Welcome to the Q2 2022 reporting of Aspo. I'm glad to say that we had a strong year, also during Q4 2022. We had a record year when it comes to operating profit EUR 55 million, and the last quarter EUR 11.3 million. Maybe even more importantly, we've taken major steps when it comes to strategy implementation in a fairly difficult market environment. So far, we signed all the exits related to selected Eastern markets. It has tied up a lot of time of management. Telko has made acquisitions according to the compounder strategy. We're very happy to say that the integration of Leipurin and Kobia is moving in a very successful direction.
Out of the 12 Green Coaster vessels, four are currently under production, and it looks like everything is moving according to schedule. In addition to the financial targets, also ESG targets, and ESG development is going in a good direction. If we then look at on Aspo level and top-line development, we have a growth of some 11% for the full year, and that's only 1% then for the last quarter, driven by Telko's situation in Russia and the shrinking business there. Looking at ESL, strong growth throughout the year and actually for Leipurin even accelerating growth throughout 2022.
If you look at profit, EUR 11.3 million for Q4, close to 7% margin, and for the whole year EUR 55 million and 8.5%, above our 8% target. It's quite a similar picture compared to top-line development, so Telko's result dropping during the second half due to Russia. Leipurin continuing to develop strongly towards better profitability throughout the year, and ESL strong performance throughout last year. We had last year EUR 24.1 million of items affecting comparability. In October, we forecasted EUR 25 million, so we ended up fairly close to that figure. Basically, all of this is related to Ukraine and Russia.
There are some other elements of Kauko, Vulganus, and other restructuring costs, but these are basically offsetted by the fact that we sold Espa beginning of last year, so very much related to the war in Ukraine. Very strong cash flow, EUR 68 million. Free cash flow of EUR 34 million. If you look at the CapEx investments, some acquisitions, primarily Kobia, and then investments in the Green Coasters and dockings, that is the summary of the CapEx investments. If we look at working capital, no big changes. Actually, Telko's inventory is decreasing, and ESL's inventory is increasing because here we find the Green Coasters that we will sell forward to the pool investors, when these ships arrive.
A return on equity above 30%, which actually is a continued trend throughout 2022. Russia and selected Eastern markets, I'm of course very happy to say that we now signed three binding framework agreements covering Telko Belarus, Telko Russia, and Leipurin East. These all have to be still approved by the commission, but our understanding currently is that when it comes to Telko Russia, we hope for a solution during Q1, and when it comes to Leipurin Russia, we hope to get a solution during the first half of 2022.
Now, I want to highlight here that you're probably aware of the fact that also Leipurin and Telko, the legal entities in Belarus, have been listed on a list among approximately other 1,000 foreign companies which are prohibited to be sold. This means, for example, that when it comes to Telko Belarus, we will wind down the business instead of selling it. Our business in Belarus is so small that this will not impact our figures. The big ticket, that is, the Russian businesses and making sure that we get a positive verdict by the commission. ESG emissions, good development, driven by growth, driven by operational excellence, particularly for ESL.
Safety, we're not yet happy with the results we have here, 8.1 as the safety frequency, including all the incidents that has happened. We did not reach the set target of seven. We developed in a good direction, and I'm happy to say that this is something we're working on a lot in the businesses. Making sure that operating procedures are followed, safety glasses, helmets, et cetera, and a lot of safety walks and things like this to change the culture basically. People satisfaction, personnel satisfaction, continues on a strong level and we also closely follow up on the training and trainings and these are well executed. I want to take the opportunity to welcome Taru Uotila who takes responsibility of Legal, HR and Sustainability.
Taru has a lot of relevant experience from international companies, Fortum, GE HealthCare and also VR Group, and big welcome to the team of Aspo. Moving on to the business-specific numbers and starting with ESL. As already pointed out, ESL's strong performance continued during the whole year 2022. If we start with top line development, growth of 28% throughout the year, 16% during the last quarter. This is driven by three factors, very strong demand, then our partnerships with industrial companies and then operational excellence in the sense that we were able to utilize our vessel capacity in a very good manner.
You very well know that, starting, let's say, during summertime last year, the Baltic Dry indices have been declining, and that trend has continued during 2023 year to date. However, the situation is still such that in the Baltic Sea region, there's a deficit of vessel capacity, and I'm talking then about all year round vessel capacity, ice class capacity. That we experience particularly in the coaster segment, where we actually have difficulties in securing sufficient capacity of time chartered coaster vessels. Luckily, we have The majority of our fleet is tied up to long-term customer contracts. That goes particularly for the Handysize vessels, whereas the Supramax vessels are more dependent on the spot market development.
Here you can see the development of the indices, independent if it's the Baltic Dry Index or the Handysize, Supramax indexes. They all look quite similar, so continued decline. Here of course also what you can read is that there's high volatility, so it can change in both directions going forward. ESL's operating profit EUR 10.6 million. To my knowledge, this is the best quarter ever in ESL's history, again, driven by strong demand, by a good operational performance, but also due to the fact that weather conditions were good during the last quarter. The margin %, on a small decline compared to Q4 last year, that is, for example, related to the increasing fuel prices.
Over to Telko, quite a polar, let's say dual situation. We have the Western markets developing very favorably, we have the situation on the other hand in Russia and Ukraine. Looking at revenue development, we have the decline of top line of approximately 20% during last quarter, which actually continued than the trend we had during Q3. Here it's interesting to see that basically this means that currently we have some 20%-25% of our Russian business left if you compare Q4 this year, 2022 compared to previous year. As mentioned, in the Western markets, organic growth and then even that being supported by the acquisitions made.
If you go a bit into the business lines, plastics and chemicals, a decline in price levels during Q4. However, the situation was stabilizing and, for example, in some chemicals, you even had increasing pricing. Now going into 2023, I would say in general, we're above the normal price level in the market. Extremely strong development by the lubricants business, particularly in the industrial lubricants, supported of course by Mentum, but good price development, extremely strong demand. Going forward, I said, stabilizing situation, but of course, uncertainties remain. Macro level uncertainties, inflation, energy prices, China, et cetera, which adds uncertainty. We announced in January an acquisition of Eltrex. I think this is a kind of textbook example of a good acquisition opportunity of Telko.
Spot on kind of market segment, specialty chemicals, a very profitable business. This is basically a market entry for us into the chemical segment in Poland. Looking at Telko's profitability, you see a clear decline here in profitability during Q4. However, the rationales and drivers behind these are very clear. We have the situation in Russia, a very shrinking business. Looking at Ukraine, unfortunately, there has been a development towards worse. Energy distribution have been very difficult in Ukraine during the fourth quarter, and hence that has impacted production and also impacted Telko's business.
Then in addition, there are some, let's say, elements of one-time costs, M&A mapping, exchange rate losses, ruble, Kazakhstan, and some obsolete inventories, unfortunately, giving a worse result for Q4. I just want to highlight here that I'm not worried at all about Telko's financial performance going forward. As you very well know, approximately a quarter of Telko's revenue is Russian-related, and we will compensate that based on the M&A we do, and also we invest a lot in cost efficiency. I think the situation of Telko looks quite good. Leipurin continued improvement of performance, that you can even see from these top-line curves here.
Basically, we have had strong growth driven by inflation throughout the year, specifically during Q4, the acquisition of Kobia even accelerated net sales development, 30% of growth in Q4. This growth is relevant both for bakeries and food industry, if we look at the volume trend, it's still disappointing, this is driven by inflation. We see that kind of the macro development of the market consumer confidence is impacting volumes negatively. We will end up losing the business in East, as told you before, Kobia will compensate more than well for the lost revenue. Some weeks ago, we came out with a sales and leaseback arrangement of the Gothenburg warehouse of Kobia.
If I give you the big picture, basically, in our balance sheet, all the Kobia assets, property assets are valued at approximately 13 and a half million euros. Now, we were able to sell one of the smaller entities, and even that with a profit compared to the balance sheet value. We're pursuing opportunities to also sell and lease back the rest of the properties. Profitability of Leipurin continues on a very kind of positive trend. We made EBIT of EUR 4.1 million during 2022. I think this is a clear record year if we look a couple of years back before the times when Leipurin did some EUR 6-7 million of EBIT, but clearly a very strong performance now of Leipurin, clearly going in the right direction.
Kobia didn't really contribute anything to the bottom line last year due to the IFRS changes. That is still to come during this year. I said the integration is moving in a good direction. The profit boost program is also going on. Good kind of forecast for Leipurin here. I also want to take the opportunity to welcome Miska Kuusela, who started beginning of this year as the CEO of Leipurin Group. He has very relevant background in different Finnish and more international food companies. Is well on board. Welcome Miska to the team. Back to Aspo's financial position and balance sheet.
Overall, during last year, we developed in a favorable direction some 35% of equity ratio and gearing of 108%. If we look at our net debt, it's currently EUR 156 million. A year ago, it was approximately EUR 170 million. Interest rates clearly on an increasing trend, so we need to watch out not to for that to impact too much on cash flow. Liquidity remains on a very good level, EUR 34 million plus the facilities of EUR 40 million. Here I want to highlight that out of the EUR 34 million, some EUR 12 million are tied up to the Russian business it that will be exited. The maturity profile of our debt is fairly healthy.
It will be further extended when we take the EUR 32 million loan for the Green Coasters from the Svenska Skeppshypotek, which is a 15 years loan. Dividend proposal. Here if we compare to our earning per share, EUR 0.6 per share, if you disregard the one-time costs, actually the earning per share was approximately EUR 1.3 per share. The proposal by the board of directors to the annual shareholders meeting is to pay a dividend of EUR 0.23 and in addition, to authorize the board to decide upon a additional payment of EUR 0.23. That adding up to EUR 0.46 dividend compared to the EUR 0.45 paid last year.
Still then summarizing the year, if we look from a financial perspective, record year EUR 55 million, basically all of the financial targets were reached. If we look from a activity perspective, and this is a bit of an extended year, we did four acquisitions. We exited Vulganus, we exited Kauko, and addition, we signed exits for the Russian businesses. We made quite major changes when it comes to our financial arrangements. We had the hybrid of EUR 30 million during spring last year, we got the pooling arrangement around the Green Coasters up and running after the summer breaks. We invested in the Green Coasters, a total of 12. I think this summarizes the year fairly well. Going into 2023, I think we remain in a good position to compound growth.
If we look at ESL, it's really about further developing the industrial partnerships. It will be a very much kind of ESG-driven growth, investing in new, emission-friendly, vessel capacity. Telko will focus on growth, both organic and non-organic growth, and make sure that scalability is on the top of the agenda. Leipurin, it still remains all about profit improvement and selecting the segments in where we want to grow. Guidance for year 2023. What we guide is saying that Aspo's comparable operating profit will be higher than EUR 35 million in 2023. This was a short capture of the last quarter of 2022, and then also perspectives on the full year.
I'm happy to take questions starting from the floor.
First, could you comment on Leipurin's EUR 1.1 million adjusted EBIT? How much does that already reflect this Kobia acquisition synergies? I mean, it's still a very fresh acquisition, so could you provide some color on that? Because... Yeah.
Good question. If we look kind of what Kobia has brought to the table so far, it's actually negative EBIT if we look at the IFRS changes when it comes to the inventory, and then also because the fact that we've valued the properties to at 13.5. We're doing some depreciation which did not happen before the acquisition. From pure EBIT standalone perspective, it's negative contribution for year 2022. If we look at synergies, I would say that so far they've exceeded expectations. We see a lot of opportunities taking principles from Finland to Sweden, vice versa. See a lot of opportunities of selling Kobia products in Finland and the Baltic countries.
At the end of the day, the kind of effects on the Q4, I would say very limited. That's definitely a lot more to come during 2023.
All right. Telko Q3 EBIT was EUR 3.7 million adjusted, it was then discussed that that was like That should give some sort of sense of the going forward run rate, now it was only EUR 1.3. How do you see that in that from this perspective?
Good question. If we look at Telko's EBIT the last two years, were both years beyond EUR 20 million. If we kind of deduct the Russian business out of that, it's approximately a quarter. If we do that on a kind of top line and also kind of an indicative level on the bottom line, I think that's gives a fairly good picture of the run rate, and that actually resembles the EUR 3.7 you mentioned for Q3. Q4, I think you cannot read too much out of that on a standalone basis due to the kind of different elements. Of course, there are some risks related. One is the kind of macro level development.
One is, the longer the Russian business is part of Telko, it will affect the profitability in a bad manner. The Russian business, it makes a loss of EUR 100,000-200,000 per month. That's a negative impact. Also the development in Ukraine. Actually last year during the summertime, we had fairly good development in Ukraine, but that weakened quite a lot during Q4 due to limited production.
Right. Maybe about ESL. Outlook it seems pretty stable. I guess at this point you can't really comment too much on the latter half of this year. If we think about how does it look like Q1 or H1 from a comparison perspective to last year, like how would you describe pricing for the smaller vessels now compared to a year ago? Also how does the situation for Supramax look at the moment?
I think you very well summarize it, that it's very difficult to kind of forecast H2 this year. A lot of things can happen. Longer term, I believe very strongly in what we're doing, kind of ESG, industrial partnerships, et cetera. When it comes to the coaster segments, we have a deficit of some five, six vessels currently, and we want to add capacity. From that perspective, the Green Coaster investments from a timing perspective is quite ideal, we will start getting the Green Coasters during fall this year. The Supramax vessels, basically they are tied to traffic until end of February, mid-February. After that, if we are not able to do kind of longer term commitments, we are to some extent dependent on the spot market development. So.
The Handysize segment, that fleet is very well tied to the industrial partnership. The possible weaknesses lies in the Supra segment and the fact that we lack capacity in the coasters.
The Supra pricing, is it still like relatively good for this Q1 period when you have them?
The current contracts that we have are still on a good level.
Thanks.
Sauli Vilén from Inderes. About your guidance, can you give us some more light? Like on what kind of scenario are you basing on your guidance, since obviously you are guiding EBIT to come down fairly significantly?
If I comment on the specific businesses, Leipurin, I see improving performance. Telko, I see basically a dip in the profitability only based on the fact that we will exit the Russian business. However, we will try to compensate via cost efficiency improvements and M&As. ESL, which had a kind of a record year 2022, we will go down a bit, and this assumption is basically built on what I just mentioned, so the spot market development and then securing sufficient all year round capacity in the coaster segment.
On the Russian e-exit. Obviously, you are doing everything you can to get out of there, what if you don't? What if the commission or whatever the entity is disapproves the sale? You obviously have some kind of plan B. What that would mean?
I think it's a very relevant question and, as I mentioned in the presentation, we put a lot of efforts into this process and it also means that we will not give up. Even if the commission would kind of disapprove the applications pending on the feedback we get, there might be different kind of venues to take. There of course, at the end of the day, we're in the situation where we have a very small inventory and then cash in the bank. Of course we'll do our utmost to get that cash back to Finland. Then of course, if you look at kind of worst case scenario, that could take some time pending on the commission approval.
There might be then some legal scenarios how to do it and cooperation with different parties, et cetera.
In Finland we have this thing called AKT who are on strike at the moment. Does that affect you in any way if the strike prolongs from here?
A very kind of accurate question. What is going on here at the moment? Our situation is if we look at ESL, let's assume that this will be a approximately two week strike, then that would cost us in profitability. Our best estimate currently is half a million EUR. If I look at the two other businesses, they work in a bit, in different manner. In case it will only be a two week strike, I think the effects will be very limited. If it will go beyond that, we will have some problems in securing capacity, et cetera.
It's a bit of a dual picture, and, this half a million EUR, it's a very preliminary figure, but based on our kind of, fast analysis, it should be the right magnitude.
Finally, on the financial income, you actually booked some positive financial income items during Q4. I guess this is for the CFO. What items were there?
Mostly interest and then, dividends.
Dividends from East or? Okay, very helpful. Thank you. That's all.
Anyone else questions on the floor? If not, then do we have any questions online?
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No questions online. I want to thank you for the shown interest towards Aspo's financial performance. Thank you very much.