Good afternoon, and welcome to Detection Technology's fourth quarter results announcement. My name is Hannu Martola. I'm the President and CEO, and pleased to be informing you what took place in fourth quarter and 2023. In a nutshell, it was a tough year. A lot of changes externally and also internally at DT, but it ended really well. So fourth quarter, we made a record sales, EUR 31.3 million, and reached a profitability of 14.8% EBITDA, which is at our target level. The growth was 11%, which is slightly above the midterm target of at least 10% growth. When we look closer, then what's in the sales, both industrial and medical sales grew single digit.
Industrial sales actually still suffered a little bit on our, if I call DT legacy business of the, let's say, slow times. But thanks also to DTS, we got some new sales, and overall, we grew nice 7%. Especially, TFT flat panels were contributing to growth, but also automotive sector in larger. So we are actually, for example, we are delivering detectors for battery inspection as well as heavy tire inspection and that contributed to the growth. Medical sales was 4% growth. Sort of medical, the sales was what we expected. I mean, we had heavy negative growth in third quarter because of the China anti-corruption campaign.
That campaign continues, but fourth quarter was a bit of an exception because 90% of the China healthcare spending is public, and in these public systems, they have annual budgets that they have to use, otherwise they will not be supported for the next year. And this had an effect on the, also on the China medical sales, and in total, we grew. Despite that amount, we see that most probably the first half of 2024 will be a bit tough still on the anti-corruption side. Security sales grew fantastic, 21%. The growth continued, especially in all sectors outside China, in the aviation. One thing to note is that we're very pleased with our sort of progress in India.
Actually, India started to contribute already to this security sales, and we look forward on a very long term, nice growth, not only in security, but also in other areas of X-ray digital detector business. I must note that the focus and efficiency program we started in September, actually, or started in August, closed in September, that helped to get the fixed cost into control. And thanks to the nice sales growth, plus the more sort of downsized fixed cost base, we were able to yield out a nice EBITDA. Net sales by quarter, these are the last 4-year sales, quarterly sales. Clearly, the best result so far.
And then when we look closer into the profitability, we clearly see that DT business model scales nicely when we get the volume up, and we're able to reach the targeted 15% level. Then looking closer on the business unit split, IBU reached EUR 5 million sales, MBU EUR 13.1 million, and SBU EUR 13.2 million. By the way, SBU for long now was bigger than MBU, and the annual sales changes with 1% for SBU, 4% roughly for MBU, and 7% for IBU. And now, SBU and IBU are about 60% of our sales, and MBU about 40%. Then on the sales by region, Americas really high growth, especially driven by security sales to US.
Asia Pacific, 12.6%. That is a little bit helped also by India, as I explained. And Europe, Middle East, Africa, a decline of roughly 19%, and I must explain that this is mostly also a result of some one-time items in the fourth quarter of 2023. Oh, sorry, fourth quarter of 2022, as a comparable quarter, we had exceptionally high growth for SBU, fourth quarter 2022, due to also some consignment stock that we're selling to customers and so on. So this is not giving the full truth on a longer term. We expect coming time growth in all these markets.
Full year, EUR 103.8 million , EUR 9.7 million EBITDA, representing 9.3% of our revenue, excluding the NRI. And as a reminder, we had for third quarter, we had some NRI relating to the one-time costs for this fix, this focus and efficiency program. Sales by business units, all business units grew on an annual scale. IBU, flat, flattish, and like I said, I mean, IBU, legacy IBU would have been negative, but thanks to DTS for the second half, that helped there. MBU, flattish. It was good start for first half, but then the anti-corruption campaign came, and SBU, nice growth through the full year. By region, again, Americas is a nice 60% growth, thanks to security sales in US.
Asia-Pacific, flat, flattish. Without India, this would be, by the way, a bit negative. Europe, Middle East, Africa, about flat, zero percent . Then looking more closer into the finances, if I pick some numbers here, one item is relating to overall, I mean, I think R&D, I mean, full 2023 were about 11.3%. That's sort of the level of 10%-11% that we need to be investing, which are then recognized the cost, but we need to be investing into our R&D. Cash flow was positive, not to the level that we, let's say, normally could have been doing.
There was some because of the, especially medical business, there are very long lead time items for quite expensive, like, photodiode, CMOS wafers, and so on, and we have to order those based on forecast. When the forecast didn't realize because of the hit for the second half, that resulted a bit higher inventory what we would have otherwise had. Another reason for bad cash flow also is this, that very heavy accounts receivable, thanks for especially December sales was really high, and that affected our sort of net working capital. On investment side, just to note that, if we look 2022, I mean, we did really, I mean, just some maintenance investments, so the CapEx was low, EUR 1.6 million.
Now we see fourth quarter a bit higher, EUR 1.1 million. That's an outcome of one fairly expensive production equipment and also the investments for this new Oulu facility. So this EUR 1.1 million is a bit high side on to our normalized sort of outlook for investments. Then relating to earnings per share, just to note that if we look on FY 2023, earnings per share is EUR 0.38 compared to the FY 2022, EUR 0.35. The change is actually smaller than what we see in the nice growth in the EBITDA profitability. There are two things affecting this EPS one-time things relating to last year. One is the interest cost.
So the interest costs were high because of the currency exchange rates. We actually don't sort of... The net cost for our loans is about zero because we have income, and we have... Then we pay a little bit for the working capital loans interest, but the net is zero. But then all the accounts receivable, as well as our sort of balances in our accounts, bank accounts, is at the year-end, is then translated into euros, and then there we have some changes. It was positive on 2022, it was negative on 2023, and long term, it will be less. We don't need, and we don't hedge because we don't see a need for that.
We are nicely, our sales and purchases are sort of balancing each other out, but these kind of balance sheet items then are sort of then floating, whatever the currency exchange rates are. Another topic here is the taxes. We had extraordinarily high taxes for 2023 because of some one-time items. I think the tax rate was even close to 25%. Our normalized tax rate should be somewhere close to 20%. I mean, China, we are paying 15%, U.S. is even 29%. We had high, nice profits in U.S., especially fourth quarter, so that affects. And, some other one-time items that, then will be sort of, let's say, balancing out over longer, sort of longer midterm. On strategy highlights, two topics to note. One is this Oulu facility.
Actually, our team moved in yesterday, so they are in brand-new office. Production is starting now in February and early March, and then we have a nice, good facility on also manufacturing the products that we are selling, for example, in the US, and we are getting some savings from European origin-based reasons. Then the Haobo Imaging, which we call DTS, is now fully integrated to the system, and we are very pleased what we have gotten. And we've understood also based on employee survey that also DTS people are pleased what's going on, and we have a joint nice future together. This is one of our really strategic objectives, is to get this TFT business and conquer the world with our sort of products and offerings.
Other events, we received, as a sign of our super high world-class quality and lean activities in our factories in Beijing and Wuhan, we got, for Beijing factory, an excellent supplier award of one major healthcare company. We also were able to recertify as a high and new technology enterprise in China, meaning that our tax rate is 15% for the next three years, not 25%, that it would be otherwise. And then, we also recognized as one of the top 10 companies in the Beijing area, out of the 884 largest sort of companies in the Beijing development area for our sort of activities in health and safety and developing the facility further.
We are continuing to work with UNICEF and Ahlström Capital, impact on making the world a better place for children. On sales expectation, on business unit-wise, what we see is that nice growth for industrial for first quarter and first half. For medical, actually to decrease due to this anti-corruption, for first quarter and first half. And then security, as well as industrial security, should see nice double-digit growth in first quarter and first half. And as of net, our official guidance is the total net sales is about flat for first quarter and first half on beginning of this year. And then we foresee that things will be getting better for the second half.
And here, as the word to word guidance, we expect year-on-year total net sales to remain stable in first quarter and first half of 2024. The market growth numbers, we hold them the same, but I mean, there's so much volatility and so on that, I mean, it will be then in the history books what the growths were then when you look behind later on. And there's a lot of issues going on, as we all are sadly aware of in the world, so that we have to be very, very fast in our sort of reactions, have good situational awareness, fast decision-making, and then navigating the company further for the benefit of our owners, and stakeholders, and employees, and so on.
On earnings per share and payout, so the board will be proposing and is proposing to the annual general meeting a dividend of 61%, so on the higher end of the 40%-60% policy, which would mean a EUR 0.23 dividend per share. And the financial targets remain: midterm annual sales growth, at least 10%; operating margin, EBITDA of 15%; and then dividend, which is then the returns on net profits, 30%-60%. Thank you. I'm very pleased to answer any questions. So Matti, Matti, please.
Good afternoon, Matti Riikonen, Carnegie. Couple of questions. I'll take them one by one. First of all, in the text, you write about 2024, that for the full year, you would be in your target growth, which would, which would be roughly 10% or more. Now, you're guiding flat first half, so the second half needs to be very good. What is this idea based on? What kind of security or kind of confidence do you have that you can actually meet the second half if forecasting is difficult in your business, as we have seen?
Thanks. The confidence is the market knowledge and being tough, going out there to capture the business. The answer shortly is that we expect, as everybody else in the market, that this China anti-corruption will not continue forever. We should see fairly nice growth through the year for our security and industrial business, expect double digit for both, and then when the medical should be bouncing back, then we should be able to be reaching the close to our target growth for the full year. But what we are guiding, to repeat, we are guiding the first half, which we see that would be sort of flattish.
Right. Okay. Then second, you talk about the Chinese budget year ending and creating kind of end-of-the-year demand. What was it so, so kind of particularly good this year that made it happen? Because if the budget year is the same every year, then was the comparable comparison particularly weak,
Well, I think the thing is that the third quarter was weak because of artificial reasons. We must remember that these kind of like public hospitals and so on, I mean, they are funded. Even all the decisions are there to build new hospitals, to buy new technology. I mean, this basic CT is a basic, I say, workhorse, a must-have tool in any hospital, and a must-have enough capacity, because people coming ill to hospital, that's what you need to be checked with a CT first. So, this need is there, the funding is there, just artificially because of this anti-corruption campaign, hospitals were careful, and they were a bit afraid of ordering.
But then, as we are guessing, and what we were also told by our customers, that also the need to spend the budget so that you are not wiped out the budget for 2024 was then stronger than this carefulness for the buying the equipment. So but this is then, I must say, this is our sort of a guess, but also based on some customer information.
All right. Then thirdly, you talked earlier about the margin pressure, particularly in China. What is the situation now, and how do you think that it will affect your profitability going into 2024?
The price war is out there for medical. China is clearly a different market in healthcare than the rest of the world, because of this sort of a slowdown of the anti-corruption and market sort of coming down. It has an impact for us also. We have to be very careful how we are pricing our products in China, so that we are holding on to in a very competitive situation into some key projects. Some we also, you know, we know that we have to let some go. Despite that, we foresee growth there, but, I mean, short term, we have to be careful.
It will have a slight impact to our profitability if you really would look just medical, but then it will be compensated with higher sales on security and industrial and higher volumes.
Basically, operating leverage should help you more than the price competition is kind of putting brakes?
I think, yeah, the thing is, if we look then the performance for 2024 on EBITDA level, I mean, we should be close to 15% without DTS. Now, DTS, we must remember DTS is in the in as part of DT group, and DTS is not yet able to deliver. I mean, it meaning that actually dilutes. I mean, it starts to be. We had nice growth for DTS for second half of 2023, and we plan for growth also for 2024, and just mathematically, you have sales that is not contributing into the EBITDA.
Vice versa, it's having a small, but negative effect because we are building the products and businesses for later on for medical and getting these approvals and so on through, so that requires efforts. And this is as we have told before.
All right, thank you. I'll give the turn to others.
Thanks. Sami Sarkamies, Danske Bank. I have a couple of questions. We'll also take this one by one. Starting from fixed costs, the level you had in Q4, is that indicative of what the fixed cost structure will be also in 2024?
Yeah, roughly what we had, I mean, one million euro savings for, for second half as we, we have been informed, as savings of this focus efficiency program that carries as a run, run through as, sort of two million for the, for the 2024. There will be some, salary inflation, and these kind of things, but there also will be some, some savings. So roughly, in big picture, the answer is yes.
Okay. And then regarding the Chinese price war you talked about, was this already impacting margins in medical in the fourth quarter.
No.
Okay. So the impact will come then during the first half of the year. Okay, and then, regarding product mix, in Q4, you had 47%, gross margin, is on par with last year, a bit higher than in the third quarter. Was mix good, in your opinion, in the fourth quarter?
Better.
Okay, and then finally, regarding sales progression in security and industrial segments during this year, you're guiding for double-digit growth rates. Do you expect growth rates to ramp up during the year, or it's gonna be more steady going?
That's a good one. I don't think we have visibility for the second half. We sort of have an understanding that the growth will continue. Right now, what we see is we have nice orders in, I mean, higher level of orders of our forecast, what we normally have had, which gives confidence for the first half for security and industrial, but second half, it's a bit early to sort of say what will... Outside of that, yes, there will be growth.
If we think about impact from, for example, the TSA program in the U.S., is that going to be evenly spread throughout the year or somehow back-end loaded?
Probably it will be sort of evenly spread in through the year.
Okay, thanks.
Hi, Felix Henriksson, Nordea. I have a few questions. I can also go one by one. Firstly, on R&D spend for Q4, it was EUR 2.7 million, I think a bit less than 10% of your sales, which is below your historical patterns. Do you think such level is also sustainable going forward?
I think more it's closer to 10%-11%. I mean, if we look at R&D spending, we have probably 70% is internal, and then 30% are external, you know, and they don't come balanced. You might have a, let's say, ASIC project, sort of some R&D one-time cost, NRI, related to the design of an ASIC, et cetera. So it's impact of external versus internal.
Thanks. And then on this year's margin outlook, you mentioned that you'd be close to 15% without DTS. Can you give us any color on how much DTS will dilute margins in 2024? 1 percentage point, what are we talking about?
Oh, I mean, what should I say? I mean, it's not huge impact. I mean, I don't have the mathematics now in my head.
Then you're also looking at double-digit growth in IBU for the first half of the year. Can you just explain what's driving this growth? Is it further progression in the automotive vertical or something else?
Yeah, I think it's now, I mean, the legacy business is coming back a bit, like, food safety is important part of that. We expect the demand continue in the automotive, like batteries and also the tire inspection and so on. But then the legacy basis, IBU, I mean, it's, it was affected quite heavily, first of the component shortages, then customers over-ordering, having stock, and then driving down the stock. And I think overall, the market sentiment is more positive than it was a year ago, for example, or even half year ago.
So would you say that inventory correction or destocking still had an impact on IBU in Q4, or was that already.
Yeah, it had. Yeah, it had, I mean, and also markets where... I mean, if I say it this way, that markets are waking up, and then you are melting the stocks, and you start to have pull sort of... Thanks.
All right, Nikko Ruokangas, SEB, I could continue on the industrial business topic a bit. So, do you expect already in H1 that the organic growth in IBU will be positive?
Oh, a good one. I don't have the numbers in my head, but I mean, it's... What I can say that the legacy organic IBU is improving clearly, sort of, from-- And then there's the DTS sales on top of that, and then, as an outcome, we will be then double-digit.
All right. And then when the IBU gets to organic growth, so do you expect some kind of faster recovery, given that you had quite a much organic decline 2023, or do you expect, like, kind of stable growth going forward?
I mean, what we see is double-digit growth for IBU. So it was single on fourth quarter, including the legacy and DTS effect, and now it's improving.
All right. Then on security topic, so first of all, you just said that the TSA investments will be quite evenly spread between the quarters in 2024. So, will this quarter impact be much bigger than what it was now in Q4 of 2023?
I think we had nice... I mean, aviation growth was nice already for the fourth quarter. If we look the security business unit, we had aviation was growing, India was growing, China was not growing, and by the way, if we look the inside, the security business unit, it's not it's much more now, it's... Or if I say this way, it's much less, like, China-dependent than it was before. So, if China wakes up and starts to grow with the infrastructure investments, then that's sort of a plus then for us. But it's, this SBU is very much driven or pulled, the growth is pulled by, you know, Western, Americas, US, Europe, and India, especially.
All right. And on India, how much is that out of your sales? And if you compare that to maybe couple of years back, so how much has the India grown?
India still is fairly small, but the growth percentages have been quite, quite big, and that's why, it even, you know, it's even sizable for the security fourth quarter. If I look our business in India, historically, we've done a lot, or we've done some, I say, most of the business has been Nondestructive Testing, meaning all kinds of, like, quality, inspection for industries, I mean, of critical, components and systems, and some security. Now, the security part really has started to be demanding. India is starting to have very big infrastructure projects in airports, in train system, in highways, and all this is driving the X-ray business further in India. And also, what has happened is that there starts to be local players.
There's even local players who have been aviation-certified. And of course, these will be getting part of the India infrastructure X-ray system infrastructure investments. And we see a long sort of a growth journey ahead in India. It sort of kickstart in 2023, the percentage was really nice, but still, I mean, what we had 2022, the sales was fairly low. But once this sales gets increasing, then of course, it starts to have a bigger impact on our total business.
All right. Thanks. Then still on security topic, outside aviation, so could you describe the sales outside aviation? What kind of growth did you have in Q4? And then in 2024, what kind of expectations do you have for security growth outside aviation?
Outside aviation, I think, before, historically, outside aviation has quite much been dictated by the China markets, and now it has been, since the COVID started, very silent in that area frontier. The outside China markets have been much, much less for outside aviation, and what has now happened is that there's some growth in the rest of the world, and then especially then aviation has been driving, plus India, the security growth.
All right. Then one last from me. Could you give us indication about the Haobo impact in Q4? Was it roughly on the same level as in Q3, or...?
Yes, same level than Q3, so we had now Haobo with us in our books for the second half. But in total, Haobo grew better than the legacy DT for the second half.
All right, thanks. That's all from me.
Joonas Ilvonen from Evli. I was also wondering about certain Haobo-related issues. I don't know, do you have any further comments on those operating expenditures and investments you are going to make this year? I mean, in terms of the magnitude in absolute euros or something like that.
I think the CapEx, CapEx will be higher than twenty-three, I mean, big reason for that is that we are equipping the, the Oulu electronic D17, the new facility that's been renovated. So all these investments related to that, that's something that will have a, an impact on the investments. If I throw a number, probably investments CapEx will be somewhere between EUR 4 million-EUR 5 million. I understand you want to fill your Excel and so you can use any number you want between there probably is well in the ballpark.
Thanks. Your net working capital has been trending up quite a bit in recent years. Do you see that you're able to get it now under control or even reverse that trend this year?
Well, actually, we reversed it already in 2023, not as much as we would have liked. One reason that has to be remembered that, that also now, one part of having Haobo in our books is that we also have their working capital in our books. So, we had decrease, if we exclude Haobo, into the working capital, but of course, including that, then the net difference probably is some negative. I mean, it would have been better without this anti-corruption surprise on the medical. And also, then, last year's sales was very heavily actually focused in the fourth quarter, so all that sales is unfortunately still on our accounts receivable.
Right. Thanks.
Hi, it's Matti Riikonen, Carnegie. Couple of questions more. First of all, you made a bad debt provision of EUR 0.7 million in Q4. You have done this also in the past. Have you reversed the earlier ones, or are they all in kind of your balance sheet at the moment?
These are... I mean, what we reported here for fourth quarter and full 2023, those are now in the balance sheet as a sort of provisions for accounts receivables bad debt.
What would be the kind of pattern to basically reverse them if the customers ultimately pay?
If the customers ultimately pay, and we believe that there are no other risks and so on in the foreseeable future, then the pattern would be that we would have to reverse that.
But for the moment, when you kind of increase the bad debt provision, it means that you basically think that the customers are still kind of not going to pay at least those invoices that they have due.
I think in big picture, we need to be prepared. I think the world is not a safe place today, so we have to, you know, be cautious and conservative in going forward.
About the Chinese aviation security business, you think that it would recover towards the end of 2024?
I wish-
What was that idea?
I wish that has been-
Where does it come from?
I think it's... We have visibility that there are some airports that in China that are now sort of converting the line scan technology into CT. I mean, public information is that Hong Kong is doing right now. It's a massive airport, by the way, and we should see some also orders for these. But then in larger extent, I don't think anybody knows what's really what are the big plans, and China is more on an execution type of a system, that they have all kinds of plans in the bookshelf, and then they, for various reasons, they decide to pull in certain things, and then they move ahead very effectively.
So if we think about your internal idea of what kind of growth you are looking for for 2024, it basically includes that the Western countries are making these, or they continue to increase spending in aviation security, and there might be some small things, like the projects that you know in China, that will be probably done, but you are not kind of embedding expectations of a further, more broad-based aviation security investment wave in China, not at least in 2024.
Yeah, I think maybe sort of something in between what you're saying and so on. So, we have visibility of, for example, these 10 airports. In larger scale, nobody knows. I mean, but we are planning also growth in our sort of China security, aviation security business.
All right. Thank you. That's all.
Sami Sarkamies, Danske Bank. Still wanted to come back to your CapEx outlook. You indicated EUR 4 million-EUR 5 million for this year. What would be a normal level going forward?
Oh, that's a good one. Maybe 60% of that, or of course, depending if very much on the growth. I mean, I hope we grow fast, we then need to invest. So it's a tricky question, but I mean, the maintenance CapEx side, I think that 2022 was a bit on the downside. Also, there was not growth. This year is a bit on the high side because also the old facility clean room and production equipment, and then next year, I mean, very much depending on growth. And if we look more on the some new technology production equipment, then the maintenance CapEx, we probably are somewhere, you know, EUR 3 million-EUR 4 million level. But this is my guess, educated guess.
Okay, thanks.
Okay, thank you. Very active and good questions. I guess I was just informed that we don't seem to have more questions in the chat box, so I thank you very much. Thanks for bearing with us, and I wish you a very nice coming spring. Thank you, and bye-bye.