hand, we are continuing our strategic projects, first and foremost, the Road to China project, and Peter also will report later a bit more about this project. So overall, we expect an increase in EBIT, roughly proportional to the development of sales, and thus maintain the EBIT margin at the good level that we had in 2023. With that, I'm ending the figures, facts and figures section of this call, and I'm handing back to Peter.
Thank you, Jörg. Ladies and gentlemen, RATIONAL is temporarily not included in the MDAX. The reason for this is that the chairman of the audit committee, Dr. Hans Maerz, is not considered independent, according to the German Corporate Governance Code definition, since he is serving the supervisory board for 12 years now. We dutifully communicated this with our declaration of conformity with the German Corporate Governance Code in January. Deutsche Börse requires an independent chairman of the audit committee in its criteria for any index membership. Dr. Merz will not stand for reelection to the supervisory board at the upcoming annual general meeting on May eighth. After the new elections, we will reappoint the chairman of the audit committee, and this and thus once again meet all index criteria. We therefore expect a resumption in the MDAX in June 2024.
The stock price was unfazed by the temporary exclusion and stood at around EUR 780 yesterday evening. Let's switch to more outlook into the future. As you know, and as we informed a year ago, we have our Road to China initiative. It is about securing our market position in the Chinese markets, especially in the lower segment, which is expected to grow over proportionally in the years to come. We will develop, source, and produce locally a combi steamer with less features and therefore lower cost and price points compared to the Landsberg-produced iCombi. Start of production is somewhere in the second half of 2025. Yesterday, our colleagues in Suzhou, outside Shanghai, opened our new plant officially. You see the group pictures at the right lower corner. You see on the left lower corner, our facilities, which are still empty now.
We will now start to buy all the machinery and tools we need to set up the production. The plant is situated in Suzhou Industrial Park, and the project is on time and progresses as planned. Finally, I would like to briefly introduce you to a world premiere, the iHexagon. It is a cooking appliance that uses convection, steam, and microwave to heat food. After more than 10 years of research and development, our engineers have succeeded in taking the cooking intelligence, which already distinguish us from all other manufacturers, to the next level. After the very first combi steamer in 1976 and the very first VarioCooking Center in 2004, we just created a new product category in 2024 with the iHexagon. With the microwave, we can reduce cooking times by 30% and even more for certain dishes, and without any loss of quality.
That's what we can do with iClimateBoost. iClimateBoost optimizes six variables and makes sure that we have the best quality in even shorter cooking times. We are very proud of this achievement. We started showing the product to selected customers at Internorga at the beginning of March. They were thrilled with quality and variety of food and the time saved while cooking it. They, on their side, now need time to clarify for themselves how and where they can best use the iHexagon. With the higher throughput, processes in kitchens, restaurants, et cetera, can be redesigned and thus productivity can be increased. As the colleague in the movie said, our people help our customers in doing that. So that will take some time, as it did 47 years ago with the combi steamer.
In addition, it is important to note that we are targeting chain customers first with the iHexagon. They will do tests in their own labs. They will carry out pilot rollouts and then decide on larger rollouts. So that might explain to you why we do not expect an immediate increase of orders with the iHexagon, but a slowly increasing volume. So far, we see three main areas of application: production of larger quantities, snack areas with short warm-up times and flexible quantity, or for instance, fresh cooking for buffets, where you can reproduce as needed. Due to shorter cooking times, fresher cooking can be done here as an alternative to holding food at a certain temperature. To give you some examples, if we do rice in the iCombi Pro, it will take 24 minutes. In the iHexagon, it only takes 16 minutes.
That means it is more than 30% faster. If we do pieces of salmon in the iCombi Pro, it takes 7 minutes and only 5 minutes in the iHexagon. Again, more than 30% faster. Finally, a full load of croissants takes 22 minutes in the iCombi Pro. In the iHexagon, it takes 17 minutes, which means we are 25% faster in the iHexagon. We always do those comparisons with our own iCombi Pro. If you take other combi steamers, the gain in time is even higher, since usually they are not as performant as our iCombi Pros. With that, I'm at the end, and we are starting the Q&A session right away, and I hand over to Nicole.
Thank you, Peter. Just... one second. So here we go. I start with you again, Peter. Current thoughts or contingency plans in the case of potential US import tariffs?
We closely look at this topic, but with most of our suppliers being in Europe, we do not see a great risk here.
What is the outlook for the gastronomy industry in new markets?
That's depending on the individual markets. I would say the weakest right now is Germany, for many reasons, but in many European markets, the Americas and in Asia, we see the markets to be rather strong.
The next question is about the competitive environment. I'm told that there are some new combi ovens or similar coming out from new and/or existing competitors. Can you please walk us through those new products and how you are preparing for these, this increased competition?
We do not see new competitors except local manufacturers in China. What we see is established competitors renovating their portfolio of combi steamers as usual, so there's nothing unusual in that development. Trends go towards better user interfaces, audio-controlled units, cameras detecting loading and food, and in general, more sustainable units with regard to resources, being used while cooking. For us, being in the combi market now for 47 years, we have encountered different competitors coming and going. In general and in relation to our own sites, we do not see more competition. None of our competitors can offer cooking intelligence. That's in the market now for 20 years. No one achieved or succeeded in offering the same feature in their competing units, and usually most of them, they do not reach our performance and reliability in hardware quality.
Let me refer also to the iHexagon. Some voices said that there is already a combi steamer using microwave at UNOX. It's called SPEED-X. Please note that this unit can only do combi steaming or microwaving. It can't do both at the same time, and the iHexagon is using all three sources of energy at the same time. That's the big difference.
Can you provide us with any kind of milestones you are targeting in the next couple of years with the iHexagon?
We start with three markets, U.K., USA, and Germany, to gain experience in reaction of customers. We plan step by step, adding markets and dedicated teams as not to, how to say, defocus our normal sales force. As explained, it will take customers time to test and decide and then finally roll out the units. So that's why we are very optimistic with regard to the potential, but we do not disclose any milestones at this time.
Have you started to take orders already? And if so, can you indicate what contribution you deem realistic in 2024?
We started to present it to customers earlier in March at the Internorga in Hamburg. They are now exploring the potential of the iHexagon. Once they have seen it and believe that it's working, they have to go into their own production workflows and think about where to put it, where to use it, and we target the iHexagon to key accounts. That means, again, they will first run tests in their labs. They will do some sort of pilot rollout before they do big orders. That's why for 2024, we expect quite small sales volumes, but for 2025, an increasing volume and margin contribution is expected.
How should one think of ramp-up costs of or the launch budget? And can you indicate as of when you do expect the product to be accretive to group margins?
So the ramp-up and launch costs, including the dedicated staff, is roughly EUR 1 million per year. The ramp-up launch was quite, let me say, cost efficient since we did an online keynote, and we are launching the iHexagon in three markets only. So compared to our former global launches, for instance, of the iCombi Pro, the launch costs are quite low. Group margins contribution, as I said, in 2024, I think it will not be noticeable, but it should help us in 2025.
What is the most recent reaction of the markets to the new innovation combining steam, hot air, and microwave?
Customers and dealers are really curious about the new product and keen on learning more about it. They were amazed by the quality of food we prepared at the stage and served to them.
How will the iHexagon product be priced?
So far, we announced the list prices for the three first markets. In Germany, it is priced at EUR 21,700, in UK at GBP 20,100, and in the US at roughly $38,000. It is roughly said twice the price you have to pay for an iCombi Pro 61.
Thank you, Peter. Now a couple of questions for you, Jörg. Why is the implied average sales price in the backlog minus 10%? What does this reflect in terms of change in order mix pricing in half year 2 2023 versus half year 1 2023?
Yes, this fluctuation is due to the changes in the product sizes, regions, products type, and share of the non-unit business. For example, we had, in the end of the year, a bigger share of the Asian key account orders, which are typically small units and also more competitive priced. But I think the minus 10% is more or less just a snapshot. It is not a general statement that we can repeat here.
How is the start of the year orders demand, trend, and color by region?
All regions had started, as we expected. So far, the only exception here is Latin America, where we had a little bit a weaker first two months.
Which percentage of your 2023 sales did come from China, and what is the outlook?
Around 5%-6% was the share of the Chinese orders of our total sales, and that includes the extra order that we had from Yum China. So for 2024, we are expecting to have more or less the same share with a different composition. So we are expecting a higher street business and a lower key account share due to this special order from Yum.
What are the key raw material costs effects anticipated on costs of sales for 2024?
Yes. So, steel and alloy surcharge, it's around 10% of our COGS, and these are currently a bit down, so they are on a low level, although we are now seeing in March a little bit a rising trend, but on average, they are lower than 2023. Another big component are electrical components. They are important. Here we have currently stable prices, and also one area where we are benefiting from lower COGS, the chemicals that we have for our cleaners.
Does the steep increase in the R&D cost relate to the development and launch of the new iHexagon, or is that a new level going forward?
Our ongoing R&D level is around 5% of sales that we had during the last couple of years, and certainly a part of that amount that we invested in R&D was due to the iHexagon, but it is more a continual level that we are seeing also for the coming years.
What investments do we need to assume for usage rights in 2024?
Usage rights, especially for our rented offices externally, is around EUR 10 million.
In which strategic projects will you primarily invest in 2024?
Yeah. Our strategic products, or projects are first and foremost, Peter already talked about it, it's Road to China. Then we have our digital products that we will launch, digital in terms of efficiency, reporting to, to end customers, but also, technical, warranty reporting to our service partners. We will continue completion, of the Wittenheim site, and also we will start, to initiate or to, to start our investment program, speed up our investment program in sustainability.
What is the basis for the significant sales growth, unit growth, that you see in 2024? Is it, for example, the forecasts of the larger distributors, or is it, for example, the assumptions that come from increased trade fair activity? What is your input data here?
Yes, I think we, we talked in the presentation that the last three years there were quite dynamic, and especially, one important topic was that our normal sales process, our sales activities in the market, they were not running on a normal level. And, for 2024, for us, the message is just back to our basic sales model so that means to apply our sales process consistently in all markets. That means visits, cooking live events, trade shows, but also includes key account activities. So it's a, it's a full bunch of measures that we just want to apply consistently all over the world.
What are the components of the growth outlook for this year, roughly by product group, iCombi, iVario, and the new product?
Well, the new product, Peter already mentioned that we don't expect any effect for this year. Due to the lower market penetration and regional ramp-up in the USA, we expect the iVario to grow with twice the speed than the iCombi.
In terms of how the revenue growth guidance of mid- to high-single-digit is likely to be spread across the quarters, and bearing in mind that Q1 and Q2 last year were very strong, should we expect softer growth in Q1, Q2, then accelerating in Q3 and Q4?
Exactly, that's what we expect. We saw it also in the presentation that we had Q1 till Q4, were more or less on a very strong level due to this high order backlog. Now we are back to our normal model. That means with a lower order entry in the first half, a higher order entry in the second half, and that we also will see in sales.
How do you see the further development of the input prices?
On average, the input prices 2024 will be lower than 2023. The alloy surcharge, I already mentioned, is currently at a low point, and we see a slight tendency to rise here. However, it's still below the average of 2023 level.
Will the gross profit margin increase again in 2024? If yes, by how much?
Yeah, we expect it to increase by 0.5-1 percentage point.
Will the gross margin in the first half of 2024 remain at the level of 2023 or even improve?
We assume that the gross margin improvement will be noticeable, noticeable already in Q1, 2024, and we rather see it stable throughout the year.
Can you provide any color on current trading conditions you're seeing by region, by product category?
Yeah, we expect the expectation of the single markets, except Latin America, we see a good order development in all our markets according to our expectation.
What kind of price increase is reflected in your revenue growth target for 2024, and how do you view demand from your distributors in Europe, in particular, in light of low or no GDP growth?
We have no price increases planned for 2024, except some minor currency adjustments that we normally do, but we don't count that as a price increase. As I said, it's more a currency adjustment. Regarding the distributors in Europe, we still see a chance that coming back and applying our normal sales process, that we have the normal growth rates in the different regions, so that mean more double-digit growth overseas, single-digit growth in Europe. I mean, yes, there is a lower GDP growth. On the other hand, the necessity for getting help in the kitchen due to no staff or lower skilled staff are still the same, so we still think that we have growth opportunities also in the big markets in Europe.
Thank you, Jörg. Couple of questions for you now, Peter. Are you back to normal inventory as well as accounts receivables levels?
Yes, we are.
What percentage of the trade receivables are insured?
Roughly 90% are insured.
In which quarter do you think iVario turnover and sales figures will increase again in 2024?
In Q1 2024.
How do you see the further development of the wages?
After high inflation in the last two years, especially in Europe, inflation is coming down now, now significantly. We therefore plan with a lower wage increase this year, but we didn't disclose any figures yet.
The EBIT margin guidance for this year is quite encouraging, considering the multiple growth initiatives RATIONAL currently is investing. Can you, in any way, quantify how much the burdening effect of these measures are included in the guidance?
Yes, that's around EUR 10 million.
Will you fully use your capacity for iVario in Wittenheim in the longer term?
Absolutely, yes. The new plant will be ready to produce up to 25,000 units per year. We are now at roughly 8,000 units, with an anticipated growth rate of around 15%. We would double the output approximately every 5 years, which would mean that after opening the plant, later this year, the next expansion has to be looked at in 6-7 years. It is important to know that the plant is built in that way, that we easily can expand it.
... How do you progress with the new production in China? Do you produce already? How do you avoid copy-paste by Chinese locals?
We are on plan as presented, but production did not start yet, serious production. So we are at an early stage of developing. It is important to know that the software for the Chinese model is developed here in Landsberg, and that the hardware has been copied for the last probably 20 years already. Of course, we use our patents and our trademarks to successfully protect our intellectual property.
Will you produce in Suzhou only for the Chinese market?
Yes.
What level of staff recruitment is anticipated for 2024?
It's around 160 new staff planned on group level, most of them in sales.
Thank you, Peter. Up to now, we have three more questions. I go back to Jörg. What sort of tax rate should we expect over the next few years?
We calculate internally with 24%.
Is the product driving the road to China margin dilutive? What can we expect in terms of volume?
Well, we do not talk about the volumes yet. In terms of the margin, we try to maintain the group margin on the same level.
Thank you, Jörg. So I have one more question now for you, Peter. Do you have an up-to-date statistic for the amount of all food types used by your R&D department?
We know that we use roughly 30 tons of food per year here in Landsberg. That does not include our application center in Shanghai, where we develop Asian dishes. And of course, it depends also what we do in the labs, depends very much on where our innovation goes to. It is important to know that we try to donate roughly 90% of that food to local food banks or our employees.
Okay, there's no more questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Nicole, and of course, thank you, Jörg and Peter, for your yeah, comprehensive presentation. It was a little bit quicker than expected, so we stay within the one hour. Thank you for that. I now want to come to a few announcement on coming events. On the ninth of April, so in two weeks, we will be organizing an IR follow-up talk. I think some of you already participated in the past year. If you have any questions arising in the meantime, we will then have the opportunity to discuss them then. You can find the registration link on the homepage in our IR calendar, where you already also registered for this call.
Our Q1 figures will be published on the second of May with the well-known setup, and on the eighth of May, we will have our annual shareholders meeting in Augsburg, in Germany, and we, of course, would be happy to welcome the one or the other from your ranks. Last but not least, one longer term announcement. As everybody is quite curious about the new iHexagon, we will show the iHexagon this year on our Capital Markets Day in November, together, of course, with our product specialists. Please block the twenty-eighth of the November in your schedules to come to Landsberg at that day and to learn more about this new product revolution. With this, I would like to close the call. I thank you all for your participation, and I wish you a good time until our next meeting.
Goodbye and take care!