Hello and welcome to RHI Magnesita's Full Year Results 2024 webcast with Stefan Borgas, CEO, and Ian Botha, CFO. The webcast will consist of a presentation followed by Q&A. If you would like to ask a question, please click on the Questions tab above the slides on the webcast. We will also be operating a video bridge, the details of which have been shared with analysts only. If you would like to register a question on the video bridge, please use the Raise Hand button, which you can find under React. Until then, please mute your audio and video. I would now like to hand over to Stefan to start the presentation. Stefan, please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and welcome everybody joining us here in Vienna. Ian and I will lead you through the 2024 results, and then, of course, we are very happy to answer all of your questions right afterwards and in the coming day. But before we start, I would like to share a safety moment with you. We begin all presentations and meetings at RHI Magnesita with a short discussion or reflection on safety. I would like to share a reflection all around learning about health and safety. As you know, we recently acquired Resco Products in North America. The Resco approach, the Resco management approach on safety, has very excellently focused on behavioral awareness of all the employees. For example, last year, they had completely stopped work at all of their nine production facilities because before there was an accident in one of them.
This created huge and very, very good awareness among all of the employees on safety. On the other hand, now that we're going through their plants a lot, they miss to put in place some of the physical protection, like guardrails or hand protection screens or lockout sensors, more similar to what is done in other RHI Magnesita plants. So now, of course, as we listen and learn to each other, the best approach will be to combine both of those approaches to safety. We learn from each other, we listen to each other, and then we put in place an even better process to improve safety for everybody. Before we now move into the main section of the presentation, I would like to highlight the three key takeaways from this 2024 result review.
First message: For the third year in a row, we have been facing a declining demand from our customers. Thanks to our operational performance, our improved operational performance, we have still delivered solid financial results. Weaker pricing, reduced revenues, this was offset by contribution from acquisitions. Despite these falling prices, we increased adjusted EBITDA margins to 11.7% from 11.4%, achieving our guidance. Cash conversion remained high, above 100%, and gearing is very well controlled within our guided range. Second message: We have taken a major step forward in North America, actually in the United States, with a EUR 391 million acquisition of Resco Products. This is our largest acquisition since the merger of RHI and Magnesita in 2017. We are focused on the benefits now, mainly on those benefits this merger will bring to our customers in the U.S. market and then, of course, to our shareholders subsequently.
Third message: RHI Magnesita continues to be a sustainability leader in our industry. We are closing in on our decarbonization targets for 2025. I'm very confident that we will meet those, and we have set ambitious new targets for 2030. As opposed to the last five years, we are now starting to actually deploy cutting-edge technology to solve complex engineering challenges in order to deliver meaningful reduction in CO2 emissions. Let's move into 2024: health and safety. We are fully focused on health and safety as a core value, actually, at RHI Magnesita. The board and the executive management team have made it very clear that nothing takes priority over safety, and at the moment, nothing is more important than completing our overhaul of our safety standards to review and relive our safety culture and safety leadership. We don't want any accidents anymore, let alone any fatalities.
Every employee in RHI Magnesita has the right to stop industrial activity if there is a risk to safety. The global RHIM team is responding very, very well to this initiative and to this relaunch. I believe that we will succeed together and make a real step change in the next quarters and years. An example of our unity on this topic has been the launch of the RHIM HELP Fund, which has been funded by staff contributions from employees, management, and the board of directors, and then a one-to-one matching contribution from the company. Together, we have raised over EUR 800,000 for this new fund, which has already made payments to some families who have been affected by serious injuries due to workplace accidents. HELP offers support not just for RHIM employees, but also to those affected in our communities. Let's move into the financial highlights of 2024.
We have again faced very difficult market conditions during that year as we continue to operate through an extended, still ongoing downturn in global industrial output. Against this backdrop, we have delivered resilient financial results with revenue, EBITDA, cash flow, cash conversion, and gearing, all in line with 2023. The results were supported by M&A. At EUR 407 million EBITDA, we achieved our guidance range for the adjusted EBITDA that was between EUR 400 million and EUR 410 million. Our board of directors recommends a final dividend of EUR 1.20 per share, maintaining the full year payout at EUR 1.80 per share. This is in line with last year. By focusing on cost and operational efficiency, we managed to increase our adjusted EBITDA margin by 30 basis points to 11.7%, despite increasing pricing pressure. Earnings per share grew by 7%, also due to favorable currency movements.
Increasing margins in an environment of falling prices and softer volumes at the same time is not an easy task. And this shows the benefit of the investments we are making to improve the efficiency of our business and to grow through acquisitions. So let's talk about M&A contributions because they offset the revenue effect of lower pricing. If we take a closer look at the revenue line, we actually saw a 1% decline in sales volumes in our base business before acquisitions and a 6% lower pricing. Part of the pressure on pricing was due to lower industry input costs, leading some of our cost-plus competitors to reduce their prices. Increasingly, competitors are now also fighting for volumes. However, lower price per ton is also a result of changing product mix due to our acquisitions, as these have shifted the product mix to certain lower-priced product segments.
Nothing to worry about here. This was expected. The contribution from an M&A increased revenue by 6% to EUR 3.5 billion, which is then broadly flat versus 2023. In this weak demand environment, we delivered a slightly improved adjusted EBITDA margin of 11.7%. However, this is a story of two parts. On the one hand, a record refractory margin of 10.9%, reflecting our disciplined cost and price management and still improving operational execution. On the other hand, a record low backward integration margin contribution of only 0.8%. This is a function of very low magnesia prices, which remain at a cyclical low, and also very low capacity utilization at our raw material plants due to the weak volume demand from end customers.
While raw material prices are low, the backward integration is still positive, with a contribution of EUR 28 million to EBITDA because we remain able to produce at a cost that is below the external market prices. This compression has removed EUR 56 million of EBITDA when compared to the EUR 84 million only two years ago. This has largely offset the incremental EBITDA contribution from acquisitions over the period that was at EUR 77 million. Our strategy is to continue to sustainably grow margins as we expand our business and capture network, logistics, procurement, and other synergies from acquisitions. Let's go into the different business segments now. Steel revenues reduced slightly, but this was mainly due to price and product mix. We increased sales volumes by 1%, excluding M&A, which is quite a solid performance compared to global steel output, which reduced by 1%, according to World Steel Association figures.
We also successfully increased gross margin to a four-year high of 23.2%, thanks to operational delivery in our supply chain and in our plants. Regionally, we saw weakness in China and North America, while India, West Asia, and Africa, Europe, and South America recorded increased steel output, although each region for a little bit different reasons. S o let's look at the regions, w orld steel production reduced by 1% in 2024, as I mentioned, the third consecutive year of contraction in global steel output. This, ladies and gentlemen, is unprecedented in the last 20 years. Only the global financial crisis saw a greater decline, and that was for two consecutive years, but then there was a fast and full recovery.
All of our regions recorded lower steel revenues compared to 2023, with the exception of China and East Asia, where a full year of contributions from 2023 acquisitions and a strong volume performance from the base business resulted in a 12% increase in sales volumes. In India, West Asia, and Africa, a 4% increase in steel production suggests a strong backdrop. But much of the domestic production was displaced by imports, impacting demand growth locally and also triggering reduced pricing. The contributions from M&A were evident in Europe, CIS, and Türkiye, where shipped volumes, including M&A, increased by 7% against a backdrop of zero growth in steel production. Increasingly weak pricing and mix effects reduced revenues by 1% in North America, by 1% in Europe, CIS, and Türkiye. North America was again our largest market by steel revenue.
During 2024, we were operating in a tough environment with a 4% decline in steel production. We believe that steel mills may have been reluctant to increase production, especially in the fourth quarter, with the expectation of tariff protection potentially leading to a higher steel pricing opportunity in 2025. South America, last but not least, was relatively stable in all respects, except in pricing, as imports from China and soft customer demand impacted pricing to be lower. Let's look at the industrial business. The industrial business delivered flat revenues versus 2023, although there were some large movements behind this. M&A contributed strongly to the performance in Europe and India, and shipped volumes increased by 11% overall in the industrial business. The strong growth in volume was fully offset by weaker pricing and also by mix effects.
By product segment, we saw a weak, or let me say a very weak, cement and lime season, but this was offset by industrial projects, which grew revenues by 7%, supported by a good number of capital projects in non-ferrous metals and glass, which we know will not be repeated in 2025. The main reason for the slight decline in gross margins to 26.6% was the change in mix due to acquisitions. The industrial segment remains overall a higher margin business than steel, but with a higher year-on-year volatility. The most significant strategic development in 2024 was undoubtedly the acquisition of Resco Products in the U.S. We have been working on this transaction for several years, and we have been very keen to grow our local presence in the U.S. based on strong, strong feedback from our customers to do this.
Resco more than doubles the size of our industrial business in the U.S. and allows us to enter into new market segments, in particular in the oil and petrochemical industries, as well as aluminum and cement also. A significant proportion of the Resco steel business is actually focused on iron making, where RHI Magnesita was traditionally not very strong in the U.S. And this is therefore very complementary to our existing business overall in the United States. Resco has a good network of eight refractory production sites and two raw material sites. It is this plant footprint which will enable us now to transfer production that is currently in Europe and South America to onshore U.S. locations.
To deep dive a little bit into this local production strategy, while many industrial players today seem to be waking up to the frictional costs resulting from tariffs and duties, those of you who have been following us for a number of years will know that we have been very attentive to this issue and the connected challenges of freight and working capital management and long supply chains and uncertainty there. This is why our strategy is fundamentally based on a local-for-local production strategy as far as possible in our five manufacturing hubs, which are located in the largest refractory markets around the world. We seek to produce as much as possible close to where our customers need it, but still leverage the power of our global network.
As we have built up this network until now, the longest supply chain and the largest proportion of imports has been in North America, which receives material quantities of finished goods exports from Europe and South America, and in the Resco portfolio also from China. The acquisition and the merger of our businesses gives us the opportunity now to address this and increase local-for-local production in the U.S. to at least 75%. A typical acquisition for RHIM will always benefit from procurement, SG&A, and technology transfer improvements. With Resco, there is also a major opportunity in logistics benefits, network efficiencies, and working capital savings, which is why we are very pleased to have completed this transaction and launched the integration process fully to realize those gains as quickly as possible, of course.
There's also an opportunity to bring our industry-leading recycling practices with associated sustainability benefits to Resco's customer base and to using the plant network that we now have. Our M&A program since December 2021 now spans 11 acquisitions with a total deal value of EUR 1.2 billion. I would summarize the benefits to our group overall as an integration of knowledge. Each acquisition brings us valuable insights into new market opportunities and exposure to different business models. We gain from the addition of talented individuals to our team from whom we can learn so much. They can often bring their expertise to a much wider customer base by leveraging the RHIM network and our global platform. In sustainability, we are closing in on our 2025 targets and expect to meet our key environmental targets fully.
We set them in 2029, and we said we would reduce CO2 emissions intensity by 15% and increase our recycling rate to 15%. When we originally set these targets, it was not clear in detail how we would be able to deliver them and whether the timing would be too aggressive. It is through a combination of remarkable innovation and determination of all the people in our company that we have been able to get to this point. We have now set ourselves new benchmarks for 2030, which are equally stretching and will demand much from the team to deliver. It will become incrementally much more difficult and more expensive to make additional gains. Recycling has now grown to such an extent that we are now setting up a new business unit to pursue external sales of green raw materials to other refractory producers and other industrial companies.
A few words on regulation in this space. With this annual report, we published our first sustainability statement according to the new CSRD or ESRS standards this year. Having complied in full with the new requirements, we are of the view that the outcome is not particularly beneficial to stakeholders. These reporting standards place a very high compliance burden on firms, which diverts resources away from actually trying to solve real-life sustainability challenges. The assurance process alone costs EUR 500,000 to RHI Magnesita, and this is before the cost of significant internal resources required to complete this process. We are encouraged to see that regulators have realized that these and other new regulations have imposed a high burden and are hopefully revising directives that have been proposed. We are hopeful for improvements here.
Irrespective of regulation, sustainability is a cornerstone of our strategy, and RHI Magnesita is leading its industry in developing new technologies to deliver sustainable growth. I'm very happy to share with you an example of our technology leadership and innovation in this field. This is the RAPTOR, a cutting-edge modular sorting technology, which is fully scalable and can be rolled out globally at speed. RAPTOR is an automated sorting line which uses scanning technology and robotics to deliver a step change in our ability to process and sort large quantities of reclaimed refractory materials to a very high level of purity. You are looking at the first installation in our Mitterdorf recycling facility in Austria. In previous presentations, I have shown videos of how the sorting technology has performed in testing. This is the delivery of a commercial-scale facility for real-world use.
We have also been working on other robotic solutions for various refractory applications, and I'm pleased to report strong growth in sales in 2024. Recycling and robotics are just two examples of the additional value that we are able to bring to our customers. As the group has shown, and as we have grown in size, we have become closer and closer to our customers, in particular where we have been offering solution contracts. Our offering has now evolved to the point where we have redefined and relaunched it under the 4PRO banner. We now group all of our offerings under the four categories of people, performance, partnership, and planet, and you can see the wide variety of areas which this service and solutions menu encompasses. We have evolved into a global business which can deliver far more than simple refractory materials.
The more we grow through acquisitions and develop our in-house capabilities, the broader our offering becomes, and we can differentiate ourselves further from the competition and, more importantly, help our customers in their operations. No other refractory player has this breadth of offering and geographic penetration. With that, now let me hand over to Ian for a more detailed look at the financials.
Thanks very much, Stefan, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. In a difficult market environment, we have delivered a strong operational and financial performance. In 2024, revenue declined by 2% and gross profit by 1%, with weak pricing largely offset by the contribution from M&A. Despite the revenue decline, we saw an increase in the adjusted EBITDA margin to 11.7% from 11.4% in 2023. This helped us deliver adjusted EBITDA of EUR 407 million in line with guidance and consistent with the 2023 performance.
Net financial expenses benefited from a foreign exchange gain of EUR 11 million compared to a loss of EUR 30 million in 2023 due to the strength of the U.S. dollar against the euro, the Brazilian real, and the Mexican peso. This was the primary driver behind our 7% growth in adjusted EPS to EUR 5.32 per share. The board has recommended a final dividend of EUR 1.20 per share, bringing the total dividend for 2024 to EUR 1.80, which is the same as the payout for 2023. The dividend is covered approximately three times by adjusted EPS in line with our policy. Turning to revenue, in 2024, we faced a EUR 43 million currency headwind on the revenue line compared to the previous year. The 1% reduction in sales volumes in the base business led to a EUR 46 million decline in revenue.
In addition, the 6% lower pricing and the weaker sales mix impacted revenue by EUR 221 million. This was partially offset by the contribution from our 2023 M&A, which added EUR 224 million. In 2024, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of EUR 407 million, which was largely flat year- on- year. M&A contributed an additional EUR 40 million of EBITDA. At the EBITDA level, the currency effect was reversed, and we benefited from a tailwind of EUR 30 million, this given the weakness in the Argentine peso and the Brazilian real. However, these positive effects were fully offset by two key factors. Firstly, the falling contribution from the group's raw material assets reduced EBITDA by EUR 33 million year- on- year, dropping to a record low contribution of EUR 28 million. This was primarily due to lower prices for refractory raw materials and a very low loading of our raw material plant.
Secondly, we saw a decline in earnings from our refractory business driven by lower prices and lower sales volumes, which more than offset the benefit of lower input costs, better fixed cost absorption, and our operational improvement. As a result, as shown on the right, the contribution from our base business fell year- on- year by around EUR 40 million to contribute EUR 341 million, and at the same time, our M&A contribution grew by EUR 40 million to €66 million. There were three key categories of adjustments to our EBITDA in 2024, and I'd like to provide you with more detail on each of these. The first is digital transformation spend. We are replacing our core operating systems, including our SAP ERP, while redesigning our end-to-end business processes to cut costs and to enhance our customer experience.
As you are already aware, the digital transformation spend is accounted for as Software- as- a-S ervice and expensed as incurred, as is required by IFRS accounting standards. The total cost for 2024 is EUR 52 million. This is above our guidance of EUR 35 million, and this increase is due to certain items that were capitalized in 2023 but have now been charged through the P&L in 2024. The second adjustment relates to the non-cash impairment of certain fixed assets in Brazil. This results from our strategy to transfer production to the U.S. post the Resco acquisition. This was anticipated in our business case for the Resco deal and was announced at the time the Resco transaction completed, and then finally, as part of a new phase of network optimization, we've provided EUR 25 million in closure costs for the Mainzlar plant in Germany.
This plant was originally slated for closure as part of the RHI Magnesita merger, but the closure was delayed due to capacity needs at the time. With the optimization efforts now in place, we are moving forward with the closure, and this delivers a EUR 10 million EBITDA benefit in 2025. These adjustments account for the bulk of the EUR 125 million in total adjustments, and they align with our existing policy for handling such expenses. Turning to costs, in 2024, our cost of goods sold remains stable year- on- year. Lower input costs in our base business offset the impact of M&A-related expenses. However, the cost mix did shift. Labor rose as a proportion of our cost of goods sold, while raw material costs declined. This year, in 2025, we are seeing some input cost inflation driven by rising labor and raw material costs.
To offset this, we are targeting price increases in our refractory products. This has not been realized in the first quarter and weighs somewhat on our first quarter 2025 results. Now, the six M&A transactions that we completed in 2023 delivered an EBITDA contribution of EUR 77 million. This is in line with our guidance of approximately EUR 80 million, despite difficult demand conditions. This boosted our EPS by 23%, or just below EUR 1 per share. In 2024, M&A spend totaled EUR 77 million, including EUR 44 million in Resco prepayments, EUR 5 million for the acquisition of Italian recycling business Trezzi, and other deferred payments or minority acquisitions. Group free cash flow comfortably funded these payments, together with a dividend of EUR 87 million, with net debt reducing by EUR 53 million in the year. The remaining payments for the acquisition of Resco of EUR 391 million have now been made in January of 2025.
Our working capital intensity improved to 23.4%. We ended 2024 with EUR 115 million lower working capital, driven by a EUR 39 million reduction in inventories, stable accounts receivable, and a EUR 74 million increase in accounts payable as we extended payment terms with our suppliers. We are pleased with our inventory coverage, which was reduced to target levels in previous periods and is tightly controlled. In 2024, we invested EUR 145 million in CapEx, and we are setting 2025 guidance at the same level. This includes EUR 15 million for the Resco integration and maintenance CapEx. Our focus is to keep CapEx as close to or below depreciation as we prioritize capital allocation towards M&A to drive long-term growth. In addition, as mentioned, we are investing approximately EUR 35 million per year into our digital transformation. This is being charged through the P&L under other expenses as required by IFRS.
Turning to our network optimization, following the significant M&A activity in 2023 and the completion of the Resco transaction, we are now taking the next step to optimize our network to fully capture the benefits of our expanded footprint. This also seeks to address surplus capacity in lower growth markets and reducing exports from locations where they are no longer needed. As a result, we will be closing some sites in Europe, in South America, and in North America, while expanding capacity modestly in the United States to support customer demand. To execute this, we plan to spend EUR 100 million between 2025 and 2027, comprising EUR 40 million of CapEx and EUR 60 million in restructuring costs. Importantly, we expect a fast payback with an EBITDA benefit of EUR 10 million this year in 2025, EUR 20 million next year, and a EUR 30 million annual benefit thereafter occurring.
The EUR 10 million EBITDA benefit in 2025 is included in our market guidance for adjusted EBITDA to be modestly above 2024. Also, the 2025 CapEx guidance of EUR 145 million includes network optimization spend of EUR 15 million. Our business continued to generate strong and consistent cash flow, reinforcing financial stability and supporting strategic growth. We delivered EUR 419 million in adjusted operating cash flow in 2024, bringing our total for the last three years to EUR 1 billion. The period of exceptional working capital absorption in 2021 and the first half of 2022 is now firmly behind us, and we've returned to the strong cash conversion that is normal for our business. Free cash flow has also remained very healthy, with EUR 258 million in 2023 and EUR 225 million in 2024, reflecting the resilience of our operations. Net debt reduced to EUR 1.25 billion, down from EUR 1.3 billion at the start of the year.
We continue our track record of stable and predictable management of our balance sheet. Gearing was held at 2.3 times for the third consecutive year, remaining within our guided range of 2-2.5 times. This despite weakness in end markets and investments in M&A. Also to note, net debt increased by EUR 44 million in 2024 due to prepayments on the Resco acquisition, though no pro forma Resco earnings are included in the 2024 gearing number. We maintained high levels of liquidity, almost EUR 1.4 billion at the year-end, ensuring we were well prepared for the EUR 350 million in payments for the acquisition of Resco in the first quarter of this year. To support this, we secured a new EUR 200 million bilateral facility linked to completion of the transaction. Our debt maturity profile is long-dated, with three-quarters of our interest rates fixed and a weighted average cost of debt below 3%.
We continue to benefit from a broad range of financing sources and long-term relationships with supportive lenders. I'll now hand you back to Stefan for some closing remarks.
Thank you very much, Ian. Let's look at the future. I would like to summarize the market guidance that we have announced today and provide the context in a really, really difficult market environment that we continue to face. The first quarter of 2025 has started very weak, and there's no recovery in demand visible anywhere around the world and in none of our industries. The structural issue of excess China production and exports of many different materials continues to affect domestic producers in other regions on an ongoing basis. RHI Magnesita has a higher share of the refractory business in these other regions, so it weighs overproportionately on us.
In the industrial business, we had a relatively good 2024, but 2024 finished the industrial sector's CapEx cycle, and we know that this good project business in industrials will not be repeated in 2025. In addition to this, the cement business in the first quarter has been particularly weak due to the ongoing weakness in the world construction market, and less non-ferrous and glass projects are in the order book for 2025. We therefore guide to adjusted EBITDA that will be only modestly above the levels that we achieved in 2024, including the contributions from Resco. We expect that this will be weighted 45% in the first half and 55% in the second half. Let me finish where we started with the themes of safety, resilience, and progress. Safety, because this is our number one priority, and it will always be.
Resilience, because we have once again in 2024 delivered results that I hope you will agree are impressive given the very difficult market conditions that we are facing since two years. And progress, because despite the challenging environment, we are continuing to build a global business through acquisitions that is now well- established as a consolidator in the refractory industry. We are a true leader in terms of the value that we can bring to our customers. Ian and I are now happy to take all of your questions. Thank you for listening.
Thank you, Stefan. If you would like to ask a question on the conference call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. On the video bridge, please use the raise hand button located under React at the bottom of the screen.
If you choose to turn on your camera, you will be live with Stefan and Ian in the studio. For those watching on the webcast, please use the questions tab above the slides to ask a question. We will now take our first question from the conference call.
Thank you. Our first question comes from Andrew Simms of Berenberg. The line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. So Andrew Simms from Berenberg here. We've got a couple of questions. Firstly, it's quite interesting on slide nine where you go through the growth performance by region. Can you maybe give a bit of a color on China, given the steel production was down and certainly your comments around exports and things like that? It's interesting to see your base volume go up 5%.
I'd be interested in what you've been doing there, how that's come about, and maybe what the pricing situation is there. The second question is then on just gross margin and refractory. Is that all efficiency improvement, that improvement you've seen there, or is that some net pricing that you've been able to hold on to through this year? And then I suppose just thinking about the start to 2025 now as well, you mentioned perhaps some pausing of steel production due to tariff concerns. Have you seen any of that start to reverse yet, or is there anything, any signs of life that part of that pause might change? Thanks.
Okay, let me start with China. You know, we have a very, very small market share in China in the domestic business.
Hence, if we gain one or two large contracts, it makes a big impact on our growth, but it's relatively immaterial to the whole market. Also, we have made good progress in Southeast Asia in some of the markets that were relatively weak in 2023, where we have regained volumes because customers started to produce again. And thirdly, we have a full year integration of our acquisitions in China, and if you take this all together, then you come with a volume impact. So it's not market-driven, but it's driven on the relative percentage of our relatively small business to the very big market. Refractory margin improvement, yes, this is almost entirely driven by operational excellence. I mean, it's a continuous good progress.
We started to work on our machine room, on our global robustness, on our global supply chain performance substantially after the COVID year because we saw in this big recovery that we had a lot of work here, and we still have quite some opportunity here, but the refractory margin improvement comes almost entirely from this and not from pricing that we could hold on to because unfortunately, in the fourth quarter of 2024, prices went down overproportionately despite the fact that raw material cost in alumina started to go up. And then last question that you had, Andrew, 2025, start of the year, we haven't seen yet a big pickup in steel production in the U.S. I think it's more affecting now pricing there, steel pricing. So customers are quite confident about their own profitability, but volumes haven't yet improved significantly.
There are lots of discussions on import duties, but they're not actually effectively yet implemented. So no relief on the volume side yet in the U.S. from the steel side.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. I'll now hand back to the management team for any questions via the Zoom.
Thank you, Alex. The next question comes from Harry Phillips at Peel Hunt. Harry, please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. I'll show my face quite literally.
Hi, Harry.
A couple of questions, please. Just thinking about pricing and mix, I mean, I think the mix you've explained very clearly, Stefan, around the project side and what have you within industrials and what's going on there. But in terms of raw materials, I guess you get sort of two-way here.
If magnesia prices sort of remain flat, as they seem to be at the moment, that you don't get any pickup in the vertical margin, vertical integration margin. And then if you get the fused alumina, as it shows in that chart, really kicking on in the final quarter, you just don't get any recovery on that. And if you can't lift prices, you just have to take that hit straight in your P&L. Is that a correct reading of that?
Yeah, that's absolutely correct. On the magnesia side, the fused magnesia prices have started to increase. Unfortunately, we are not backward integrated there. We're only backward integrated into the sintered magnesia. And here the price increases are small. They are there, but they are still very small, so they're not yet material.
Maybe that could be an opportunity in the second half of 2025, but I think it remains to be seen what happens here. China is the price- maker here. On the alumina side, however, the risk is fully there. Prices went up, so ourselves and all of our competitors bought these higher-cost alumina products, and they are now in the cost of goods of the materials that will be sold in the next six months. Unfortunately, alumina prices, or fortunately, depending on from which perspective you look at it, alumina prices have started to go down again. So I think there's a real danger that many competitors decide to absorb this peak, and then we will have quite a noticeable margin compression, especially during the first half of the year if this trend continues.
It's quite dynamic, so I think we need to discuss it quarter- by- quarter, and we're happy to tell you, of course, what happens here. But this is a true risk for margins now in the first quarter, and we see it, as Ian has mentioned, already in the January and February shipments.
T hat makes a lot of sense. And then just thinking about Resco and sort of synergies out of Resco beyond the sort of plant optimization, if you like, of the broader network, with your rule of thumb on synergies from acquisitions, which is, what, 30%-50% of EBITDA in outer years, can we apply that to Resco as well above and beyond the sort of optimization plan you've outlined already?
Yes, that's a good number. That's what we're targeting here as well.
Now, the network synergies will only come in 2026 or maybe even 2027, right? Because we need to do some adaptations of the plant. That takes time. The engineering needs to happen. So that the customers need to test the products. So that takes a little bit of time. The non-network synergies, like raw materials synergies, consolidation of general and administrative costs, and so on, that will come this year. But of course, there are a lot of one-time costs that balance this out. So from a cash flow perspective, that won't help very much yet this year. Maybe there's a bit of an opportunity here on the EBITDA side to solidify it, but we've been careful on budgeting this in now. We've just closed, and the integration has started three weeks ago, so.
And then just one very final one in terms of that local-for-local sort of model in North America and this sort of 75% with Resco in there. Is that the right level for it going forward, or can that go higher still than the 75%?
Yeah, so the 75% number is a number that we know we can deliver with what we want to do. I think there's a little bit more opportunity here to go to 80%, maybe even 85%, which should be the optimal level. We don't ever want a local-for-local percentage to be at 100%. Why? Because it takes the flexibility away that customers are requiring for diversifying their supply chains, right? What we offer to customers is you don't only get the sources of the products in your country.
This is the main supply base, but you also get backup supply from different parts of the world. This is the one reason why we should never be at 100%. And the other reason is, of course, super specialty, high-tech products we only want to make in one or maximum two places in the world and not everywhere. Otherwise, the fixed costs are too expensive.
That's great. Thanks very much indeed.
Thanks, Harry.
Thank you. The next question comes from Mark Davies Jones at Stifel. Mark, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Morning, Stefan, morning, Ian. A couple of things, please. Firstly, on the raw material side, obviously getting squeezed quite hard on the margin there, is there anything that you can do from your own cost of production point of view within that business?
Obviously, restructuring has principally, I think, been focused on the refractory business, but anything you can do to your own cost position there that would help in the meantime? And any early thoughts on pricing this year, whether the price declines you would expect given this environment could be steeper than those you experienced in 2024?
Yes, on the raw material side, of course, when we talk about magnesite raw materials, there's always something we can do. We're, for example, looking at lower-cost fuels in Brazil, where we can switch from one fuel category to another, taking advantage of this. The new plant in Brumado in Brazil also allows us to modify our product portfolio and then get an overall reduction in cost per ton, assuming that we can fully utilize this plant, of course. So there is opportunity here, for sure.
I would estimate this to become effective in 2026 rather than in 2025 because, of course, these changes take time until they're implemented and then make it through the supply chain, right? Raw materials are early in the chain, so it always takes a little bit longer for this to be noticed in the P&L eventually. On the pricing side, Mark, there is clear risk. We don't see. Let me start a different way. The last time we had structural price increases in the industry was in 2021, when raw material costs really went up dramatically and the industry was forced to do this. Now, with three years of industrial decline, you have two things that happened. People lost a little bit that confidence and that focus on making sure that costs and prices follow each other.
But the other thing you see is also because of the low, ongoing low-volume environment that some competitors are getting frustrated with volumes not going up year- by- year. They won't go up in 2025 either because the demand simply isn't yet recovering unless something changes during the course of this year, which we all hope, of course. But that combination, I think, embeds more pricing risk than pricing opportunity for short-term volume gains. In our time at Magnesita, we will be even more disciplined on pricing in 2025 than we were in 2024, even more, even at the risk to lose market share. We will put a focus on this because we have to defend our margins. Otherwise, we get into a bad spiral.
Okay. Thank you very much and just one final one.
Given the fact that Resco is the biggest deal that you've done, would it be fair to assume that the focus this year is principally on integration? You've done a lot of transactions now over the last few years. Or are you continuing to look for new consolidation targets at the same time?
Both. Look, acquisitions are the only way for us to grow structurally. So acquisitions will remain a clear pillar of our strategy. But on the other hand, of course, now we need to absorb and digest this relatively sizable acquisition. So the amount we will spend and also the numbers of transactions that we can actually physically execute might be a little bit lower this year and next year in terms of spent volume, but also in terms of number of integrations that we can actually master. The Resco integration has to really work well.
So we have a lot of focus on it, but we really want to make sure that we deliver very well on this.
Thank you very much.
Next question comes from Jonathan Hurn at Barclays. Jonathan, please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Good morning.
Hey, Jonathan.
Just a few questions for me, please. Firstly, I was just on in terms of the return on invested capital of the business. If we look at the level in 2024, it's 9.8%. It was 10.7% in 2023. It is coming back due to M&A. Obviously, you've done another big deal or completed on Resco at the start of January. So the question really is just on the outlook for the return on invested capital of the business. Is it going to be structurally lower going forward? I think if we go back to 2019, it was around about 15%.
Can we get back to those kinds of returns for RHI, please? That was the first question.
Ian, you want to take that one?
Yeah. Thanks, Stefan. Morning, Jonathan. So we have super focused on our return on invested capital. Clearly, the 9.8%, which has been coming down over the last couple of years, is too low for us. It's come down really for two reasons. One is this collapse of the backward integration margin. And you can see the very weak vertical integration margin or our ROIC that we get below our cost of capital at 3.5%. And then the second piece is the M&A. We are focused on both improving the numerator, so growing revenue, growing earnings, improving our cost position, and on improving the denominator.
Network optimization, reducing our working capital, being super disciplined around the CapEx that we spend, and making sure that that is in line with our depreciation. Because of the size of our invested capital, just over EUR 3 billion, obviously moving ROIC is not just something to happen in one year, but over a couple of years. Certainly, our expectation is that it will tick up nicely this year, and it will continue in 2026.
Jonathan, the main reason for these network optimization activities, the EUR 100 million that we will spend and the EUR 30 million annual benefit, the main reason is ROIC improvement. If backward integration margins come back to over 1 percentage points and the network optimization is implemented, then ROIC will beco me double-digit again.
Okay. Okay. Very clear. Thank you very much for that.
The second one is just if you can speak a little bit more about the outlook for India. Obviously, the growth coming through there is below expectation. I think it's fair to say. Obviously, it's getting hit by imports from China. But can you just talk about how you see that market developing from here? Is it going to continue to be sort of a sort of 3%-4% growth market, or could it actually go back to that sort of mid to high- single digits, which I think a lot of people were hoping for? Just some color there would be helpful, please, in terms of the medium term as well as the short term.
Yeah. Look, in our business, there's two things that drive this growth in India. One is, of course, the imports from China.
Here, your guess is probably better than ours because you see much more and broader industries than we do. As long as this is not addressed, then I think the growth in domestic production will be lower than the growth in domestic demand. The demand growth in India is solid, so we don't need to be concerned about this at this point in time. The second piece here that affects our growth is the startup of new production facilities in India, where we have an overproportionate share because for these new facilities, customers want a more broader, encompassing solution. This is true for steel, but this is also true for new industrial plants. Because of the little bit lower production level, these new projects have been delayed a little bit.
But as they come on stream, we will have these step changes, and we will have one now in the first half of this year from a big new steel plant that is now just starting up, originally scheduled to start up in September last year, now delayed, but this is now coming. And there's a few other industrial plants as well. We have some, I think, additional opportunity there by translating the Resco portfolio to India because the oil and gas industry and petrochemical industry in India is a good, strongly growing sector as well. And now we have a product portfolio for this and a reputable brand also. So I think we can get back to 5%, 6% volume growth in India relatively in the short term.
But whether we can get to 8% or maybe in a year even to 10% depends very much on this import dynamic.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you. And last one, I was just interested about that ERP implementation across the whole group. I mean, it's a big undertaking. How's it going? I mean, has there been any issues? Just essentially, I mean, it's a very complex task. I mean, yeah, just what's happening there and how easy you think it's going to be.
Yeah. So there are many moving parts on this because obviously, it's not just you don't just buy a software and put it into place. We redesign our total business processes. One portion of this was either business services, the administrative services, in-house, we call it our administrative factory, which has potential for improvement and efficiency gains. We partnered with Capgemini on that.
Ian is leading this part of the transformation. That is going very well. The software design, we're in the process at the end of the process design phase. Now you can bet that we have hundreds of energetic, controversial discussions with a little bit of a delay, but we've achieved a super high level of standardization here, standardizing our business process to the future ERP design. So that has worked very well as well, and now we're in the phase of actually programming this and showing the first pieces of the new software to our key users. There, we're a little bit delayed. Of course, we have a very large partnership here with Tata Consulting Services, and we're getting used to each other in this. So there, it's a little bit bumpy. So we've had a few months' delay, but nothing to be worried about.
So far, I think the program is broadly on track. There's no issue here. We're on budget. The timing is a little bit delayed, but it's not going to affect us very much. The key milestone is going to be at the end of this year when we implement the first big region, which will be North America, and then we'll be live on the new systems, and then the rollout to the other regions, hopefully, will be easier, but this year is a decisive year for this.
Great. Thank you, guys. Very clear.
Thank you. We are now turning to written questions. The first question comes from Stephen Clapp at HSBC, who has two questions for you. The first question is, how do you see pricing developing at the moment and through 2025?
The second question is, how much market tailwind and rebound in demand do you need in markets in H2 2025 to achieve your guidance?
Pricing, I think we said most of the things already. This is maybe the biggest short-term concern we have at the moment. Therefore, the operational teams all around the world have a very big focus on this. So I think there's more risk than opportunity on pricing for 2025, quite frankly. Market tailwind, we don't need a lot of tailwind, but we need these new projects to come on stream. This is mostly in the U.S. in steel and also in India. Those, they need to happen. And we need to be sure what needs to happen in the industrial business is that those projects that we have actually get delivered and not delayed into 2026 again.
So I think those are the two things we need. I think other than that, we're okay. That's right. Next question, please.
The next questions come from Mark Fielding at Royal Bank of Canada. He's asking, please can you clarify around two accounting changes on revenue recognition and inventory provisioning? Were these changes expected at the time of the Q3 update when the 2024 outlook was updated or further back at the half-year results? Further, the revenue recognition benefit would seem like a base-level change for future years. Is that correct? And on the inventory provisioning, is this more of a one-off benefit or also a base impact?
Mark, thank you very much for the question. These are great examples of how we are getting closer to our business, how we are more tightly managing the performance of our business.
The revenue recognition item, Stefan touched on the journey that we're on at the moment with redesigning our ERP. What we found out was, as we were redesigning the new SAP S/4HANA instance, that actually for one particular shipment type, CFR using an intermediary, particularly into India, that we were recognizing the revenue a little bit too late. We're recognizing it when it reaches the customer port rather than when it is loaded onto the vessel. And clearly, we have fixed that. The net incremental benefit this year at an EBITDA level is EUR 2.5 million. The second piece is bigger, and this is a one-off. And this is inventory. Those that have followed RHIM for several years will have seen that we've been through periods of reasonable volatility in our inventory.
We've had periods where we've had too little inventory, and we've had to air freight material in, and we've been through periods of too much inventory. Finished goods coverage at 2.9 months, whereas today we're sitting at 1.7 months. What we have seen is, as we are more tightly managing our inventory, it's more stable, it's more predictable. Not just does it improve our PIFOT, our produced in full on time, not just does it improve our customer experience, but actually it allows us to revisit the very high levels of stock obsolescence that we've carried. Because our reality is that we've been recovering over 2/3 of the obsolescence value that we've provided. That's an ongoing better level of stock obsolescence that we expect. But yes, it does provide a level of support in 2024 of around EUR 10 million.
You know, if I can make another comment here, we talk about the margin improvement because of operational excellence. On the inventory side, this is a really fantastic example of this. Because of the sharper management, the much lower level of obsolescence, the better control across the entire supply chain, simply we waste less. And therefore, we write off less and have a better margin because we do it right the first time. And of course, our auditors look at this and say, okay, your provisions are too high. Please bring them down. So yes, it's a one-time effect. But of course, we're trying to do everything we can to have another one-time effect next year or in 2025.
If you look at our obsolescence as a percentage of our inventory, it still remains reasonably high.
And this is clearly an opportunity for us over time as we tighten up our inventory management to further reduce that.
Thank you. The next question comes from Vanessa Jefferies at Jefferies. Regarding 24% working capital intensity target in FY25, understand the market share gained from your inventory strategy. But given current raw material prices and availability dynamics, can we expect to eventually move back to the pre-FY22 15%-18% target range?
V anessa, thanks for the question. So I think that we certainly are seeking to reduce our working capital intensity further over time. And a particular focus on reducing our inventory intensity as we drive more local for local, like with Resco, as we invest in some of this new digital technology around transport management and supply chain planning, but also as we seek to reduce further our accounts receivable overdues.
So bringing it down 1%-2% in future periods is certainly on our radar screen. It will not go back, though, to the 15%-18% that may have been the case in the past, really for three key reasons. One is that we have not increased our trade finance as a proportion of our working capital as the levels of working capital have grown. If we were to do that, that alone would add a reduction of almost three percentage points. Secondly, as the portfolio grows in geographies like India, what we do find is that there are longer supply chains that now exist. It simply takes us, we have more material on the water into India. And thirdly, it's a consequence of the relative strength of the U.S. dollar.
Thank you.
This concludes the Q&A, and I would now like to hand back to Stefan for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much for all of your questions, and thank you very much for dialing in to listen today. Let me just summarize our key messages. In our industry, together with many other industries in the basic materials, we are facing a very serious, difficult demand situation now, the third year in a row. Considering this, our 2024 results are quite resilient. Second, in RHI Magnesita, we have delivered another good contribution from our strategy execution with the Resco acquisition in the U.S. that gives us a true step forward here in terms of revenue, profits, synergy potential, but also local production increase in this important market. And third, we are and we remain the sustainability leader in our industry.
The activities here are now moving from a big operational focus to a technology implementation focus for the next five years, but we will continue to be here. If we look at 2025, we have to be careful. Our outlook for 2025 is considering this market environment, which could very well get worse before it gets better because we have now pricing pressure coming on top of the already weak and ongoing volume demand. We are sure that in 2025, we will deliver moderately better results than in 2024, but that includes the integration of Resco. Thank you very much for listening to us today, and we're very happy to engage with you over the course of the next days and weeks. Goodbye from Vienna. Thank you.