Welcome to Glaston Corporation's Q4 and full year 2023 results webcast. My name is Pia Posio, and I'm your Investor Relations Contact as well as lead the marketing and communications here at Glaston. Today, our session is characterized by the steady improvement in profitability throughout 2023. With me today, I have joining the stage Antti Kaunonen, our Interim CEO, and Päivi Lindqvist, our CFO. Content today will cover the highlights for Q4. We will have a market review, dive into financials, and then talk about the outlook for upcoming 2024. In addition to that, we will shortly go through the strategic targets. This morning, we updated slightly some of the targets as well as the term that we are aiming to achieve those targets. But before we go into details, I would like to spend a couple of minutes here with Antti. Antti Kaunonen [crosstalk].
It's a pleasure, Pia.
Welcome to Glaston.
It's a great pleasure to be here, and especially after such a good quarter and such a good year. So I really love to be here.
Many might know you already. You have a long history with Glaston as being the member of the board of directors. 5 years [crosstalk].
Five years, the [crosstalk] time flies.
Now, with a couple of months as Interim CEO, how would you characterize the highlights and what is important to you in this role?
Well, if I think about my background a little bit before really addressing your question, so I have been always involved with the intelligence machines and intelligent services [crosstalk]. And this is really in the capital goods business, so business to business. And this is really my background. So automation forever. And then, if I think about this five-year board membership in the Glaston, I have really understood that my background fits very well with the needs and especially the future needs of the Glaston. So it's a great pleasure to be here. Then, of course, when you're in a board position, you don't go to the details. You just oversee what is going on. Now, when I have been involved with the everyday business, so important has been that the customers, if I may use the word, love us. We have a very good recognition by the customers.
And then we have a lot of dedicated people who really love the glass industry. So from that point of view, I'm extremely happy. And then, of course, when coming to a company, you always want to have something to do, so to have your strong beliefs. And if you think about me, so what I have been doing through my career, so I have these three, like in Finland, you have to have these three nowadays strong beliefs. The first one is safety. And safety is really the safety of the employees, safety of the operations in the customer side. And safety is really something that it's between the ears. It's a thinking what you have to do. And this is something that I'm pushing. And I will say in my presentation a few times that we still have a lot of improvement opportunities. Why is that important?
Because I strongly believe that this is the foundation for any kind of professional operations. This is very important. Second one, services. Nowadays, of course, we have to say intelligent services. So you have to be close to the customer because our offering, our solutions are sometimes complex or can be considered as complex. And you have to be close to the customer, not a little bit under the skin, but not so that it hurts the customer. And it's very important that we have the service operations because they secure the customer satisfaction, they secure profitability, and they secure the future business. So now I have two of these, so it's time for the third one. And I would like to say costs and its own costs. Market prices are set by the competition, by the customers.
To some extent, we have to have, of course, the competitive advantages. But what we need to do really is to control our own costs. Market prices are what the market prices are. We can control our own costs. Did I answer your question at [crosstalk] all?
Yes, you did. And I want to mention something we've discussed a lot and which is emphasized now even further in the strategy that we are moving forward with the new thinking around the life cycle and expanding the thinking of a life [crosstalk] cycle even further. That relating to [crosstalk] your services.
You got me in that [crosstalk]. Because if I think about the services, so it's, of course, not selling the spare parts. It's a very important part. But if you think about now the services, so it's really the life cycle thinking from that point of view that when you do the product development, you have to have your between the ears thinking about how do we service that, how we provide the best services to that. So from that point of view, services is not just selling the spare parts, not just sending technicians to the site, but it goes from the early part to the end. And I'm pushing very strong nowadays, for example, in Glaston, that no product development activities without having a service activity development at the same time. It will come, I promise you.
All this relates to the topic of today, which is much around the profitability things you mentioned. Should we get going?
Why not?
Yes. [crosstalk] It's your stage now. Thank you, [crosstalk] Antti.
Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here, and especially if you think about our years. So if I start with the quarter 2023, so we have, of course, these two segments. So the other segment is having issues with the market development. So that's the Architecture part. And then in the Mobility Display and Solar, of course, we use this word MDS, and I hate the word, by the way. But anyway, so what is very important is just that there are a lot of activities and in general in that kind of market. And if I think about this MDS segment, so order intake was up 11%. So the mix has changed in quarter four. And this reflects, by the way, all for the full year of 2023. Net sales for the last quarter was roughly EUR 60 million.
What I'm very, really, really happy about and proud is the profitability margin. Päivi will show that afterwards that there's a steady development of the profitability. This was the record from 7.6%. Then I would like to emphasize something that we had a very good cash flow. Over EUR 13 million, that will be coming later. But if you have a good profitability, good cash flow, it gives you a lot of opportunities for the future development. Yes, I will come back to that we are now living the new organizational structure. We want to get the focus and speed, and we are going through that. Of course, there are some hiccups when you are having a new setup. That's the normal way of life, but we are living that now, and we are going according to the new setup.
Then, to the highlight of the day: the full year of 2023 improve. So if I think about the full year, so we had a good year even when the markets did not help us. A good year without the help from the markets. And I really want to use that statement what we have in the first slide. So steady improvement in profitability through the year. And that was really what we were able to accomplish. About those market segments, I have already explained something. It's the same situation quarter four and in the full year. And then net sales, well, 3%, it's higher than in 2022. And then the EBITDA margin was this 6.8%, which is the record. Extremely happy about that development. Strategy execution, I will be talking about the revised strategy also later. So we go according to the plans, and this is going forward.
Safety, if you remember, so this is close to my heart. It was one of the key focus areas throughout the year, but I have to be very open. We have a lot of improvement opportunities, a lot of improvement opportunities in that because, like I said already, it's between the ears. When you make changes between the ears, you have to have patience. Sustainability, we focused on our own operations. I have to say, very good progress with our own operations. Next, we will go, and I will explain that later, so to the more expanded world, so to the upstream and downstream. Then here are the strategic targets, so performance in 2023. Please understand that these are based on our earlier strategies, so what you have as a financial targets and non-financial targets, so they are the ones.
If I think about the color coding, so you can see that the darker the green, the better it is. And of course, we have one red one, and I would like to have the red one a little bit more red one, what it is shown here in the display. From the financial part, we had development altogether, so EBITDA 6.8, and then the return on capital employed almost 13%. I'm very happy, very proud of our performance. Then when I come to the non-financial targets, so first we have Net Promoter Score, and we have target and 40, and then we have the number 62. Why do we have it as light green? We have to work with the sample, meaning now that people who answer, the customers who answer to us, the customers who are happy with us, they answer, they give us good rating.
But then the customers who are unhappy with us, they take the phone and they call, and they don't answer. And we really need to work with the sample. That said, I'm extremely happy that the customers call. The most difficult situation is that when the customer is unhappy, he's not calling. Then lost time accidents, this is maybe the color should be even more red. There, we have absolutely a lot of activities that what we have to do, and we are working with that item. Patience is not my strength, but here I have to have patience. Then the employee engagement rate, so we gave us a light green. We were not able to improve, but we were having the same result what we had from the questionnaire last year or 2022, sorry. Very happy about the CO2 emissions what we have been doing.
This is about taking care of our own activities, focus on our own activities. Not bad, I would say. About the market environment, and now I take a slightly different view. So I go from the geographical point of view. So if I start with the most important one from the development point of view, so it's Americas. And if I think about the Americas, so for the full year, so we had a growth of 19%. And this is remarkable. So Americas really helped us. And thank you for the customers. Thank you for our organization. And I want to push some, so very important here is just that if you're able to read in the middle of the text, in the U.S., the new energy regulations drove demand for insulating glass technologies.
So there are regulations, and we expect that these regulations are going to come also to the other parts of the world. And of course, from our point of view, we welcome them from the energy savings point of view, but also from the business opportunities point of view. Then Europe, Middle East, Africa, so nothing new from that point of view with the mix. The mix seems to be going the same way all the time. That was +1 for the whole year. I want to take the full year instead of talking just about quarter four. And this is our biggest business geographical area what we have. So from that point of view, so it was weak. Then disappointment, challenge, whatever one I call it, was really the China was architectural glass was really soft.
For automotive, so the market in China was at good level. So if I take outside of China, so China was okay-ish. If I take outside of China, so then come to APAC region, so then I have to say that this was a major disappointment to us. And altogether for the full year, so it was -16, 1.6, -16. Americas was extremely important helping us in 2023. Then about the strategy execution, so I have touched base some of those points. So first, this reorganization. So I want to emphasize from that point of view that the target of that is speed and focus. And focus is coming from the fact that now we have the architecture, which is based on the customer segmentation. We have the same customer names to whom we are selling different solutions.
If I think about then the other MDS what we have, so then it's really based not on the customers, but on the technologies that can be reutilized for three different totally different market segments with different kind of customers. So customers, technology, segmentation. Then about China, and I love China. So if I think about we have completed now the transfer of the capabilities of the assembly operations for the automotive pre-processing to Tianjin. So that was completed. And that was step one. Please understand that we took a minimize the risk. We started it assembly. We shipped the components from Europe, from the same suppliers what we had earlier to minimize the risk. And then at the same time, we started the transition to local automotive sourcing. This sourcing has been delayed from that point of view. We have not been able to as fast as we expected.
You can see that also in the financials of the Mobility Display and Solar market. The last one what we have is really the Tempering Technologies for solar panel production. The project is delayed not because of us. Then this is now something that is being started up as we speak. And this will be very helpful for us to get to that market. So strategy execution, I would say that we have been following our plans. We have been doing the things what we wanted to do. About sustainability highlights. Our first focus was about this own operations. And if I think about now, the situation is really such that very openly, so our own operations, the CO2 reductions may be here. If I think about going to the upstream, so going to the suppliers, maybe it's here.
And then the real one is just that when we go downstream to our customers, so it's there. So we understand that we needed to start somehow. And this is important that we have to we want to start with our own operations. And now, as you can see, so we are working as a last bullet point, so also with our suppliers and then going to that direction. And then we are very active with different kind of initiatives to secure the sustainability. And this is now really something that we are very keen on working with all of those initiatives and see that which one is now the best one for our point of view. And this takes me now to the next slide, which is about the financial development. And here I have to ask Päivi to help me out. So Päivi, so please.
Thank you, Antti. Actually, before we go to the financials, I would like to remind you about the questions. There is time reserved for questions at the end of the presentations. Please send your questions already during the presentations if you have any. We'll take them up then afterwards. Yes, let's go a little bit deeper into the financials. Of course, as always, orders first. In the fourth quarter 2023, we had new orders of close to EUR 58 million, which was 11% growth. Despite the market circumstances, fourth quarter order intake was actually the highest of the year. Quite differently from 2022 when we had rather modest order intake in the fourth quarter, not very typically.
And in 2022, we then had this extremely high order intake in the third quarter boosted by one individual order that was partly canceled last year. And this is good to note when we look at then the full year order intake development, which in the reported figures declined by 13%. But then if we kind of adjust the comparison by this cancellation, then the decline is 6%. If we look at the orders from a product area perspective, we can see that our architectural machine businesses were the ones that had quite significant declines. The Tempering business declined in full year 25%. And the second half of the year was weak. And this business was particularly impacted by the architectural market decline. Then in addition, also, the insulating glass business, which is supported a lot by the energy efficiency megatrend, had a 30% decline last year.
This was a 14% decline if we adjust for this order cancellation. Q4 was a good year-on-year development with a 25% growth in the business. So we do see that this business is on pretty solid grounds. The mobility display solar technologies were growing very strongly last year. Q2 and Q3 were on the low side. But then the last quarter was very strong with over 100% increase in the machines' orders. And this was both on the pre-processing side and then also in the kind of heat treatment technologies for the mobility sector. And this also means that in the final quarter, kind of the structure of the order intake was a little bit different than we had historically had with more orders coming from this mobility area. Services as a whole in the year, growth of 3%, clear improvement towards the end of the year.
The fourth quarter orders grew in services by 9%. We saw now nice development in the upgrade orders, which have been lower earlier. If we move to net sales, we had net sales at the same level as the fourth quarter in 2022. In 2022, as you can see from the chart, the comparison figure was high. It was boosted by kind of lower third quarter when we had some issues with the components, which was then caught up in the fourth quarter. Considering this, a good level of net sales as well. For the full year, net sales growth was 3%. Looking at the product areas, there we can see a little bit opposite situation compared to the order intake. It was the architectural machines businesses that were growing.
Tempering and Laminating Technologies over there with 3% growth and very nice end of the year with 11% growth. Insulating glass technologies with 7% growth. This was declining slightly in the fourth quarter, but I would say purely because of the very strong comparison figure. Mobility Display and Solar technologies were flat throughout the year and explained by lower orders in the second and third quarter. Services were in slight decline in net sales. This is impacted quite a bit by this low upgrades order intake that I mentioned earlier. Next one for us is the regional net sales development for the full year. There we can see already what Antti mentioned about the strong growth in Americas, 19% growth in the full year. EMEA, rather flat, still over 50% of our business.
This, of course, was the region where we did see kind of market downturn to some extent. Then we have APAC, which declined last year by 16%. This decline in net sales was quite a lot driven by China. The China share of net sales declined from 12% in 2022 to 8% in 2023. But here also, we have an opposite development in order intake. And especially the second half of last year, the orders grew strongly. Fourth quarter, actually close to 100% increase in the orders. And the China share of orders then, on the other hand, then increased from 8% - 13%. So that then shows quite clearly that China for us has come back. And this is very much boosted by the preprocessing technologies, the locally made machines for the automotive sector in China, and then also the high-end insulating glass technologies. Then profitability.
And, like, now mentioned several times already, we have a very nice curve of improving quarterly EBITDA margin in 2023, reaching 7.6% in the final quarter. And then in the full year, improving from 6.4%-6.8%. So nice kind of consistent improvement in profitability. This is very much driven by the architectural business and the Architecture Business Area improving its profitability, which actually then takes me to the reporting segments. So now in this final quarter, we are first time reporting according to the new organization and have now two reporting segments instead of three that we had earlier. And the first one, which is really the bulk of our business, is the Architecture BA, where, like I said already, we had a very strong improvement in profitability. But on the other hand, the markets have been softer. And the machine orders declined 13% in the fourth quarter.
The full order intake declined 4%. So the services were improving nicely. Like said, upgrades boosting services order intake here to 10% growth year-on-year in the final quarter. It is mainly, like said, Tempering and Laminating Technologies that are clearly suffering from the kind of construction industry downturn. Net sales in the final quarter were flat against the strong comparison period. And then this profitability improvement, 9.9% EBITDA margin in the quarter and 8.6% margin for the full year, very much driven by strong gross margin in the machines. And then we have Mobility Display and Solar, where we then, on the other hand, have a very strong growth in orders, 69% in Q4, driven by strong demand in China. Net sales pretty much flat. Machines side stable, services declining somewhat due to lower spare parts.
The profitability, which of course is very much unsatisfactory for the fourth quarter and for the full year as well, close to break-even levels and burdened by lower gross margin, which is then impacted by lower services share and also the regional mix that we have here, more lower margin Chinese business compared to 2022 when we had more America's higher margin business in the revenue recognition. And this impacted then the gross margin. And in addition, of course, then the Chinese margins have been low when we have moved the production to China. And they are clearly improving quarter to quarter, but still not yet at the target levels. And of course, like Antti mentioned already, one of the highlights of the quarter is the very strong cash flow. Fourth quarter typically for us is a very strong cash flow quarter.
This was the case last year as well. Then especially after kind of rather modest cash flow figures for the first three quarters, then that was totally kind of caught up then in the final quarter, boosted by good profitability and then also working capital release. And the good operating cash flow then obviously also resulted in clearly lower net debt and net gearing now at 16%. Then the next topic is about the capital return and comparable EPS, earnings per share. And as you can see from the chart, we also have a very consistent progress here, earnings per share a bit above 0.10 EUR in 2023. And the board is proposing a capital return of 0.05 EUR, which is consistent with our dividend policy of 30%-50% payout. And then I would like to end the presentation with a small kind of sustainability highlight.
If we consider the EU Taxonomy reporting, which is then kind of reporting specifying which businesses for the company are supporting certain environmental targets. In our case, our insulating glass technologies as well as the glass processing technologies for solar panel production are both enabling climate change mitigation. The share of these businesses last year increased to 46% from 43% in 2022. So nice progress in these kind of businesses supported by the global megatrends as well. Now I would like to invite Antti back to go through the outlook for 2024.
Thanks a lot, Päivi. So let me start with the outlook for 2024. Very openly said, this was the most difficult slide for us to make. Of course, if you think about the situation what we have now, so the order backlog coming to this year from 2023 is less than it was from 2022 - 2023. And then there is the question about are we able to fulfill with orders the funnels what we have. I have been heavily involved with our sales colleagues, and then our message is really so that the sales funnel seems to be such that it supports our statement what we have here. So net sales and Comparable EBITDA will stay at the same level or increase slightly in 2024 from the levels reported for 2023. And this is such an important message that I wanted to just read it from the text.
So we are committed to come to the same targets minimum. Then what is the strategy changes? And I have to disappoint you. So we don't have a totally new strategy and changing everything. A new guy is coming and making all the changes. No. Our basic strategy is good. The things what we are doing are good. They are the right ones. So we have just slightly revised that, and it's based very much on the market situation. But having a little bit repetition and coming to the situation. So these are the megatrends what we had in 2021, correct. And then note changes in the megatrend as they are. Four of those are supporting us and our activities. One that is in the middle, so the economical and political reality. We all know it. We read the net. We get all the messages. So the China economy.
Our expectation was such that with all the offering what we have, we would have been more strong or stronger in China what we are today. Then the geopolitical tension is really something that there's so much uncertainty. So a lot of the projects have been postponed or some of the projects are only coming in the far future. So that has really to have a major effect on the market. But all the other four ones are supporting us. And I just want to make some highlights. So first one in the urbanization, the rise of megacities is the energy efficiency, insulated glass. Absolutely. This is the great opportunity for us. We are able to provide a solution. Then I would take for the environmental awareness, so it could be also in the other point, regulations.
There are coming more and more regulations that may have a positive effect on our business from that point of view. Then very important is also the lack of skilled talent, people. So it pushes the automation to go to the next level, and I have to say, as having an automation background, we have a lot of great opportunities to improve from that point of view. So please remember, 4 of those are fully supporting us. 1 of those is causing some gray hair to us. Then this slide, although it looks very easy and simple, takes a lot of effort. So please understand that there's the small text that Glaston estimates. So we have done it ourselves based on tens of different kind of factors. And the key message what we have is really so that we expect the growth of the equipment markets.
Service is not included here. Equipment markets, especially for the Mobility Display and Solar and for all those segments separately, and roughly maybe 5%+ each year. This is only to the market what we are addressing. Please understand, only the markets what we are addressing. So we have taken everything else out. Then for the architectural glass, so we expect that 2025 is already better. So it means that in 2024, we expect to get orders to be able to ready for 2025. So we see that there is a positive development for us. Then if I think about our strategic targets, no big surprises, like I said. There are some minor elements and they are really postponing, if I may use that word, some of the targets what we had earlier.
If you read again the small text on the bottom, medium term is 3 years-5 years. So this Glaston's medium term strategy targets are presented here. If you look at the financial targets, so there's a slight change about the annual average exceeding the addressable equipment market growth. We have a little bit neutralized that statement. EBITDA stays as it was. And then the ROCE, return on capital employed, we have this above 16% as a target. Then when I come to the non-financial targets, so Net Promoter Score, as I said, so we have now over 60, but we have to work with the sample. That's why we didn't want to change that. We have to really get the satisfied and dissatisfied customers to give their views. Lost time accident. Okay, 0 is a target for the reported accidents.
But please understand that zero reported accident is not the target for the safety. It's the change between your years that is important. Employee engagement over 75, like earlier, and then we had sustainability targets more detailed, and now we try to get out of this only from Scope 1 and Scope 2 also to get to the Scope 3, which is a big, big step. And I have to state here that the comparable EBITDA 10%, so I don't expect that we are able to get it only with the machine sales. We have to push the services and have much more service growth what we have today. Then these are now the strategy targets, and then, of course, we have these to the Architecture, Mobility Display and Solar, and then to the services, and then we just roll them down.
Then, about the focus areas, a little bit thinking about the most important things. So we have roughly 4.2% of net sales for the development activities. We want to keep that. We want to be a technology leader and to be able technology leader. So then you have to invest money into the development. Then we have a happy problem, very happy problem. So do we need to expand the production capacity of IG lines, insulating glass lines? We seem to be hitting now the max what we are able to get from the current setup, and we have to consider that how to be able to serve the customers better and to be able to expand our activities. Lifecycle thinking, I already touched base. Pia helped me to touch base that. So it's really the thinking that is it's not only service revenue.
It's the thinking about having the development activities always including the service element, thinking about having the spare parts also that they will be only coming from us to some of our machines. A lot of activities. This is about change in the thinking, not only in the revenues. Then I said already about the innovation process. So we are taking the first steps to utilize that. This is important that we have a better control about our investments of 4.2% of net sales, what we do with that money. Then something that we have not yet touched enough is really the sourcing. Then we have a lot of opportunities for the sourcing savings. Then combining the activities what we have globally. There's a mouthful to do. No question about that.
Then this is trying now to explain now the situation, how to get from 6.8%-10%, and this is just a repetition what I have been saying or what Päivi and myself have been saying. So the gross margin side, sourcing benefits, efficiency, higher services share. Yes, of course. Then, of course, there's the inflation. Then it's the pricing for market share gains. Sometimes you need to consider that what are strategic projects, and then mix within services. So how much is the upgrades? How much is the spare parts? How much is something else that we hopefully have in the future? Then about the fixed cost and other operating incomes. So fixed cost leverage, of course, not to have a lot of new persons in the back office, but focus on the growth and leverage that. Automation, innovation, efficiency. Then the negative ones, cost inflation and growth resourcing.
What growth resourcing is is just that: when we grow, of course, we have to have more people. This is clear. But also in the back office, very openly said, of course. So this is the target for the 10%, which is our target. I really want to emphasize the fact that we are having a good track record. This is our target. We have a lot of activities. The strategy what we have is the revised. We have been doing good things and we continue doing them also in the future. That really ended my part. Then I guess that Päivi and me, so we would be more than happy to entertain you with the questions. So have we received any questions [crosstalk], Pia?
Absolutely.
Yes. Yes, indeed. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for the presentations and like Päivi mentioned, you can keep the questions coming through the platform. Let's continue where you left, Antti. You highlighted the role of cost control going forward. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for further cost cuts or cost structure streamlining?
I would not start to work with the cost cuts. So I would always like to talk about the efficiencies, and the prime example is sourcing. The prime example is sourcing for me. Anything to add, Päivi?
Yes, I agree that we have of course, in our case, you always have to be very flexible when it comes to the kind of cost base because we do have certain cyclicality in our business, and then if kind of the volumes are declining, then you need to do some adjustment measures that we have also done last year. So this is continued follow-up, but like we have kind of already identified when we did the reorganization, that there are certain areas where we do see quite a bit of potential coming from the fact that we have not yet utilized the full Glaston potential, that we are working kind of in different ways at different sites, and sourcing is one of those, and then this whole kind of automation, innovation, software development area is definitely another one as well. You mentioned already the supply chain.
So that is obvious, do we see any changes, progress related to the component availability? And how would we see the utilizing global presence in the supply chain?
If I start very shortly, so the situation has stabilized since the COVID. So things are getting much more to the normal, whatever normal is. So I don't see big changes coming or big.
Yes. Of course, there are differences in different components. There might be still some challenges. Or I would say maybe longer lead times that there was before COVID. And then the price development is not the same for all type of components. But on average, we could say that the pricing of components and materials is approaching the general inflation.
Thank you. Region-related question. Are you expecting the strong momentum in the Americas still continuing further? Or has there been any first signs of momentum weakening?
For North America, so I don't see big softening of the markets. I'm very optimistic from the U.S. market. Of course, there are always ups and downs, but the general trend is there.
The new BAs, there are some questions related to those. So let's start cracking. Can you discuss the expectations for different business areas in terms of growth contribution for 2024?
Well, if we look at the order backlog, we can clearly see that the Mobility Display and Solar business area has kind of higher backlog, whereas then Architecture Business Area has lower backlog. So that then means that the growth expectations that we start the year with are higher in Mobility Display and Solar. Then, of course, what happens during the year, it's a little bit difficult to say. We are quite optimistic that the architectural market is going to recover somewhere during the year. When that will happen, how strong it will be, I think no one knows. But this is the basis of how we see this year.
And if you don't mind, I would really like to remember that slide that was presented about the market expectations. So that's really the big target setting and our understanding that all the activities are based on.
Yes. You actually addressed already the following question about the timing of these contributions. Like mentioned, may I repeat that the Architectural addressable market, we don't know exactly at what time the change will happen, but we expect during 2025 and 2026. Yeah, that's in a way the years when we at the moment see that we would be back at those 5% annual growth levels and gradually getting there. So the expectation is that the recovery will start, but at least at the beginning, it would be a bit slower.
Yes. Let's continue with the Mobility Display and Solar. What kind of margin level are you aiming for this year in that business area?
Well, I guess we are not giving any expectations or guidance on BA level profitabilities. But I think it should be clear to everyone that we are not at all happy with the profitability that we had last year. And there needs to be improvement from that.
Do we have specified what will it take to raise that? Is there anything you can elaborate on those?
Well, of course, the volume is one thing. The business area was suffering from low order intake, I would say late 2022 as well as second, third quarter of last year. One clear thing is the kind of China-made pre-processing lines margin improvements with the sourcing changes, which mostly have been done. But of course, it will take time until they will show in the P&L. That's one thing, and then, of course, you know the general kind of cost consciousness that we want to apply in all our businesses.
Yes, [crosstalk] it's absolutely related. Absolutely. Sourcing in China. I always have this short answer. Sourcing in China and then the other one is the services. We have really to focus also on those activities to improve it.
Yeah, correct.
Moving to architectural business area, can you elaborate a bit on what magnitude order decline in architectural we have seen in respect to comparing to the old BA heat treatment and insulating glass definition of a segment?
Wow.
That's a tough one.
Yeah, it's so.
Maybe with the follow-up. Has IG remained more resilient? Well, yes and I think if you look at the product area reporting, you get insight into also in detail how the IG technologies have performed. We did have a decline in the order intake last year, and even if we adjust for this canceled part of the orders taken in 2022, there was a decline, but the level is still kind of good level. It's in a way, 2022 was an extremely good year for that business, and the megatrends are really supporting this. So at the moment, we do see quite a big difference between the kind of tempering, laminating businesses and then insulating glass businesses within the architectural segment.
And if I may add, so one of the statements what I meant about [crosstalk] the future strategic intent or activities was really to increase the IG capacity, insulated glass capacity. So it's a very strong statement what we are making here.
And reviewing that a little bit closer now during the year.
Correct.
Practicalities, Päivi. I think this lands to you. What were the factors behind net financials and corporate tax rate? B
oth of them were impacted by positive one-time type of impacts. So financial items by foreign exchange gains, a nd then also taxes that there was kind of a certain tax bookings that were made at the end of the year where we kind of needed to change the interpretation of taxes for certain very specific items. So this impacted the tax rate. But generally, 2023 financial items were on the low side of what they kind of sustainably would be with current debt levels, and then also the tax rate was a bit lower than we would expect in normal circumstances.
Thank you. Moving towards strategy still. It looks like we are close to ending our Q&A session. What, if any, are the biggest changes in strategy and its execution based on the timeline extension? Antti, you mentioned that no dramatic big changes. But if you want to elaborate a little bit more on the execution side.
Well, on the execution side, I would almost go what I said as my three things in the early part. So it's the safety, of course. We have to improve that. Then it's the services, how we can get this service-minded. And then, of course, we have to look at our own costs. So they are very important parts of any of the strategies, what we do and all the activities that we do. But it's a really big disappointment from that point of view that we do not make big change in our strategy. It's about the execution. Like always, so forming a strategy is easy, and to have a PowerPoint ready strategy is easy. But to get that into the action, you have to continue repeating, making the changes and pushing that forward, and we are at that stage, getting that to the everyday life.
So, continuing on the steady progress on what we are going to do.
You got it.
I think that is a wonderful way to close the Q&A session. About this year, you can see the expected dates for the financials that we're going to report moving forward. And next one waiting right after Vappu, as we say in Finnish. And with that, I would like to warmly thank you. Thank you, Antti, for your first webcast with us, and then Päivi, of course, and I would like to also thank our audience for spending the time and everybody contributing to the good questions. Thank you.
Thank you. [crosstalk] See you again.
Thank[crosstalk] you, everybody.
It was a pleasure. Thank you.