Good morning. I think that it's time to start. It's at 10:00 A.M. Finnish time. Good morning, and welcome to Scanfil's Q2 and first half year results presentation. My name is Pasi Hiedanpää. I am the Investor Relations and Communications Director at Scanfil. Results will be presented by Scanfil CEO, Petteri Jokitalo. This will be also his last time for after stepping down after 15-year career at Scanfil, of which 10 years or over 10 years as the CEO of Scanfil. About practicalities, please mute your microphone during the presentation. At the end of the presentation, there is a possibility to ask questions in a Q&A session. There are three options to address questions. One, raise your hand on Teams, you will be notified when you will get your turn to ask question. Unmute your mic, then you are free to ask.
After asking, kindly mute yourself. Second, you may ask questions via the chat window on the right-hand side. Questions will be read out, and Petteri will answer those. Number three, there is also a possibility to ask questions anonymously. There is a Menti link on the right-hand side chat box, so you can click there and ask questions via that. Also, in that case, questions will be read out loud and answered. Also, note that the meeting will be recorded, and it will be available on the company's website later today. Then, Petteri, please go ahead.
Thank you, Pasi, and good morning, everyone, and also welcome from your side to Scanfil, Q2 2023 result call. As I understand, the presentation is now visible for you. Pasi, can you confirm?
Yes. Yes, it is.
Very good. Let's, let's go ahead. Q2, this year, as we, as we said, it was strong in all, all measures, by all KPIs. Record high sales, EUR 243 million, 14% growth year-on-year. Drivers, strong customer demand, also, components availability, was improving, also from Q1 this year. We also invested to our production capacity, so we could better meet high customer demand and, and, and improving components availability, possibility to improve our volumes. Also, all-time high operating profit, EUR 17.5 million, or 7.2% operating margin. Driven by, mainly driven by high utilization of production capacity and, increase of production efficiency, what was positively impacted by improved material availability.
Bottom line, earnings per share was doubled to EUR 0.22 from last year, Q2. Especially, we saw very strong customer demand in Energy & Cleantech customer segment, year-on-year, 61% growth. Sure, we see that our customers, they have really great tailoring now, drivers related to green energy, energy efficiency, and so on. Also, Connectivity, we saw very great growth, 38% year-on-year. advanced hearing protection customer was one of the strongest growing companies segment, and these products are also utilized partly by defense, military, military forces. Medtech & Life Science, automation, safety, we saw a stable development, single-digit growth. Advanced Consumer Applications, we saw some negative growth.
If you are cleaning the growth numbers from spot purchases, actually, we also had, like 7% growth year-on-year in that segment. Our spot purchases last year were really high, Q2 last year, almost EUR 30 million and pretty much in Advanced Consumer Applications segment. This year we saw as total number, only EUR 5 million spot purchases during Q2. Other key numbers, return on equity, a good level, 22.6%. Equity ratio improved to 45.8%. Net gearing improved as well to 36.5%. Especially, I'm very satisfied with the positive development with our net cash flow from operations, EUR 25.2 million cash flow during Q2.
Pretty much driven, of course, by healthy, healthy profitability, but also, our success to reduce our inventory level. We're able to reduce inventories by EUR 7.5 million during Q2, what was really good result, taking consideration that we were growing the same time, quite, quite strongly. And here is looking, looking at three years sales development and trends. We can, we can see different trends. First of all, growing growing sales since early 2021. Lowering spot purchases, I said the spot purchases were peaking exactly one year ago, EUR 30 million, and gradually, quarter by quarter, we have been able to reduce our spot market purchases reduced because of improving improved materials, materials availability.
Maybe the third thing here to notice is that, that, looking at least at three years, three years, picture here, we can see that Q2 has been, in very many years, quite, quite good year sales wise, and also Q4. Normally, Q1 is bit, a bit lower because of, bit slow start for the year and Chinese New Year, that kind of factors, and also Q3 is impacted by, by a summer holiday period. A similar picture, about the operating profit and operating margin. Healthy, operating margin improvement, since Q2 last year, and now we are the level we have said that we are targeting 7%, where we used to be, by the way, before COVID. You can see that we were about 7%-7% level.
There are different drivers, but one driver what impacted our bit lower operating margins in 2021 and also 2022, was for sure material availability, what was decreasing our operational efficiency. Other really country-specific reason was the closure of Hamburg factory and production transfers to Poland and our other factory in Germany. That was, that was negatively impacting these two things to our operating margins. Now looks like material availability is normalizing. Even there are still some issues, but normalized a lot, and, and Hamburg technology transfer has been successfully done, and it's not impacting any more our profit. Our factories are now good. All, all the factory network, good shape, and, and running with high efficiency.
Major production investments, what we have, or decisions or investments, what we have done this year. Atlanta, as told earlier, we have in, made already last year decision to invest in, in electronics manufacturing capacity and line. We didn't have a real electronics manufacturing line in Atlanta before. Now, the line installations being done, and actually we have this week, we have started to manufacture first pilot pilot PCBAs there. Definitely we are in our schedule to really start commercial volume production during Q3 this year. This is important step for us. We didn't have a sale, we didn't have electronics manufacturing capability in, in the United States earlier.
Now we have, as I said in the interim report, the demand and interest from customer side, even exceeded our expectations that really looking forward to to start to produce volumes in Atlanta already this year and especially next year. Sieradz, Poland, our customer demand has been all the time very strong. This was earlier this year, when cap, components availability was not so big bottleneck anymore, and we have invested heavily there as well. We have got a new major electronics manufacturing, new, new, new line investments there, installed and done, and these are as well ready for production from from now on. We do not see any capacity limitations in Sieradz anymore.
And we are able to, able to even, even, even meet, meet the higher demand from customer side what we see today. Then yesterday, we announced, made the stock market release. We, we made a decision yesterday to, to invest about EUR 20 million to new, new building. This is increasing our floor space in Sieradz by 14,000 square meters. It's like a 70% increase to existing. It's really a remarkable major investment to Poland. It really will ensure our European electronics manufacturing capacity from 2025. We are able to increase our, our electronics manufacturing Europe by hundreds of millions EUR when this building expansion is done.
This EUR 20 million is including building only unrelated, heating, etc., ESD floor kind of investments, and then production lines themselves can be tens of millions, of course, but it will be then invest gradually in line with customer demand from 2025. Really important decision for Scanfil to make sure that we stay competitive, we are able to grow not only with our existing customers, but also by new customer hunting in Europe in next five plus years. Outlook supported by strong first half of the year and strong customer outlook for rest of the year.
We revised our outlook on July 10th, now the new guidance is that we see that our expected sales turnover this year will be somewhere between EUR 900 million-EUR 950 million, and adjusted operating profit, EUR 61 million-EUR 68 million. The focus areas remain pretty much the same time earlier, driving organic growth. Now, as I said, we believe that we have a decent capacity for this year, of course, we need to make sure that we are ensuring manufacturing capacity for next year. Securing components still, even, even material availability has improved a lot, there are still issues.
There are still extra potential to manufacture even more, even this year, if we are able to, able to find missing components. For some special components, lead times are still very long, and availability is big. That's all. Securing components is not forgotten. It's still, still an issue. Even we are now 7% level and above, we are, of course, not, not, not fully satisfied with that. We still need to see some possibilities to improve, increase our efficiency, and work will continue to maintain and even further improve our profitability. For sure, even, even our Q2 results were good when reducing our networking capital need and inventories, that work will continue. We have quite ambitious targets for rest of the year.
Time for your questions, please.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Petteri. Now we can kick off the Q&A session. There is already actually raised hand by Pasi, Pasi Väisänen, Nordea. Please, Pasi, go ahead. Unmute yourself. Thank you.
Great, thanks. This is Pasi from Nordea. I have a couple of questions, and then to start with, with the component availability. When you do now have the components available and all the backlogs are going to delivery, is this a very good run we have seen in the, sorry, we have seen in the, second quarter? Could it be like a ketchup bottle effect and fading away later on? How do you see what is the, like, an underlying sustainable growth and profitability in if this would be a bit more ordinary year, by excluding this ketchup bottle effect? Also one question related to investment.
Quite many EMS companies are adding capacity just when the markets are very worried about the kind of order intakes in the several sectors and also worried about the consumer spending on this year and especially regarding the next year due to inflation. What is the customer segment or the product category this new investment to Sieradz is actually focused on? Are you kind of sure that there will be in demand for your new capacity and devices in Poland? Thanks.
Thank you, Pasi. Very good questions. First, how confident we are that the, the demand continue in short term or was the Q2 kind of, kind of peak? I said very times earlier, our customers are providing us, bit, would say from typically, forecast, covering next, 18 months or something like that, 12-24 months, and quite typically 18 months. We have not seen that kind of affecting customer forecasts. Vice versa, we have seen that it looks like the demand is sustainable and then, and we didn't, we didn't face any kind of special peak in Q2.
The customer forecast that the best, best what we have in hand. Also, our guidance is, as I said, it's pretty much based on customer forecast. That has been historically the best way to evaluate the future business development. Secondly, that how sure we can be that we have enough demand in Sieradz when that investment is ready, 2025? Of course, there are no guarantees. You also asked that, how is our customer base is there? We're feeling that we have very healthy customer portfolio in Sieradz. Very good customer distribution. We are not too depending on any individual customer. We have very many customers exactly coming from energy, energy sector.
If personally, I should bet, I, I would bet on the companies who are getting tailwind from energy efficiency and green energy revolution in Europe. I do not see that demand disappear. Of course, there could be weaker periods, longer periods, but I see that that's a mega, mega trend what will remain. I and we are very confident that definitely this, this investment is needed, we have very good opportunity to fill the factory.
Okay, thank you.
May I have one follow-up regarding the, regarding the kind of demand?
Please go ahead. Please go ahead.
We're looking at the kind of the very strong performance into Energy & Cleantech segment or customer sector. Did I hear right that you said that it was partly related to defense and military-related devices, or is that right?
That was, Connectivity.
Okay. It was on Connectivity. Yes. Then it's clear. Thanks. That was all.
Okay, I would say that this is kind of a follow-up to Pasi's question regarding the Energy & Cleantech segment, which performed very nicely actually during the first half of the year. Joonas from Evli, could you elaborate a bit on Energy & Cleantech customers and demand? Enersense is one of the new customers there, but obviously not the large at this point. Are there any significant new customers or are the high volumes stemming from the well-established names?
The high volumes are always, a stop, coming and established and coming from, well-established names. That, if, yeah, new customer, basically doesn't matter if this is an large or mid-sized customer, we start with lower volumes, and then gradually, we are ramping up. So the major volumes, big product volumes, they are coming from well-established, OEMs, also in Energy & Cleantech segment. We have quite a promising, new customers in, in sales pipeline, but, as said, volumes are not, super high yet.
Okay, continuing the customer segments. Rami Koria is asking a question regarding our concentration to specific customers in Connectivity. Going back to our roots as a supplier to Nokia, and how we should think about the business in the coming quarters for the Connectivity sector.
Customers are quite different in Connectivity. As you see, those few brands, what we were solving, they are not competitors at all. They are in different businesses, they have different outlook. We have customers where the outlook is very good, and it's also talked by the customers. INVISIO, we mentioned one customer who had publicly told that they have very good outlook.
All right. If you have any further questions, just raise your hand or type in the chat box. Jyrki, there's a question now from Jyrki. Will the focus of investments in the future be on the expansion of existing factories as it is now, or are acquisitions also likely?
Yeah. We are feeling that growing organically, it's, it's very efficient and good way to grow if, if there's that kind of demand situation, what, what we have seen, and I know what, what is still, still believed, still, still will continue. Of course, again, it's very cost-efficient way if we are able to expand our existing factories. And if location is right, we should do that. As in Sieradz case, we definitely believe that is good location in all terms, and it's almost like a no-brainer to grow by expanding existing factories. If we believe that all fundamentals are there and customer demand in Europe continue.
Then we have geographical areas we are not. Our factory network is not so strong that, as said several times for us, just North America, we have this important. We have site in Atlanta. We also will have electronics manufacturing capability in Atlanta, and that's really improving our service capability there. Most likely, mid or longer term, that's not enough. It's big continent, and it's quite easy thing that we need bit wider factory network, and we are not able to solve that by expanding Atlanta. That there could be one good example that definitely could make sense to consider acquisition, maybe including Mexico, site in Mexico.
Bit same in Asia, that we have, very well, high efficient, high scale factory in China for Chinese market. We do not have any factory network in Asia outside China. Greenfield, is not, attractive option, but, again, we could, consider acquisition.
Thank you, Petteri. Antti Viljakainen, at Inderes, he has three questions. First, let's start from there. Several EMS companies have reported that the order delivery lead times have decreased the pre-COVID levels as component availability has improved this year. Do you see the same, and how far can you see at the moment?
Yes, the order delivery lead times may be not so relevant from our point of view. We have forecasts from our customers, and then call-offs, basically, that we are buying materials based on customer forecast, and customers are taking material liability based on that. It's not so much linked to when customers are really calling off the products or placing the final purchase orders. That we, we, we don't see any impact that that process. Of course, the lead times from our suppliers, these are normalizing. As said, there are still some components we have issues. We have still components with longer than two years lead times. That it's not 100% solved yet.
I say, we have still tens of millions potential to sell more if we are able to in relatively short term, if we are able to solve components issues. Just to give you a picture that, that it's not 100% solved yet, but there are still components with availability issues.
Okay. Thank you, Petteri. The second question from Antti: have you taken typical summer holiday breaks in factories in Q3, as demand and probably also backlog are strong?
Yes, we have had typical holiday breaks, as we had last year as well now, July, August.
Okay, thank you. The third one from Antti: how did your customer satisfactory level develop in the mid-year survey?
Yeah, very, very, very good, good point. I could highlight that as well. We, we saw now improvement in customer satisfaction after last couple of years, where material availability has been quite stressful and negative thing impacting everybody. Now, we believe that there have been several, several factors why we saw general improvement in remarkable improvement in customer satisfaction after our tool survey. One for sure is, is material availability, better OTD, but not only, we have better OTD also because of capacity investments, what we have done. We have also paid lot of, lot of attention to improve our, our communication and cooperation with customers. Yes, happy to, happy to tell that improvement seen.
Okay. Thank you, Petteri. If there are no further questions, we can go.
Maybe before.
Sorry.
Yeah, before, before we close, key takeaways. Strong Q2, strong first half, operating margin around 7.2%, the whole half year, 7%. Net working capital, inventory, management, pure success. Looking forward, we have ambitious targets to second half. New electronics capacity, taking the products in Atlanta, Sieradz factory expansion. Really remarkable ensuring our future in Europe to be part of that. Strong customer outlook remains for 2023. Maybe still a couple of words before we close. As Pasi say, this will be my, my, my last Q1 report and call. I think that I have 41 quarter reports, bit more than 10 years, or 40, 41 reports, and Scanfil, totally 15 years. Scanfil over 10 years as CEO position, been really great time.
I'm feeling so in every, every aspect. Now, when my time is ending at Scanfil, really would like to thank all the Scanfil stakeholders. Also would like to thank you, shareholders, investors, analysts, the whole investor society. Thank you for your trust and constructive cooperation. Thanks a lot. Have a good day. Bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.