Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SGL Carbon conference call on the ninth month results 2022. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in listen only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Claudia Kellert. Please go ahead, madam.
Thank you. Hello, and a very warm welcome to our conference call about the business development and the financials of SGL Carbon in the first nine months of 2022. On behalf of our SGL team, our CEO, Torsten Derr, our CFO, Thomas Dippold, accounting, controlling and IR department are participating. We want to present the financials and the outlook on a presentation. We'll answer your questions after the presentation. I will hand over to Torsten Derr.
Yes, Claudia. Thank you very much. Good afternoon to everyone. I'm Torsten Derr, the CEO of SGL Carbon, and our business model has proven to be resilient in the first nine months. Our sales growth accounted for 14.8%, and EBITDA even is + 25.4%. You can see we are still following our margin above volume strategy. With this, we confirm our guidance, which we have raised some weeks ago, with sales on a level of EUR 1.2 billion for the full year and EBITDA pre between EUR 170 million and EUR 190 million. The business was successful and all of our four business units have delivered to this higher profitability and have supported our growth.
We have pretty strong pricing power, and could forward almost all of the raw material price increases and the energy price increases. Yeah, we filled our capacity, and also capacity utilization supported our bottom line improvement. Our markets are strong, and we could manage our energy challenges so far very successfully. Our focus is on growth markets, and we will talk about this later on in this talk, which is, for example, semiconductors, renewable energies and e-mobility, and this helped us to have this stable and good figures. With this opening statement, I would like to hand over to our CFO, Thomas Dippold.
Yes. Hello, everybody. A warm welcome from my side. This is Thomas Dippold, CFO of SGL Carbon, and I have the honor and the pleasure to guide you through our development of the first nine months of this fiscal year. On slide number five, if you just follow it with some printouts, you can see the overall profitability throughout the course of the year for the first nine months of 2022. As Torsten has already highlighted, we were very successful in growing our top line. Our sales reached EUR 853.9 million, which is EUR 110 million more or almost 15% more than at the same time last year, where we reached EUR 743.5 million.
You see, it's really a quite remarkable step into the right direction as we are growing, and apparently, our markets that we serve are fairly attractive and successful. If we exclude the translation effects from currency effects, which is mainly the strong U.S. dollar, then our sales would grow by 11.3%, instead of the 14.8%, which is still a double-digit growth rate, and we're very proud of that. When you look at the sales split, then it stays roughly the same. It's hardly any changes compared to the same period last year.
As Torsten has pointed out, our EBITDA grew by EUR 28 million, so we are reaching now EUR 136.1 million in our EBITDA pre figure, compared to EUR 108.5 million for the first nine months of the last fiscal year. Again, if we deduct the currency effects in the profitability increase, it would still be far higher than our sales development. Currency adjusted, our EBITDA pre grew by 17.9%, which is a fantastic development, and we like that very much. Where does it come from? The key developments, Torsten has already pointed out, it's mainly very attractive businesses that are growing and apparently the demand from that is very strong.
It's mainly semiconductor business for our Graphite Solutions business, but also industrial applications, which we see in our Carbon Fibers business, but also especially in Graphite Solutions. These markets are growing very strongly, and we serve them very well. There's also a product mix effect in there, which boosts the margin quite significantly. In absolute terms, Graphite Solutions is growing the most. It's almost EUR 50 million, where the top line grows in Graphite Solutions, followed by Carbon Fibers with roughly EUR 25 million compared to last year, closely followed by Composite Solutions with EUR 19 million and last but not least, Process Technology with almost EUR 15 million. You see all the four business units are contributing to the strong sales development.
If you look at it from a relative perspective, the two smallest, Process Technology and Composite Solutions, are growing the strongest. The large ones like Graphite Solutions and Carbon Fibers have merely some single digit or double digit growth. EBITDA on an operative level is positive in all the four business units. Only in Carbon Fibers we have the one-off effect with the hedging activities that we conducted in the first quarter with the EUR 9 million. If we exclude that, all the four business units were increasing their bottom line. On slide number six, as usual, you see the development of our largest and biggest business unit, which is Graphite Solutions.
They show a very strong third quarter, and after the first nine months of this year, they have reached EUR 382.5 million in the top line in sales, which is 15% higher than the EUR 332.7 million, which they have achieved in the first nine months last year. This is an increase of EUR 50 million, or if you take the currency out, especially the U.S. dollar, then it's still 9.4% growth that we see compared to last year. Bottom line, the growth is 24.4%, now reaching EUR 84 million compared to EUR 67.5 million last year. We could increase the EBITDA margin from 20% to 22%. This is a very strong achievement that we see there. Where does it come from?
In principle, all the markets that Graphite Solutions is serving are continuing to grow, especially the semiconductor and LED market is growing with a growth rate of over 40% compared to last year. In the semiconductor market, especially the silicon carbide business is growing the strongest. Industrial applications also contribute, but on a far lower level compared to the semiconductor business, and especially the silicon carbide business. In the bottom line, our guiding KPIs, EBITDA pre, we see with the higher sales and the good product mix as we shift some capacities, especially into the semiconductor business and the high relative capacity utilization. This is what boosts the profitability.
We were, as Torsten already said, we were fairly successful in passing on all the raw material prices and energy costs to our customers, who, you know, apparently have a strong demand for the product, and are also willing to pay higher prices in order to get it. Slide number seven, Process Technology, our smallest business unit, is growing the strongest 24% up in the top line, and now reaching EUR 77 million in sales. It's really a strong growth that we see there. Also currency adjusted, it's still higher than 20% growth that we see there. We have a very strong order intake, which we saw beginning of the year or also end of last year, and some six to nine months later, it all converts into sales.
This is exactly what we've acquired at that time with a strong sales team, and now it materializes also in sales. A good development. Book-to-bill ratio is still 1.4 for the first nine months of the year. This also indicates that our order book, at least for the next six to nine months, is pretty solid. We think we can continue with that stable development for quite a while. When it comes to profitability, we can clearly show the improvement that we've always been targeting for. We now reach EUR 7.5 million in our EBITDA pre for the first nine months of the year 2022.
As we promised, we almost achieved a double-digit margin when you look at the 7.5%, compared to the EUR 77 million there. This is where the business simply should be. It's a niche business for the chemical industry, plant building business, and they should achieve a double-digit margin, and we came very close to finding this year. Again, what is driving the good profitability, it's a higher utilization rate. We focus on higher margin business, and we are also, again, in this project business, very successful in passing on higher raw material costs to our customers. Especially in the third quarter, we were benefiting from some declining and decreasing steel prices in the last three months. On slide number eight, you can see the development of Carbon Fibers.
In our top line, they grow by almost 10%, to EUR 269 million, compared to EUR 244.7 million at the same period of time last year. Currency is only 0.5% in there, so it would have been 9.5% growth without any translation effect. I think as we have to compensate the so-called BMW i3 take or pay contracts, which expired end of June. I think we were fairly successful, especially in the third quarter, to compensate these capacities with wind business.
With that, we were able to grow the business even further as it was in the first six months of the year. We see a high customer demand, especially in the wind and industrial business ther. We can simply sell all the products, all the fibers that we produce into the market. That also helps us as our production capabilities are fully loaded, and we can sell that into the European Union, but also on a worldwide approach. Last but not least, also in Q2, the higher final deliveries, especially to BMW with the i3 contract, were very supportive in driving the sales.
When we come to the bottom line, to the EBITDA pre figure, then we see a slight deterioration from EUR 43.8 million last year to EUR 42.7 million in this year, which is 2.5% down. Please bear in mind, in the first quarter, we had, as aforementioned, special effect from the hedging of the energy derivatives with EUR 9.2 million, which guaranteed that we could produce on a digestible level throughout the course of the year. This was very beneficial for us as we haven't had to run our business.
We have some tailwind from currently lower prices for our main raw material, which is acrylonitrile, which we have to pass on through to our customers only with a time delay. Last but not least, also worthwhile mentioning, which is also contributed into the EBITDA pre figure of Carbon Fibers. Our at equity result from our joint venture that we have is the Italian brake company, Brembo, and the short name for it is BSCCB. Their earnings are also in the carbon fiber business, and they are also EUR 2.1 million higher than previous year. This also contributed quite to that good development. On slide number nine, you see our last operative business unit, which is Composite Solutions.
There we also see a strong growth, and it's mainly driven by our very strong automotive business there. The sales now reached EUR 111 million, which is a + 20.5%. With currency adjusted, it would be 15.3%. Last year, we were below EUR 100 million, just reaching EUR 92 million. We see a strong top-line development. A lot of projects and ramp-ups were started with automotive customers, be it in Europe, be it in North America. Our price initiatives where we want to pass on all the raw materials were also successful. The customers accepted our requests, and this also boosted our top line quite significantly. Our bottom line benefited even more.
You see there some 62.6% increase coming from EUR 9.1 million last year for the first nine months of the year and now reaching EUR 14.8 million. This is, of course, a very strong development and, but you have to bear in mind, and you can see the comment on the right side and at the very bottom of this slide, there is a compensation payment in there, which is a kind of a one-off effect. We have negotiated with one of our OEM automotive customer a compensation payment for the, as a kind of a breakup fee for a project which hasn't been conducted in a proper way.
We received a one-off payment of EUR 3.7 million in the first half of the year. If you deduct it and just look at the operating performance and the run rate which we have in Composite Solutions, then it would be a little bit above EUR 11 million. This is now the real like for like figure that you have to take into consideration. It would still be a good 10% margin, which is not so bad for our automotive business, and we are happy with the development that we see there. On slide number 10, I would show you how our bottom line, our net results, but also some balance sheet figure and some ratios look like and how they have developed.
This is exactly what Torsten and myself have always promised you, that we try to fix not just the P&L, but also the balance sheet. I think we've been showing some great progress also in that. When you look at our net results, it went up by EUR 28 million, now reaching EUR 70.6 million after nine months of the year. This is really a remarkable increase coming from EUR 42.6 million at the same period last year. Our equity ratio rose by more than 10%, 10.9% to be precise, and now reaching 37.9%. I think this is a very healthy equity ratio that we show there. What is contributing to that, on the one hand, the strong operating performance.
On the other hand, the higher interest rates, which affect the pension provision. Last but not least, as you know, we have placed a convertible beginning of September, and there's also a kind of equity portion in there that also goes straight into the equity. All the three, four effects contributed, the currency, not to forget, to the increase of 10.9% coming from 27% to now almost 38%. The net financial debt remained almost stable. It went up by roughly EUR 3 million in order to grow the business as we did it, but also to finance all the working capital that we need in order to secure and to guarantee our growth.
Our leverage ratio, the way the banks calculate it, has reached a very healthy 1.3x. It has been at the same period of time, or at the year-end, 1.5x. Last but not least, our ROCE has reached, for the first time since quite a while, 10.3%. We're also very happy with the development. At year-end last year, our ROCE was 8%. With that, I would like to hand over back to Torsten, who's trying to tell you a little bit about the outlook, but also the challenges ahead of us.
Yeah. I would like to talk a little bit about energy. As you can imagine, currently, no shortage of gas or electricity has hit us. We used the time to prepare for it. If you look at our risk exposure, the risk exposure is mainly in Europe, and our biggest gas consumer is our site in Lavradio, Portugal. There we feel pretty safe because Portugal receives the natural gas from North Africa, from Algeria and Morocco, and there is plenty of gas, and we don't expect availability problems there. If a gas scarcity should happen, Germany would be affected, where we operate 5 sites in total. There are 3 small sites, Wackersdorf, Willich and Limburg.
They don't have a huge energy exposure, so the risk falls into our main and large production site in Bonn and the second in Meitingen. Together, we disclosed this figure last time, we have around 100 GW of natural gas demand. We used the time to prepare for it. In Bonn, we will install propane gas tanks and dual fuel burners to have the option to switch from natural gas to propane. You can see on the picture on the right-hand side, a picture out of Meitingen, and this is our nice 1.5 million liter oil tank. We have already filled this tank completely with oil. In times of gas scarcity, we could switch from natural gas to oil.
We feel pretty well prepared, and we could digest lower gas allocation of 10%-20% with our preparation measures. To most of our new sales contract, we added an energy clause. If price increases should happen in energy, we could directly forward it to our customers. What we like very much is the announcement of the German government because you see our risk is mainly in our two sites in Meitingen and in Bonn. With a gas price cap and the electricity price cap, we feel pretty well prepared for next year. This about energy. I would also like to talk on the next slide a little bit about resilience and our markets. You can see on the left-hand side our split into the main markets we deliver in.
We have colored three of the markets in petrol colors. This is mobility, which accounts for roughly 30%, energy 12.4%, and digitization, roughly 16% of the market. In all of these three markets, we see pretty strong growth. We have depicted on the right-hand side the main markets we are delivering into. The most important is electromobility. According to our estimates, the EV market is growing with a CAGR of 28%, and our mobility segment with several products will benefit from this. Also, our carbon fibers go into wind turbine blades, which are reinforced with carbon fibers, and this is driven by the offshore wind energy market. Again, a double-digit CAGR of 15%.
We have photovoltaics, and this is driven by our business unit, Graphite Solutions. We produce a lot of graphite parts, which are used to produce solar cells. The photovoltaic market globally is assumed to grow with a CAGR of 8%. You see the markets which drive our growth are growing at very healthy growth rates. At the top right-hand side, you see SiC semiconductors, and SiC stands for silicon carbide. This is a new type of semiconductors which go into power electronics. I will talk about this a little bit more later on. This market is growing with 34% CAGR in the next 10 years.
We took these figures from Yole consulting company, which is analyzing the SiC semiconductor market and is the most used source for the growth of this market. This goes into our digitization field and will also boost top line and bottom line of our business unit, Graphite Solutions. I will come to this later. The next slide, I can give you a little hint how we go into the market, electromobility, and these are just a few examples. We are very good in the production of battery cases. An electric truck in the U.S. is delivered exclusively with our battery cases. We have leaf springs which are carbon fiber or glass fiber reinforced spring systems especially in the EV segment.
We produce brake disc reinforced with carbon fibers. Usually, you think you don't need that strong brakes in electromobility, but they accelerate so fast, and you have to take the acceleration away with brake discs, that iron brake discs will not do the job, and this is why our brake disc segment is growing above average. In the renewable energy segment, we already talked about solar cells, where we produce equipment for. We produce carbon fibers which go into the blades of wind turbines. We are among the largest producers of the so-called gas diffusion layers, which is a main component of fuel cell system. You see, we are pretty well-positioned here.
In semiconductors, we produce equipment for the production of chips and also for the production of silicon carbide as well as LEDs. We talk about this on the next slide. We also supply robot companies with carbon fibers. You need, for example, for robot arms, light and reinforced parts. We also supply the aerospace market. You see strong markets, strong products, and this drives our growth. Now I talk a little bit about silicon carbide, which goes into power electronics. Please look in the pictures in the middle, in the silicon carbide markets, there is EV chargers and a wall box, which you maybe have installed at home, contains at least one inverter produced with silicon carbide parts. Bidirectional chargers have two inverters inside.
Mobile chargers for your mobile phone or for your computer use silicon carbide. You need for photovoltaic and wind inverters, which convert AC into DC, produced with silicon carbide. The most important part is the main inverter, which is included in every electric vehicle, which is very beneficial if you use silicon carbide instead of silicon. Why is it better to use silicon carbide inverters? Because efficiency is much better. You have at least 10% less power losses. You can charge the car with less power. The weight is at least 50% lower. You can build an inverter based on silicon carbide at reduced size and have reduced cooling requirements.
You see, there are very important arguments why silicon carbide will grow, because the markets will grow like EV or solar, and the adoption rate of silicon carbide in those markets will grow from currently around 5% to 50%, at the mid of the decade. There are two turbos which drive our markets. On the right-hand side, you see picture of our products, and you have to understand what is the role of SGL in the silicon carbide market. We are not producing chips. We are not producing silicon carbides. We produce graphite parts, and some of them are depicted here. For example, crucibles, which are used to melt silicon carbides. We produce heaters, which are used to bring up the temperature above 2,500 degrees Celsius. We produce graphite rigid and soft felts for isolation.
All those parts are used in devices to produce silicon carbide chips. We are the only one-stop shop in the industry which can deliver all those graphite parts in a very high purity grade. This bit, our business, our graphite business, is increasing with the silicon carbide markets. More about this we will disclose beginning of this year or beginning of Q2. To summarize what we said, SGL Carbon is well prepared despite a lot of uncertainties. The overall market conditions are still with very low visibility, how everything is going forward. If you watch the gas prices and the electricity prices, it's like to be on a roller coaster. Currently, it's pretty low, but we expect much higher prices at the end of the winter in Q1.
The energy prices in Europe will stay high, despite the current status. We are very happy about the countermeasures, especially of the German government.
The availability of gas is still uncertain, and you have seen we prepared for everything. We have this, oil tank and propane gas tanks in our sites in Meitingen and Bonn. How our customers will behave is still a little bit blurry. I think at least a mild recession in Europe is still very likely. What does it mean for SGL? We have done our restructuring program, and we will successfully complete it by end of this year. This bring us in a very good cost position to mitigate all, which is coming from the world around us. You have seen that our focus is on growth markets, where we already have foothold in, and we will bet on very attractive markets with two-digit CAGR growth rates.
We will do targeted capacity expansion exactly in these markets. Our financial base has been strengthened. Thomas already talk about it. We have, for example, refinanced our convertible bonds some weeks ago. Now our equity rate is around 40%, and we feel pretty well prepared with this. Having this said, I'm going to conclude our prepared remarks, and we would be happy to answer your question if there are any. I would like to hand back to you, Claudia.
Thank you. Now we have time for your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Andreas Heine from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for having the chance to ask questions. I ask them one by one. I have quite some, but I will go back through the line to allow my friendly competitors to ask also questions. I would like to start with the sales guidance. I have no problem with the earnings guidance. Very on a good track. If I look on the sales guidance, it basically means that you have another acceleration into Q4. Usually, I would assume that Q4 is a weaker quarter, with December being only a half month. Could you explain why, well, you are at about EUR 300 million in Q3, and it has to get close to EUR 350 million to get to EUR 2.1 billion, if my math is right. So what is sequentially driving another growth in this particular quarter?
Yes, Andreas, thanks for the question. I think we've shown a very strong Q3, which was already been anticipated at the beginning of September when we raised our guidance for the second time of the year, when we said, it's no longer be EUR 1.1 billion, but instead EUR 1.2 billion. So far, we have reached EUR 853 million. And you're right, there is still a lot to come in the fourth quarter. Maybe we don't meet EUR 1.2 billion literally, but at least we'll be closer to the EUR 1.2 billion instead of the EUR 1.1 billion, which we have guided previously.
You've already said, the earnings is totally in line with what we have described so far. When you look at the quarters, especially in our biggest business unit, Graphite Solutions, then they are growing steadily quarter by quarter, and we also expect a strong fourth quarter with them. But as I said, the sales guidance, maybe we will not meet the EUR 1.2 billion literally or that we meet it. But we definitely will be closer to the EUR 1.2 billion instead of the EUR 1.1 billion. That was also the reason why we raised our top line guidance, when we adjusted our last guidance in general. Hope this answers.
Yeah, yeah. Very fair. Thanks. That helps a lot. Coming to your cash flow statement. For quite a number of companies, net working capital was up considerably, mainly price-driven. My understanding is that you had also quite a strong volume growth. Going into Q4, now we see quite a number of companies doing a lot of inventory management, in light of a weaker business next year. How do you see your own net working capital trend in Q4, and what does that mean for the cash generation on a full-year base? Maybe, linked to this, could you give an update what your factoring was at the end of Q3?
Yes. I think we are not alone when we try to manage net working capital at year-end. You're completely right. On the one hand side, we are growing with double-digit figures, which also means you have a lot of receivables that materialize. With a time lag, we have some valuation issues with higher raw material prices. When you grow, you have to buy higher raw materials first. I think we are all well aware of the cash conversion cycles that we have in our business when you do graphite and as Torsten has described it, and especially when you want to have super purified graphite for our customer, mainly for the silicon carbide industry.
This means that you have to produce and buy it from pitch and coke, and you have to bake it, and then you have to graphitize it, and then send it to the site where we do all this purification, send it to the customer, and then finally get paid after a couple of weeks. The cash conversion cycle is really quite long. This is driving our net working capital. However, of course, we are trying to manage it, especially in order to secure our cash flow by year-end. I think we're on a good way to do that, and I think we are confident that our cash flow will be quite a bit higher at year-end as it is right now on a Q3 basis.
Maybe also as an indicator, you mentioned factoring. Factoring at half year, after six months of the year, was roughly EUR 46 million, and now it's only EUR 39 million. It has declined by EUR 7 million. This is also an effect on our working capital.
Yeah. Okay. Then one question again on the balance sheet. Pensions, I would have assumed to come down in Q3 again as the interest rate was going up considerably, and you have given a sensitivity in the last annual report. But what we have seen in the first half did not continue in Q3. Could you explain why that was?
Yeah, very good question. The interest indeed went up on the one hand side in Germany from 3.2% to 3.7%. We have the same effect or even a stronger effect in the United States, where we also have quite an amount of pension liabilities. There, the interest rate went up from 3.7% to 5.2%. This is really a strong increase. On the other hand, you have to bear in mind, in the United States, let's maybe start with that one. There we have plan assets. It's a completely different pension scheme that we have in the United States.
From a restructuring point of view, last year we have funded our pensions in the United States. That means we have plan assets standing right next to the plan to the DBOs. As the interest rates went up, on the other hand, our plan assets went down because of the poor development of the share prices. That was more or less a wash, and this was a compensation. This is the U.S. Here in Germany, we have closed one of our pension schemes, which was, as we think, a very expensive one. We had some negotiations with our works councils in order to set up a new pension scheme and consolidate.
On the one hand side, finish and really close a very unattractive and old pension scheme, and got, you know, somehow convert it into a new one. We also consolidated all our pension schemes that are up and running into this new scheme. By end of Q3, we looked at the trend of our pensions. Normally you just do that at year-end. As we went into the new scheme, we did it also for Q3 already. In the end, you can say we anticipated some effects that we would only see on year-end normally when we have all these normal pension statements where some experts look at it.
We have already adjusted the trend in the future pensions from 1.5% to 2.1% already. This then also compensates the interest increase that we saw in Germany. I know it's complicated, but you're an expert. I hope I could answer your question.
Yeah. Thanks. That's very helpful. Again, I keep to my last question. You had a very strong growth, especially in the silicon carbide business. It accelerated even through the year. Do you have to invest significantly to keep that growth? There is enough capacity available. In other words, you might be at EUR 60 million CapEx this year. Is that going up to a number, let's say EUR 80 million-EUR 90 million next year? Or do we have to assume that you can continue your growth in future CapEx?
Yeah. Andreas, this is Torsten. I try to answer your question one by one. First, our CapEx remains the basic CapEx, the same on depreciation level. The customers like our product in the silicon carbide market so much, that they are prepared to give us customer down payments. If we invest already this year, we will do this funded by our customer. This is not one device, which we are going to increase or to double. This is a global value chain going from site to site to site. This is what Thomas explained. We produce a green graphite in Bonn, then it goes on, it's baked, graphitized, cleaned, and so on.
It goes through three or four hands, and we debottleneck every site where we have a bottleneck. This will be a global investment campaign, but not with that big-ticket items. It's more a low-cost debottlenecking, which we went so far. The second effect, which I have to describe, is a reallocation of businesses. LED market is more lower margin. Silicon chips, standard computer chips is in the mid, and silicon carbide is the highest margin. We also reallocated part of our businesses from LED to silicon carbide, and this also accounted for the growth. I hope this answers your questions.
Thanks. I step back to the queue.
The next question comes from Thomas Junghanns from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
First of all, thanks for taking my question. I have a question regarding the higher energy prices. To what extent are your contracts equipped with the energy clauses, and how confident are you that you can continue to pass on elevated energy prices also next year and especially in 2024 when we see this expiration of hedging?
Thomas, sorry, we don't disclose these figures, but some contracts containing this energy escalation clause, which is good and bad. Good because we can cover the increased energy. Bad if gas prices are declining like it happens right now, we have to give back the price to our customers. What is much more important for us is the energy hedges we did so far, and we were quite well equipped with energy hedges this year, which is harder in next year because we don't find counterparties, and this is why we enjoy the state programs that much. This is a much bigger leverage on the margin than forwarding it to customers.
As most of our markets are still tight, we think we will be somewhat successful to further pass on energy cost increases if they happen.
Yeah. Thank you.
For example, in silicon carbide, we are more or less sold out, currently.
Okay. Got it. Thanks.
The next question comes from Richard Schramm from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Two questions, if I may. First, concerning the pricing component, as you mentioned that you have been able to more or less completely pass on the higher input cost to your customers. What was the contribution of this 11% sales increase if you strip out the currency effect in the first nine months referring to pricing? What is the pricing component in this 11% increase? As a rough estimate.
Yeah, it's a good question. On the one hand side, it's margin improvement. We have some mixed effects, as Torsten has pointed out, as we shift some capacities from a lower margin business, it's still a decent one, into a higher margin business with like silicon carbide and so on. Then we have the price effect. In the end, you can take the, let's say, now you mean currency adjusted. We have a growth of EUR 110 million in the top line, and I think all three parts, be it price increases or price pass-through, be it mixed effects, but also cost savings.
I think the three of the components are roughly at the same level and contribute to that, increase. Please allow me to take out the currency adjustment. Otherwise, it gets very complicated. Otherwise, I have to go through side by side. I think I cannot disclose or cannot pass on to you this information. You can say it's one-third, one-third, one-third for price effects, mix effects, and cost savings. I think that answers the question in the most fair way I can do it.
Okay. Thank you. Which at the end of the day means that there has been also real increase in volume in your business. It was not only price driven and not only currency driven, but there has also been a real volume growth, right?
Exactly. Yeah, this is exactly what we did in the past. I mean, you know that we are very prudent and tight on the CapEx side. As Torsten just pointed out when he answered Thomas Junghanns' question, we are investing since the last two years on the level of depreciation maximum. We try to spend our CapEx money in the most diligent way we can use it by debottlenecking, as we call it. Always, we look at the weakest part at the constraint in our value chain, be it in the global value chain, be it in a site, be it in a production line, or be it in a simple machine or, you know, at some shift.
We always look at where is the constraint, how can we overcome it, and this is where we invest in order to maximize our production from what we can do, where we know the customer, and where we can produce the product. We do not try to make any stupid new things which we maybe have never been done, never done before. This is how we do it. There's also a real growth in our quantity that we sell, let's put it this way.
Okay. Thank you. Second point I wanted to touch is the growth areas you outlined here on the chart on page 13. Can you give us an indication what portion of your business you would attribute to these markets at the moment? I assume it's still a relatively low portion and should grow, of course, then over the next years. Where do we stand at the moment here?
Yeah. Richard, those markets, as I said, offshore wind energy is a carbon fiber market, so it goes into our business unit, Carbon Fibers. EVs is Composite Solutions. They are the battery cases, and so on. SiC semiconductors and photovoltaic is Graphite Solutions. If you look at the margins of the respective business units, they are above average. This is what I can say, but we don't disclose margins for specific markets. They are above average in the respective business units.
Sorry, I didn't ask for a margin, but a share in sales.
Ah.
Was my intention to get an idea of where this business stands at the moment within your whole product portfolio.
Richard, you have seen the left-hand chart. This shows our market exposure split. We sell 29% into EV. We sell 12% into energy. This is the average market split of all business units. Part of this is described by the four markets we randomly selected for this presentation.
Richard, do you wanna know exactly, the growth rate of each market segment, or?
No. Put it quite simple. From your 100% sales, is these let's say future growth market, are they at the moment at 5%, or are they already at 10% of your sales? Where do we stand at the moment here? What's the basis we have to look forward from, this growth rates you have penciled out?
For wind energy and our carbon fiber, this is what we can say. The wind energy replaced the automotive. There you have to distinguish between onshore and offshore, and especially in offshore, which is growing far bigger than onshore. Especially in our offshore applications, this is where they need our graphite parts. What we can disclose, the wind energy part of our carbon fiber business is next year, almost it's roughly 35%-40%. This is what we can say. A part of it is offshore, and this is the larger portion that we have in there. When we come to photovoltaic and SiC semiconductor, this is something we don't disclose.
As I pointed out in the beginning, our semiconductor share in our Graphite Solutions business unit is about one-third. Out of that, a certain portion is silicon carbide, and this is what is growing with 40% year-on-year, as Torsten has pointed out. This is the way we can disclose it. When you look at electric vehicles, there we have especially our Composite Solutions business unit. They are almost 100% into automotive and serving especially the electric vehicle market. For sure, they're also doing some aero kits for some sports cars and SUVs, and they also have some leaf springs.
The battery cases, which is an element as this niche business in the electric vehicle part, this is definitely in our Composite Solutions, and it plays there the largest share of our top line. I hope this could answer the question in the way you asked it.
Yeah. Gave me an idea of this. Okay, thanks a lot.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Klaus Schlöte from Solventis. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I have a question regarding the anode material for batteries. As far as I remember, a couple of quarters ago, that was something that was kind of a case where future growth might come from. What is the current situation there? Is this business you are still trying to get a grip on the market there that some OEM will buy your powder? Or is it actually given, have you given up on that? Thank you.
Yeah. This is still a strange story. You see all the announcements of the automotive OEMs, which will boost the rate of electric vehicles, and they need batteries. Currently, the majority of batteries is imported from China or Asia, but a European battery industry is building up, and there are 20%-25%.
Projects which are announced and some of them raised EUR 4 billion to construct everything. What we see, we sample almost every one of them. They analyze our material, do trials with it. We get pretty good feedback, but the business is not there. We see ourselves in a pole position as we have contact to most of the players, but we also see that most of the battery projects are delayed.
It's still a case for future growth, basically.
Yes. It's small-scale production what we are currently doing. This is the status and what we see in the future is that the European battery market will be independent. It might be that China closed its borders and not that many batteries were exported. This is why big subsidy programs were launched in Europe and also in the U.S. We see in 10 years from now pretty much independent regions, Europe, the U.S. and China. This will require a battery industry to be built up. We see that graphite for those batteries is pretty scarce. We are, I would say, the largest player currently in this field.
We have a site in Poland which could be able to produce up to 20,000 tons of graphite powder for batteries. Currently everything is more or less imported from China.
What is your best guess when this market will take off?
25, 26, the first capacities are going to open. All the 20 projects which are announced, I would bet on end of this decade.
Your contract with one of the OEMs, when will this happen, most likely in this context?
We have no sales contract signed right now. We are still in the sampling phase and in the small series production. This is nothing we would bet on. We need the large volumes, and they might come 2025, 2026.
Okay. Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from Mr. Andreas Heine from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yeah. First question is on the industrial part of your business in graphite and also in carbon fibers. It was very strong. You said that you have quite some lead time, so that goes back to, let's say, first half, which looked still pretty good for the industry, but it's not the case right now. Do you see already an impact on a slowdown from this end market in your book-to-bill ratio and specifically graphite in the industrial applications and also in carbon fibers?
Yeah. Still, we don't see a disaster in those markets. What we can see that the order entry is going down. It's still positive for us. Order entry is still increasing our order backlog, but not to an extent which we have seen two or three months ago. Everything is slowing a little bit down. We can see in no region and in no specific segment a real breakdown. Of course, we read the same information as you in the newspaper, but from order entry point of view, we cannot see a significant slowdown right now.
With the lead time you have, you can be in these end markets pretty safe, at least for the first half of next year. Is that fair, I say?
I would say so. Our preparation was what I'm trying to explain. We shifted already volumes from the LED segment into silicon carbide power electronics. We expect a slowdown of the semicon industry and our strategy was to use the mix effect a little bit and shift volumes of markets which are not that stable into the very solid silicon carbide market. This is our strategic answer to it.
I see. The second question is on these gas and electricity brake ideas of the German government. As far as I've seen it, that they are only applicable if you have seen an EBITDA decline by 40%, which quite frankly is not what I see for you, and I would not expect this for next year. This is for companies having a demand of use of gas and electricity of more than 1.5 GW, which is also valid for them. I would assume that you have basically no advantage at all from these gas brakes. What's your view on what we can see from the proposals right now?
Andreas, we have to check it, as the conditions for the programs are pretty new. We haven't checked it so far. We will come up with this during our next call.
Okay, thanks. The last one I'd like to add this then is the wind energy. Indeed, you were very successful, and we could see this with sharp decline in mobility and strong increase in energy and carbon fibers. This wind energy, was that all Europe because you said that in this carbon fibers there was basically no FX effect, and I would assume if you deliver to Asian players, for example, that would have seen an FX effect. That's first question. I would also be interested whether there you have how broad range of customers do you have? Is this a couple or some more of customers you were able to find for this fast switch from the BMW i3 contract to wind energy?
First of all, the industry in wind energy is an oligopoly. There are, I think, seven p layers which account for more than 80% of the market. Of course, we have contact to all of them. Directly or indirectly, we are supplying almost everyone. You see, it's a global business. Also our value chain is a global value chain, and this is why the currency effect might not be that big. We have a production in Lavradio for the first step of the value chain, precursor manufacturing. The second step which is also pretty energy intensive is the carbonization, which we do in the U.S., Moses Lake. It's not a pure European business and this might mitigate our-
Okay.
FX effect. I hope your questions are answered.
Thanks.
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