Morning, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our Q1 2022 results webcast. First, I would like to draw your attention to our disclaimer. Our CFO, N. Orhun Köstem will make the introduction today, and I'll be reviewing our businesses. N. Orhun Köstem , the floor is yours.
Thank you, Kerem. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for making yourselves available today. Obviously, like the quarter, the first quarter of 2022, that's behind us, today is also quite a dynamic day. Again, thanks for joining and taking the time. I'm happy to report that, Sabancı Holding, on a combined basis have been able to deliver profitable growth in this, highly volatile environment. Obviously, what I'm going to touch base today is how we also proceed towards our strategic goals that we have communicated to yourselves, starting from two years back.
At the same time reaching, for the moment, the highest ever consolidated return on equity for the quarter, and maintaining a very healthy balance sheet with ample liquidity that obviously gives us flexibility of maneuvering in this otherwise challenging times. We are also happy to report that our efforts and initiatives in sustainability continues to be recognized by independent bodies. Refinitiv, as I'm sure you know, which also is in cooperation with Borsa Istanbul, has rated Sabancı Holding, and we have been among the highest, if not the highest, of 50+ global investment holding companies. In the quarter, the first quarter, in addition to our good financial results, we have produced the first green hydrogen in Enerjisa Üretim in our Bandırma power plant.
Obviously, going forward, we would want to continue capitalizing on this capability so that we can, on one hand, replace our fuel usage for electricity generation by using hydrogen, and at the same time, we will try to see how we can further commercialize and create a business, potentially out of this. On the industrials, as you have followed, I'm sure you may have. Arvento was acquired by Brisa and Microtex was acquired by Kordsa, which I'm going to touch base very briefly. As we have been telling a few times for most of you who we have been in communication with, that we were planning to build a digital business. The first inroads into that, we have taken the steps, as we have announced. I'm going to briefly touch base on that as well.
Finally, on the building materials, Çimsa initiated a calcium aluminate cement capacity construction, which is obviously important because as you know, Çimsa is one of the white cement global white cement players. This, even though it's a niche sector, is a high-end value part of the business of which Çimsa hopefully is going to also participate in the global business of calcium aluminate cement. With that, I'll move to the next page. As I have discussed briefly, I'm happy to say that we are continuing our path in terms of delivery on our strategic initiatives. I'm not going to repeat what has happened until the year-end.
As I'm sure you see on this page, our efforts also have accelerated since the start of the year in the first quarter of 2022, including then April. We have closed the disposal of PHILSA and PMSA shares, as you have followed. As I've touched base, we started producing green hydrogen in Turkey. Acquisition of Arvento was completed by Brisa. On the bank side, the transfer of Türk Telekom shares owned by Levent Yapılandırma Yönetimi A.Ş. (LYY) to Türkiye Wealth Fund was completed. Microtex was acquired by Kordsa. That's in the process of completion. The calcium aluminate cement investment has been initiated by Çimsa, and we have initiated our digital investments by the acquisition of Radiflow and SEM.
Next, obviously, we don't only move towards our strategic goals, but we continue delivering very good financial results. First quarter of 2022 is no exception. I'm happy to report that we have been able to deliver ahead of the very high inflation levels and obviously raw material and supply chain related pricing increases in the quarter. On a combined basis, as you see, our revenues have grown or more than doubled year-on-year. Our EBITDA growth was faster again, on a combined basis year-on-year, you know, close to double. The consolidated net income more than doubled on a year-on-year basis. That's a very healthy, as far as we're concerned, delivery of financial performance.
Coming from both our bank as well as our non-bank businesses. Obviously, you know, Akbank has announced their results, a very strong set of results, very good, you know, delivery against their ROE guidance, driven by, you know, a number of elements including, you know, customer acquisition, delivery on their core business revenues, good position in their portfolio, you know, on the back of this high inflation environment where the portfolio supports net income generation, both for the bank and obviously for our business as well on a consolidated basis. On the non-bank side, again, the performance is great. The growth is, you know, over 100%, both in terms of revenue and EBITDA.
As we move towards profitability on the non-bank side, of course, we need to consider that the raw material prices, fuel prices, energy prices, I'm sure you know, have been increasing. These results have been delivered on the backdrop of those increases. Of course, on the backdrop of the fact that the average dollar devaluation was about 88% in the first quarter, euro was 75%, and the CPI hit over 60%. When we look at the results, of course, it's important for us to keep those dynamics in mind.
Nevertheless, we're quite happy with the net income performance of our group as a whole, driven by our healthy leverage and our favorable cash position, just under a long position of just under $400 million, which you're going to see at the back end of the presentation on the appendices as well. We had a great start to the year, a very strong start to the year. Having said that, we maintain our guidance, our midterm guidance for the period, on the back of a number of volatilities and uncertainties, both on the inflationary front, on the, you know, raw material front, as well as, you know, energy prices.
Coming back on the next page, you see our return on equity have hit its highest levels both on the bank and obviously on the non-bank side. At a consolidated level, Sabancı Holding return on equity was just under 25%. Our cash position. You know, if you look on the holding basis, net cash position was TRY 7.7 billion at the end of the first quarter. That's of course, since the end of the year, the completion of the PHILSA sale contributed to our cash position as well as the dividend income. Since the end of March, our net cash still stands about TRY 7 billion, around about 7.2.
After the dividends we received, we have paid, and of course, the ongoing share buyback program that we pursue. On the next page, you see our operational cash flow. You see the negative swing on our operational cash flow. The main driver, as I'm sure you must have followed, our friends in Enerjisa, is the cash flow performance of Enerjisa. It's basically the distribution business of Enerjisa does quite well, which is the majority of the business, about 85%. On the retail side, the cost of electricity versus the tariffs still does not generate enough cash flow. There is an impact coming from the VAT changes, which is temporary and will be normalized rest of the year.
The cash flow impact normally should be normalized at one point in time, although looking from today is difficult to say when. Having said that, again, I'm sure you noted that Enerjisa increased their underlying net income guidance for the year, and it runs a very healthy balance sheet of 1.5x . This we don't see as a major impediment for our performance in 2022. Other than that, the cash flow performance of our other non-bank businesses are slightly less than last year. That's primarily driven by the fact that we're building inventory in most of our businesses with the expectation that the raw material prices, fuel prices are going to increase the rest of the year.
It's take it as more like a hedging for the you know next nine months for us to be able to protect our margins as well as our cash flow. Our balance sheet you know allows us to do that. We're still at 1.2x net debt to EBITDA. Still we run a very healthy level of leverage. If we go to the quarter by quarter review. Again, if you look at the revenues on our non-bank business, the primary driver of the revenues is our of course energy business. We're quite happy that we have a portfolio of generation as well as distribution.
Because we talked about the impact coming from the distribution, whereas our generation business have been performing exceptionally well, which makes us quite happy for the period and adds on to our financial performance. On the industrial side, obviously, as you will remember, the majority of our business are exports. Of course, we have been able to generate over 24% export growth year-on-year together with our industrial as well as building materials businesses, which adds on top of our revenue performance. Our retail business has done well in terms of revenue. Obviously, part of that is once mobility comes back and we're getting back to you know, relatively normal, the retail business benefits. That both Teknosa's business as well as CarrefourSA's.
Also, let's keep in mind that on the back of higher inflation, there's a certain, accelerated shopping behavior at this point in time. Although we still expect to see, you know, good results in line with our guidance, our year-on-year growth rates may normalize in the rest of the year, if this shopping behavior does not continue. If you look at EBITDA, again, on the non-bank side, one of the important contributors is our energy business. Regulated asset base growth contributes to that greatly, from the distribution business, as well as, our generation business, which did, quite well in terms of EBITDA generation.
We would expect, hopefully, you know, that's still early to say, but the first signs gives us hope that hydrology could be better than the past two years, which obviously helps us with better margins on our generation business. Kerem is going to, you know, walk you through the details of these. On the industrial side, of course, again, as you remember, Kordsa benefits from the fact that it has a diversified footprint, and does not get hampered by the supply chain disruptions globally, and that continues to be an advantage for the Kordsa business. On the Brisa side, under the industrials, Brisa's raw material hedging strategy obviously adds positively on its profit performance.
On the building material side, you know, the top line performance passes through the EBITDA line. Of course, the alternative fuel usage will continue to increase year-on-year, which also helps us, in light of increased fuel prices, helps us in terms of managing our margins. One caution, though, I'm sure you must have seen as well, in our non-life insurance, Aksigorta's insurance business, the profitability of Aksigorta, both on EBITDA and net profit levels were not well. That's the nature of the business. The premium generation does not, at this point in time, match its cost increase driven by the abrupt increases in the inflation levels and this high negative real interest rate environment.
Nevertheless, we benefit having a diversified portfolio of businesses which allows us to double our EBITDA compared to last year, well ahead of the inflation as well as devaluation levels. Same is true for the consolidated net income. Again, you know, the profit performance of energy contributes, as well as the industrials contributes positively on our bottom line. I've talked about our cash position, which also helps delivery to our bottom line, and therefore we have been able to grow our bottom line, you know, more than two times in the period. Now, very little on what we have disclosed to you before the Bayram break, that we have been telling you about since last year, that we intend to create a business, a digital business going forward.
One arm was cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is an interesting, obviously, industry, because it's one of the fastest growing on the digital space in the past three years, from 2018- 2021. The CAGR growth of the industry was 9%. Within it, actually, what we have been focusing on was the operational technology part, basically. The operational technology security, OT, which has been growing by 14%, so faster than the overall cybersecurity segment. Looking forward, unfortunately, this operational technology security market is expected to grow even faster, you know, just over 20% CAGR growth. I don't need to tell you the risks associated with cybersecurity, and this operational technology security deals with, you know, power generation and distribution, oil and gas distribution, utilities and transportation.
We have acquired a business called Radiflow. With a, you know, not a large deal size, but a very good growth profile, a very good technology that we expect would benefit most in this fast-growing segment of the cybersecurity domain. It's already a global business generating revenue streams globally, operating in, you know, Europe, EU, and, you know, Middle East, APAC markets as well. We don't have this technology. Obviously, we bought another technology, and we would very much like to continue building on this position to grow. On the other hand, we also acquired SEM. When I say acquired, both of these are subject to, you know, completion after customary processes.
SEM actually was a subsidiary of Ströer. Some of you may have heard. That's a globally acclaimed agency. It's specifically its business is digital marketing, and it enables us to leverage the engine that we have generated internally in Sabancı Holding for, you know, marketing intelligence, basically with its experience and its customer base, data-driven, you know, technologies, to, you know, manage marketing services. Both of these businesses, we expect to have great potential going forward. I want to also show you how we've structured these businesses. I'm sure you must have heard from us our digital arm, SabancıDx.
We are now accumulating these digital investments initiatives under our wholly owned Holland-based subsidiary, Sabancı Dx Technology Services and Investment BV. Radiflow, SEM, and the commercial businesses and services of SabancıDx will be under this Holland subsidiary, and obviously will create us a platform to enjoy synergies with Sabancı University to grow on the digital front and hopefully create a good business for us. I will briefly touch base on the acquisitions on the industry side. One of them is Microtex, which was acquired by Kordsa. As you will also remember, Kordsa has expanded to composites. That was before the pandemic. A great move, not a great timing, unfortunately, but have been able to diversify its business both geographically and product wise.
Acquisition of Microtex, which obviously is in Europe and especially, you know, an important player in as a supplier in the automotive and motorsports industry, accelerates that diversification for Kordsa and will add on top of the existing composite business going forward. Brisa announced the acquisition of Arvento, and it's a mobility solutions business, fits exceptionally well with Brisa's existing business as is. Arvento is a leading fleet telematics and IoT solutions company with a high market share in the sub-segment. So we are quite happy with these two acquisition initiatives under industry as well. As I said, Microtex also is subject to closing procedures. Finally, again, I'm happy to report that we continue our initiatives in ESG performance.
I'm not going to repeat our advances under MSCI Index or the CDP, you know, climate ratings, which we continually look to increase. But we have been the only Turkish holding company to be represented in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, which was in 2022. Also, as I mentioned, we had a very good result under Refinitiv's rating with a rating of A among the over 50 companies in the investment holdings category globally. We're quite happy with our first quarter performance on all fronts. I'm just now going to deliver over to Kerem to walk you through specifics of our segments. Kerem?
Thank you. Let me start with energy. This time it's going to be a little bit long, so bear with us. A lot of things happening in the energy sector. In Q1, energy sector's EBITDA is more than double, thanks to positive contribution from both Enerjisa Enerji and Enerjisa Üretim. When we look at the generation's performance, it delivered exceptionally strong results in Q1, thanks to higher electricity prices, weak Turkish lira, diversified portfolio. Higher hydrology compared to last year and optimum capacity usage that led to major improvement in both spark spread and dark spread. Electricity demand growth was approximately 5% year-over-year in Q1, driven by lower than average temperatures despite negative impact of gas supply curtailments.
Heavy spot prices increased five-fold in Q1 compared to last year, mainly due to increase in commodity prices, gas supply limitation, and change in maximum price formula to maintain supply security. Enerjisa's total generation volume declined by 14% year-on-year because of lower volume from natural gas plants, again, which is the optimum level of production to reach highest profitability level as far as spark spreads are concerned. Despite lower generation volume, revenues increased four-fold year-on-year, mainly driven by much higher spot electricity prices, higher energy trading volume, as well as weak Turkish lira. EBITDA more than triples as natural gas and lignite profitability continued to drive higher spark and dark spreads in generation business driven by higher market prices.
From renewables, hydro profitability started to show some signs of recovery as its contribution to EBITDA increased thanks to higher water flow and weaker Turkish lira compared to last year. Moreover, we have successfully captured market opportunities by benefiting from higher spot electricity prices and our team's ability on commodity trades. Higher dispatch contribution also supported the EBITDA in Q1. All in all, net income more than quadruples in generation business compared to last year, thanks to this robust EBITDA contribution. When we go to details of distribution and retail business, Enerjisa Enerji distribution segment's EBITDA increased by 48% in Q1, driven by higher financial income on higher short and medium term inflation assumptions. Regulated asset base growth reached 61% compared to last year, reflecting higher inflation despite lower CapEx spending due to seasonality.
Retail business EBITDA growth reached 98% year-on-year in Q1, fueled by increasing gross profit of regulated market segments, thanks to higher electricity procurement prices and higher retail service revenues. Despite the strong operating performance, net income declined by 60% year-on-year due to higher financial expenses as a result of higher financial debt and interest rates, and revaluation expenses of bonds and customer deposits due to higher inflation. Excluding non-cash deposit revaluation, net income growth was actually becoming 16% year-over-year. The decline in net income in Q1 is not a proxy for the full year due to quarter-specific drivers. The peak inflation took a toll on financial expenses in Q1, while the impact of inflation on cost will be lower in subsequent quarters.
Meanwhile, the positive impact of inflation on revenues will continue to be reflected throughout the year, noticeably for distribution segment, even when the inflation start to ease. Like in many countries, Turkish authorities also made some changes to the regulation in the energy sector, which were by April, which you all know. The regulator introduced maximum price limit application for power generators. The maximum settlement price has set for each electricity generation technology. For low cost generators, difference between the market price and the regulated asset base maximum settlement price will be allocated to a special fund. This fund will be used to both ensure supply security and to support cash flow of retail companies. The impact of this newly introduced regulation is likely to have limited negative impact to our generation company. Actually, limited impact, not negative, but likely to have positive impact on the retail company.
Therefore, net-net, our businesses are likely to remain at balance even in a changing macro and/or regulatory conditions. Once again, I just wanted to stress Q1 has marked as another quarter when we benefited from having diversified businesses in our energy segments. While cash flow and net profit of Enerjisa Enerji weakens due to extraordinary market conditions, on the other end of the spectrum, Enerjisa Üretim business benefited from the same conditions by delivering exceptional strong performance and succeeded in partly offsetting this weakness. Moving on to Industrials segment combined revenues surged by 130% driven by strong demand, pricing flexibility, and weaker TR.
Our tire reinforcement business volume growth exceeded markets, thanks to its local agility, combined with strong global footprints. Segment strong operational profitability was driven by top line growth, raw material hedging strategy, and channel diversity entire business, and better margins and higher volumes in tire reinforcement business. Segment's net profit more than doubled thanks to the strong operational performance and drop in financial expenses. Moving on to building materials. Revenue growth was impressive in Q1, reaching 179% year-on-year on sustained demands, better pricing flexibility. Please note that contribution of Çimsa Sabancı Cement BV in segment revenues increased to a meaningful level this quarter. Even without Çimsa Sabancı Cement BV contribution, segment's revenue growth still stands at more than 100% year-on-year in Q1.
Despite fuel mix optimization, better energy margin and better OpEx to sales ratio, escalated fuel, electricity, raw material and transportation costs limit this positive impact of strong top line performance, which resulted in a lower EBITDA margin of 11% compared to 18% last year. Net EBITDA margin is almost doubled compared to Q4 2021. Segment's bottom line declined 6% on higher financial expenses, driven by increased interest expenses and FX costs. I just wanted to highlight finally, our efforts to improve fuel mix prevails as our new alternative fuel investment in our Afyon plant became operational in this quarter. As a result, segment's alternative fuel usage improved even further and reached 21% compared to 14% last year. This is way above Turkey's 8% average.
In retail, segment's combined revenues increased by 7% thanks to strong contribution from electronics retail, while food retail revenue growth was in line with the average inflation in Q1. Like-for-like customer numbers in both businesses have shown double-digit improvements. E-commerce sales growth prevails, increased 48% in Q1. Although e-commerce share in total revenues declined slightly by one percentage point due to easing COVID-19 restrictions and as the mobility improves. As electronics retail company officially launched its own marketplace in February 2022, with the aim of much stronger presence in e-commerce markets, the pace of online sales in electronics likely to increase its share in total revenues going forward. Solid top line growth was able to cover elevated operating expenses and operating profitability is maintained in both businesses.
Segment's IFRS-adjusted EBT increased by 75% in Q1, and margin improved very slightly by 0.1 percentage points, thanks to increased share from more profitable electronics retail. Despite higher financial expenses, segment's bottom line improved. Moving on to financial services. Segment top line increased by 59% year-on-year, driven by both life and non-life businesses. In life business, technical income increased by 29% year-on-year, led by growth in life protection volumes and pension assets under management. In non-life business, on the other hand, underwriting results were adversely affected by the increase in mobility, coupled with negative impact of 50% hike in minimum wage and the increase in FX-driven claim costs in motor segments. As a result, combined ratio deteriorated to 106% in the quarter compared to 108% a year ago.
Despite higher financial income on increased interest rates and liquidity, deterioration in non-life business underwriting results due to higher claims resulted in lower profitability on the segments. Finally, on banking. Despite the challenging environment, along with higher global inflation as well as negative impact of ongoing pandemic, Akbank positioning enables the bank to generate long-term stakeholder value. Akbank's quarterly net income of about TRY 8 billion is almost 4x than the first quarter of last year. Return on assets came at an eye-catching 4% and around 29% ROE, well ahead of the guidance. Robust loan growth across the board, fee income growth, as well as strategic securities positioning were supportive factors for solid core operating performance. The bank further built capital during the quarter, reaching a robust figure of 17.7%, excluding FX variances, which is the highest among its peers.
Its net cost of credit evolution underlines proactive provisioning, while improved collection values and ongoing strong collection performance continue to contribute positively. For 2022, Akbank's focus will continue to remain on healthy profitable growth and customer acquisition, while sustainability remains at the heart of its strategy. This finalizes our details on segments. I now would like to hand over to our CFO for closing remarks.
Thank you, Kerem. Again, we're quite happy to have a very strong start to an otherwise challenging year. Some of our businesses, obviously, like our bank or our electricity distribution business, is very well positioned in this, you know, high inflationary environment. Whereas some of our other businesses are more susceptible. We are aware of the fact that the energy, raw material prices, fuel prices in general will continue, you know, being challenging. Will be driven by our ability to price as well as manage our costs and expense bases. Nevertheless, obviously, we maintain our guidance for the year after this very strong start, and we will be more than happy, hopefully, to share with you our good progress in the following quarters to come. With that, we can go to Q&A.
Yes. Let me remind you that you can write up your questions to the Q&A section or in the chat section of our Zoom. [Hamza Bey], you raised your hand, but we cannot take questions live. If you can write the question, we'll be able to see it. Thank you. Once again, please type your questions in Q&A section of Zoom. Thank you. All right, we have the first question. You mentioned that you are maintaining the guidance. Can you please share your guidance on holding levels? On energy business, how should we think about your EBITDA margin consolidating this year? Thank you.
Thank you, [Hamza]. You will remember our midterm guidance. We were guiding for revenues growing 8% better than headline inflation. EBITDA doing better than 10% better than headline inflation. We were guiding for our net debt to EBITDA to be no more than 2x. You will also remember we have discussed that we are going to step up CapEx in the next five years versus the last five years, which is obviously true. I mean, if you take the first quarter and including April, our CapEx to revenue has actually increased from 6% to, you know, round about 9%. We're pretty much in line with what we have been guiding you.
We were maintaining that we would like to increase the share of the FX revenues. Our midterm target is about 30%. Let me see. The other one is you know, as we're transforming our portfolio with investments in the new economy, we expect the share of the new economy to come to some 13% from a base of 6%, which is the average of 2017-2021. That was actually our guidance. On the second question, I mean, if you looked at the EBITDA performance of our energy businesses together, you know, you take the generation as well as the distribution business segment-wise, the growth in the first quarter was just under 130%.
Obviously, most of a substantial part of the growth coming from the generation part. Although we will see in the second quarter more clearly on the generation side, the hydrology could be different from last year. We would expect the energy prices to remain high, you know, given the you know, energy deficit in Turkey. On the distribution side, as I said, our regulated asset base model actually protects us in terms of EBITDA growth. We don't expect a negative, let's say, movement. In fact, we could see some margin opportunity, as I said, if the hydrology becomes better compared to the past two years.
Peter's second question: After having leveraged the balance sheet, what will be energy generation strategy? M&A, green fields or dividends?
On the generation side, thank you [Hamza Bey]. I mean, look, it has become a very healthy business. Actually, probably a bit of everything that you have underlined, because we would very much like to continue expanding our renewable portfolio, and we would want to continue investing on our renewable portfolio. We already have, as you will remember, we've communicated 565 MW of wind, of which 65 MW has started to get commissioned. We're looking to see if there are, you know, reasonable opportunities for acquisition. Obviously, the company is in the best position to do that from an M&A point of view. As shareholders, we're quite happy with the dividends, you know, streams that they're coming from the generation business.
The beauty of, you know, Enerjisa Üretim is, it could do everything that you listed without necessarily hampering its balance sheet health. Staying within our midterm guidance for our leverage, as in the group as a whole, our generation business could do the greenfields or, you know, acquire businesses as well as continue distributing healthy dividends.
Once again, you can type your questions in the Q&A section of Zoom. A little reminder, please type your questions through the Q&A section. Well, we see these are all questions, I guess. Everything's pretty clear. I would now hand over to our CFO for closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Kerem. Thank you all for participating today. Obviously, these were the This is the presentation and the discussion and the questions for today. We don't have to remind you, if you have any more questions, please, you know, follow up with us. We would be more than happy to answer them. We look forward to getting together at the end of the next quarter, hopefully sharing a new set of good results with you. Bye for now. Stay healthy. Thank you.
Thank you.